The influence of human resources management on job embeddedness and voluntary turnover intention: a case study of the constructions industry in Saudi Arabia

This thesis investigated the effect of six antecedent HRM (Human resource Management) practices on intention to remain of Saudi national employees in the Saudi Arabia construction industry based on a job embeddedness model that includes testing of the mediating impact of on-job embeddedness. 374 Saudi national construction employees from two Saudi construction organisations completed the questionnaires, measuring their intention to stay in their present organisation of employment based on their perceived notion of the HRM practices such as perceived employee selection, perceived employees training, perceived employee’s compensation, perceived employee participation, perceived job security and perceived supervisor support in their respective organisation. Path analysis was used to examine the hypothesised relationships in the model. The results of the primary research that was conducted supported all the hypotheses, though on-job embeddedness only partially mediated the relationship between the investigated antecedent HRM practices and intention to remain. Additionally, though positive correlation was established between off-the-job embeddedness and intention to remain. The study findings indicated that there was positive moderately significant relationship between on-job embeddedness and the six antecedent HRM variables of perceived employee selection, perceived employees training, perceived employee’s compensation, perceived employee participation, perceived job security and perceived supervisor support. Furthermore, the results suggest that consistent and targeted use of HRM practices by organisations can increase employee intention to remain, which in turn will reduce turnover intentions. In terms of off-the-job embeddedness, the study results showed that community embeddedness accounted for 4.4% of intention to remain and that improvement in community embeddedness can lead to up to 36.5% increase in intention to remain. Accordingly, the study has valuable implications for managing the turnover intentions of Saudi national employees in the Saudi Arabia construction industry, including specific HRM strategies can be used to deepen on-the-job embeddedness of Saudi national employees and HRM strategies for increasing the value of the fit, Link and sacrifice that would have to be made by employees that leave the organisations. Hence, contributing to HRM literature in the construction industry and to research on the applicability of SHRM models in cross-cultural, non-Western contexts.