When Satisfaction Loses Its Grip: Constraint, Mobility and Turnover Intention Among Expatriate Educators in China

The negative relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention is among the most robust findings in organisational research, yet it may weaken among internationally mobile professionals. This study sets out to examine two competing explanations for such weakening. A dilution account holds that abundant alternatives weaken the satisfaction–intention link uniformly across a mobile workforce. A decoupling account holds that practical constraints, such as visas, family obligations and children’s schooling, sever the link for some employees while leaving it intact for others. The accounts were formalised as six propositions and examined with survey data from 52 self-initiated expatriate educators in international high schools in Guangzhou, China, supplemented by written interviews with eleven educators. Satisfaction correlated with organisational commitment (r = .73) at the strength predicted by meta-analytic benchmarks, but its correlation with turnover intention (r = −.26) was significantly weaker than the benchmark of −.58. In an exploratory moderation analysis, satisfaction was strongly related to turnover intention among educators reporting low constraint (r = −.55) and unrelated to it among those reporting high constraint (r = .17), a pattern more consistent with decoupling than with dilution. Both results were sensitive to a single influential case and to restricted variance in the constrained group, and are offered as directions for theory rather than established effects. The study concludes that heterogeneity in constraint, rather than mobility itself, may explain a weakened satisfaction–intention link in mobile labour markets, and that low turnover intention among constrained employees can conceal detachment.