a causal model of faculty turnover intentions

A Causal Model of Faculty Turnover IntentionsAuthor(s): John C. SmartSource: Research in Higher Education, Vol. 31, No. 5 (Oct., 1990), pp. 405-424Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40195946 .

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Research in Higher Education, Vol. 31, No. 5, 1990

A CAUSAL MODEL OF FACULTY TURNOVER INTENTIONS

John C. Smart

A causal model is proposed and estimated to assess the relative influence of individual attributes, institutional characteristics, contextual-work environment variables, and multiple measures of job satisfaction on the intentions of faculty to leave their current institutions. Special attention is given to similarities and differences among variables in the model for tenured and untenured faculty. Regardless of tenure status, younger faculty, those at institutions that have experienced decline and that have more autocratic forms of governance, and those that have lower levels of organizational and career satisfaction are more likely to leave their institutions. Being a male, spending more time on research, and having a stronger record of scholarly productivity are positive influences on the intentions of tenured faculty to leave their institution, while salary satisfaction is an influential variable only for nontenured faculty. The research and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Declining student enrollments and associated reductions in financial support have had a number of consequences for the management of colleges and universities and for the quality of life and career options available to the professoriate. There is growing evidence that institutions facing declining enrollments and revenues tend to centralize decision making and to increase structural rigidity through the formalization and standardization of operating policies and procedures (Cameron, Kim, and Whetten, 1987; Cameron, Whetten, and Kim, 1987; Zammuto, 1986). Such conditions have been identified as contributing to an "insidious deterioration in the quality of faculty life" (Bowen and Schuster, 1986, p. 268).

This set of circumstances is especially unfortunate for the professoriate because these same societal and institutional conditions have severely limited

John C. Smart, College of Education (M/C 147), University of Illinois at Chicago, Box 4348, Chicago, IL 60680.

Source of data: Carnegie Surveys of Undergraduates and Faculty. Copyright 1985, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1985.

405

0361-0365/90/1000-0405$06.00/0 © 1990 Human Sciences Press. Inc.



406 SMART

their professional mobility. For example, Cartter (1976) found that the percent of doctorate-holding faculty changing their institutional affiliations on an annual basis declined from 8% in the mid-1960s to 1.4% in 1972. Similarly, the National Science Foundation reported a decline from 3.5% of the professoriate leaving academic employment annually in the mid-1960s to about 1% in the late 1970s (Finkelstein, 1984). Thus, the professoriate is faced with deteriorating conditions within their institutions and apparently few opportunities to seek employment in other academic or nonacademic settings.

While this scenario may suggest that faculty turnover is a moot issue today, there are a number of forces on the horizon that suggest it will not be the case in the relatively near future. Among these forces are the expected increase in student enrollment during the next decade and the associated improvement in the financial support for higher education (Trow, 1988). The anticipated increase in student enrollments in the next decade, however, will occur at a time when there will be higher than normal retirement rates in colleges and universities due to the aging of the professoriate (Bowen and Schuster, 1986; Burke, 1988).

These conditions have contributed to an emerging concern that there will be a serious faculty shortage in the 1990s (Mooney, 1989), and provide a more optimistic hope for improvements in the quality of faculty life on campus and the professional mobility of the professoriate. Given these trends, the results of contemporary studies of faculty turnover may have great practical value to campus officials in the reasonably near future when they face an academic labor market in which the potential for faculty mobility is much greater, for turnover is closely linked to the state of the economy. March and Simon (1958) succinctly concluded that "when jobs are plentiful, voluntary movement is high; when jobs are scarce, voluntary movement is small" (p. 100). This relationship is clearly evident in Eagly's (1965) finding of a correlation of - .84 between job turnover and unemployment rates in the United States from 1931 to 1962. While the expected increase in the level of faculty mobility may afford individuals with greater opportunities for professional advancement, it represents a potentially serious institutional problem given the economic consequences of hiring during an era of anticipated faculty shortages (Mooney, 1989), and the centrality of a competent faculty to institutional vitality and effectiveness (Clark, 1987; Clark and Lewis, 1985; Finkelstein, 1984).

