1. Introduction
Securing sustainability through sustainable management is becoming an important topic for companies. This emphasizes the importance of growth and development from a long-term perspective, rather than a company’s purpose being only to pursue profit from a short-term perspective. During past periods of high growth, companies have made leaps based on large-scale capital investment, excellent facilities, and high-quality technology. However, as we entered a period of low growth, these factors between companies gradually became equalized, and the source of sustainability and competitive advantage shifted to human resources [
1]. As the technological gap narrows and anyone can easily access the information they want, it has become difficult to sustain firms’ competitiveness and sustainable competitive advantage using products or services that can be easily imitated [
2]. Accordingly, the number of people who create innovation and differentiation in the way they approach customers (i.e., the number of core talents who achieve high performance in their roles) has become an important factor in determining a company’s success. In other words, employees are no longer limited to the concept of “resources that provide labor” and are seen as core assets for running business operations and creating value [
3]. Accordingly, in order for a company to secure sustainability and achieve long-term growth and development, it is very important to recruit and nurture loyal employees who are highly committed to the organization. In addition, it can be said that it is very important to strengthen the long-term sustainability of a company by lowering the turnover rate of loyal employees.
However, the labor market environment is changing rapidly, posing a serious threat to companies unable to adapt. In particular, Korean society is facing major social, political, and economic changes, including the emergence of the MZ (Millennials and Generation Z) generation, who often choose to change jobs rather than adapt to an organizational environment that does not fit their values or enduring disagreeable workplaces. Changes in the working environment caused by COVID-19, the diversity of employment types, and intensifying low growth trends have led to low employee engagement and high turnover and resignation rates in companies. This frequent turnover and resignation of employees not only causes direct damage in terms of the time and money required for recruitment but also increases the workload of existing employees, disrupts work progress, diminishes performance due to a lack of key talent, decreases employee morale, and harms the firm’s image, which lowers the value of its tangible and intangible assets considerably [
4]. Hence, companies face the simultaneous challenges of securing and retaining talent [
5], and it is very important to study the complex effects of factors that affect the retention of excellent employees in order to secure competitive advantage and improve performance.
From this perspective, existing studies have investigated various factors that can affect increasing retention rates by lowering employee turnover rates. In general, the factors that lead employees to leave can be related to compensation, growth potential, job satisfaction, organizational culture, and working environment [
6]. However, because these influencing factors differ depending on the characteristics of the person and the characteristics and circumstances of the company, concerns about which issues to focus on are inevitable. A concept that has emerged as a key element in understanding employee turnover is organizational commitment (OC) [
7]. The theoretical concept of OC has developed since it was first proposed by the organizational psychologist William Kahn [
8]. Scholars and practitioners agree that the high commitment of organizational members is positively related to firm performance and have begun to emphasize OC as a major method for improving performance. Many studies have shown that employees with high OC have high productivity and profitability and lower rates of occupational accidents and turnover [
9,
10].
However, because employees’ OC changes depending on their perceptions and experiences, a company’s competitiveness must be strengthened by maintaining an environment in which they can immerse themselves. Companies with a culture of low OC find it difficult to recruit excellent talent. In addition, even if new talent is recruited, if it cannot adapt to the organization and leaves or becomes disengaged, both performance and competitiveness fall [
11]. Empirical studies [
12,
13] have shown that high employee commitment is reflected in long-term employment, while highly engaged employees have an 87% lower turnover rate than those who are not engaged [
14].
In addition, the importance of strategies that elicit innovative work behavior (IWB) from employees is being emphasized in order to retain excellent employees. It is based on research showing that organizations can increase members’ pride and loyalty to the organization by providing members with opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities and strengthening support for self-development and innovation [
15]. However, strengthening OC and IWB, as well as reducing TI, cannot be achieved simply through financial compensation, education, or skills training. Continuous attention, management, communication, and interaction are all required to see effects in practice, and it is important to proactively recognize the fairness of the organization [
16,
17]. If employees feel that their organization is fair, it reinforces their perception that their efforts and performance are evaluated fairly, which increases job satisfaction and promotes long-term retention in the organization [
18]. Therefore, understanding the pathways and mechanisms of the influence of OJ, OC, and IWB on TI is very important not only for researchers but also for practitioners.
