The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention

Problem statement: The objective of this study were to determine the effect of job satisfaction on turnover intentions among the emplo yees in XYZ Sdn. Bhd, Malaysia. Approach: A total of 32 set of complete questionnaires gather ed from executives and non-executives of a local printing company were involved in the study a nd 32 completed the questionnaires. Using structured questionnaires in a controlled environme t, the results manage to extract both intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction that influences the turnover intention. Results: The statistical results obtained in this study showed that both forms of jo b satisfaction (intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction) have inverse relationship on employee s’ turnover intentions. Conclusion: Eventhough Instrinsic Job Satisfaction have stronge r influence on Turnover Intention. Existence of Extrinstic Job Satisfaction also must be conside r n measuring the intention.


INTRODUCTION
In an organization, what makes an employee leave or intend to leave are always become the big question for any company. Several studies have examined job satisfaction as an antecedent of turnover intentions (for instance, Mobley et al., 1979;Price and Mueller, 1981;Shore and Martin, 1989;Hellman, 1997;Ghiselli et al., 2001;McBey and Karakowsky, 2001). These studies, however, were conducted in the United States and Canada. The industries investigated were wide ranging covering hospitals, military and food-service companies. Although job satisfaction has been found to be a rather consistent predictor of turnover intentions, the strength of the satisfaction-intention to leave relationship varies according to each setting. In addition, little work has been undertaken using professional subjects within the South East Asian context (for example, Aryee and Wyatt, 1991;Chan and Morrison, 2000). The objective of this study is to examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction on turnover intentions of employees.
Job satisfaction may be defined as a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences (Dunnette and Locke, 1976). This positive feeling results from the perception of one's job as fulfilling or allowing the fulfillment of one's important job values, provided these values are compatible with one's needs (Dunnette and Locke, 1976). Given that values refer to what one desires or seeks to attain (Locke, 1969), job satisfaction can be considered as reflecting a person's value judgment regarding workrelated rewards. Locke and Henne (1986) define job satisfaction as the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the achievement of one's job values in the work situation.
Work rewards reflect the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits that workers receive from their jobs (Kalleberg, 1977). Two important groups of work rewards that have been identified include task and organizational rewards. Task rewards refer to those intrinsic rewards directly associated with doing the job (Katz and Maanan, 1977;Mottaz, 1988). They include such factors as interesting and challenging work, self-direction and responsibility, variety and opportunities to use one's skills and abilities. Organizational rewards, on the other hand, refer to the extrinsic rewards provided by the organization for the purpose of facilitating or motivating task performance and maintaining membership (Katz and Maanan, 1977;Mottaz, 1988). They represent tangible rewards that are visible to others and include such factors like pay, promotions, fringe benefits, security and comfortable working conditions. According to Loscocco (1989), every working person has a certain order of priorities with regard to what he or she seeks from work. It is generally assumed that individual's value economic (extrinsic) as well as intrinsic job reward. Some workers may strongly emphasize both types of rewards, some may place little value on either and others may emphasize one type and deemphasize the other. Nevertheless, both forms of rewards contribute to job satisfaction (O'Reilly and Caldwell, 1980). A job that entails high pay, high security, greater promotional opportunities, interesting work and fair and friendly supervision, all of which is judged as a way to achieve work and non-work goals, should lead to positive feelings of well-being.
Meanwhile, a relevant research by Spector (1997) and Hirschfeld (2000) indicate that the different aspects of job satisfaction could be split according to Herzberg's two dimensions. The intrinsic satisfaction refers to job tasks and job content such as variety, autonomy, skill utilization, self-fulfillment and selfgrowth. And at the same time, Buitendach and Witte (2005) state that extrinsic motivation refers to other factors such as pays, co-workers and work conditions.
