Abstract
Employee turnover is one of the most widely studied concepts in the organisational behaviour literature. While there has been significant progress in understanding why and how employees quit their jobs, there is much more still to be learned about certain areas of voluntary employee turnover. One area that requires particular attention is the voluntary turnover of self-initiated expatriates. These are professionals who choose to relocate to another country to seek job opportunities. Empirical research on self-initiated expatriates is extremely scarce and mostly descriptive and exploratory. Existing literature on expatriate turnover has tended to examine isolated factors leading to expatriate turnover and has not incorporated these within a theoretical model. Using a quantitative methodology, this thesis drew upon a sample of 204 employees working in healthcare organisations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to pursue two aims: 1) to develop a model of self-initiated expatriate turnover intentions through identifying the effects of three major forces on expatriates’ turnover intention, namely, job satisfaction, job embeddedness, and shock; 2) to examine the generalisibility of existing turnover models for expatriates in a non-western context, the UAE.Findings indicate that job satisfaction and affective organisational commitment are negatively related to turnover intention of self-initiated expatriates. Results also indicate that on-the-job embeddedness negatively influences turnover intentions of self-initiated expatriates over and beyond job satisfaction and affective organisational commitment, whereas, off-the-job embeddedness does not. Finally, results show a significant positive relationship between shock and turnover intentions of self-initiated expatriates over and beyond job satisfaction, affective organisational commitment, and job embeddedness. This relationship is moderated by off-the-job embeddedness. The thesis discusses the implications of these findings for the generalisability of existing turnover models for expatriates in a non-western context.
| Date of Award | 2016 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Stephen Deery (Supervisor) & Riccardo Peccei (Supervisor) |