Abstract
This study aimed to clarify the core elements affecting the turnover intention of grassroots employees in the digital film industry and to construct a model of the factors affecting the turnover rate in this industry. Adopting the grounded theory approach, which encompasses coding techniques such as open, axial, and selective coding, this research involved the participation of 21 grassroots practitioners to explore the causal and influencing factors of the turnover intention of grassroots practitioners in the digital film industry. The results show that determined by the unstable nature of the job and fierce market competition, interpersonal interaction is a core element that influences whether practitioners continue with or leave their jobs. The over-reliance on interpersonal skills leads to negative psychological outcomes and difficulties in career advancement for practitioners. The interpersonal interaction-focused influences model reflects the correlation between the willingness of individuals to leave and the market environment and organizational culture.
Keywords
Introduction
Since the start of the 21st century, China’s state-owned studios have been reforming their system and grassroots workers have been flowing out of this system. According to Yang Zesheng, an expert from the Pearl River Film Studio, migrant workers, who are employed as freelancers, have been the majority constituting the digital film lighting personnel since then. Although the main body of professionals have maintained a cooperative relationship with the digital film equipment rental companies, the industry has endured a frequent turnover of personnel. Since 2018, the entire domestic film market has seen a low frequency of movie-going behavior and a decline in cinema attendance. The outbreak of the pandemic has further worsened the situation for the entire industry. Chen Qingyi, vice president of the Bona Film Group, has stated: “What is more noteworthy is the confidence of the middle and lower employees of the industry.” The loss of confidence and the brain drain among practitioners has caused great damage to the industry. While Guangdong suffered a blow as an important base for the creation of domestic film and television works, the loss of practitioners to other industries also represented a more significant phenomenon, especially the exit of front-line lighting technical workers. For companies, employee turnover is viewed as having a negative impact on managing revenue and expenses, which has been identified as a serious operational and strategic challenge (Tracey & Hinkin, 2008). Hamel’s study (as cited in Chiat & Panatik, 2019) indicates that a high employee turnover rate delays projected works and hurts the total productivity of a project. For the industry, when the rate at which employees leave an organization is high, there will be an adverse effect on its competitiveness and profitability (Dwesini, 2019). Presently, China’s film industry and market environment are undergoing unprecedented changes. Digital transformation has become a “new problem” facing the growth and development of China’s film industry (Cheng, 2019). Against this background, the high personnel mobility in film and television production is leading to a lack of inflow of young blood into the industry, which also aggravates the bottleneck in the improvement of technical capacity in the industry. Addressing this loss to the industry, the current study aimed to explore the factors that lead to the high mobility of lighting employees in film and television production in Guangdong province.
Curran (as cited in Dwesini, 2019) posited that “there is no universally accepted configuration for the causes of employee turnover despite the abundance of literature on the subject.” The mode of production in China’s film and television works is indisputably different from that of other countries in many aspects, including the division of labor, which is relatively undefined in China’s film and television industry.
Si Ruo et al.’s (2021) study has revealed some interesting insights in this field of research. For example, China’s production team has achieved a “block” division, mainly including production, outreach, art, on-site, and other small production teams, with significantly less granularity in job allocation than in the United States. When we consider existing employees in the digital film industry, except for standardized and systematic education and training systems for some professions such as directors, actors, and artists, other front-line production team members including those engaged in clothing, make-up, props, photography, lighting, recording, post-production, and other types of work, have not experienced systematic learning and training, and have entered the theater profession and industry through the introduction of the mechanism wherein “fellow townspeople lead fellow townspeople.”
Given the distinctiveness of this profession and the fact that it is mainly composed of freelancers, this study sought to identify the factors that affect employees’ turnover rate, using data obtained following two approaches. First, we interviewed digital film experts from the Pearl River Film Studio, a key film and television production base in Guangdong province established after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and the Guangdong Film Association. Second, we conducted a field survey and collected data from the film shooting sites. The study sample covered the entire Guangdong region (mainly Guangzhou and Shenzhen).
Cinematography and photography involve the use of artificial lighting to obtain desired artistic effects. The lighting profession addresses aspects related to the use and arrangement of light sources for filming; staff engaged in artificial and other types of lighting work are called lighting practitioners. According to the status of the division of labor in Guangdong, the current hierarchy of lighting practitioners’ positions mainly includes gaffers and two types of lighting assistants, and the practitioners are mainly migrant workers.