Intentions are, according to researchers such as Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) and Igbaria et al. (1995), the most immediate determinants of actual behavior. The validity of studying intentions in the workplace can also be drawn from Sager (1991) longitudinal study of salespeople, in which intention to quit was found to differentiate effectively between the leavers and worker that stays. However, while it is reasonable to argue that intentions are an accurate indicator of subsequent behavior, researchers still do not know what determines such intentions.
Intention to turnover refers to an individual's perceived probability of staying or leaving an employing organization (Cotton and Tuttle, 1986). Tett and Meyer (1993), on the other hand, referred to turnover intentions as a conscious and deliberate willfulness to leave the organization. Barak et al. (2001) in their review of antecedents to turnover argued that many studies use intent to leave rather than actual turnover as the outcome variable due to two main reasons. First, there is evidence to indicate that workers typically make a conscious decision to do so before actually leaving their jobs. This relationship is supported by the attitude-behavior theory (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975), which holds that one's intention to perform a specific behavior is the immediate determinant of that behavior.
Second, it is more practical to ask employees of their intention to quit in a cross-sectional study than actually tracking them down via a longitudinal research to see if they have left. In addition, actual turnover may be more difficult to predict, as there may be other factors such as employment alternatives that affect a person's turnover behavior. According to Muchinsky and Morrow (1980), an unfavorable economy may reduce a person's flexibility to move elsewhere leading to lower correlations between intent to leave and actual turnover whilst the job satisfaction-intention to leave relationship tend to be stronger when greater economic choice existed.
Job satisfaction is one the factors that contribute to people's intention to quit their jobs (Moore, 2002); however, it is important both manager's and the individual's perspective to understand the factors that mediate the relationship between job stress and turnover intention.
Although a worker's "intention to leave" is considered a sign of quitting, there are no consistent findings that regard to its value as a predictor of the actual turnover to the workers. Supported by Parasuraman (1982) in his studies found a positive significant of relationship.
Numerous researchers (Bluedorn, 1982;Kalliath and Beck, 2001;Kramer et al., 1995;Price and Mueller, 1981;Saks, 1996) have attempted to answer the question of what determines people's turnover intention by investigating possible previous circumstances that lead to employees' intentions to quit. So far, there has been little consistency in the findings, which is partly due to the diversity of constructs included by the researchers and the lack of consistency in their measurements but also relates to the heterogeneity of populations sampled.
Social support has been shown to play an important role in mitigating intention to quit, although not all findings have been in agreement. For example, Moore (2002) found that social support from supervisors reduced the level of nurses' burnout and indirectly, through reduced levels of burnout, reduced nurses' intention to quit. A similar result by Kalliath and Beck (2001) when they tested the impact of social support on two components of burnout, namely depersonalization and emotional exhaustion and found that supervisory support reduced not only those symptoms of burnout but also directly and indirectly nurses' turnover intention.
On the other hand, Munn et al. (1996), in a study of American child life specialists, found lack of supervisor support was the best predictor of job dissatisfaction and intention to leave a job, while Hatton and Emerson (1998) found that actual staff turnover was predicted in part by low levels of support from superiors. However, other studies Rahim and Psenicka (1996) have failed to find a moderating effect for social support in the relationship between job stressors and turnover intention.
Other researchers such as (Kelly and Cross, 1985) have found that rather than supervisors' support, it is the support gained from talking with peers, family and friends that is frequently cited as a source of stress reduction. Consistent with these findings, Freddolino and Heaney (1992) found that peer social support was associated with higher job satisfaction among direct care staff and home managers for intellectually disabled clients, while turnover intention was associated with the presence of social undermining by co-workers and provider agencies. However, the bulk of evidence suggests that it is situation-specific support, that is, work-supervisor/home-family, Tinker and Moore (2001) that is most effective.
