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Employee turnover is a serious issue for both employees and organizations. For organizations, employee turnover takes a heavy toll, increasing costs both directly (through recruitment, selection, training, etc.) and indirectly (in the form of lost knowledge and reduced productivity). In the USA, the average monthly turnover rate in 2011 was about 3 percent, of which some 49 percent was voluntary ([15] Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). This means an annual rate of about 20 percent voluntary turnover, at a cost estimated in billions of dollars per year ([15] Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012; [63] Mukamel et al. , 2009). Moreover, even before an employee formally quits a job, turnover intentions are likely to affect that employee's performance - and, therefore, the organization's. For instance, employees with high turnover intentions are likely to show little or no organizational citizenship behavior ([26] Dodd-McCue and Wright, 1996; [86] Van Breukelen et al. , 2004), and often provide poor service to customers, which may seriously undermine customer retention ([4] Allen et al. , 2003b; [79] Tax and Brown, 1998). This is not surprising, as turnover intentions have been consistently linked to negative employee attitudes, such as reduced satisfaction and commitment, that are known to diminish both short- and long-term organizational success.
The causes of employee turnover are multiple and complex, and are still only poorly understood. In an effort to shed light on the antecedents of employee turnover, researchers have focused attention on modifiable risk factors, expecting that changes in these factors will effect corresponding changes in turnover intentions and actual turnover rates. Since the 1980s, employee performance has become a focal point for turnover research ([3] Allen and Griffeth, 1999; [16] Bycio et al. , 1990; [44] Jackofsky, 1984; [78] Steers and Mowday, 1981; [96] Zimmerman and Darnold, 2009). Yet despite rich research in this area, the nature of the relationship between job performance and turnover has proven to be elusive.
On the one hand, several studies support a general, negative relationship between individual job performance and turnover. For example, [24] Dalton et al. (1981) and [39] Hollenbeck and Williams (1986) found that 42 percent and over half of the leavers in their studies, respectively, were poor performers. The researchers propose two primary mechanisms to explain a...