Literature Review
Employee turnover is defined as a situation wherein “the number of employees is reduced by leaving the organization.” (Farooq et al., 2022) Turnover can be voluntary or involuntary in nature (Pizam & Thornburg, 2000). In the current study, we focus on talent that leaves jobs voluntarily, not on employees who are fired. The implication is that turnover rates become dysfunctional for an organization when the brain drain of employees exceeds the talent levels of their replacements (Lyons & Bandura, 2019). Turnover could have both broad and narrow meanings. In a broad sense, turnover refers to the movement of labor from one location to another (movement between regions), one job to another (movement between jobs), or one industry to another (movement between industries; Stamolampros et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2012). In this study, we refer specifically to the voluntary turnover behavior of film and television lighting practitioners between different industries.
Bill published a paper describing the first empirical study on turnover in 1925. Bliss (2004) stated that “the costs of time and lost productivity are no less important or real than the costs associated with paying cash to vendors for services such as advertising or temporary staff. These are all very real for the employer.” Indeed, employee turnover remains a frequently studied phenomenon. The number of empirical studies conducted is high, and most of them are from the United States (Bolt et al., 2022).
The notion of turnover in existing organizational and human resource management (HRM) literature is based on Mobley’s (1977) model, which identified diverse possible antecedents. The HRM theory has been used in empirical studies in different fields, such as the hotel industry (Santhanam et al., 2021; Zamanan et al., 2020), oil and gasoline industry (Memon et al., 2019), banking sector (Onsardi et al., 2021), and education sector (Kakar et al., 2019; Zamanan et al., 2020). These studies have verified the negative correlation between HRM practices and employee turnover intentions, but there are some regional differences. For instance, in the Malaysian hotel industry, only green participation and green compensation and rewards were found to have an impact on reducing millennials’ turnover intentions; in comparison, other green human resource management (GHRM) practices had no such direct impact. Further, the study did not find any moderating effect of work environment on the relationship between GHRM practices and turnover intentions among millennial hospitality workers (Qadri et al., 2022). Oh (2020) conducted a survey of white-collar workers and intellectuals in different organizations in South Korea, and confirmed that salary satisfaction and job security have a significant indirect negative effect on employees’ willingness to leave the organization, which supports previous research in Western contexts. However, the indirect effect of job autonomy on employee turnover intention is not clear in this study.
In the IT department of Mellat Bank, six indicators proposed by Tanwar and Prasad were tested in a prior study; in particular, four indicators—reputation, organizational culture, social responsibility of the organization, and training and development practices—were found to be involved in the positive influence of employer brand on job satisfaction, as well as the negative influence of work-life balance and diversity on job satisfaction (Tajpour et al., 2021).
In another study, the job satisfaction scale was implemented among public sector employees, with results revealing that job satisfaction is the main outcome of public service motivation and an important prerequisite for job performance. High-performance public organizations realize that their success depends on the competence of their employees. Therefore, strategic human resource planning for public organizations is critical to maintaining, sustaining, and even increasing employee satisfaction (Hidayati & Sunaryo, 2019).
The importance of employee voice for HRM has been emphasized. Based on a qualitative theoretical study, researchers have constructed a model for the voice of knowledge workers, and pointed out that the factors influencing the voice of personnel constitute intervention conditions including individual contingencies, overall cultural and economic environmental factors, and the atmosphere within the organization (Hosseini et al., 2021). Further, on six aspects covered in Loshali and Krishnan’s questionnaire on HRM, which was constructed in 2013, the impacts of the recruitment system, job security, job involvement, and participation encouragement on entrepreneurship were confirmed (Salamzadeh et al., 2019).
In addition, numerous theoretical systems and influencing factor models have been presented in the literature, such as the theory of job demands-resources (JD-R), the social exchange theory, and the job embeddedness theory. The JD-R model has been widely applied to explain the causal relationships between job characteristics and employee outcomes such as burnout and turnover intention (Le et al., 2022; Luo & Lei, 2021; Sklar et al., 2021). After controlling for psychosocial predictors derived from the JD-R model, including job demands, job resources, job burnout, and job engagement, a negative relationship has been noted between collective psychological ownership (CPO) and social service workers’ willingness to leave (Su et al., 2021); this finding enriches existing knowledge about the positive influence of CPO in organizational contexts, including decreasing work burnout and enhancing social service workers’ work engagement (Su & Ng, 2019), by emphasizing its influence on reducing employee turnover intention. By analyzing the adverse effects of job demands and daily job stress on hotel employees’ daily burnout and daily turnover intentions, job demands and daily job stress were found to be indicators of daily burnout and daily turnover intentions, while colleague trust moderated the negative effects of daily job stress on daily turnover (Park et al., 2020). Based on the career construction theory, social exchange theory, and trait activation theory. Two mediators were proposed: career satisfaction and perceived organizational support (POS). Both career satisfaction and POS were implicated in the adverse effects of career adaptability on the intention to leave. Moreover, differences in the symbolic brand of the company tend to have an impact, that is, the mediated path through career satisfaction to intention to leave is stronger in companies with a better extended brand, while that through POS to intention to leave is stronger in companies with better instrumental brands (Zhu et al., 2019). Based on the social exchange theory, job social support has been found to significantly moderate the relationship between career adjustment and turnover intentions (Lee et al., 2021). Job referrals can also improve referrer performance and reduce turnover intentions by enhancing referrer job engagement, job satisfaction, and job embeddedness (Pieper et al., 2019).