From this perspective, this study provides important information to help understand the causes and patterns of turnover in a changing social environment and provides important implications in terms of suggesting strategies to prevent it. Specifically, by examining the impact of individual characteristics on TI along with organizational-level characteristics, we suggest the importance of a new academic perspective that analyzes the dynamic interaction effects of factors at various levels. As a practical implication, it will be possible to present specific strategies to managers that will help reduce TI more effectively. This study differs from previous studies in that it identifies various paths that affect TI and explains employees’ complex psychological mechanisms using a dual mediation model.
6. Conclusions
Unlike in the past, the influence of companies on social development and sustainability is becoming stronger. Now, companies are under pressure to carry out broader social responsibilities rather than simply create economic value and passive social contribution activities. This suggests that the influence of companies on the development and sustainability of our society has been further strengthened. Therefore, the results of this study, which suggests employee retention measures for the long-term development of companies, may provide meaningful implications that will help strengthen the sustainability of our society. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, all the paths in the research model were found to be significant. In other words, higher OJ was associated with increased OC and IWB and decreased TI. Additionally, higher OC was associated with increased IWB and decreased TI, whereas higher IWB was associated with decreased TI. Second, by verifying the mediating effects of OC and IWB, the indirect paths from OJ to TI through OC and IWB were found to be significant. Furthermore, the indirect path from OJ to TI, sequentially mediated by OC and IWB, was significant.
These results have academic and practical implications for organizational managers. From an academic perspective, the significance lies in confirming the dual mediation model of OC and IWB in the process by which OJ reduces TI. Previous studies have often addressed the factors influencing TI by separately examining individual mediating effects. On the other hand, this study presents the importance of a new academic perspective that analyzes the dynamic interaction of organizational-level and individual-level elements by examining the effect of organizational characteristics, such as OJ on TI, through OC and IWB, which represent individual psychological states and behaviors.
Furthermore, the dual mediation model presented in this study has practical implications for designing management strategies. Organizational managers aiming to reduce employee turnover can formulate effective strategies by considering not only the individual effects of OC but also the mediating variables of IWB. Additionally, considering that major changes occur in the sequential path of OJ → OC → IWB → TI, organization managers can adopt a strategy that optimizes effectiveness by considering the interactions between the variables at each stage. Specifically, in order to reduce employees’ TI and increase loyalty, managers should prioritize strengthening OJ. Such an organizational culture can help retain excellent human resources for a long period of time and improve corporate performance by increasing OC and IWB, which are individual psychological characteristics and behaviors. The results of the analysis of the relational influence between organizational-level and individual-level variables presented in this study will help you develop and implement strategies for building organizational culture and human resources that suit your situation and goals. For example, when implementing organizational change and improvement, managers would be able to understand the impact of OJ on employees and design programs to activate OC and IWB, providing various opportunities for engagement to promote OC while simultaneously establishing systems that encourage the presentation of innovative ideas can help maximize organizational members’ willingness to stay.
Despite the academic and practical implications mentioned above, the limitations of this study are as follows. First, this study has limitations in that it predominantly focuses on internal factors as antecedents to TI, neglecting the impact of external factors, such as the external environment and economic conditions, on the outcomes. For instance, external factors, such as rapid economic fluctuations and changes in market conditions, could influence an individual’s intention to leave their job. Analyzing only internal characteristics without adequately considering how these external variables might affect employees could limit the generalizability and applicability of the findings. Therefore, in future research, it is necessary to measure the impact of the external environment on TI among organizational members and analyze it alongside internal factors to clearly elucidate the relationships between the internal and external variables. From a similar perspective, on the level of the economy, there might be other interests in addition to limiting TI. For example, how resources are allocated efficiently, where growing sectors and companies should obtain a good workforce and diminishing companies and sectors should lose it. The process of creative destruction is somewhat different inside companies than in the economy as a whole. However, although this perspective is an interesting topic, it was excluded because it was not within the scope of this study. Second, this study has a limitation in that it did not include economic variables as dependent variables due to difficulties in measuring variables. Additional valuable implications can be provided if measurable economic variables, such as labor productivity, are added and analyzed as dependent variables. Third, the amount of empirical data is somewhat limited (N = 346). In future research, we plan to collect and analyze more data to obtain more accurate and generalizable results.