PROPOSED CAUSAL MODEL

Based on their review and meta-analysis of findings from 120 studies of employee turnover, Cotton and Tuttle (1986) concluded that "it is no longer valuable simply to link variables with turnover"; instead, they suggested that



FACULTY TURNOVER 407

"what is needed is research that determines whether variables are causally linked to turnover, and how these links are moderated by other variables" (p. 66, emphasis added). The primary purpose of this study was to propose and test a causal model of faculty intentions to leave their current institution. Such intentions have been clearly demonstrated as being the single best predictor of actual employee turnover in other organizational settings (Mobley, Homer, and Hoi lings worth, 1978) and of student attribution from colleges and universities (Bean, 1982). The use of causal modeling procedures permits the identification of causal links in the turnover process suggested by Cotton and Turtle (1986), and reveals how these links are moderated by other variables associated with

employee turnover. The proposed causal model contains components of models of employee

turnover developed by economists, psychologists, and sociologists (Mobley, Griffeth, Hand, and Meglino, 1979; Muchinsky and Tuttle, 1979; Porter and Steers, 1973) and variables that have been found to be associated with faculty turnover intentions and behaviors (Baldwin and Blackburn, 1981; Caplow and McGee, 1958; McGee and Ford, 1987). While possessing differences reflecting the authors' diverse disciplinary orientations, the theoretical models and associated research evidence suggest that employee turnover has at least three

major sets of determinants: individual characteristics reflecting demographic (e.g., age, gender, educational level) and work (e.g., distribution of time across

job responsibilities) factors, contextual variables reflecting individuals' stature in (e.g., salary, influence) and adjustment to (e.g., organizational and career satisfaction) the work environment, and external conditions (e.g., employment perceptions, economic and societal conditions).

The model estimated in this study is a fully recursive model in which five individual characteristics of faculty and two organizational characteristics of

colleges and universities were considered the exogenous variables. Three of the individual attributes (i.e., career age, gender, marital status) represent demographic factors, and two (i.e., research time, teaching time) reflect work related aspects of faculty careers. There is abundant research evidence that

employee turnover is negatively related to age and higher for unmarried individuals (Cotton and Tuttle, 1986; Finkelstein, 1984). The relationship between turnover rates and gender, however, appears to be different in academic and nonacademic organizations. For example, Cotton and Tuttle (1986) report that turnover rates in the general population are higher for women, whereas Brown (1967) and Finkelstein (1984) note that turnover rates in academia are higher for men. McGee and Ford (1987) found the level of the

faculty members' teaching responsibilities to be negatively related to faculty turnover intentions and Blackburn and Havighurst (1979) found that faculty who valued and were engaged in scholarly activities were more likely to remain at their institutions.



408 SMART

The two organizational characteristics among the exogenous variables (i.e., organizational decline, campus governance) were included to reflect the magnitude and impact of external conditions on faculty turnover, given the demonstrated relationship between external conditions and employee turnover in the work force (Eagly, 1965; March and Simon, 1958; Muchinsky and Morrow, 1980). There is growing evidence that faculty and staff turnover is related to the enrollment and financial (i.e., external) conditions of colleges and universities and their internal governance patterns. For example, Cameron, Whetten, Kim, and Chaff ee (1987) identify the voluntary turnover of competent faculty and staff as one of the common "dysfunctional consequences of organizational decline" (p. 218). In general, faculty turnover is higher at institutions facing serious enrollment and financial difficulties (Cameron and Zammuto, 1986; Cameron, Whetten, and Kim, 1987; Zammuto, 1986) and at those whose governance patterns tend to be of a more autocratic than democratic nature (Bowen and Schuster, 1986; Clark, 1987).