Job satisfaction has been defined as a pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experience as stated by Dunnette and Locke (1976). This positive feeling results from the perception of one's job as fulfilling or allowing the fulfillment of one's important job values, provided these values are compatible with one's needs, Dunnette and Locke (1976). Given that values refer to what one desires or seeks to attain, Dunnette and Locke (1976), job satisfaction can be considered as reflecting a person's value judgment regarding work-related rewards. Locke and Henne (1986) defined job satisfaction as the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the achievement of one's job values in the work situation. According to Williams and Hazer (1986), job satisfaction is an individual's affective response to specific aspects of one's job.
Similarly, Mottaz (1988) regard job satisfaction as an effective response resulting from an evaluation of the work situation. Glick (1992) view job satisfaction as an effective response by individuals resulting from an appraisal of their work roles in the job that they presently hold. According to Robbins (2003), job satisfaction refers to an individual's general attitude toward his or her job. In sum, the job satisfaction construct can be considered as an effective response by an employee concerning his or her particular job and results from the employee's comparison of actual rewards or outcomes with those that are expected, needed, valued, wanted, or perceived to be fair (Spector, 1997).
Work rewards reflect the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits that workers receive from their jobs (Kalleberg, 1977). Two important groups of work rewards that have been identified include task and organizational rewards. Task rewards refer to those intrinsic rewards directly associated with doing the job (Katz and Maanan, 1977;Mottaz, 1988). They include such factors as interesting and challenging work, self-direction, responsibility, variety and opportunities to use one's skills and abilities. Organizational rewards, on the other hand, refer to the extrinsic rewards provided by the organization for the purpose of facilitating or motivating task performance and maintaining membership (Katz and Maanan, 1977;Mottaz, 1988). They represent tangible rewards that are visible to others and include such factors like pay, promotions, fringe benefits, security and comfortable working conditions. Job satisfaction has been repeatedly identified as the main reason why employees leave their jobs (Barak et al., 2001). Many studies (for example, Mobley et al., 1978;Price and Mueller, 1981;Shore and Martin, 1989;Aryee and Wyatt, 1991;Hellman, 1997;Chan and Morrison, 2000;Ghiselli et al., 2001;McBey and Karakowsky, 2001) have reported a significant negative relationship between job satisfaction and intention to leave the organization. Tan (1998) assess job satisfaction and turnover intention of employees in the travel agencies in Malaysia. Seventy-two items of Job Descriptive Index (JDI) were used to determine the job satisfaction level. Tan also found that job satisfaction was significantly related with intention-to-leave.  Saal and Knight (1995) report that JDI, Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and face scale were the most popular job satisfaction measures. However, JDI is found to be the most frequently used as measurement of job satisfaction compared to the other. Vroom (1994) called it as the measure without doubt and the most carefully constructed measure of job satisfaction.
Referring to Fig. 1, the framework were adapted and modified from Nasurdin et al. (2003) previous research, which the independent variables consists elements like working condition, co-worker and supervisor under extrinsic job satisfaction and element of work value in intrinsic job satisfaction.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Subjects were the executives and non-executives of a local printing company employee. 36 structured questionnaires were distributed through a control environment and 32 return back complete. That yields 89% of the respondents' size.
Random sampling technique was used to distribute set of questionnaire which were adopted and adapted from Smith et al. (1969) and Nasurdin et al. (2003) in order to determine the employees' opinions regarding turnover intention in the company. The questionnaires were divided into four main parts. The first and the second part measured the respondent's working condition, supervision, co-workers, as well work value in the second part. A five-point Likert scale was used to indicate the respondent's answers (1-Strongly Disagree; 2-Disagree; 3-Neither Agree nor Disagree; 4-Agree; 5-Strongly Agree). Supported through Thomas and Tymon (1994) measurement regarding satisfaction and turnover intention as well. The third part were used as an indicator of measurement to measures the respondents intention to leave which use multiplechoice that suits the best decision they will make representing their intention in the organization. The fourth part of the questionnaire was regarded the respondent's demographic background, which include gender, age, marital status, department, position (executive/non executive) and education.