Hobfoll’s (1989) conservation of resources (COR) theory is a stress and motivational theory; its main tenet is that individuals strive for the retention, protection, and enhancement of resources. Within the COR, resources relate to valued personal characteristics, objects, (environmental) conditions, and so-called energies. For example, relevant resources encompass an individual’s self-esteem, self-efficacy, social status, and possessions (e.g., houses or social networks). Work interference with personal life (WIPL) has been found to be positively related to turnover intention. Distributive justice, interpersonal justice, and competitive psychological climate were also found to have indirect effects on turnover intention through WIPL (Gim & Ramayah, 2020). Hobfoll’s COR theory was used to explore the role of workload (WL), nepotism (N), job satisfaction (JS), and organization politics (OP) on turnover intention, especially mediating the effect of harassment between WL, N, JS, and OP on turnover intention (Abbas et al., 2021). Among the studies on turnover reduction strategies based on the job embeddedness theory and grounded theory, recognition and rewards, training and career development opportunities, effective communication, compensation, pay, and benefits have been found to be effective in reducing employee turnover (Mohammed, 2020).
Globally, the number of studies on employee turnover in the digital film industry is rather limited; we now explore some relevant prior studies. The challenges involved in career sustainability were made clear in a 2011 Broadcasting Magazine survey, in which only 35% of the 550 British TV freelancers surveyed expected their careers to last another 10 years, while a third described career planning as “impossible” (Parker, 2011). Another study examining the UK TV industry explored the reasons why practitioners leave the industry from a gender perspective, as well as the widespread perception of a lack of professional care for workers in the industry, including the personal cost and the loss of identity suffered by those leaving (Percival, 2020). In China, the extent to which front-line film and television production is dominated by freelancers has not been fully recorded because of the difference between the system and the stage of film and television development. The local film and television industry associations have not produced statistics regarding the formation of relevant trade unions by freelancers, and the personnel are scattered. In addition, the educational level of film and television lighting practitioners at the grassroots position is generally low. These factors lead to great difficulties and challenges, according to the questionnaire data survey and analysis, making it difficult for these professionals to become front-line technicians. In China, studies related to film and television lighting “migrant workers” have shown that their frequent employment has become a common phenomenon and an important feature of the current labor market. The interpersonal relationships in the workplace of migrant workers have been explored. By classifying and analyzing the “differential pattern” of interpersonal relationships in the Chinese context, Yang et al. (2023) noted that predisposing relationships such as kinship and geographical affinity had a significant positive effect on the internal recommendation of both new and old generations of migrant workers, but the effect on turnover intention was not significant. Meanwhile, posterior relationships, such as friendship and professional relationships, only had a significant inhibitory effect on the turnover intention of the new generation of migrant workers, with internal recommendation having a partial mediating effect on the association. Another study including migrant workers under 35 years from the Zhoushan shipbuilding industry found that job satisfaction and its dimensions had a negative effect on turnover intention, and the dimensions were ranked in descending order of importance: satisfaction with job rewards, satisfaction with interpersonal relationships, satisfaction with the job itself, and satisfaction with personal development (Ying, 2020).
Our sweeping review finds that turnover scholars often theorize and study individuals, work groups, or entire companies. However, the industry is an aspect that is often neglected. Could turnover hold a different meaning among “declining versus ascending industries” (e.g., coal vs. wind energy; brick and mortar vs. Internet retail)? Some industries are clearly more appealing to highly educated, specialized, and paid “knowledge workers.” Researchers have recommended that future theorists consider how different industries and their attributes affect turnover (Hom et al., 2017). The use of existing models makes it difficult to gain insight into the industry. Understanding employees’ perceptions in detail, particularly “how” certain HRM practices may lead to their turnover intention, can be extremely important in developing an employee-retention strategy for the management (Basnyat & Clarence Lao, 2020). Therefore, this study adopted a qualitative research methodology based on the grounded theory to conduct empirical research on the work and experiences of grassroots employees in the digital film industry, seeking to better understand the turnover intention of these employees and determine its main influencing factors.