These characteristics of faculty members and their institutions were assumed to influence the first block of endogenous variables in the model that represent contextual measures of faculty work environments: Their participation in the campus governance process, their perceived influence in governance issues, their research productivity, and their salary. McGee and Ford (1987) note specifically that "inadequate attention has been given in previous research to work environment variables" (p. 4). The level of faculty participation and perceived influence in campus governance was expected to be strongly influenced by the two institutional characteristics given extant evidence that organizational decline often results in a more centralized form of governance that limits faculty participation and influence (Zammuto, 1986). Gender was also expected to exert considerable influence on these measures given extant findings that women tend to be underrepresented in leadership and governance positions (Baldridge, Curtis, Ecker, and Riley, 1978; Bayer, 1973). The amount of time that faculty spend on research activities and their career age were expected to exert strong positive influences on their research productivity and salary given recent findings regarding research productivity and stature in the academic profession (Blackburn, Behymer, and Hall, 1978; Braxton, 1986; Creswell and Bean, 1981; Fox, 1985). It was also expected that the level of enrollment and financial difficulties (i.e., organizational decline) experienced by colleges and universities would exert a strong negative influence on faculty salaries given the lower capacity of such institutions to remunerate their employees.

These two blocks of variables were subsequently expected to influence the three dimensions of faculty job satisfaction that comprise the third block of variables in the model: organizational satisfaction, salary satisfaction, and career satisfaction. These three specific aspects of faculty job satisfaction were




selected given Cotton and Turtle's (1986) conclusion that employee turnover intentions and behaviors were consistently related to their organizational commitment (i.e., organizational satisfaction), pay satisfaction (i.e., salary satisfaction), and work satisfaction (i.e., career satisfaction). The strongest influences on these job satisfaction measures were expected to come from the contextual measures in the preceding block of variables given extant findings that faculty job satisfaction is related to perceptions of their control over their work environment (e.g., participation and influence in governance matters) and their stature and recognition (e.g., research productivity, salary) within the academic community (Cares and Blackburn, 1978; Clark, 1987). The exogenous measures concerning the level of enrollment and financial difficulties experienced by the institutions and the nature of their campus governance process were expected to exert significant influence also, albeit in an indirect manner.

The dependent variable in the model was the intention of faculty to leave their

present institution for another position in either an academic or nonacademic

setting, and was seen to be causally dependent on all preceding variables. It was assumed that the three job satisfaction measures would exert the strongest direct influences on faculty intentions to leave their institutions, with the influences of variables earlier in the model being exerted primarily in an indirect manner. For example, the existence of a more autocratic governance process would diminish

faculty participation and influence in the governance process, which in turn would contribute to lower levels of organizational satisfaction, which

subsequently would negatively influence faculty intentions to leave their current institutions.

RESEARCH PROCEDURES

Sample

Data for this study were obtained from the 1984 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching national survey of faculty (Opinion Research

Corporation, 1984). A two-stage stratified random sample design was

employed. The first stage was based on a random sample of institutions, with the probability of inclusion in the sample being proportionate to institutional size (defined as the number of full-time faculty). A total of 310 institutions were selected for participation in the study, and 190 (136 public, 54 private) agreed to

participate. The second stage was based on a random sample of faculty members at the institutions. Approximately 52 questionnaires were distributed to

randomly selected faculty at each of the 190 institutions. A total of 9,968 surveys were distributed, of which 5,057 (50.7%) were returned. The final



410 SMART

sample used in this study was comprised of 2,648 faculty who were employed full-time, who held the doctorate as their highest degree, and who had full information on all variables described below. The majority of faculty not included in the study (n = 2,409) were deleted because they did not hold a doctorate (n = 1,793, 74%) or were not employed full-time (n = 412, 17%).

Variables

The model estimated in this study included four sets of variables ordered in a causal sequence:

1. Individual and institutional characteristics (i.e., career age, gender, marital status, teaching time, research time, organizational decline, campus governance).

2. Contextual, work environment measures (i.e., governance participation, governance influence, research productivity, salary).

3. Dimensions of faculty job satisfaction (i.e., organizational satisfaction, salary satisfaction, career satisfaction).

4. Intention to leave current institution (i.e., intention of faculty to leave).

Table 1 provides full operational definitions for all variables included in the model, as well as their reliability estimates where appropriate.

