Graduates' work experiences as predictors of organisational commitment, intention to leave, and turnover: Which experiences really matter?

The commitment and retention of employees has emerged as a topic of considerable interest in applied psychology and human resource management. There has been considerable research on organisational commitment (OC) and intention to leave (IL), but little has examined the relative impact upon them of a wide range of work experiences. It was hypothesised that the nature of the work, and career development, would be most influential, because those experiences tend to reflect graduates' reasons for joining their employer, their developmental concerns, and their expectations and psychological contracts. Questionnaire data were obtained from 474 UK graduates in eight organisations on two occasions one year apart. Multiple regression analyses testing the predictive power of seven work-related experiences showed that intrinsic work characteristics were the strongest predictors of change in OC over the one-year period. Career development was easily the strongest predictor of change in IL, and was also highly significantly related to change in OC, Results are discussed in terms of their consistency with earlier research, implications for career development theory, and practical applications.