The Effect of Job Satisfaction on Employees ' Intention to Leave by Mediation of Organizational Commitment ; Evidence from a Petrochemical Company

To retain the existing human resource, especially the expert and active ones, is of the main goals of each organization. The management tries to maintain the human resources by increasing their job satisfaction. Lack of attention to employees' job satisfaction leads to numerous problems of the most important is job turnover. Given this fact that most the factors affect the job satisfaction similarly affect the organizational commitment, according to scholars, there exists a significant relationship between them. Accordingly, after reviewing the literature relating to job satisfaction and turnover, the purpose of this study was to examine the mediating role of organizational commitment in the relationship between job satisfaction and intention to leave. In doing so, 224 employees of warehouse and logistics of Razi Petrochemical Company were investigated by distributing the questionnaires and 200 well-qualified ones were returned. Gathered data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique. Research results indicated that the tested model is goodly fitted to data, and all the four hypotheses were statistically confirmed. In general, results of this study indicated the efficiency of proposed model for decreasing the under-study employees' intention to leave. Finally, some practical and research implications were provided for the statistical population, which can be utilized considering the research limitations. © 2017 Elixir All rights reserved. Elixir Org. Behaviour 106 (2017) 46746-46750 Organizational Behaviour Available online at www.elixirpublishers. com (Elixir International Journal) Masoud Movahedzadeh and Ebrahim Albonaiemi / Elixir Org. Behaviour 106 (2017) 46746-46750 46747 Chandan (1997) considers job satisfaction as a degree of positive emotions and attitudes that people have towards their jobs. Usually, employees prefer jobs that thereby are able to use the available opportunities for enhancing their skills and abilities as well as they like jobs that have specialty and about doing good works, they get feedback. These features cause the person feels a sense of satisfaction subjectively. Employees want to promotion policies of position and payment system to be in such a way that they think it is fair. When employees consider the compensation system is fair and they believe that salaries are paid based on skill levels, job satisfaction increases. Employees always pay attention to facilities or arrangements in the work environment from the individual perspective; they prefer the working environment to be healthy, safe, quiet, clean, and untarnished. Finally, individuals will receive a result more than money of their work. For most employees, work is more than money and can meet their social needs (social relations). So no surprise that having intimate partners and support life causes to increase job satisfaction (Robbins, 1997). Organizational commitment In the past decades, the concept of organizational commitment has allocated an important place in research on organizational behavior. However, there isn't agreement, consensus on how to define organizational commitment and determine its indicators. In addition, the use of multiple words to describe this unit phenomenon adds to this confusion. Porter et al. (1974) have defined organizational commitment, depending on the severity of an individual's identification with a particular organization and the level of involvement and his cooperation with the organization. O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) define organizational commitment as support and continuity to the goals and values of an organization and for the organization and away from its tool values (a means to achieve other goals). Hunt and Morgan (1994) raised organizational commitment at both micro and macro levels. Commitment at the micro level is the commitment to organizational specific groups, including working groups, supervisors, senior management and commitment in macro level is commitment to the organization as a system. Organizational commitment represents a condition that employees of organization represent the organization's goals and they wish to remain as a member of that organization (Robbins, 1997). Intention to leave Meyer et al. (1993) define intention to leave the organization as conscious intention to search for job opportunities and alternatives in other organizations. Also, intention to leave the organization is interpreted as the individual mental likely to permanent leaving of organization in the near future (Vandenberg and Nelson, 1999). Mobley et al. (1979) found that behavioral intentions to stay or leave an organization are effectively connected with the conduct of leaving the organization. In fact, the intention to leave the organization is an effective predictor for actual dropout rate of employees in organizations. Also, intention to leave the organization is considered as a predictor of real leaving the organization (Randhava, 2007). The desire to leave the organization is considered in many studies and defined by Mobly et al. (1979) as "the process of thinking, planning, and turnover intention" (as cited in Lambert et al., 2008). Ajzen (1975) in his attitude theory assumes that the best predictor of behavior is to measure the intention to exert a behavior. According to the classical model of leaving the organization, intention to leave the organization is a function of desirability and perceived ease of leaving the organization. Overall, personal factors (like negative relation of age and official hiring with intention to leave), inter-organizational (such as job condition) and external (such as economy conditions), determines likelihood of organization to be leaved by employees (Kuean et al., 2010). Research model and hypotheses development In the field of optional turnover, there is a strong relationship between job satisfaction and intention to leave the organization (Griffeth et al., 2000). Job satisfaction is a multidimensional construct that includes the satisfaction of a job, supervisor, colleagues, payment terms, promotion programs, and politics of company and sense of job security. Job satisfaction reduces turnover rate and increase organizational commitment. Therefore, organizations should pay attention to job satisfaction of employees because it has a strong relationship with other critical outcomes (MacIntosh and Doherty, 2010). Among the variables that correlated with organizational commitment is job satisfaction. Research of Meyer and Allen (1993) showed that there is a positive relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment. It is generally assumed that job satisfaction will lead to organizational commitment. Williams and Hazer (1986) have noted that there is a causal relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and job satisfaction is precondition of organizational commitment. In general, positive relationship between job satisfaction and organizational commitment has been repeatedly reported by researches (such as Tett and Meyer, 1993). Organizational Commitment is known as an effective factor on intention to leave the organization, even organizational commitment with more influence and stability than job satisfaction can act in making decision to leave the organization. A number of studies have confirmed that organizational commitment has a negative effect on turnover of employees. The results of some meta-analysis studies have shown that low commitment has relationship with turnover and high commitment with stay in the organization (Tett and Meyer, 1993). According to these arguments and on the basis of explanations about CRM system, research hypotheses are codified as follows. H1: employees' job satisfaction affects their intention to leave H2: employees' job satisfaction affects their commitment to organization H3: employees' organizational commitment affects their intention to leave H4: job satisfaction affects the employees' intention to leave through organizational commitment Figure 1. Research conceptual model. Masoud Movahedzadeh and Ebrahim Albonaiemi / Elixir Org. Behaviour 106 (2017) 46746-46750 46748 Research method The current study is to find the implications for improving job satisfaction and organizational commitment in order to retain the employees, and so, it is an applied-descriptive research. Data were collected through questionnaires including the items for job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to leave anchored on a Likert-type scale. Gathered data were analyzed by conducting structural equation modeling. Statistical population of this research is comprised of procurement employees of Razi Petrochemical Company. Given the size of statistical population (1000), the statistical sample (164) was determined by Cochran's formula. Given this fact that some of the questionnaires are probably not returned, 220 questionnaires were distributed, and 200 wellqualified ones were returned.