Authors: Sofia Chatzi, Konstantinos Tsoukas, Eirini Peitzika

Title: Managing employee retention in the Greek Army Special Forces: explaining the relationship between job characteristics, work-family conflict, work engagement, organizational commitment and turnover intentions

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Today, many organizations are striving not only to acquire personnel of high talent, but also to ensure their commitment to the organization. Among them Army struggles with retention and faces difficulties with personnel turnover all over the world. With the current research, we aim at investigating the mechanism of how job characteristics and work-family conflict affect organizational commitment and identifying the boundary conditions of this effect, and then indicating the role of organizational commitment in the relationship between work engagement and employee turnover intentions. A sample of 112 officers and noncommissioned officers that work for the Special Forces of the Hellenic Army was used to collect our data. Our findings indicate that work-family conflict moderates the link between job characteristics and employees’ work engagement, such that the positive link is stronger when work-family conflict is low. Furthermore, work engagement significantly mediates the relationship between both job characteristics and organizational commitment and between work-family conflict and organizational commitment, and lastly organizational commitment has an indirect significant effect on the linkage between work engagement and turnover intentions. Practical implications for successfully retaining Army personnel are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.