PROFILES IN QUITTING: INTEGRATING PROCESS AND CONTENT TURNOVER THEORY.

Abstract

Process models of turnover focus on how people quit; content models focus on why. To integrate these approaches and test whether motives relate systematically to decision processes, we classified 159 leavers using four process types and measured eight content motives for leaving. One key finding was that those who quit with no job alternative had more negative affect than users of other decision types, suggesting affect-driven, impulsive quitting. Results suggest that process-content integration is a fruitful direction for turnover research. “Voluntary employee turnover ” is one of the most studied behaviors in management research