1. Practices in Global Environments
Employee Retention in Complex Systems: Significant Factors and Effective
Practices in Global Environments
Andrew Baker
Dissertation Advisors:
G. David Andersen, Ed.D., Primary Advisor
Eric B. Dent. Ph.D., Secondary Advisor
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The Graduate School
University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, MD
Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation is to identify significant factors and supporting practices that improve employee retention and to offer suggestions to management. Relevant themes include retention factors such as turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. Relevant human relations practices provide supporting themes and include recruiting, compensation, training, development, support, and culture.
Evidence
Results
Research Question 1.
• Affective commitment, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions factors were found most significant across the retention literature as determined by a meta-review of retention meta-analyses, literature reviews, and retention process models.
• HR recruitment, compensation, training, development, support, and organizational culture were those HRM practices found most effective for improving retention.
Research Question 2.
Nursing environments in developing nations account for the majority of global retention studies.
Other reliability-seeking organizations such as law enforcement and the military are also highly represented in the literature.
Improving staff adaptability can increase organizational resilience.
The greater national, cultural, and industrial context matters and impact organizations in similar ways.
Workplace aggression, unsupportive work environments, poor work relationships, job role ambiguity, hierarchical controls, inequitable workloads, and ineffective scheduling lead to organizational uncertainty and increasing employee confusion, stress, and burnout.
The number of unwillingly employed staff working under poor conditions increased.
Emerging environmentally driven retention factors might be best framed as components of system self-organization since CAS provides a standard framework applicable to most contexts.
Longitudinal studies better account for complexity by addressing continually increasing rates of change using several measurements of the same subjects over regular time intervals
• Collective turnover is largely environmentally driven and its frequency changes with global climate; this activity can function as both a (de)stabilizing force in complex environments.
Context emergent turnover (CET) theory might help predict emerging collective turnover trends.
Research Question 3.
Global systems produce organization environmental complexities formulated as workplace ‘shocks’ which can impact employment trajectory formulated as employee ‘scripts’.
Staying or leaving scripts are moderated by psychological climate where an HRM can intervene with flexible practices by creating a supportive work environment.
Flexible practices are mindful practices conceptualized as a spectrum of contextually dependent existing practices including complexity leadership.
The Problem for Practitioners
Global environments are characterized by continual organizational change punctuated by rapid and intermittent advances in information technology and increasingly culturally diverse settings. New challenges to retention include navigating organizations as highly dynamic complex adaptive systems and mitigating these challenges with practical solutions such as flexible leadership.
Research Questions and Propositions
RQ1: What are the most significant factors and effective management practices for improving employee retention?
RQ2: How have these factors and management practices evolved with increasing organizational complexity?
RQ3: What are the implications for management in global environments?
Proposition 1: Those factors found most significant for improved employee retention include turnover intentions, job satisfaction, and affective commitment and these factors are moderated by work environment.
Proposition 2: Those management practices found most effective for supporting improved employee retention include HRM recruitment, compensation, training, development, support, and culture and these practices are moderated by work environment.
Proposition 3: Increasingly complex work environments produce emergent factors and flexible leadership practices evolving with organizational change.
Theoretical Framework
Implications for Practitioners
Complex organizational environments require flexible HRM practices.
Flexible HRM practices produce positive psychological climate.
Positive psychological climate requires a supportive work environment.
Supportive work environments contain positive perceived organizational support, perceived supervisory support, work relationships, good person-organization fit, job role clarity, high job autonomy, equitable workloads, and effective scheduling.
These efforts will decrease stress and the likelihood of burnout and will improve employee well-being.
Improved employee well-being increases affective commitment and job satisfaction while decreasing turnover intentions to improve retention.
Conceptual Model
Method
1. Evidence Based Research: Systematic Review
2. Search strategies: PRISMA (staff* OR employ* AND retent* OR attrition OR turnover AND "turnover intent*" AND SU "work environ*“)
4. CIMO research design: (C) global organizations, (I) flexible HRM practices, (M) positive psychological climate, (O) retention
5. Quality Appraisal: Weight of Evidence (WoE)
5. Thematic Synthesis Flexible HRM practices produce supportive workplaces increasing commitment and satisfaction while decreasing turnover intentions to improve retention
6. Expert Panel Review: Subject Matter Experts (5)
Implications for Scholars
• Expanding complexity frameworks by borrowing models from quantum systems theory (cognitive science literature) as special cases of CAS to better describe and explain organizational change and interaction with other systems.