Analyses

Several preliminary analyses were conducted to determine if there were differences in the factors influencing faculty intentions to leave their current institutions based on (1) the type of institution in which they were employed (i.e., Carnegie classification), and their (2) academic discipline affiliation (i.e., Biglan classification), (3) gender, and (4) tenure status. This procedure was accomplished by regressing "intention to leave current institution" on all causally antecedent variables in the model plus a set of interaction terms that were the cross-products of each of the above attributes (e.g., tenure status) and each of the predictor variables. The results of these preliminary analyses were not statistically significant (p < .05) for institutional type (F = 1.29), discipline affiliation (F = 0.86), or gender (F = 1.15). However, the analysis based on tenure status produced a statistically significant increase in the rt-square value (F = 3.86, df = 42/2591, p < .001), indicating the need to estimate the model separately for tenured (n = 2, 058) and nontenured (n =

509) faculty. The estimation of the direct and indirect effects implied by the model was



FACULTY TURNOVER 41 1

TABLE 1. Variable Definitions

Variable Names Variable Definitions

Exogenous Variables

Career age The number of years since receipt of highest degree. Gender Sex of faculty member coded: 1 = female, 2 = male. Marital status A three-level measure of the marital status of

respondents and the employment status of their

spouses coded: l=not married, 2 = married, spouse not employed, 3 = married, and spouse is employed.

Research time The average number of hours per week devoted to research activities. Response categories ranged from 1 = none to 10 = 21 or more hours.

Teaching time The average number of hours per week devoted to

teaching activities. Response categories ranged from 1 = none to 10 = 21 or more hours.

Organizational decline A four-item measure based on perceptions of the

magnitude of enrollment and financial problems the institution is experiencing, the number of actions the institution has taken in response to those problems, estimates of reduction in the size of the departmental faculty, and perceptions of the likelihood of tenured

faculty losing their jobs due to enrollment or financial

problems (alpha =0.69).

Campus governance A seven-item measure based on perceptions of the extent to which the administration of the institution and the department is democratic in character, the

degree to which there is broad faculty involvement in the governance process, the effectiveness of faculty meetings, and the level of support for academic freedom from the administration (alpha=0.72).

Work Environment Variables

Governance participation A four-item measure of the level of participation in

departmental faculty meetings, campus-wide faculty meetings, campus- wide committees, and administra- tive advisory committees (alpha =0.73).

Governance influence A two-item measure of perceived influence in institutional and departmental policies (alpha =0.62).

Research productivity A two-item measure of the number of total publications in the past two years and whether respondents are currently engaged in scholarly work they expect to lead to publication (alpha =0.68).

(Continued)



412 SMART

TABLE 1. (Continued)

Variable Names Variable Definitions

Salary The institutional salary of respondents with fifteen

response categories ranging from 1 = below $8,000 to 15 = $40,000 or more. All salaries were converted to a

nine-month, academic-year equivalent.

Job Satisfaction Variables

Organizational satisfaction An eleven-item measure of respondents' overall satisfaction with their institution; satisfaction with their institution in terms of the intellectual environment, ratio of faculty to students, faculty salaries, teaching loads, and the administration; and satisfaction with their de-

partment in terms of the intellectual environment, personal relations among faculty, and the academic ability of departmental students (alpha =0.81).

Salary satisfaction A single item reflecting satisfaction with respondents' current institutional salary. Response codes ranged from 1 = poor to 4 = excellent.

Career satisfaction A five-item measure of respondents' overall satisfaction with their careers. Specific items included were: "I am more enthusiastic about my work now than I was when I began an academic career," "I often wish I had en- tered another profession," "If I had it to do over again, I would not become a college teacher," "My job is the source of considerable personal strain," and "I hardly ever get the time to give a piece of work the attention it deserves. " All items were coded or recoded such that a

higher score reflected greater satisfaction (alpha =

0.81).

Dependent Variable

Intention to leave A single item reflecting the intentions of faculty to ac-

cept a job in either another college or university or in a nonacademic setting. Respondents were coded such that 5 = "I have found and accepted me," 4 = "I am now

negotiating for one," 3 = "I am now actively looking for

one," 2 = ttI would seriously consider a reasonable of-

fer," and 1 = "I would not consider an offer."