Methodology
To research and trace the factors influencing the turnover intention of a specific group of film and television lighting personnel in the digital film industry, we deemed it essential to have an in-depth understanding of the current situation of the practitioners and access to information from specific individuals. This study used a qualitative research approach, distinguished from quantitative research methods in its value and scope: it allows for the introduction of different perspectives that can be used to describe a particular phenomenon from the perspective of the participants, with rich, descriptive details of the human context. With this approach, the aim is to present a broad overall picture. Direct access to the inner world of individuals through interactions facilitated by applying qualitative methods is considered a unique advantage over quantitative methods (Groenland & Léo-Paul, 2020, p.2). Modern conceptions of management built on a quantitative paradigm are problematic because they tend to ignore the social and human dimensions that qualitative methods bring to the table, also limiting the extent to which stakeholders’ voices can be captured (Lanka et al., 2021, p.2). Qualitative research methodologies contain numerous elements and approaches, including case study, ethnography, and the grounded theory approach. The method chosen for this study is based on the grounded theory. This study considers the lighting community in the digital film industry; given the limited number of prior studies focusing on this industry and a smaller number of practitioners, we chose the grounded theory as a structured yet flexible approach that is appropriate to use when little is known about a phenomenon (Chun Tie et al., 2019, p.1). According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), the grounded theory does not require prior theoretical assumptions, rather relies on knowledge generated from the data. Here, data constitute the source for knowledge system construction and researchers can use them not only to conceptualize the data but also to construct hypothetical theoretical explanations (Charmaz & Belgrave, 2019, p.744). In our attempt to fulfill the research objectives and construct a model of the factors influencing practitioner turnover, the application of the grounded theory helps us avoid self-reflexivity. It ensures the development of a newly derived theory (Cutcliffe, 2000). Grounded theory is also widely used in current research on management practices. In a prior study, the grounded theory was applied to demonstrate the role of corporate esthetic strategies on employee retention and deterring employee turnover intentions in organizations; the results showed that organizational esthetic strategies promote employee retention and prevent employee turnover intentions (Molahosseini et al., 2020, p.171). Further, the grounded theory was used by Cheng et al. (2023) to study teachers’ turnover intention in remote areas of China; the study revealed that teachers were more likely to stay in rural areas when they were more satisfied with social support, especially emotional support. Leclerc et al. (2021, p.1) revealed a nursing-specific theory: human-centered leadership in health care was found to be uniquely suited to assist leaders in addressing structure, process, and outcomes.
The discovery of theory from data—which we call grounded theory—is a major task confronting sociology today, because, as we shall try to show, such a theory fits an empirical situation, and is understandable to sociologists and non-experts alike. Most importantly, it provides us with relevant predictions, interpretations, and applications (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
This paper employs the method of Strauss and Corbin’s grounded theory and carries out the research according to the Basis of Quality Research: Procedures and Methods for Forming Grounded Theory. The grounded theory has been used to acquire ample qualitative data to construe and explain the target phenomenon’s subjective connotation. In this type of research, more importance is given to qualitative data, to gain real insights into issues and the nature of topics (Creswell, 1998). This may refer to authentic experiences pertinent to the issues under examination, particularly helpful when describing hidden and unanticipated subjects (Sabokro et al., 2021).
As the “bottom-level” personnel in film and television production, lighting technicians have received little scholarly attention. In our interactions with the lighting team, we learnt that there have been fewer young people engaged in lighting work in recent years, and according to managers from the digital film rental companies that cooperate with lighting technicians, young practitioners often change careers within a few days. In fact, it is even normal for middle-aged lighting masters who have worked for several years to switch careers.
After our preliminary research, we recognized the problem of a high turnover rate in the industry, established the study purpose of “exploring the specific factors that cause a high turnover rate among employees in the industry,” and determined three objectives to be addressed in this study:
Assess the factors that cause a high turnover rate and intention among lighting professionals in the digital film industry.
Use the grounded theory to construct a model on film and television lighting professionals’ turnover and identify the main influencing factors.
The grounded theory paradigm includes the following stages: open, axial, and selective coding. To meet our first study objective, we collected data by performing a sample selection of practitioners, finding representative samples, and conducting semi-structured interviews. Before the interview stage, we developed questions based on preliminary research and expert opinions. First-hand data were collected through observation and field interviews with the digital film lighting group. Any methodology must be complex if it is to understand a given experience and explain the situation. It is important that this complexity be captured as much as possible in the study, that events be viewed from multiple perspectives, and that differences be fully considered in the analytical framework (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). To fully reflect the work characteristics of the interviewees, we also conducted interviews with the closest collaborators of gaffers on the set, as well as a director of photography, to prevent the likelihood of any missed information and content that may be taken for granted by the lighting practitioners and to obtain a more detailed picture. The director of photography, as the direct supervisor and collaborator of the gaffers on the set, also affects the professional intentions of the lighting practitioner to a certain extent. The objective was to learn about lighting practitioners’ perceptions of their own profession through semi-structured interviews with both parties in the field, as well as the perceptions of the director of photography regarding the lighting personnel. Based on text data collected from previous interviews, we aimed to find out the various factors that affect the mobility of practitioners and form concepts. At this stage, the main codes were extracted by integrating open codes within the researchers’ notes. In the next step involving axial coding, the codes were integrated based on categorization. Subsequently, relationships among the codes were explained using selective coding (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008).
