International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 6(9) 2019, Pages: 76-84
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International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences
Journal homepage: http://www.science-gate.com/IJAAS.html
76
Work-life balance practices and turnover intention: The mediating role of
person-organization fit
Abdul Samad Kakar
1,
*, Nur Naha Abu Mansor
1
, Roselina Ahmad Saufi
2
, Harcharanjit Singh
1
1
Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 54100, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2
Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Business, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Kelantan, Malaysia
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received 8 April 2019
Received in revised form
9 July 2019
Accepted 10 July 2019
The higher educational institutions in Pakistan are facing challenges to
reduce the turnover of their faculty members. To date, research has failed to
explore the antecedents of faculty members’ turnover intention, especially in
the context of Pakistan. The purpose of this study was to investigate work-
life balance practices and person-organization fit as antecedents of faculty
members’ turnover intention. This study hypothesized that work-life balance
practices and person-organization fit are negatively related to intention to
leave the job. Furthermore, the study proposed that person-organization fit
mediates the negative relationship between work-life balance practices and
intention to leave the job. This study adopted a cross-sectional design and a
quantitative approach. The data was collected from a total of 250 faculty
members from the public sector colleges in Baluchistan, Pakistan, through
self-administered questionnaires. This study used partial least square
structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for the analysis of measurement
and structural model. The results revealed that work-life balance practices
and person-organization fit had a direct negative and significant effect on
employees' intention to leave the job. Furthermore, the results also showed
that person-organization fit mediated the relationship between work-life
balance practices and intention to leave the job. This study contributes to
work-life balance practices and person-organization fit literature by
examining the mediating processes through which work-life balance
practices and intention to leave are linked. These findings provide important
implications for human resource professionals to reduce the turnover of
faculty members. Limitations and directions for future research are
discussed.
Keywords:
Work-life balance practices
Intention to leave the job
Turnover
Person-organization fit
© 2019 The Authors. Published by IASE. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
*The academic work environment is characterized
by poor working condition, job dissatisfaction
(Kinman and Jones, 2008), workload (Almer et al.,
2016), long working hours, high job demands
(Watanabe and Falci, 2016) and occupational stress
(Opstrup and Pihl-Thingvad, 2016). Such an
environment often creates an imbalance between
work and family lives and may result in undesirable
outcomes such as stress (Opstrup and Pihl-Thingvad,
2016), and turnover intention (Barnes et al., 1998;
Kinman and Jones, 2008). Turnover intention or
* Corresponding Author.
Email Address: samadkakar87@gmail.com (A. S. Kakar)
https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2019.09.012
Corresponding author's ORCID profile:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1209-2454
2313-626X/© 2019 The Authors. Published by IASE.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
intention to leave refers to the subjective probability
of leaving the job in the near future. Prior empirical
research and theories posit that employees’
intention to leave the job is the significant predictor
of actual turnover (Rubenstein et al., 2018), hence,
the present study focuses on intention to leave
rather than actual turnover.
The turnover of the academicians has become a
global issue (Vekeman et al., 2017) because the
turnover of academics not only affects the
productivity of the organisations but also results in
the disruption of the teaching and research activities
and students learning. Owing to such grave
implications, understanding the factors that may
contribute to the academics’ turnover intention
would benefit organisations (Johnsrud and Rosser,
2002).
One particular factor that is associated with
improvement in the academic work environment
and academics’ retention is Work-Life Balance
Practices (WLBP). Work-life balance practices, which