Using the Statistical Package for Social Science version 12.0 for Windows, we process the data that collected from the respondents and several tests were carried out to test the variables. Cronbach's Alpha values were extracted from the reliability test on the variables (intrinsic, extrinsic job satisfaction and turnover intention). In addition, correlation analyses on the three variables were also obtained to identify the most relevant and significant relationship among the variables.

RESULTS
The statistical analyses were computed using SPSS version 12.0 for Windows to extract the data and results. There are several results which are displayed below from the study. Table 1 below explains the background of the respondents. 75% respondents were percent female. In addition, an equal 50 percentage for age group of the respondents which were 18-24 years and 25-34 years. And then, 87.5% of the respondents' were single. Job tenure shows 37.5% group each work less than a year and another 1 year to 2 years plus. 62.5 % respondents were non executives. Finally, the employees were divided into 3 group; first degree 37.5%, diploma 37.5 and STPM 25%.
According to the Table 2, the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for the Intrinsic Satisfaction (Work Value) scale is 0.883. There are total of 20 items in this scale and no item being removed as since the reliability of the measurement indicates that the independent variable is in 'very good' range.
According to the Table 3, the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for the Extrinsic Satisfaction (Working Condition) scale is 0.78. There are total of 18 items in this scale, whereby 9 of them (satisfying, respected, pleasant environment, useful career, tiresome and burden, challenging, frustrating, endless and give sense of accomplishment) have been omitted to increase the reliability of the measurement. Referring to the rules of thumb, the independent variable indicates that the reliability test is in 'good' range.  Table 4 shows the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for Extrinsic Satisfaction (Supervisor) scale is 0.829. There are total of 18 items in this scale, whereby 4 items (hard to please, bad, lazy and around when needed) have been omitted to increase the reliability of the measurement. Referring to the rules of thumb, the independent variable indicates that the reliability test is in 'very good' range. Table 5 indicates the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for the Extrinsic Satisfaction (Co-Worker) scale is 0.850. There are total of 18 items in this scale, whereby 4 items (boring, slow, stupid and low interest) have been omitted to increase the reliability of the measurement. Referring to the rules of thumb, the independent variable indicates that the reliability test is in 'very good' range.     Extrinsic intention Intrinsic 1.000 -0.000 -Extrinsic 0.763(**) 1.000 -Turnover intention -0.365(*) -0.172 1 ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). Table 6 indicates the Cronbach's Alpha coefficient for the turnover intention scale is 0.723. There are total of 4 items in this scale, whereby 1 item has been omitted to increase the reliability of the measurement. Referring to the rules of thumb, the independent variable indicates that the reliability test is in 'good' range.
Pearson correlation coefficients in simple bivariate correlation were used to measure correlation between turnover intention and each variable. It shows how each of the items associated with all the other items. According to Sekaran (2003), the coefficient has a range of possible values from -1 to +1. The value indicates the strength of the relationship, while the sign (+ or -) indicates the direction

DISCUSSION
The purposes of this study were to determine the effect of job satisfaction on turnover intentions among the employees in XYZ Sdn. Bhd, Malaysia. The statistical results obtained in this study showed that both forms of job satisfaction (intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction) have inverse relationship on employees' turnover intentions. This result is consistent with those of previous researchers (for instance, Mobley et al., 1978;Price and Mueller, 1981;Shore and Martin, 1989;Aryee and Wyatt, 1991;Hellman, 1997;Chan and Morrison, 2000;Ghiselli et al., 2001;McBey and Karakowsky, 2001). However it is found that in this research, the intrinsic satisfaction has significantly inverse correlated with turnover intention as compared to the extrinsic satisfaction.
The small correlations existed between these study variables has been expected. During the data collection session, the employees of the company that have been servicing for more than one year have just received salary adjustment plus three months bonus. The salary adjustment and the bonuses were done to align the company's remuneration package with their merger counterpart.