Note: A two-step procedure was used to develop scores on all measures where individual items were on a different metric. First, all items were standardized; second, the sum for each individual was obtained by obtaining the mean response to items that comprised the scale.




done in two parts. First, ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the coefficients of the eight structural equations defining the model. Each endogenous variable was regressed on all exogenous variables and causally antecedent endogenous variables. Eight sets of regression coefficients were

produced for tenured and nontenured faculty representing the direct effects of the causal factors on the dependent variable. Second, the indirect effects were calculated and their statistical significance was tested using gemini (Wolfle and

Ethington, 1985), a Fortran program based on the work of Sobel (1982).

RESULTS

Tables 2 and 3 present the structural equations for tenured and nontenured

faculty, respectively. These regression weights may be interpreted as the direct

effects of individual predictor variables on the causally subsequent endogenous variables in the model, when the influence of all other predictors in the

equations is held constant. Inspection of the final structural equations in Tables 2 and 3 indicates that the variables in the model explain 13% of the variance in tenured faculty intentions to leave their current institution and 14% of the variance in the comparable measure for nontenured faculty.

Table 4 presents the standardized and unstandardized indirect effects and total effects of variables in the model and their significance levels for tenured and nontenured faculty. The indirect effects represent the influence of each predictor variable on the dependent variable mediated through intervening predictors in the model. The total effects are the sum of the direct and indirect effects in the

equations for the respective groups. The following discussion of the results is structured according to the three sets

of predictor variables in the model, with attention given to similarities and differences in the equations for tenured and nontenured faculty. Direct, indirect, and total effects are discussed together.

Individual and Organizational Characteristics

Career age is the only exogenous variable that has a significant direct effect on the intentions of both tenured (b = - .0129, see Table 2) and nontenured (b = - .0229, see Table 3) faculty to leave their current institutions, and its

negative influence indicates that professionally younger faculty in both groups are more likely to be inclined to leave. Gender and amount of time spent on research activities have significant direct effects only in the equation for tenured

faculty: The negative sign of gender (b = - .2066) indicates that tenured men have stronger intentions to leave than tenured women, while the positive sign of research time (b = .0184) indicates that tenured faculty who devote more time



414 SMART

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416 SMART

TABLE 4. Indirect and Total Effects on Intention to Leave

. . . Indirect Effects Total Effects Independent . . . Variables Tenured Nontenured Tenured Nontenured

1. Career age -.0024 -.0053 -.0153* -.0282* (-.0251) (-.0281) (-.1577) (-.1499)

2. Gender -.0193 -.0403 -.2259* -.1438 (-.0086) (-.0174) (-.1007) (-.0622)

3. Marital status -.0034 -.0133 -.0214 .0613 (-.0039) (-.0118) (-.0242) (.0544)

4. Research time .0015 -.0025 .0199* .0005 (.0063) (-.0079) (.0813) (.0017)

5. Teaching time .0250* -.0049 .0318 .0257 (.0156) (-.0024) (.0198) (.0126)

6. Organizational decline .0672* .0945* .1416* .1625* (.0569) (.0629) (.1198) (.1081)

7. Campus governance -.1177* -.1981* -.1715* -.4357* (-.0860) (-.1062) (-.1253) (-.2334)

8. Governance .0155 .0212 .0124 -.0575 participation (.0121) (.0137) (.0097) (-.0373)

9. Governance influence -.0443* -.0296* .0109 -.0545 (-.0482) (-.0224) (.0119) (-.0412)

10. Research productivity -.0321* -.0230 .0530 -.0285 (-.0300) (-.0130) (.0496) (-.0161)

11. Salary -.0118* -.0278* -.0144 -.0243 (-.0323) (-.0579) (-.0393) (-.0506)

12. Organizational -.1725* -.1707* satisfaction ( - . 1290) ( - .0967)

13. Salary satisfaction - .0397 - . 1 142* (-.0418) (-.0944)

14. Career satisfaction - .2429* - .2025* (-.1886) (-.1248)

Note: Standardized coefficients are in parentheses.

to research activities have stronger intentions to leave. While the amount of time devoted to teaching activities does not have a significant direct effect in the equation for either group, this measure does have a significant indirect effect (b = .0250, see Table 4) in the equation for tenured faculty. The positive indirect influence of teaching time for tenured faculty is mediated through organizational satisfaction (i.e., those who spend more time on teaching tend to have lower levels of organizational satisfaction, which, in turn, increases their intention to leave). Marital status does not have a significant direct or indirect effect for either group.




