Enhancing precision in the prediction of voluntary turnover and retirement

The present research examines the differential validity of the facets of organizational commitment and job embeddedness to predict who will reenlist or retire from a branch of the armed services. We tested hypotheses with survey data from 1839 enlisted personnel in the U.S. Air Force. For personnel facing the decision to reenlist or separate, continuance commitment and organizational job embeddedness predicted reenlistment. For those eligible to retire, affective and normative commitment as well as organizational job embeddedness predicted who would reenlist rather than retire. However, unlike previous studies, for both criteria (reenlistment and retirement), people who were more embedded in their communities were more likely to voluntarily leave. This finding identifies an important boundary condition for job embeddedness theory.