Work orientations and turnover

Voluntary turnover imposes substantial costs on organizations, yet we know little about whether workers’ fundamental orientations toward work shape their mobility decisions. In this paper, we distinguish between job, career, and calling orientations, defined as the long-term beliefs about the role of work in one’s life. Using original survey data from the Dutch LISS panel, we show that work orientations are strong predictors of quit intentions and on-the-job search, even after controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, personality traits, job characteristics, and job satisfaction. Career-oriented individuals exhibit significantly higher quit intentions and search activity, particularly when perceived promotion opportunities are limited. Calling-oriented individuals report substantially lower quit intentions and on-the-job search. By contrast, having a job orientation is not systematically associated with turnover-related outcomes. The associations between work orientations and actual job quits one and two years later are weaker, suggesting that work orientations primarily shape turnover intentions and preparatory search behavior, while actual working conditions more strongly influence mobility. Overall, our findings identify work orientations as a novel and quantitatively important determinant of turnover-related behavior and highlight the role of workers’ underlying motivations in shaping mobility beyond standard economic predictors.