The Role of Career Satisfaction and Career Advancement Opportunities in Shaping Employees’ Job-Related Affect and Turnover Intention

The Role of Career Satisfaction and Career Advancement Opportunities in Shaping Employees’ Job-Related Affect and Turnover Intention

Peiris, J. M. P. M.

Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, Mihintale, Sri Lanka

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2024.11120009

Received: 24 November 2024; Accepted: 02 December 2024; Published: 28 December 2024

ABSTRACT

This study emphasizes how employees’ opportunities for career progression are valued by their organizations, and in response, how they generally demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviors at work. Thus, this study is based on the Social Exchange Theory and it has supported to investigate the association of Perceived Organizational Career Support and Satisfaction with Career Advancement Opportunities in contributing to employee’s Job-related Affect and Turnover intention. The researcher adopted a quantitative approach as the research methodology to test hypotheses and to achieve the main objectives. The data was collected from Non-Managerial Executives in Sri Lankan Apparel Industry. The hypotheses were tested using Correlational Analyses and Multiple Regression Analyses. The present study has drawn data from 150 valid self-administered questionnaires, and the study has proven that although Perceived Organizational Career Support has a significant negative effect on Turnover Intention, it does not have a significant impact on employees’ Affective well-being. Also, it was found that while Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities has a significant positive association with Affective well-being, it does not have a significant negative influence on Turnover Intention. At the core of these findings, this study proves practical implications for Sri Lankan Apparel Industry.

Keywords: Perceived Organizational Career Support (POCS), Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities (SAO), Job-related Affect (JA), Turnover Intentions (TI).

INTRODUCTION

Business organisations have identified the retention of human talent as a priority since it is the most critical intellectual capital that drives firms to succeed in today’s competitive and evolving business landscape (Abeysekera 2007). “In the current business and social environments, firms are increasingly aware of the importance of employees with excellent abilities (also called key employees) for achieving success” (Rodríguez-Sánchez, González-Torres, Montero-Navarro, & Gallego-Losada, 2020, p. 9). Organisations are thus focusing on retaining their top performers to maintain competitive advantage (Dupre and Day 2007). However, voluntary employee turnover poses a significant challenge to organisations, not just because of the financial costs and disruption to operations,and also because valuable talent is lost (Hom, Mitchell, Lee, and Griffeth 2012), costing organisations a significant amount of money, time, and effort spent to develop these employees (Kraimer, Seibert, Wayne, Liden, and Bravo 2011) only to possibly lose them to their business competitors. Over the years, therefore, numerous theories and concepts (as an example ; “Unfolding Theory (Tellez, 2014), proposes that employees follow one cognitive pathway when deciding to leave”) have been proposed to understand why employees quit or remain in their employing organisations (Lazzari, Alvarez, & Ruggieri, 2022). Due to the studying and collecting data on actual employee turnover, employees ‘intention to quit’ or ‘turnover intention’ has been the focal variable as the intent is the strongest single predictor of actual turnover (Hom et al. 2012). To better understand reasons for Turnover Intention, most of the Turnover literature studied job attitudes and job availability as antecedents of Turnover Intention (Maertz and Campion 1998). Other studies have also focused on personal determinants, and emotional or cognitive states, such as burnout (Swider and Zimmerman 2010) and Perceived Organisational Support (Shore and Tetrick 1991) respectively. Work conditions have also been investigated as determinants of Turnover Intention (Houkes et al. 2003). However, despite all these efforts to uncover why employees leave or stay, a large proportion of voluntary employee Turnover remains unexplained.

