Page Title

Race Effects on the Employee Engagement-Turnover Intention Relationship

April 28, 2005 

"While no definitive consensus as to a formal definition of the term 'engagement' appears in research literature (Finn & Rock, 1997), some common threads have emerged about the nature of the construct.  One point of agreement seems to be that employee engagement involves an expression of the self through work and other employee-role activities.  Yet another thread running through research on engagement is that it is multidimensional.  The role of satisfaction with the supervisor-employee dyad, is important, but the impact of engagement is even more critical in that engagement can be seen as a more 'local,' day-to-day concept than job satisfaction.

One area in the topic of employee engagement that has not been extensively studied is the effect of demographic variation on engagement's relationship with work satisfaction and business outcomes.  There are several logical reasons to suspect that the racial composition of a workforce might affect the level of and the effect of engagement on individual and organizational outcomes.  A number of recent investigations have pointed out that members of different racial groups view their workplace environment in very different ways.  In addition to differing views of their workplace environment, members of different racial groups frequently also view each other in disparate ways.

Hypothesis 1.  There is an interaction between employee engagement and racial composition of supervisor-employee dyads in predicting employees intent to remain with the organization, such that at low levels of engagement, members of cross-race dyads will report a lower intent to remain than members of same-race dyads; at high levels of engagement, there will be no difference between cross-race and same-race dyad members in reported intent to remain.

Every year, the Gallup Organization takes multiple measures of employee perceptions of satisfaction, work motivation, supervisory practices and work-group effectiveness through the use of the Gallup Workplace Audit (GWA).  The GWA includes 12 items that collectively measure employee workplace engagement.

We define employee engagement here as individual employees' involvement and satisfaction with, as well as enthusiasm for their work and is assessed with the GWA.  Intent to remain with the organization was assessed by two separate items, one for short-term intent, and one for long-term intent.  Age has consistently been show to be negatively related to turnover intention (e.g., McBey & Karakowsky, 2001; Porter & Steers, 1973).  Respondent age was measured by the response to an open-ended item and recorded in years.  We also controlled for respondents' confidence in their companies' financial future and self-reported income, as both could likely affect an individual's desire and/or ability to remain with his/her employer.

There are significant positive associations between age and both measures of intent to remain.  In addition, employee engagement was also positively correlated with both measures of intent to remain.  When the racial composition of the dyad was different, the respondent was less likely to report an intention to remain with his/her organization, either on a short - or long-term basis.

The benefits of a highly engaged workplace are reaffirmed, as reflected in the correlations between engagement and two turnover intention measures.  However, these effects are altered when we take into account the racial composition of the supervisor-employee dyad.  Because the subject of interactive race effects on engagement is somewhat in its infancy, there are a number of environmental and individual variables that could be potential moderators, or perhaps even better predictors of intent to remain as the racial composition of the supervisor-subordinate dyad (Jones & Harter, 2005, p. 78-87)."

Reference:  Jones, J.R.; and Harter, J.K. (2005).  Race effects on the employee engagement-turnover intention relationship. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2005, Vol. 11, No.2

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_______________________________________________________________________

The Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies is available on loan from the Ohio State University Leadership Center.  To borrow this resource or any other resource please go to the resource search page <http://140.254.85.212/winnebago/search/search.asp?lib>

If this is the first time you have borrowed resources from the OSU Leadership Center, please contact us at 614-292-3114 and we will register you in our library system.  Once you have been added to the system, you may request resources via the website.

Learn how the Ohio State University Leadership Center is strengthening tomorrow's leaders today at <http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu/>

Leadership Discoveries is a free monthly e-mail mailing about leadership research.  If you have any colleagues who would like to receive Leadership Discoveries, please have them send an e-mail message to flynn.61@osu.edu with the message, Subscribe Leadership Discoveries.

Back to Top >

Created: 2007-08-28, Updated: 2009-02-17