1. Introduction
As a global epidemic, the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), seen as “a humanitarian crisis” and “the greatest test” since the 1940s [
1], has caused a great slowdown in global economic activities. According to recent estimates by the International Labor Organization [
2], the level of working hours is expected to be 4.2% below the pre-pandemic level, equivalent to 123 million full-time jobs. This indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic not only posed significant challenges to organizations and influenced their long-term development [
3], but also potentially interfered with employees’ conduct in the workplace. For instance, numerous studies have identified the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on several employee workplace behaviors, including organizational deviance [
4], avoidance coping behavior [
5], and workplace cheating behavior [
6]. Notably, some scholars illuminated that, during such a hard era, how to retain qualified employees also represents a major challenge for organizational practice [
7,
8]. Recent studies have empirically investigated that as a stressful event, the COVID-19 pandemic has damaged the relationships between employees and organizations and stimulated employees’ negative psychological states [
9], which in turn may increase their turnover intention [
10]. However, these studies still have several limitations.
First, previous studies have proved that employees’ intentions to leave have been increased due to the COVID-19 crisis [
10,
11]. Indeed, taking into account the external labor market, the deteriorating economic environment has not only reduced job opportunities but also forced a large number of employees to lose their existing jobs [
12]. Thus, this stressful event can also lead to intense competition in the job market, which may further facilitate employees to place a high value on their current job. As such, it is conceivable that the decision-making process for employees to leave or stay in an organization during the epidemic is complicated. Nevertheless, extant studies have rarely addressed the potential inhibitory effect of COVID-19 on employee turnover intention or uncovered this complex process. Second, from the perspective of work stress, a majority of existing studies have primarily revealed employees’ psychological mediators to explain how COVID-19 leads to surges in turnover intention among employees, including emotional exhaustion [
10], job insecurity [
13], and psychological anxiety [
14]. However, the mediating mechanisms that explain COVID-19 detrimental impacts have not been fully explored. Remarkably, little scholarly attention has been paid to exploring whether such an event would exacerbate employees’ turnover intentions by triggering their negative social cognitions. Hence, to fill these gaps, it is essential to develop a more comprehensive model to explore whether, how, and when COVID-19 event strength affects employee turnover intention.
In this study, we thus employ event system theory [
15] and social cognitive theory [
16] as our overarching frameworks and propose a paradoxical cognitive mechanism in accounting for the complex relationship between COVID-19 and employee turnover intention. Specifically, this study theorizes that the overall strength of the COVID event may threaten employees’ cognitive appraisals of their career development and reduce subsequent intentions to leave current organization. Thus, as an important indicator of employees’ potential for career development [
17], perceived external employability, which refers to employees’ beliefs about their competence in finding new employment in external labor market [
18], is imported to explain the mechanism linking COVID-19 to employees’ turnover intention in this study. Moreover, the undesirable impacts of the COVID-19 crisis may not only involve employees’ career development but also spread to the organizations’ overall development [
19]. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the deteriorating external environment would hinder organizational sustainability development [
20], which may elicit employees’ negative cognitive evaluations of the growth of current organization and engender their intentions to leave subsequently. This study thus speculates that perceived organizational growth may be another pivotal cognitive mechanism in accounting for how COVID-19 event strength affects employee turnover intention.
In addition, social cognitive theory states that affected by situational factors, employees with the same cognitive level behave differently [
21]. Organizational identification refers to employees’ perceptions of oneness with their organizations [
22]. Strong identified employees are inclined to be psychologically attached to their current organizations [
23], which may alter the strength of perceived external employability and perceived organizational growth impact employee turnover intention. Therefore, this study proposes an integrated framework to explain the complex impacts of COVID-19 event strength on employee turnover intention with perceived external employability and organizational growth as mediators and organizational identification as a moderator.
In this article, we first elaborate on how COVID-19 event strength is complicatedly associated with employee turnover intention through perceived external employability and perceived organizational growth. Then, we detail how organizational identification moderates the two paths described above. After that, we report the findings of an empirical study conducted on four companies in China and finally conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications.
5. Discussion
Drawing upon event system theory and social cognitive theory, this study proposed and examined how employees’ assessments of COVID-19 event strength affect their turnover intention in a complex manner with two paradoxical paths: a retention path through decreasing perceived external employability and a turnover path through reducing perceived organizational growth. As predicted, the findings revealed that COVID-19 event strength can decrease employees’ turnover intention by triggering their negative perceptions of external employability, but increasing their turnover intention through stimulating their perceived little organizational growth. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated the conditional indirect effect of COVID-19 event strength on turnover intention via perceived external employability and perceived organizational growth at separate values of organizational identification.