Moreover, the world of labour is moving from a work-intensive, industrial society to an automated information society. Therefore, recruitment efforts of business organisations are now directed toward more expensive, educated, and professional individuals (Urme, 2023). Due to this change, employers face the challenge of fulfilling such individuals’ needs for advancement in their careers. Human Capital Theory proposes that investing in one’s skills and education leads to greater value in the marketplace and, hence, should enhance career attainment and success (Becker 1965, Ng, Eby, Sorensen, and Feldman 2005). Empirical research has shown that educational attainment is positively related to managerial advancement, salary progression, and assessments of promotability (Wayne, Liden, Kraimer, and Graf 1999). Therefore, it is natural that skilled and more educated employees have always focused on upward mobility and seek career advancement opportunities with higher earning power. Thus, organisations must play a critical role in supporting these career advancement needs and creating attractive advancement opportunities to retain such skilled employees (Dockel, Basson, and Coetzee 2006). Interestingly, Human Resource (HR) practices in organisations have been receiving increased attention for their effects on employee turnover (Allen, Shore, and Griffeth 2003). Particularly, HR practices that suggest investment in employees and recognition of employee contributions signal that the organisation is supportive of the employee and, thereby, it may reduce employee Turnover (Wayne, Shore, and Liden 1997). For example, Allen et al. (2003) found that employees’ perceptions of supportive HR practices, such as growth opportunities for employees, led to the development of employees’ perceptions of organisational support, which was negatively related to Voluntary Turnover by employees a year later. Similarly, Huselid (1995) found evidence that high-performance work practices that contribute to employee development, such as promotion from within, had a clear negative relationship with employee Turnover.

However, what has received very little attention is whether career-related HR practices, such as opportunities for career advancement, influence employees’ turnover intentions. It is important to note here that it is the employees’ perceptions of such HR practices, rather than the objective existence of these practices, that would have the greater influence on employees’ attitudinal and behavioural outcomes (Whitener 2001). For example, an organisation may have career support practices in place, nevertheless, if employees perceive that they have received inadequate career support from their employer, they may be less motivated to stay with their current employer. Similarly, if the organisation has formal mechanisms for enabling employees to advance in their careers within the organisation, however, employees believe that there is limited opportunity for internal career advancement, they are more likely to be dissatisfied with their career prospects with their current employer and, therefore, may be more likely to leave the organisation. However, there are very few studies that have rigorously tested the influence of employees’ perceptions of career support and perceptions of opportunities for advancement on turnover intention. This study, therefore, seeks to fill this important gap in the literature by investigating (1) employees’ Perceptions of Organisational Career Support and (2) their Satisfaction with Career Advancement Opportunities within the employing organisation as antecedents of Turnover Intention.

Conversely, in Sri Lanka’s Apparel Sector, employee Turnover appears to be a pressing concern. Weerawansa and Aponsu (2012), noted that employee Turnover, particularly at the middle management level, was an issue of the utmost concern to the Apparel Industry. The Apparel Industry of Sri Lanka has been the largest export earner since 1986 (Dheerasinghe 2009), however, one of the major concerns impeding its competitiveness is low productivity (Tammita et al. 2010). High employee Turnover and Absenteeism have been found to be major contributing factors to the low level of productivity in the Apparel Industry (Kelagama and Epaarachchi 2003, Tammita et al. 2010). Given that Sri Lanka’s Apparel Industry has become the largest industrial employer in the nation and a significant contributor to Foreign Exchange Earnings (Weerakoon and Thennakoon 2006), significant attention must be devoted to studying the problem of employee Turnover as there are very few local studies that have been conducted on the issue using different perspectives (Jayanthakumaran and Weiss 1997). Hence, the present study that sets out to investigate the influence of employees’ career-related perceptions on their turnover intention will have a significant implication for the retention of talent, organisational success, and the long-term survival and growth of the industry in the face of tight Global Competition. In addition to Turnover Intention, this study also investigates the influence of Perceived Organisational Career Support and Satisfaction with Career Advancement Opportunities on Job-related Affect (also referred to as affective well-being; Warr 1990). Affect refers to a range of feeling states, including moods and emotions (Totterdell et al. 2004). The study of Job-related Affect is not new as many researchers have investigated job-related feelings in work settings (Brief and Weiss 2000). However, employees’ Affective Well-being; because of their Perceptions of Career Support and Satisfaction with Advancement Opportunities is not a topic that has received a lot of attention even in Western Countries. Given the recent shift in national interests and strategies towards the promotion and enhancement of the Psychological Well-being of employees in most countries, it is important that research is carried out to investigate employees’ Job-related Affect and its antecedents in the Sri Lankan context.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In literature, POCS and SAO identified as the Career advancement elements, mainly evaluation elements of career management or career development, even though the concepts of POCS and SAO differ on the same, thereby, some researchers treated these predictor variables as synonyms because of their proximity (Hughes 2012, Arthur 2005). Hence, in the current review of literature career advancement elements in addition to career- development were treated synonymously.

