Factors that Determine Retention of Long-Term Skills and Turnover Among Employees in Australian Organizations

Running Head: BUSINESS RESEARCH
Business Research
Student Name:
Student Number:
Couse Code:

BUSINESS RESEARCH 2
1. What are the dependent, independent, moderating, mediating (intervening) or
control variables in this study? How are these variables defined?
Smith, Oczkowski and Selby-Smith (2011) use their journal to examine factors that
determine retention of long-term skills as well as turnover among employees working in
more than 300 Australian organisations. The authors collected primary data on two different
dependent variables. The two variables were employee turnover and employee confidence.
Smith, et al defined employee turnover as the percentage annual average over a period of
three years. More specifically, they measured the variable along four skill categories –
elementary skills, intermediate skills, skilled trade workers, and professional skills. While the
confidence to retail skills was defined by the degree at which an organisation was likely to
continue accessing the skills to assist achieve long term goals. While on the other hand, the
study focused on three independent variables including learning orientation (LO), total
quality management (TQM), and lean production (LP). Smith, defined LO as organisation-
wide activities that managers use to create and knowledge to strengthen competitive
advantage. They measured the variable along three-sub-constructs (shared vision, open-
mindedness, and commitment to learning). They defined TQM as a philosophy that managers
use when they want to achieve continuous improvement across all products and services as
well as processes (Xiaojun, et al., 2013). While LP was defined as a combination of TQM
and teamwork that managers used to operate through minimum resources.

BUSINESS RESEARCH 3
2. What is the motivation for including these variables into the conceptual
framework for the study?
The motivation to include the two dependent variables; employee turnover and
employee confidence was because of the need to extend the previous organisational literature
along three dimensions. First, they sought to differentiate between conventional measures of
turnover and incorporate a new measure that helps employees retain more skills. Most
importantly, the authors understood that retaining skills among employees is critical for
achieving long-term goals. Furthermore, they were motivated to include a variable that
considers an organisation’s long term strategic perspective as well as identifying a number of
drivers of retention. The second motivation was based on the fact that previous literature that
focused on high performance work systems analyzed one set of measures around monitoring
systems, training, and practices. In contrast, they sought to examine the significance of
various management philosophies that underpin high performance systems and practices of
human resource managers. The third motivation was to broaden the previous findings by
incorporating four other employee categories of skills in order to identify the presence of
unique drivers likely to contribute towards increased retention of skills and turnover to
achieve long-term goals.