An Evaluation of the Utility of Expectancy Theory in Studying the Turnover of Nurses

Abstract

Although expectancy theory has been widely used in organizational behaviour research to study the motivation of individuals, its application in the field of turnover research has been limited. The aim of the present study was to assess the usefulness of the approach in the study of turnover behaviour of hospital nurses. In terms of the propositions of the theory, desirability of outcomes (valence) and expectancies about the achievement of these outcomes in the nursing work role as well as alternative work roles were assessed. The univariate results of the study showed that while nurses who left their jobs and those who remained did not differ significantly with regard to their nursing work roles, there were significant differences between the groups in their evaluations of alternative work roles. This finding underlined the importance of examining employees' perceptions of other work roles in employee turnover research.

The results of the bivariate analysis revealed that the expectancy theory measures were not particularly good predictors of turnover. However, correlations with nurses' job satisfaction and organizational commitment were comparatively high and significant. It was concluded from the correlational analysis that respondents' ratings of expectancies of achieving outcomes were better predictors of the dependent variables than the traditional approach to operationalizing expectancy theory measures, namely, expectancies weighted by desirabilities.