NVIVO is a program created by QSR International, a program that helps researchers organize and manage their materials so that they can use them more meaningfully. (Lopezosa, 2020). We used the NVIVO 12 software to encode the data from 21 interview transcripts (imported from Microsoft Office files), analyzed the textual content (coded by marking the nodes), and utilized the tools of the software to display more nuanced data analysis results.
Coding essentially means labeling and creating categories for sections or “chunks” of data in the dataset. This process is similar to creating subject heading labels for sections of data that may help move forward or bring to the surface emerging themes in the second phase of analysis (Dhakal, 2022). “Nodes” is the term that Nvivo uses for codes.
We continued to use the Nvivo software to construct our model of the influencing factors. After the basic concepts were established, we classified them, extracted further topic concepts, performed the relevant logical constructions of the basic concept relationships under all topics, and finally formed the model. In the third stage, we assigned a weight to each influencing factor and assessed the logical relationships in the model.
Theoretical Sensitivity
One of the key concepts of grounded theory is the scholar’s acquisition of theoretical sensitivity; Glaser (1978) has devoted an entire book to the concept. Indeed, the rule for generating theory is not to have any pre-set or valued hypotheses but to maintain a sensitivity to all possible theoretical contingencies among the hundreds of possibilities afforded by large surveys (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Sensitivity corresponds to objectivity and requires researchers to immerse themselves in the research (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). It is a magical interaction between the investigators and the data, in which understanding what is described in the data entails a slowly evolving process until the researchers form their own “interpretation.” The knowledge reserves, backgrounds, and experiences of individual investigators constitute a source of individual theoretical sensitivity. However, during a study, it is not recommended that analysts impose their own experiences on the material; instead, they are encouraged to use the experiences of the participants to discover other possibilities of meaningfulness.
Although Corbin and Strauss (1998) emphasized the use of technical literature and did not state the need for a review of all works in the field, it is important to understand the relevant questions and concepts that have been previously raised in a particular field. Research on talent drain inevitably involves some basic words in management, such as “labor intensity,” “salary level,” and “job satisfaction.” Such terms assisted us in collecting rich information in the early stage of our study, and helped us extend, verify, and extract the knowledge in this field to improve theoretical sensitivity during the writing process.
Data Collection and Analysis
In this study, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews to collect raw data, carried out from September 2021 to November 2021. In addition to the pre-designed interview outline, some key questions were also asked during the interview process. Figure 1 shows the pre-set interview questions for industry experts, mainly to understand the context of personnel-related changes in the digital film lighting industry, as well as the group profile.
Questions for industry experts.
Figure 2 presents the questions asked in the interviews with front-line practitioners. To understand the views and intentions related to practitioners’ career mobility, relevant concepts from HRM and management psychology were cited in the interview, such as with “job satisfaction” in Question 10, derived from the two-factor theory, and occupational stress in Question 12, which has been discussed in several psychological theories.
Questions for front-line technicians.
Furthermore, before conducting the official interview, the research team traveled to the shooting site to communicate with the lighting practitioners, carried out a 1-month field survey, summarized the memorandum around the work content, and conducted preliminary interviews with the lighting practitioners to ensure that more effective information was obtained during the official interview.
As presented in Figure 3, we collected a large amount of relevant information from film and television lighting practitioners as the research progressed and the number of interviewees increased. After the initial observations and interviews, we turned to the concepts and questions created during data analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and wrote memos, which presented in Table 1, based on the large amount of initial information that we collected.
Advertising photography scene and equipment company observation memorandum notes (partial).
Gaffer Xi’s Interview Memo (Partial).
The text was then analyzed for the first time, beginning with the interview text of gaffer Xi. He has rich professional experience and has participated in the filming of many local films in Guangzhou. In terms of understanding the emotions generated during his journey from working as a lighting assistant to becoming a gaffer, as one who has been practicing for a relatively long time, he expresses his love for his career directly. As a native of Guangzhou, he is also able to provide details and examples regarding changes in the digital film lighting industry in Guangzhou.
