Organizational/occupational commitment and organizational/occupational turnover intentions A happy marriage?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to draw meaningful relationship between two foci of commitment (i.e. affective organizational and affective occupational) and two types of turnover intentions (i.e. organizational and occupational turnover intention). Design/methodology/approach - Using random sampling approach, the authors collected data from both academic and support staff of a Dutch university. An online questionnaire was developed and sent through electronic mail to 752 of the total employees. A total of 153 employees responded; yielding approximately 21 percent response rate. Findings - The results revealed that affective organizational commitment and affective occupational commitment were positively related to each other. Affective organizational commitment was negatively related to organizational turnover intention and this relationship was buffered by affective occupational commitment. Affective occupational commitment was negatively related both to occupational and organizational turnover intention. Last study hypothesis, however, could not gain support as affective organizational commitment did not moderate the affective occupational commitment-occupational turnover intention relationship. Research limitations/implications - Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed in the end. Originality/value - The study poses some valuable contributions to the existing body of literature by exhibiting the role affective occupational commitment in the models of organizational turnover intention and that of affective organizational commitment in occupational turnover intention models which has been over looked so far.