Accordingly, POCS is defined as “the employees’ global beliefs that the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being and career development” (Eisenberger et al. 1986). In other words, scholars have described the POCS as the individual’s perception about the organizational career advancement aspects such as promotion and career opportunities that are offered to them. Several researchers have reviewed the psychological theory of POCS in many ways. It is identified as one of the critical variables in the Organizational Psychology (OP) research (Eisenberger et al. 1986). It has been proved that POCS is a universal belief that concerns the extent to which organizations value their employee’s contributions and psychological and emotional well-being (Yan 2015). According to Eisenberger and Huntington (1986), they found four dimensions involved with the POCS through an extensive scale of employee surveys and it is now widely used in human resoure management research. Kraimer (2004) claimed that different cultures of employees might have various types of POCS. This has been proved by his research on expatriates on POCS. Hence, cross-cultured employees perceive subcategories of POCS i.e. Career Perceived Organizational Support and Financial Perceived Organizational Support differently.

However, the theoretical concept of POCS is Organizational Support Theory (OST); it explains employees generalized perception of the extent to which an organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. It is also evident that based on the assumption of involving social exchange, attribution, and self-enhancement OST predicts the antecedents of POCS i.e. leadership, HRM practices, employee-organization context, and employee wellbeing. Furthermore, it justifies that OST influences of process, relative magnitude of various relationships, and mediational effect (Kurtessis et al. 2017).

Moreover, past research on employees’ perceptions of organizational support for career development has found that POCS relates to turnover and job performance. Specifically, perceptions of development positively related to job performance, however, only when the organization offered internal career opportunities within the organization. Furthermore, POCS was associated with reducing voluntary Turnover when perceived career opportunities were high (Kraimer et al. 2011). Wickramasinghe and Wickramasinghe (2012) identified that POCS moderates the effect on participation in Decision Making, Affective Commitment, and Job Satisfaction in Lean Production in Sri Lanka. They recruited a similar sample to the proposed sample in the current study. Thus, they conducted their study focusing on the Sri Lankan Apparel Sector as well. However, a considerable number of studies in cross-industrial studies have also proven that negative organizational support can be directly associated the TI. Also, qualified employee retention and the effect of work support are encouraged by internal career growth opportunities (Liu et al. 2015; Yang et al. 2015).

Further, when the expatriate employees perceive little career support from their organisations, they start to look elsewhere for other jobs (McCaughey and Bruning 2005, Naumann 1993). Therefore, the expatriate literature seems to have concluded that there is a significant positive relationship between the perceived lack of career support and employees’ turnover intentions (Chen and Shaffer 2017; van der Heijden, van Engen, and Paauwe 2009). Satisfaction with Career Advancement Opportunities (SAO) is elaborated as “the extent to which employees are satisfied with the organization’s promotion opportunities” (Balzer et al., 1997 cited in Kraimer et al. 2011). Kraimer et al. (2011) have argued that SAO concerns the extent to which employees are satisfied with the promotion culture of the organization. While there are only a handful of studies that examine the concept of SAO, these studies indicated that it is a significant determinant of employees’ Turnover Intention. Employees who perceive limited opportunities for advancement within the organization are more likely to be dissatisfied with advancement opportunities. Thus, they are more likely to make plans to leave their current organization (Rahimand and Siti-Rohaida 2015; Stahl et al. 2009). Taking into account the foregoing arguments of SAO, it is evident that SAO is one of the main elements in organizational career growth and it is the core of the career development theory. It empathized the importance of the opportunities and the speed of their career growth within their organization (Wang et al. 2014). Through the process of fast-tracking their advancement opportunities; their satisfaction levels have upgraded and it has an impact on reducing TI (Yang et al. 2015).