The second interview text selected for analysis was that of Ming, who since commencing work in the 90s, continues to be in engaged in film and television lighting. He is a young lighting practitioner and a typical provincial one in Guangzhou. He is also a relatively stable industry practitioner because he is in another career stage, which can reflect the varying perceptions of the occupation at different points.
The third text was that of Zhou, an electrician who has only recently started his career. His view of the industry is not complete, because his working experience is relatively short, and he has more direct feelings about the industry.
Compared to our former analysis, from this text, some new concepts emerged that we found to be more straightforward. During the process, an open attitude to new ideas and concepts that appear in the materials must be maintained. To ensure completeness in the data analysis process, the authors encoded all the data text twice to confirm and ultimately achieve theoretical saturation.
Theoretical Sampling
Strauss and Corbin (1998) defined theoretical sampling as a method of data collection based on concepts or themes that also derive from the data. The aim is to gather information from places, people, and events to maximize the relationships between concepts from attributes and latitudes, revealing variables and finding concepts.
In the initial text analysis, this study explored the problem of “brain drain” among digital film lighting practitioners and adopted the sampling survey method to select the lighting practitioners and related professionals at different stages. According to data provided by Li Yaoguang, production director of Pearl River Film Production Co., there are approximately 500 professional film and television lighting practitioners in Guangdong province, active in Guangzhou, Beijing, Xijiang, Hengdian, and other locations. Apart from the two major cities in Guangdong province, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, there are no full-time lighting technicians in other cities. The overall number of the group is relatively small, and compared to digital film lighting practitioners from other provinces, the number of practitioners in Guangdong province is even lower.
To understand the factors affecting the willingness of film and television grassroots practitioners to leave, this study uses a multi-stage sampling technique. In the first stage, the grassroots film and television workers in Guangdong were selected as the sample frame for this study, and the grassroots film and television workers in Guangzhou were selected as the target of cluster sampling. In the second stage, a disproportionate stratified sampling technique was used to obtain more detailed information about the situation of the workers according to their job types. Finally, a total of 21 people, whose numbers and occupations are shown in Table 2 (including 11 electricians, eight gaffers, one director of photography, and one first assistant cameraperson), served as the reference group, and the sampling essentially reached the information saturation point. Using grounded theory as the sampling principle, in addition to meeting the professional requirements of lighting practitioners, the selected cases also have professional respondents associated with them, such as the director of photography and first assistant cameraperson.
Number of Interviewees and Their Positions.
Theoretical Saturation Test
In saturation testing, the data are considered saturated when the survey respondents can no longer provide additional information, and no extra information can be added. In this study, two-thirds of the primary sources were randomly selected to complete the three-level coding of distributed light development constraints, and the remaining one-third to perform the theoretical saturation test, which showed that no new categories could be generated in the primary sources.
Data Analysis
Open Coding
Strauss and Corbin (1998) emphasized that “open coding” requires a brainstorming approach during analysis, to unlock the potential of the material, and that only after all possible meanings have been considered and the context has been reviewed can investigators attach explanatory concept labels. In our study, the original interview materials were first subjected to open coding for category entries. To reduce the influence of personal bias, original coding (reference point) was carried out using the interviewees’ original words as codes whenever possible.
The process of conceptualizing information includes analyzing the original data line by line, extracting the vivid and descriptive words in the original data as “initial concepts,” and then searching for appropriate terms to further abstract the initial concepts to form corresponding concept classes.
Table 3 presents some of the open coding concepts and contents. After word-for-word analysis, the initial concepts were extracted. For example, the original text by the interviewees including phrases such as “That person is hardworking and obedient, mainly on his own, and is a hardworking person” and “A person must be hardworking, steadfast and capable” were summarized as the initial concept of “steadfast and hardworking.” Another example is as follows: “…Then I will assess whether the person’s nature is good or not and look for them directly. If their nature is not good, I will not search for them. However, if I find them or continue to look for them, this will prove that their nature and other aspects are good, and I will ask if they have any ideas for improving their space”; this was summarized as the initial concept of having a “good nature.”
Results from the Open Coding Process.
Next, the authors classified the text according to the initial concepts formed by the original sentences and continued to extract concepts. As shown in Table 3, which presents the results of the open coding process, the initial concepts of “steadfast and willing to work,” “kind in nature,” “hardworking,” “trustworthy,” and “good in character” were abstractly summarized into the concept category of “personal quality.” Initial concepts such as “technical ability,” “recognition,” “word of mouth,” and “learning awareness” were abstractly classified into “personal ability.” The in-depth study of our data and the emergence of new concepts as a result allowed us to continuously update the conceptual categories as powerful expressions of the original data.
