اثر تجانس تصویر ایده آل و تعهد سازمانی در قصد کارمند برای ترک خدمت

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among employee self-image/store image congruence, employee–store commitment, and employee intention to leave within the context of retail stores. Data were collected using a survey method. Usable questionnaires were completed by 276 retail store employees. Path analysis was used to test the hypotheses. Results revealed employee self-image/store image congruence was positively related to store image attractiveness. In turn, store image attractiveness was positively related to employee–store commitment both directly and indirectly through intrinsic job satisfaction. Lastly, both intrinsic job satisfaction and employee–store commitment were negatively related to employees’ intention to leave.

Approximately 20% of retail employees voluntarily resign from positions each year (Curtis and Wright, 2001), which results in significant increases in managerial costs from recruitment, selection, and training (Curtis and Wright, 2001 and Gustafson, 2002). Additionally, an estimated $3,000 to $10,000 is required to replace each hourly employee who resigns (Gustafson, 2002). Hence, employee turnover, defined here as “the ratio of the number of organizational members who have left during the period being considered divided by the average number of people in that organization during the period” (Price, 1977, p. 15), is a significant problem in the retail industry. Due to these exorbitant costs and additional factors such as loss of employee talent, potential damage to organizational culture, and inability to produce experienced staff, it is in every retailer's best interest to isolate and attempt to control the antecedents of employee turnover. One way in which retailers could reduce turnover is to increase employee–store commitment and ultimately reduce employees’ intention to leave the store (Cohen, 1993, Ingram and Lee, 1990, Iverson and Deery, 1997 and McNeilly and Russ, 1992). Commitment to a store “involves an active relationship with [the store] such that individuals are willing to give something of themselves in order to contribute to the [store's] well being” (Mowday et al., 1979, p. 226). Individuals who are committed to the store for which they work tend to feel loyal, which translates into both a smaller desire and propensity to resign from a position as compared to individuals who feel no such commitment. Accordingly, identifying factors that increase employees’ level of work commitment is a first step to investigating human resource management issues in the retail organization. Although not previously examined, one factor that might be related to work commitment is the amount of similarity that exists between the employee's self-image and the store's image. Individuals possess beliefs regarding who they think they are as people that are referred to as self-concepts or self-images (Rosenberg, 1979). Furthermore, individuals tend to possess similar beliefs regarding retail stores. Beliefs about the characteristics a store possesses collectively form what is known as that store's image (Martineau, 1958, Keaveney and Hunt, 1992 and Zimmer and Golden, 1988). From a consumer perspective, research has shown consumers generally like to shop in stores that possess an image similar to their own (Dornoff and Tatham, 1972, Sirgy and Samli, 1985 and Stern et al., 1977). Additionally, research has shown individuals like to work in stores in which they like to shop (Goldsberry et al., 1999). Accordingly, it is logical step to test the notion that individuals like to work in stores that exhibit store images similar to their self-images. Provided with the logic above, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among the employee's ideal self-image/store image congruence, commitment, and employee intention to leave. In the following section, we utilize the concepts of self-image/store image congruence (Dornoff and Tatham, 1972, Sirgy and Samli, 1985 and Sirgy et al., 1989), consumer identification (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003), organization identification (Dutton et al., 1994), and salesperson job satisfaction and commitment (Brown and Peterson, 1993 and Mowday et al., 1979) to develop hypotheses that form a theoretically integrated model. This proposed model can be seen in Fig. 1.

