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ABSTRACT 
The Ignored Side of Organizational Job Embeddedness:  
An Examination into the role of Personality and Social Exchanges in influencing 
the Embeddedness – Voluntary Turnover Intent Relationship 
 
Riann Singh
This study extends the existing body of research on organizational job 
embeddedness by examining the relationship of an employee’s personality and 
social exchange relationships to their embeddedness and hence to their voluntary 
turnover intentions as well. While the emerging embeddedness literature 
recognizes that the extent of an employee’s embeddedness within their 
organization is one of the most valid predictors of voluntary turnover, where 
turnover is seen as one of the most pressing organizational issues, little research 
has explored the influence of ‘people’ and social factors on this construct.  
 
This study then uses and supplements the Theory of Planned Behaviour to 
hypothesize personality as an antecedent of organizational job embeddedness, 
organizational job embeddedness as a predictor of voluntary turnover intentions, 
psychological contracts as a moderator on the embeddedness-turnover intent 
relationships, and embeddedness as an intermediary mechanism that mediates the 
personality - turnover intention relationship. Further, it is suggested that voluntary 
turnover intentions influence social networking behaviours, which in turn 
reinforce job embeddedness.  
 
These proposed relationships are examined in a final sample of 195 
service - sector employees in Trinidad using a cross-lagged panel design and 
Structural Equation Models. In general, the results provided strong support for the 
role of personality in predicting embeddedness, for embeddedness as a predictor 
of turnover intentions and for embeddedness as a mediating mechanism through 
which personality influences turnover intent. The hypothesized role of perceived 
psychological contracts however was not generally supported, although it was 
suggested that turnover intentions can predict social networking behaviours, 
which in turn can reinforce organizational job embeddedness. In these ways, this 
study opens the door to an often ignored side of embeddedness which can no 
longer be ignored. Contributions, limitations, practical implications, and 
directions for future research are offered. 
 
Keywords: Riann Singh; job embeddedness; turnover intentions; personality; 
social exchanges.