Analysis of employee turnover amongst construction managers in Hubei Province

This study determined the most important factors affecting turnover intention and developed a prediction model of construction manager turnover in Hubei Province, China. This prediction model can help human resource managers take appropriate actions to reduce the rate of construction manager turnover and keep good construction managers.

Working hours in supply chain Chinese and Thai factories: evidence from the fair labor association's 'soccer project'

This article examines the determinants of working excessive hours, defined as working in excess of 60 hours per week or for more than six consecutive days, in Chinese and Thai supply chain factories. We use a matched employer-employee dataset collected from 15 Chinese and Thai footwear and sporting apparel supply chain factories, which supply international brands. Matched employer-employee data allow us to examine the effect of worker and firm characteristics on hours worked. We find that in addition to the demographic and human capital characteristics of workers, firm-level characteristics and worker awareness of how to refuse overtime are important in explaining variation in hours worked. © John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2011.

The organisational benefits of teams

This study presents an analysis of the benefits of two team structures - quality circles and self-managing work groups - for Australian work organizations utilizing the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey for 1995. The analysis indicates that firms with team structures have higher labor productivity, a flatter management structure and reduced employee turnover. The presence of team structures in Australian firms indicates a decrease in industrial harmony. The findings were inconclusive regarding absenteeism and profitability.

GLBT workplace experience : the impact of social practices, oranisational context and personal factors on turnover decisions

‘Gay Rights’ have recently become a major issue in many Australian employers with the enactment of new legislation. Thus, research on employment issues for GLBT (gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgendered) members of the work has attracted considerable attention from academic and researchers in recent years. However, there is still little research relating to sexual orientation in the management literature. This paper develops a model exploring the impact of potential personal and contextual factors (legal system, industry and organisational) on turnover decisions of GLBT members of the workforce. This paper also suggests a number of potential topics and methodological issues for future research.

Exploring turnover intention of construction managers in China

Employee turnover has been identified as one of the principal causes of poor performance, low competitiveness and high technology loss in the construction industry. Construction managers normally acquire knowledge and skills in construction methods and management techniques on the basis of long-term practice, and their turnover can significantly impact on a construction organisation's survival and development. Therefore, there has been an increasing need to understand the major critical variables affecting the turnover of construction managers. The aims of this research were to determine these variables and use them to develop a quantitative turnover prediction model. A system framework was first developed to categorise all turnover variables into job satisfaction, organisation commitment and demographic variables and the turnover intention was measured in diverse directions. Based on an empirical study in Hubei province in China, the statistical results indicate that seven job satisfaction and organisational commitment variables dominate the turnover intentions of construction managers.

Do repatriate support practices influence repatriate experience, organisational commitment, turnover intentions and perceptions of career success?

The focus of this paper is the development of a model for the effective management of repatriation in multinational enterprises (MNEs). It reviews the literature associated with the relationships between repatriate support practices in relation to repatriation experiences, organisational commitment, turnover intentions, and perceptions of career success. A model has been developed where it is hypothesized that the perception of the provision of important and higher quality practices will result in positive repatriation experiences A positive experience will be positively related to organisational commitment, and perceptions of career success, and negatively related to turnover intentions. These relationships are based on the concepts of social support, uncertainty reduction theory, and psychological contract theory.

Impact of in vivo fatty acid oxidation blockade on glucose turnover and muscle glucose metabolism during low-dose AICAR infusion

AMPK plays a central role in influencing fuel usage and selection. The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of low-dose AMP analog 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide-1-ß-D-ribosyl monophosphate (ZMP) on whole body glucose turnover and skeletal muscle (SkM) glucose metabolism. Dogs were restudied after prior 48-h fatty acid oxidation (FAOX) blockade by methylpalmoxirate (MP; 5 x 12 hourly 10 mg/kg doses). During the basal equilibrium period (0–150 min), fasting dogs (n = 8) were infused with [3-³H]glucose followed by either 2-h saline or AICAR (1.5–2.0 mg·kg^–1·min^–1) infusions. SkM was biopsied at completion of each study. On a separate day, the same protocol was undertaken after 48-h in vivo FAOX blockade. The AICAR and AICAR + MP studies were repeated in three chronic alloxan-diabetic dogs. AICAR produced a transient fall in plasma glucose and increase in insulin and a small decline in free fatty acid (FFA). Parallel increases in hepatic glucose production (HGP), glucose disappearance (Rd tissue), and glycolytic flux (GF) occurred, whereas metabolic clearance rate of glucose (MCR_g) did not change significantly. Intracellular SkM glucose, glucose 6-phosphate, and glycogen were unchanged. Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC~pSer²²¹) increased by 50%. In the AICAR + MP studies, the metabolic responses were modified: the glucose was lower over 120 min, only minor changes occurred with insulin and FFA, and HGP and Rd tissue responses were markedly attenuated, but MCR_g and GF increased significantly. SkM substrates were unchanged, but ACC~pSer²²¹ rose by 80%. Thus low-dose AICAR leads to increases in HGP and SkM glucose uptake, which are modified by prior FA_ox blockade.

Book reviews : David Palmer, Ross Shanahan, and Martin Shanahan, eds., Australian Labor history reconsidered

An objective of this collection is to bring the history of the Australian labor movement to international attention. The editors introduce the collection with a brief overview of Australian labor history, emphasizing differences between the Australian and American experiences. The introduction argues that a unique aspect of Australian labor history is “laborism,” which is defined as the central place of the labor movement in Australian culture, as compared with the more marginal position of the labor movement in America. In Australia, this centrality is reflected in the embedding of trade unions and labor in the state through wage-fixing tribunals, a social security system designed to support the families of male wage earners, and the Australian Labor Party's strong links to the trade union movement. The introduction is informative and especially benefits from the insights of David Palmer, an American historian teaching at Adelaide's Flinders University. However, the introduction was apparently written later at the suggestion of an American reader and has thus not been fully integrated into the structure of the book.

Gender differences in organizational justice predicting the key employee outcomes of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention

All four types of organizational justice – distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational – were included in this study of gender differences. Both male and female respondents perceived the distributive-procedural justice and interpersonal-informational justice pairings similarly and weakly. Females consistently discriminated more clearly across the pairings, however. The effect of the four justices was also found to be gender-dependent. Males’ perception of distributive justice directly predicted their turnover intentions and commitment to the organization, while females’ perception of distributive justice predicted only job satisfaction. Males’ perceptions of procedural and information justice both predicted job satisfaction. Females’ informational justice perceptions predicted job satisfaction and commitment to the organization. The paper contributes to the literature by presenting results from all four justice types and the simultaneous use of the three outcomes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to quit. Overall, the males had a diffuse set of relationships between the justice types and the outcomes, whereas the relationships between the justice types and
the outcomes for females tended more to follow a limited number of pathways. The study was validated with data collected on two separate occasions.

Regrettable turnover

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework to identify antecedent variables that impact on the quit/stay decisions of high value workers. In this framework, the unfolding model of voluntary turnover is enhanced by consideration of job embeddedness, and affect-driven approaches. The concept of regrettable turnover is introduced to describe acute forms of dysfunction caused when key employees quit. The regret is experienced by managers, and heavily influenced by the criteria used to judge the value of such individuals. Therefore another key aim of this paper is to build on the literature of turnover functionality to propose a more detailed set of criteria reflecting the increasingly uncertain and dynamic environments in which organisations must operate.