When rewards received by employees are perceived as capable of fulfilling their needs and desires, they will experience a positive emotional state, which in return, induces an obligation to reciprocate their employers by being more committed. It is plausible that when employees judged the institution as being fair and supportive in their treatment particularly with regards to comfortable work conditions, relationship among the coworkers and supervisors and positive feelings of well-being will be created, which is likely to stimulate them to reciprocate by increasing their loyalty to the organization.
Likewise, when employees viewed their jobs as interesting, challenging and gratifying, providing opportunities for autonomy, self-direction and the use of multiple skills and abilities, they are likely to experience a positive emotional state, which in turn, lead them to feel committed to their jobs and organization. For this reason, their intention to leave the current institution will be reduced.

CONCLUSION
In general, this study has discussed about the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intention in a company. The objective of the study is to examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction on turnover intentions has been reached and completed. Statistical analysis on a sample of 32 executive and non-executive employees revealed that both components of job satisfaction had a negative impact on turnover intention.
Based on the findings, intrinsic satisfaction, however, had a stronger influence on intentions to leave in the organization. The findings have proved that there are extrinsic values that influence the turnover intention within the organization. Thus, the objective of this study was accomplished. Since extrinsic satisfaction founded to have less influence with negative relationship on turnover intention, which mean the intrinsic value were fulfilled, the turnover rate among the employees will be low compare if only extrinsic values that focused by the management to be fulfilled. It is hoped that the contributions proposed by the researchers were able to contribute towards improving human resource management at local printing company.

Recommendation:
With respect to the robustness of research methodology, the data gathered from the mentoring research literature, the in-depth interviews, the pilot study and the survey questionnaires have exceeded a minimum standard of correlation and reliability analyses. This may lead to the production of accurate and reliable findings toward the company turnover intention. As the study mostly referred from Smith et al. (1969) previous study. The study still require in depth analysis as well larger number of respondents to analyze more accurate findings. More specific area as well can be carried out for the future researcher to study.

Contribution of the research:
So, what can the company act to maximize it employees' job satisfaction? Based on this study here are five recommendations suggested by the researchers to be adopted in the company; Learn about jobs that are most likely to meet employee expectations: Assist the company to identify occupations that fit employee personality and their interest. Try to get accurate information about each of them.
Do not allow employees job dissatisfactions to go unresolved for long: Job satisfactions and dissatisfactions are barometers of employees' adjustment to work. They may lead to something worse --job loss, accidents, even mental illness. Depression, anxiety, worry, tension and interpersonal problems can result from, or be made worse by job dissatisfaction.
Overall job satisfaction is a trade-off: Educate employees and remind them that they should not expect 100% satisfaction or 0% dissatisfaction. There are usually dissatisfactions even in the best jobs. And, in today work world the employees cannot expect the employer to look out for them; they have to take the initiative yourself.
Telling the employee to look separately at the kind of work they are doing versus the conditions of work (pay, supervisor, co-workers, company and physical working conditions): If they are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the kind of work they are doing, they should consider a career change. Where here, telling the employees to look separately at the kind of work they are doing and what they get back in return where conditions of work will not the only factors that can bring satisfactions to their job.
Encourage employees to look down the road at their possible career progress: Present dissatisfactions might be worth bearing if they see their career progressing as how good and meaningful is their current situation are presently comparing to the situation before.
Limitation of the study: The first limitation of this study relates to the sample, which were derived from a company that categorized as a small and medium industry with a small number of respondents, 32 out of 36 employees. Therefore, the findings obtained may not be generalized to other samples within the industry. Via a larger sample from other organizations in the same industry vice versa would improve the consequential of the findings.
The second limitation were the availability of data or resources-some of the relevant data to support the research may not be available due to the nature of data or information that desired to be obtained is basically not to offend the companies' confidentiality or policies that remained secretive. In this study, the company refused to expose the data regarding the staffs salaries and opportunities for promotion.