While both organizational characteristics have significant total effects in the equations for tenured and nontenured faculty, the manner by which these two measures exert their influence is considerably different. The total influence of organizational decline is comparable in the equations for tenured (b = .1416) and nontenured (b = .1625) faculty, and has a significant positive indirect effect in both equations (see Table 4). In both cases this positive indirect influence is mediated through the organizational and career satisfaction measures (and through salary satisfaction for nontenured faculty). Organiza- tional decline has a significant direct effect only in the equation for tenured faculty (b = .0743, see Table 2). While the total effect of campus governance is significant in both equations, its total influence is much greater for nontenured (b = - .4357) than tenured (b = .1715) faculty (see Table 4). This measure has a significant direct effect only for nontenured faculty (b = .2376, see Table 3), and significant negative indirect effects in both equations (see Table 4). In both cases, the indirect effect of campus governance is mediated through organizational and career satisfaction.

Contextual, Work Environment Measures

While participation in campus governance does not have a significant direct or indirect effect in either equation, perceived influence in campus governance has significant indirect effects in the equations for tenured (b = - .0443) and nontenured (b = - .0296) faculty (see Table 4). This indirect influence is mediated through organizational and career satisfaction for both groups; that is to say, those who perceive themselves to be more influential in governance matters tend to be more satisfied with the organization and their careers, and

higher levels of satisfaction are negatively associated with intentions to leave. Similarly, the salary measure has significant negative indirect effects in both

equations (see Table 4), and this indirect influence is mediated through organizational satisfaction for both tenured and nontenured faculty, and through salary satisfaction for the nontenured group.

Research productivity has significant direct and indirect effects only in the

equation for tenured faculty; however, the total effect (b = .0530) of this measure for tenured faculty is not statistically significant. It is a function of the

positive direct (b = .0852) and negative indirect (b = - .0321) effects of research productivity. The negative indirect effect is mediated through organizational and career satisfactions. Thus, while tenured faculty who report higher levels of research productivity may appear to be more inclined to leave on the surface (i.e., positive direct effect), their higher levels of satisfaction with the organization and their careers diminish their intentions to leave their current institutions (i.e., negative indirect effect).



418 SMART

Dimensions of Faculty Job Satisfaction

Organizational and career satisfaction have significant negative direct effects of a comparable magnitude in the equations for both groups (see unstandardized coefficients in Tables 2 and 3), indicating that higher levels of satisfaction with both measures reduce faculty intentions to leave their current institution. Salary satisfaction, however, is significant only in the equation for nontenured faculty (b = - . 1 142, see Table 3). Again, this negative effect means that higher levels of nontenured faculty satisfaction with their salaries are negatively associated with their intentions to leave.

DISCUSSION

The adequacy of causal models may be judged on the degree to which they explain a substantial percent of the variance in the criterion, the extent to which the results conform to the proposed causal sequence, and the applicability of the model to distinctive subgroups of the population being studied (Wolfle, 198S). The model proposed in this study is reasonably successful on all three criteria. First, the model accounts for a significant (p < .001) portion of the variance in the intentions of both tenured (13%) and nontenured (14%) faculty to leave their current institutions. While the amount of variance explained may not appear great in an absolute sense, it is very consistent with the amount of variance commonly explained in studies of college student attrition (Munro, 1981; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1983). Second, the findings generally conform to the proposed causal sequence, which is most evident for the contextual, work environment variables whose influences are exerted primarily in an indirect manner. Only one of the variables in this set exerts a significant direct effect for either tenured or nontenured faculty, while three have significant indirect influences for the former group and two have significant indirect influences for the latter. This conformity to the proposed causal sequence is somewhat less evident for the block of exogenous variables, especially for tenured faculty where four variables in this block exert their influences in a direct manner. Third, the model was found to be appropriate for both male and female faculty in disparate institutional settings (1976 Carnegie Council typology) and academic disciplines (Biglan, 1973) through preliminary analyses that demonstrated that the explanatory power of the model is not enhanced when run separately by gender, institutional classification, or discipline affiliation.

