The interaction of the five-factor personality traits and job embeddedness in explaining voluntary turnover: A necessary-condition perspective

Job embeddedness is theorized and found to be negatively related with voluntary turnover. To provide an alternative to the dominant correlational understanding of causality in the theory and research on job embeddedness and to improve its ability to predict voluntary turnover, we apply the necessary-condition perspective to propose that a low level of job embeddedness provides a necessary but not sufficient reason for employees to leave their organizations. Specifically, we use the perspective to theorize and examine through a necessary condition analysis whether a low level of job embeddedness is a necessary condition for voluntary turnover, and logistic regression analysis to examine the moderating role of the five-factor personality traits on the negative relationship between job embeddedness and voluntary turnover. To cover a range of job positions and industries, we collected a sample of 478 employees ranging from staff to managers in various organizations and industries in Japan to test our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that a low level of job embeddedness is a necessary condition for voluntary turnover, as well as that extraversion and openness to experience amplified and agreeableness mitigated the negative relationship between job embeddedness on voluntary turnover. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the role of job embeddedness in predicting voluntary turnover by using the necessary sufficient logic and delineating the moderating effects of personality traits between job embeddedness and turnover.