In this study, a total of 56 code numbers involving 463 reference points were abstracted through open coding, and then aggregated into the coding system in the order of the number of reference points contained in the code numbers, thus reflecting the interrelationships and meaning distributions of the data after condensation. Since the initial conceptualization labels were low-level, numerous, and intersecting, we further filtered, refined, and grouped related concepts to realize concept scoping, and finally obtained 16 free nodes.
Axial Coding
Axial coding, the next step, is used to pull one’s data back together by relating categories to subcategories, utilizing a coding paradigm. The terminology adopted in the paradigm is borrowed from the standard scientific term that scientists employ in relationship to theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). To further clarify the multi-level generic relationship between concepts, various connections between concept classes are discovered and established to express the organic linkages between the various parts and form a dimensional structure that can reflect their nature to some extent. Based on our preliminary analysis, we analyzed the genera of the data and condensed the axial coding from two different angles: correlation and difference.
First, the main axis was coded for the categories obtained through first-level coding. That is, each item in the open coding acquisition category was written out separately, and members of the group categorized the items based on the correlation between the categories, then on the correlation between the 16 entry categories for consolidation and meaningful focus. For example, the four concepts of “personal qualities, personal technical ability, interpersonal interaction, and self-realization,” which are mainly affected by the subjective initiatives of practitioners, were classified into the “personal will” dimension. The results from the axial coding process are shown in Table 4. The following five dimensions and 16 sub-nodes were formed to explain the causes of high turnover among film and television lighting employees. The specific main categories and their corresponding nodes are as follows (Table 4): personal willingness (interpersonal interaction, personal ability, personal quality, self-fulfillment); industry development (reduced demand for personnel, impact by self-media, shrinking market, technology requirements for upgrading); work environment (fairness, imperfect protection of rights and interests, lack of respect); social environment (low professional recognition); and industry characteristics (low entry threshold, high competitive pressure, labor intensity, age restrictions, job instability, lack of vocational training and career promotion difficulties).
Results from the Axial Coding Process.
Selective Coding
Selective coding, the third procedural step, involves settling on one’s core category, relating it to other categories, validating these relationships, and fleshing out any category that is incomplete. This is a parallel process to axial coding, but involves a higher level of abstraction (Antony & Charmaz, 2019). As shown in Figure 4, it presented the relationship between the various concepts on an abstract level.
Diagram of the relationship between each concept genus.
In the digital film industry, the core factors that affect the fate of the practitioners include interpersonal interaction, that is, the employees’ ability to get along well with the members of the production team on the set and solve problems together, as well as the interpersonal relationships accumulated in the digital film circle, including whether they belong to the company. The ability to effectively engage in interpersonal interactions determines whether the practitioners can secure enough working days to maintain their lives. Figure 5 illustrates the detailed process of coding, showing the formation of the conceptual genera “labor-intensity” and “age-restricted.”
The process of coding (taking labor-intensity and age-restricted as an example).
Results
We ranked the proportion of each influencing factor in the original data using the NVIVO 12 software. As shown in Table 5, the first conceptual category is interpersonal interaction, which accounts for the largest proportion, with a coverage rate of 68.51. Figure 6 presents the interpersonal interaction-focused model constructed by selective coding. Both low job threshold and job instability as industry characteristics are positioned ahead in weight ranking, which also reflects the great influence of the industry and market on the occupation. In the digital film industry, interpersonal interaction is the most influential factor for practitioners.
Ranking of the Weight of Each Category.
Ranking of the weight of each category (Histogram).
The digital film industry adopts the cooperative system of project work to hire personnel, making job instability a distinctive industry feature. Moreover, in recent years, the impact of the rise of the self-media short video industry on other media industries, such as the film industry, has also shrunk the digital film market, reducing the demand for personnel, and exacerbating the unstable nature of the work of digital film industry practitioners. The low technical requirements for technical staff at the bottom of the industry have resulted in a low entry barrier, which has led to more tremendous competitive pressure, both of which have made interpersonal skills a core element of survival in the industry. Interpersonal skills, on the one hand, determine whether a practitioner can successfully enter the digital film industry, and on the other hand, determine the number of orders or income a person can receive, which is related to the practitioner’s livelihood. The level of technical ability and personal quality of the practitioner will affect the willingness of the client to cooperate, that is, intervene and influence the core element of interpersonal communication. Individual career advancement depends more on whether familiar customers are willing to provide practitioners with suitable opportunities. Customers from referrals from the cooperation of the lighting division or equipment rental company on the one hand, and from individual practitioners who rely on their interpersonal skills to take orders on the other hand, and this interpersonal skill is the center of this great effect. As such, the industry does not have unified job standards, which also leads to a lack of fairness, resulting in difficulties in career advancement.