However, the preliminary analyses suggested that the proposed causal model should be estimated separately for tenured and nontenured faculty, and the results from these separate analyses identify three specific influences that differentially lead tenured and nontenured faculty to develop the intention to leave their current institutions. The first is gender: Tenured men are more




inclined to leave their current institution than tenured women when controlling for all other variables in the model, while gender is not an important influence in the equation for nontenured faculty. This finding is consistent with Cotton and Turtle's (1986) conclusion that gender differences reported in extant employee turnover studies are not highly reliable across different types of employee groups; specifically, gender "appears to be a better predictor of turnover for the more professional jobs" (p. 63). Why are tenured women more likely to be inclined to stay at their present institution than tenured men (controlling for other variables in the model), while there are no gender differences for untenured faculty? One possible explanation is perhaps the different prior socialization of tenured versus nontenured women faculty. Bernard (1964) and Mannheim (1983), for example, suggest that female sex role socialization causes women to see the job as less central and to develop work activity preferences that are different from men. This possibility may be true for tenured, but not untenured, women. The possibility of generational differences in the professional socialization of tenured and nontenured female faculty clearly warrants further research attention in efforts to understand gender differences in the professoriate.

The second distinction that emerged between tenured and nontenured faculty is the important influence of salary satisfaction for the latter. While salary has a significant negative indirect effect in the equations for both groups, salary satisfaction is a significant influence only for nontenured faculty when

controlling for all other variables in the model. These findings suggest that while salary levels are important for both groups, they are especially important for nontenured faculty, because the influence of lower salary levels for nontenured faculty is compounded by lower levels of salary satisfaction, which contributes to their intentions to leave. These findings are highly consistent with those of Brown (1967) and McGee (1971) in that the influence of salary (and presumably salary satisfaction) on changing jobs in academe is inversely related to faculty members' current salary levels. As the relative economic position of the professoriate deteriorates vis-k-vis other intellectual professions' (Bowen and Schuster, 1986), salary considerations are likely to become an increasingly important factor for all faculty as they contemplate career alternatives. The

findings of this study highlight, however, the probability that economic considerations are likely to become more important in the deliberations of untenured faculty. Thus, campus officials who have been successful in attracting competent younger faculty are likely to face an exceedingly tough task of

providing continuing economic rewards in the midst of the growing financial

exigencies of their institutions. The third distinction that emerged between tenured and nontenured faculty is

the greater importance of the two research measures (i.e., research time, research productivity) on the intentions of tenured faculty to leave their current



420 SMART

institutions. Tenured faculty who spend more time on research activities are more likely to leave, and research productivity has a significant positive direct effect on the intentions of tenured faculty to leave, whereas neither of these measures contributed to the intentions of nontenured faculty to leave. However, the positive direct effect of research productivity for tenured faculty is largely offset by its significant negative indirect effect (research productivity enhances organizational and career satisfaction, which in turn reduces intentions to leave), resulting in a total effect that is not statistically significant. Thus, research productivity appears to enhance satisfaction with the current institution and campus efforts to support faculty research opportunities appear to be important both to the development and retention of competent faculty.

These three differences aside, however, the results of this study demonstrate the comparable importance of several influences on the intentions of both tenured and nontenured faculty to leave their current institutions. This situation is most evident in five variables that rank as the five primary influences in both equations (see standardized total effects in Table 4). Three are included among the individual and organizational characteristics block of exogenous variables (i.e., career age, organizational decline, campus governance) and two are among the job satisfaction variables (i.e., organizational satisfaction, career satisfaction). Regardless of tenure status, younger faculty, those at institutions that have experienced decline and that are perceived to have a more autocratic form of campus governance, and those that have lower levels of organizational and career satisfaction are more likely to leave their institutions.

The fact that younger tenured and nontenured faculty are most inclined to leave their current institutions indicates the importance to campus administrators of selecting new faculty whose professional orientations are consistent with institutional goals and activities, and of being sensitive to their initial adjustment to campus life and their perceptions of their potential to optimize their professional interests and values on their new campuses. This situation suggests that faculty development programs might play an especially important role in minimizing faculty attrition through monitoring the adjustment of new faculty to their new campus settings and through services that assist new faculty to achieve their professional interests (Centra, 1985). The adoption of "mentors" for new faculty within academic departments might be another approach to assist in the smooth adjustment of younger faculty to their new campus homes (Tucker, 1984).

