Title: Organisational commitment and turnover intentions in humanitarian organisations

Authors: Julia Wijnmaalen; Liesbet Heyse; Hans Voordijk

Addresses: PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory, P.O. Box 9616, 1006 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands ' Department of Sociology, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 72, 9700 AB Groningen, The Netherlands ' Construction Management and Engineering, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

Abstract: Unwanted staff turnover is a prominent HRM problem in humanitarian organisations. In the profit sector, HRM tools such as pay, benefits, socialisation and training have proven to be effective in increasing organisational commitment and decreasing staff turnover. This study explores whether such tools are also effective in humanitarian organisations. Our study indicates that: 1) institutionalised socialisation tactics have a positive effect and individualised socialisation tactics have a negative effect on employees' organisational commitment; 2) some HRM tools could have the opposite effects than expected from the literature; 3) there seems to be no relation between organisational commitment and turnover intentions. It is therefore concluded that HRM tools used in the profit sector should not be blindly copied by humanitarian organisations as their effects may differ.

Keywords: organisational commitment; turnover intentions; humanitarian organisations; non-profit sector; pay; benefits; socialisation; training; staff turnover; HRM; human resource management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHRDM.2016.075372

International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, 2016 Vol.16 No.1/2, pp.47 - 66

Accepted: 06 Nov 2015
Published online: 17 Mar 2016 *

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