The mean age of participants (N=276) was 23.93 years, with a range 16–58 years. According to the US Department of Labor, more than 30% of retail part-time employees are under 24 years. Thus, the average age of participants somewhat reflects the current retail environment. The majority of participants were Caucasian Americans (82.5%), women (82.2%), and single (78.3%). More than half of participants had completed some college (59.4%). About 77% earned less than $40,000 annually. Most participants (61.4%) indicated that they were working either permanently or temporarily part-time, and the majority of the participants were working as sales associates (60.5%).Principal components factor analysis with Varimax rotation was performed to determine construct validity for the multi-item, 7-point Likert-type scales. Factor loadings above 0.55 (Nunnally, 1967) that did not cross-load higher than 0.30 on other factors (Kline, 1998) were considered suitable for a construct. The results revealed that store image attractiveness, intrinsic job satisfaction, and intention to leave were generated as a single factor (see Table 1). Thus, all items within each construct were summed to create a research variable. Three factors of employee–store commitment were identified. The first factor that explained the largest amount of variance (51.21%) was selected for a research variable for employee–store commitment. Summed scores of the multiple items for each construct were used as research variables.Following Sirgy and Samli (1985) and Dornoff and Tatham (1972), the sum of the absolute differences between the items used to assess store image and the corresponding items used to assess employee ideal self-image was calculated for congruence. The employee ideal self-image items were first factor analyzed in an effort to identify the items which explained the most variance. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the construct for employee ideal self-image was comprised of two factor dimensions. The first factor explained the largest amount of variance (35.22%), so only indicators loading on that factor were used in subsequent research variable formation (see Table 1). Each of the items in the first factor for employee ideal self-image was subtracted from the corresponding items used to assess store image. The absolute value of each of these differences, then, was summed to create a research variable for employee ideal self-image/store image congruence. Similarly, to create a research variable for employee ideal social self-image/store image congruence, the sum of the absolute differences between the items used to assess store image and the corresponding items used to assess employee ideal social self-image was calculated. The items of ideal social self-image were factor analyzed. Of the two factors generated from exploratory factor analysis, only indicators loading on the first factor that explained the largest amount of variance (35.21%) were subtracted from the corresponding items of store image. The absolute values of these differences were summed to create a research variable for ideal social self-image/store image congruence. After the research variables for both employee ideal self-image/store image congruence and employee ideal social self-image/store image congruence were calculated, the resulting values were then reverse coded to indicate that higher differences represented higher congruence.The technique of path analysis from the structural equation modeling family was conducted using a maximum-likelihood estimation procedure using AMOS 5.0 (Analysis of Moment Structures). Path analysis is recommended when there is only a single indicator of a theoretical variable and researchers have prior hypotheses about casual relations among variables (Kline, 1998). Due to the nature of the two congruity constructs that were calculated, structural equation modeling with measurement models was not performed. The proposed model consisted of two exogenous variables (employee ideal self-image/store image congruence and employee ideal social self-image/store image congruence) and four endogenous variables (store image attractiveness, intrinsic job satisfaction, employee–store commitment, and employee intention to leave). To assess model fit, a chi-square statistic, goodness-of-fit index (GFI), adjusted goodness-of-fit index (AGFI), normed fit index (NFI), relative fit index (RFI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) were used. As an indicator of good model fit to the data, Kline's (1998) criteria were adopted (e.g., GFI≥0.95, AGFI≥0.90, NFI≥0.90, RFI≥0.90, and RMSEA≤0.08). Correlations among construct measures for the model are shown in Table 2. The correlations between the constructs range from −0.40 to 0.85. The high correlation between the constructs of ideal self-image/store image congruence and ideal social self-image/store image congruence is not surprising, given the fact that the same items are used to assess both self-image, social self-image, and store image. Additionally, the average age of the participants was 24. Younger individuals’ sense of self tends to be more fluid than older individuals’ sense of self. Young people tend to look to others for cues to use in the process of developing a stable understanding of themselves. Compared to older individuals, younger individuals use social encounters to a greater degree in the formation of their sense of self (Sirgy et al., 2000). In this respect, the high correlation between participants’ ideal self-image/store image congruence and ideal social self-image/store image congruence is not unexpected. However, as an assessment of discriminant validity among the constructs, a confidence interval test was conducted (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The confidence intervals of ±2 SE around the correlations between the constructs were examined. None of the intervals included 1.0, so discriminant validity was demonstrated by the data.Fig. 2 provides squared multiple correlations (R2) for each endogenous construct as well as path coefficients and t-values for each statistically significant path. The fit statistics shown in Fig. 2 reveal an acceptable fit of the data to the model (e.g., GFI=0.98, AGFI=0.92, NFI=0.98, RFI=0.96, RMSEA=0.10). Hypothesis 1 that predicted a positive effect of employee ideal self-image/store image congruence on store image attractiveness was supported (β1⁎=0.22, t=2.20, p<0.001). A positive effect of employee ideal social self-image/store image congruence on store image attractiveness also was found (β2⁎=0.27, t=2.71, p<0.01), thus supporting Hypothesis 2. Hypothesis 3, predicting a positive effect of store image attractiveness on employee–store commitment was supported (β3⁎=0.53, t=15.52, p<0.05). Hypothesis 4, which predicted intrinsic job satisfaction was positively related to employee–store commitment, was supported (β4⁎=.47, t=13.54, p<0.05). H5 and H6 predicted positive effects of self-image/store image congruence would be positively related to intrinsic job satisfaction. While Hypothesis 6 predicting a positive effect of ideal social self-image on intrinsic job satisfaction was supported (β6⁎=.24, t=4.26, p<0.05), the effect of ideal self-image on intrinsic job satisfaction (Hypothesis 5) was not significant. Hypothesis 7, which predicted that store image attractiveness was positively related to intrinsic job satisfaction (β7⁎=.44, t=7.98, p<0.05), was supported. In addition, a negative effect of employee–store commitment on employee intention to leave (β8⁎=−.50, t=−7.70, p<0.01) was found, supporting Hypothesis 8. Finally, Hypothesis 9, predicting a negative effect of intrinsic job satisfaction on employee intention to leave (β9⁎=−.26, t=−4.06, p<0.05), was supported.To further examine the effects of self-image/store image congruence on store image attractiveness, internal job satisfaction, employee–store commitment, and intention to leave, the decomposition of indirect, direct, and total effects of a predictor variable on endogenous variables was conducted (see Table 3). While ideal social self-image/store image congruence had a direct effect on intrinsic job satisfaction (β=0.24), ideal social self-image/store image congruence also had an indirect effect on intrinsic job satisfaction through store image attractiveness (β=0.11). This suggests store image attractiveness may mediate the relationship between ideal social self-image/store image congruence and intrinsic job satisfaction. Store image attractiveness, in turn, has both a direct effect on employee–store commitment (β=0.53) as well as an indirect effect on employee–store commitment through intrinsic job satisfaction (β=0.21). The indirect effect implies intrinsic job satisfaction may mediate the relationship between store image attractiveness and employee–store commitment. Furthermore, employee–store commitment may mediate the relationship between intrinsic job satisfaction and intention to leave because intrinsic job satisfaction had both a direct effect on intention to leave (β=−0.26) as well as an indirect effect on intention to leave through employee–job commitment (β=−0.23).