Personality Dimensions and Job Turnover Intentions: Findings from a University Context

Abstract

Research has consistently indicated that worker turnover intentions are factors external to an employee; however, little work has investigated turnover intention behavior from personality perspective in a context of a private university in a low resourced country like Uganda. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of individual personality dimensions and job turnover intentions among Busoga University staff. Correlations and regression analysis methods were used in the analysis. The study adopted a cross – sectional survey design and used probability sampling approach. A survey questionnaire was used in data collection on a sample of (n = 133) drawn from a total population of 200 staff. The findings revealed that apart from emotional stability (neuroticism), all the other four personality dimensions of (openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness), positively and significantly predicted job turnover intentions among the staff of Busoga University in Uganda. This study contributes to knowledge of turnover intention by aligning individual personality dimensions as significant predictors of turnover intentions within the context of Busoga University. This study underscores the fact that workers' personality issues, matter for organizations and can be instrumental in furthering managerial decisions relating to turnover intentions. One of study limitations was a small sample size that was less than 200 cases to support Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures) which would have been an appropriate tool to test the hypotheses considering the fact that the study had multiple constructs. Also, this study was limited to the effect that it used cross – sectional design.