Stamford Journal of Business Studies ISSN: 1817-1680 Volume 6, Issue I, December 2014 142 Factors influencing Intention to Quit or Stay in Jobs: An Empirical Study on selected sectors in Bangladesh Mohammad Fakhrul Islam * Md. Jahangir Alam ** ABSTRACT The growth and success of any organization is usually depends on it employees. Turnover intention is defined as the cognitive process of thinking, planning, & desiring to leave a job and Intention to stay that result in loyalty and cohesion among employees towards their organizations. Turnover is very detrimental & costly for the organization and having efficient employees is similarly important as well. But the underlying reasons need to explore and be aware of the real reasons, not simply people’s perception, because sometimes the high salary or pleasant working condition cannot ensure employee’s stay or poor compensation is not solely liable to quit one’s job from the organization. So, there are more other factors that influence people’s intention to stay in the organization. Thi s research has investigated the underlying factors which causes employee retention and why employees are preferred to stay in different sectors of Bangladesh. The results indicate that the factors positively correlated with employee’s intention to stay or quit. Furthermore, this study significantly helps the top management of different organizations to understand the needs of their employees in these circumstances and retained their valuable asset with them. Finally, the authors have tried to materialize the topic through the findings and recommendations. Key words: Turnover, Turnover intention, Employee retention, Causes, stay or quit. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY Regardless of the organization size, the activities it undertakes, the business environment in which the organization operates, its success depends on the decision of its employees make and the behavior in which they are doing (Mello, 2011). Employee turnover is proven to have a general negative impact on organizational effectiveness (Price & Mueller, 1986) and reduces profitability (Johnson, 1981). These negative impacts include extensive financial costs, disruption of coworkers, additional work- unit stress, reduce in quality of work-unit and diminish of ability to adapt to uncertain environments, losing the skilled workforce lead to reduction on quality, productivity, innovation and competitiveness (Miller, 2010). Furthermore, turnover cause significant cost of recruiting and training the new employees (Abbasi et al. 2008). The actual turnover of the employees is basically resulted from their intention to quit the jobs or organizations. The process of job turnover can be described as job dissatisfaction is the first step, followed by intention to leave,which finally, can result in actual turnover (Mobley et al. 1978; Bannister & Griffith 1986). Turnover intention is one’s behavioral intention to quit. According to Bigliardi, Petroni and Ivo Dormio (2005) intention to leave refers to individuals perceived * Lecturer, Department of Business Administration, Stamford University Bangladesh ** Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Bangladesh University of Business & Technology