Exploring the role of perceived external prestige in managers' turnover intentions

Employee turnover is an important topic in the human resource management literature. Several researchers have sought to analyse its multiple determinants and to model the turnover process. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of employees' perception of the external image of the company they work for on their intentions to leave. It is based on a questionnaire survey of 801 French managers that attempted to incorporate the notion of perceived external prestige (PEP) within the literature's classical model of turnover. The results show that the impact of PEP on intentions to leave is partially mediated by the two determinants of turnover in the model: organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Yet there still remains a direct effect of PEP on intentions to quit. Our research also attempted to confirm the existence of a possible moderator effect, but was unable to find such an effect.