Work Engagement and Turnover Intention: The Moderating Effect of Organizational Justice

Abstract

The success of an organisation largely depends on its employees. Employers put forward different ideas to retain employees as to avoid turnover, which can cause both financial and moral loss to employers as well as employees. The actual employees’ turnover behavior is strongly predicted by turnover intention and one factor that affects it is work engagement. Many studies have consistently shown that the relationship between work engagement and turnover intention is significantly negative. However, there is an inconsistency pertaining to the strength of its association and there could be a moderating variable affecting the two variables. Therefore, the objective of this study is to test whether organizational justice plays its role as a moderator in the correlation of work engagement and turnover intention. This study used a cross-sectional and quantitative design. Data were analysed from 225 employees in Jakarta, Indonesia, in which they were required to complete a series of questionnaires to measure all three variables. Regression analysis confirms the role of organizational justice (together with its three dimensions) as a moderating variable (F= 23.26; p< 0.05). Hence, it is recommended for the employers to consider employees’ perceived organizational justice when they intend to promote work engagement as a way to decrease the employees’ turnover intention. Keywords: Work engagement, turnover intention, organisational justice, moderating variable, employee 1.