What makes employees stay? Mastery climate, psychological need satisfaction and on-the-job embeddedness

Abstract

Job embeddedness was developed as a new perspective to explain employee retention, and recent research has demonstrated its predictive power of voluntary turnover. However, little is known about factors that might influence job embeddedness. The aim of this study was to examine if a perceived mastery climate at work predicts job embeddedness (i.e., links, fit and sacrifice) and whether satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence would mediate this relationship. In a survey of 430 employees from six organizations in Iceland and one in Norway, we found that the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness mediated the relationship between a perceived mastery climate and the links, fit, and sacrifice dimensions of on-the-job embeddedness. We discuss theoretical and practical implications as well as directions for future research.