Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Business and Social Sciences 2015, Sydney (in partnership with The Journal of Developing Areas) ISBN 978-0-9925622-1-2 779 AN EXPLORATION OF MIDDLE MANAGERS’ INTENTIONS TO STAY AND LEAVE IN A SMALL TO MEDIUM SIZED RETAIL ORGANISATION Dr Geoffrey Chapman Central Queensland University, Australia Dr Katrina Radford Griffith University, Australia Dr Heather Stewart Griffith University, Australia Mr Ryan Gould Griffith University, Australia Dr Ellen Meissner University of Queensland, Australia ABSTRACT This paper examines intentions to stay and intentions to leave as expressed by middle managers in a small to medium sized retail organisation. The concepts of employee retention and employee turnover have long been the subject of academic research, however, there is no available studies in this area that specifically focus on middle managers in the Australian small to medium enterprise supermarket retail sector. An exploratory case study methodology is used to qualitatively analyse factors that influence both intentions to stay and intentions to leave. The findings suggest that factors such as power and organisational support have a strong influence on intentions to stay, and personal factors have a strong influence on intentions to leave. In addition to this, several other findings are presented relating to other factors influencing middle managers‟ decisions to stay with an organisation or seek employment elsewhere. This paper also presents the implications of the study for both the academic research discipline as well as for managers and practitioners. JEL Classifications: L81, M10, M12, M14 Keywords: Employee Retention, Middle Management, Retail Corresponding Author’s Email Address: g.chapman@cqu.edu.au INTRODUCTION Workforce retention is a „hot topic‟ for all organisations. This is because employee turnover is costly and the loss of high performing employees (also known as, dysfunctional turnover) contributes to inefficient organisations through the loss of productivity and morale in the remaining employees (Allen et al., 2010; Dess & Shaw, 2001; Jones & Gates, 2007; Lambert & Hogan, 2009). Thus, much research has been conducted to examine the factors influencing employees‟ intentions to leave (Boxall et al., 2003; Rosen et al., 2011). More recently, the factors influencing employees‟ intentions to stay have also been investigated (Jones & Gates, 2007; Kyndt et al., 2009; Radford et al., 2014). This is because the factors influencing employees‟ intentions to leave are not always the same as those influencing their intentions to stay (Chan & Morrison, 2000; Mittal et al., 2009). A review of the literature revealed only one study exploring the factors influencing employees‟ intentions to stay and leave in the supermarket retail sector (e.g. Esbjerg et al., 2010). However, that study was based on an investigation of Danish employees and no study was found exploring these factors within an Australian context. Moreover, the authors found no available research that investigated middle managers‟ intentions to stay and leave in small to medium sized grocery retailers. Thus, this study begins to fill this gap in the literature. In particular, this research conducts an exploratory case study analysis of a small to medium sized supermarket franchise in Australia to investigate three research questions: 1) Why do middle managers stay in small to medium sized supermarket organisations? 2) Why do middle managers leave small to medium sized supermarket organisations? 3) Are there similarities and differences in the reasons why middle managers choose to stay or leave their organisation?