5.1. Theoretical Implications
This study contributes to the growing research on the COVID-19 event in several ways. First, our findings contribute to the existing research on the COVID-19 event by revealing its complex impacts on employee turnover intention. Previous research has consistently advocated that turnover intention was relatively prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic [
10,
11,
70]. In accord with prior scholars, this study illustrated a turnover path by introducing employee-perceived organizational growth as a mediator. Furthermore, this study also demonstrated the existence of another retention path. Specifically, this study found that the COVID-19 event strength can decrease employees’ perceptions of external employability, subsequently contributing to reducing the risk of turnover. Our work also responds to the call for exploring the challenges and opportunities COVID-19 poses to employee career management from a more holistic view [
7].
Second, this research sheds light on perceived organizational growth as a pivotal mediating mechanism in accounting for how COVID-19 event strength provokes employee intention to leave. Most of the extant studies have explored the detrimental impacts of COVID-19 on employee behavior by conceptualizing it as employees’ work or psychological stressors [
4,
24,
71]. However, little research has realized that the COVID-19 crisis can also be regarded as a stressful event that hinders organizational growth. This study advocates that the COVID-19 crisis has not only caused concerns for employees, but also posed numerous challenges to organizations. As such, employees would negatively evaluate the current organizational growth, and then are more likely to leave the organization. By uncovering the mediating role of perceived organizational growth, this study extends previous scholarly research on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic [
72].
Third, by considering organizational identification as a moderator, this study contributes to the research on boundary conditions of how the COVID-19 crisis affects employee intention to leave. Although previous studies have noticed the key factors that can affect the impacts of COVID-19, most of them examined the individual differences in personality such as resilience [
73], mindfulness [
9], and adaptive ability [
74]. Following the call by Liu D. et al. [
24], this research focused on a moderator regarding organization (i.e., organizational identification) and examined it as a buffer against the adverse effects of COVID-19 on employee turnover intention. Our findings demonstrate that employees with high levels of organizational identification are reluctant to voluntarily leave the current organization when they perceive low employability in the external labor market or are not optimistic about the sustainable growth of the current organization due to the COVID-19 event.
5.2. Practical Implications
This study not only examined the complex influences of COVID-19 event strength on employee turnover intention, but also provided viable solutions to management practice. First, this study found that COVID-19 event strength can lead to employees’ negative appraisals of the current organizational growth, and subsequent elicit intentions to leave. This finding reinforced the importance of fostering employees’ enthusiasm for continuous organization growth. For example, managers should put more effort into effective crisis management and enhancing organizational resilience and readiness for changes to cope with unanticipated events [
35,
75], which are conducive to achieving sustainable performance and growth of the organization [
76].
Second, this study revealed that organizational identification can be an effective buffer against employees’ intention to quit the organization, most notable when they perceive strong external employability or negatively evaluate organizational sustainability performance. In line with previous research [
56,
77], our findings provide support for the importance of nurturing employees’ identification with the organization. Accordingly, to prevent employees’ strong intentions from leaving the organization, organizations should endeavor to provide opportunities for employees to identify with the current organization, including valuing long-term working relationships, maintaining fairness in organizational decision-making, and arranging psychological capital training programs [
78].
5.3. Limitations and Future Research
This study also has several limitations that should be considered in future research. First, all constructs were inevitably measured from employees’ self-reporting, which may raise concerns about common method bias and thus overstate the relationship between variables [
79]. Although this study collected data at three time points to mitigate this concern, we cannot make conclusions about causality from such a design. For instance, it is plausible that employees who negatively perceive their external employability may describe the COVID-19 pandemic as a strong event since it harms their employability. As such, longitudinal and multi-source designs are warranted in future work.
Second, the data collection in this study was primarily conducted from four companies in the limited industries that were vulnerable to the COVID-19 event, including catering, tourism, textile, and appliance industries. However, there are also a few industries where companies and employees have gained tremendous growth opportunities from COVID-19, such as healthcare and online offices. Indeed, more diversified research should be implemented to explore the variability of findings across industries further.
Third, this research only introduced organizational identification as a boundary condition of the influence of COVID-19 event strength on employee turnover intention and could not rule out other factors that may also contribute to modifying the relationship. Future research could include various factors as moderators in an effort to comprehensively account for the strength of the influence of the COVID-19 event on employees’ cognition. Furthermore, the decision-making process for employees to leave or stay in an organization during the COVID-19 epidemic is complicated. Future works are encouraged to examine other alternative underlying mechanisms that link COVID-19 event strength and employee turnover intention.