In addition, the intensity of labor and inadequate protection of rights and interests are at the top of the overall ranking, which also reflects the impact of the nature of work and imperfect market environment and system on the willingness of practitioners to leave their jobs.
Conclusion
This study empirically explored the mobility of grassroots lighting practitioners in the film and television industry. The purpose of the study was to investigate the factors influencing personnel turnover in this group and construct a model of turnover behavior by identifying its determinants. We identified interpersonal relationship as the key determinant of turnover in this industry, confirmed through weighting tests. This study presents a distinct model on factors influencing employee turnover, with interpersonal relationship as the core and a well-suited framework for the digital film lighting sector. Accordingly, we call this the interpersonal interaction-focused influences model.
Our results highlight that interpersonal relationship plays a decisive role in the stability of lighting practitioners’ work and supporting their personal career advancement. External adverse market environment conditions create intense competitive labor pressure. Bhat et al. (2021) assessed the role of perceived labor market conditions on the moderating effect of employees’ intention to leave, arguing that external economic conditions force employees to remain members of the organization without considering their severe working conditions, (the lack of) job enhancement opportunities, and job insecurity. The influence of the labor market environment on employees’ intention to leave has been emphasized. The labor market environment also determines the dependence of individual employees on interpersonal relationships and a consequent improvement in access to job opportunities, thus making interpersonal relationships a key determinant of survival within the industry. The JD-R theory states that too much job demand and a lack of job resources lead to employees’ stress (burnout), in turn triggering turnover and other negative job outcomes. In the film and television lighting industry, maintaining interpersonal relationships is a job requirement and is the most important job requirement related to the income of the practitioners. Fairness refers to feelings of workplace equity and whether the organization is a just place to work (Schaack et al., 2020). Emotions triggered by unfair promotions or organizational experiences can in turn have an impact on employees’ psychological and physical health. Mood changes during the promotion process are related to subsequent job status and willingness to leave, with employees who maintain positive moods having better job status and relatively lower willingness to leave (Wang et al., 2019).
Limitations and Perspectives
This study provides empirical evidence based on the HRM theory and enhances our understanding of the brain drain problem at the grassroots level in the digital film industry. The correlation between interpersonal relationships and turnover is confirmed, while the linkage with other relevant factors is also explained by the model constructs. The core element of the study, “interpersonal relationships,” reflects the influence of the market environment and organizational culture on labor mobility, and also indicates the correlation between the market environment and organizational culture.
According to the COR theory, resources are related to valuable individual characteristics, objects, (environmental) conditions, and so-called energy. Networks are also the embodiment of individual resources (Hobfoll et al., 2018). The core concept in this study, interpersonal interaction, overlaps semantically with networks.
According to the HRM theory, the rationalized approach to manpower planning is based on a neutral view of the sources of supply. Per the assumption of the interchangeability of workers, the main consideration relates to costs. Thus, it may be cheaper to recruit workers from outside the organization as well as save on the costs of training those workers who are already employed. Further, the work environment as well as the socioeconomic environment corresponding to the industry has a great influence on individuals to engage in work, part of the model comprising factors influencing turnover, with interpersonal relationships as the core. Zhang et al. (2022) attempted to explore the relationship between workplace social capital and turnover intention, using workplace social capital as a comprehensive measure that can capture employees’ overall perceptions of interpersonal relationships in the public sector. The study covers the impact of many other organizational factors on turnover intention such as job embeddedness, social networks, social relationships, communicativeness, and organizational fairness. In Zhang Huan’s study, interpersonal relationships as workplace social capital were confirmed to have a strong negative relationship with turnover intention.
Despite presenting some novel findings, this study has some limitations. The sampling method leads to regional limitations in our study population. To validate our findings, in future studies, the number of respondents could be increased and more data collection could be performed. Moreover, the model of this study can be validated using a quantitative research method. Future research could explore the factors that influence the cooperation between individuals and business organizations within the industry. The interpersonal relationship-centered turnover influence factor model constructed in this study can be applied to enrich and validate our knowledge on other groups of personnel in the digital film industry, as well as in studies of industries with small overall staff numbers and relative closure. It is recommended to explore the moderating effects of other factors on interpersonal relationships and turnover intentions, such as organizational culture and individual personality traits. In addition, the meaning of “interpersonal interactions” in the context of China can be further explored.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Pearl River Film Studio.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research on Digital Media Industry in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Grant: Guangzhou Puen Enterprise Management Service Co., Ltd.
Data Availability Statement
If research data available is not mandatory required on your production system, we would like set as “Not available” for data availability statement, or statement as “Data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author Tan Jiang on request.”