The findings of this study clearly indicate that campuses facing serious enrollment and financial difficulties and those that have more autocratic governance patterns are most likely to encounter higher levels of faculty attrition. There is cause to believe, however, that both of these influences are amenable to interventions by campus officials. Clearly, the adoption of more democratic leadership styles and efforts to initiate more democratic governance




processes are two options within the grasp of campus officials that would minimize the likelihood of faculty attrition.

There is, in addition, accumulating evidence that the managerial strategies adopted by campuses experiencing enrollment and financial problems are counterproductive to overcoming these conditions of decline (Cameron, 1986; Chaffee, 1984; Whetten, 1981). Many of the "organizational dysfunctions of decline" (e.g., increasing centralization, formalization, and standardization of policies and procedures; a disproportionate emphasis on efficiency and internal allocation issues at the expense of concerns about educational effectiveness and campus morale) may well contribute to the "insidious deterioration of faculty life" noted by Bowen and Schuster (1986, p. 268) and higher levels of faculty attrition. Thus, the adoption of flexible, innovative, and proactive responses to conditions of decline, as opposed to conventional conservative, protectionist, and efficiency-oriented approaches, may contribute both to overcoming enrollment and financial problems and to the retention of competent faculty members. The findings of Cameron (1986), Cameron and Zammuto (1986), and Chaffee (1984) are particularly useful to campus officials in their efforts to

diagnose organizational decline on their campuses and to develop the most

appropriate responses to overcome this phenomenon without the loss of

competent faculty members. The fact that organizational and career satisfaction are important influences

on faculty intentions to leave their current institutions comes as little surprise since these measures have been shown to have consistently high correlations with employee turnover in both academic and nonacademic organizations (Cotton and Tuttle, 1986; Finkelstein, 1984; Muchinsky and Tuttle, 1979). Unlike earlier research on faculty attrition, however, the use of causal modeling procedures in this study highlights the key role of these two satisfaction measures as mediating variables for the significant indirect influences of other variables in the model, and helps in the development of an understanding of the

dynamics by which faculty develop the intention to leave and the actions that

campus officials may adopt to minimize this problem. For example, the

adoption of a more democratic governance pattern contributes to higher levels of

faculty organizational and career satisfaction, which in turn reduce their intentions to leave their current institution; similarly, faculty perceptions of

greater influence in the governance process lead to higher levels of

organizational and career satisfaction (and thus lower faculty intentions to leave); finally, while higher levels of research productivity by tenured faculty have a positive, direct influence on their intention to leave, this influence is

largely negated by higher levels of organizational and career satisfaction by highly productive tenured faculty (which reduce their intentions to leave).

Most importantly, the findings clearly suggest that campus officials have the

capacity to minimize turnover through attention to the organizational and career



422 SMART

satisfactions of their faculty. Bowen and Schuster (1986) attribute much of the blame for the "widespread distress among faculty members" to the tendencies of colleges and universities, as organizations, to "lose sight of the human element" and to "often behave toward their professional staff in an inconsiderate manner" (p. 273). The adoption of enlightened human relations and employee-sensitive management techniques by campus officials in their relations with faculty appears to be a prerequisite for the retention of faculty during the era of faculty shortages anticipated in the 1990s.

The intentions of faculty to leave their current institutions is a function of a

complex series of events that encompasses their individual characteristics, attributes of their institutions, contextual aspects of their work environments, and multiple dimensions of their overall job satisfaction. The causal model estimated in this study represents an initial effort to explore the relative

importance of these influences for tenured and untenured faculty, and to understand the dynamic process by which these influences are exerted. The

findings highlight both the similarities and differences in the influences that contribute to the evolution of tenured and untenured faculty members' intentions to leave their current institution.

Acknowledgements. The constructive comments of Alan E. Bayer, John M. Braxton, and Lowell L. Hargens to the initial draft of this paper are gratefiilly acknowledged.

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Received April 12, 1990



a causal model of faculty turnover intentions

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