However, according to Arnold and Silvester (2005), employee satisfaction is driven by the nature of employee motivation. When reviewing the literature, there are two main work motivation theories used to elaborate on work motivation and satisfaction with job elements such as career advancement and work behaviour, and these theories can be classified into: needs theories (considering an emotional aspect of the employees) and process theories (considers cognitive process along with the emotional aspect) (Wright 1989, cited in Lundberg, Gudmundson, and Andersson2009).

Furthermore, affect states a series of feeling states, with diverse moods and emotions that related to the job (Totterdell et al. 2004). In other words, what the individual feels at work, in terms of hedonic tones. Edwin A. Locke’s Range of Affect Theory (1976) explains that the satisfaction is resolute by a discrepancy with what employees’ actual state of the job and expected state of the job; what employees owns in their job and what they want in job. Furthermore, it conditions the amount of values is credited to the facet of work such as; degree of autonomy in the job role and it impact on employees’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction once their expectations are or aren’t met respectively. Predominantly studies have proved that Affect was represented in two general mood variables, positive and negative. The literature has suggested that affect can contribute to employee attitudes and organizational behaviours such as Organizational Citizenship Behaviour and Workplace Deviance Behaviour (Lee and Allen 2002). Moreover, such behaviours contribute to Job Performance and company productivity (Patterson, Warr, and West 2004). Prior research has demonstrated that the Job Demands Influence Negative Affect and that Job resources such as Promotion Opportunities influence Positive Affect (Balducci, Schaufeli and Fraccaroli 2011).

On the basis of the previous reviews which are related to Perceived Organizational Career Support and Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities are related to Job-related Affect to one another at the identical points in period (Chiang and Hsieh 2012; Kraimer et al. 2011). The researcher reviewed the relationship between POCS and SAO with JA. Hence;

Hypothesis 1 and 2;

(H1) Perceived Organizational Career Support is positively related to Job-related Affect,

(H2) Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities are positively related to Job-related Affect

Turnover Intention (TI) can be defined as “an employee’s intention to leave the job or company” (Schyns, Torka, and Gossling 2007 cited in Gill et al. 2013). An extensive body of literature pertaining to TI has found that satisfaction with promotion or advancement opportunities is a significant factor that contributes to turnover intention (Usman and Jangraiz 2015). Other studies have also found that perceived overall organizational support has a positive influence on Job Embeddedness, which in turn will contribute to Turnover Intention (Akgündüz and Sanli 2017; Akgündüz and Cin 2015).

Social Exchange Theory reflects that human relationships are based on a cost-benefit comparison (Emerson 1967). Social Exchange Theory provides a strong support for a relationship between POCS and SAO with TI (Kraimer et al. 2011). Furthermore, Umar et al. (2013) proposed a theoretical framework of frustration at work, which is greatly like the concept of Job-related Affect, as an outcome of Career Advancement Opportunity. Thus, when employees perceive inadequate Organizational Career Support or are dissatisfied with Advancement Opportunities, employees may experience greater Negative Affect and increased intentions to quit their organization.

Above argument has further been supported by reviews of Social Psychological reviews, past scholars have claimed that SET is the most significant perception paradigm of understanding work behaviour. It explains that if the organization has valued the employee contribution Furthermore, SET has been conceptualized with the POCS. The advantages of POCS is understood in reciprocal terms: a subordinate who perceives his superior as supportive is more likely to return with the benefits (Kurtessis et al. 2017; Eisenberger et al. 1986). However, when POCS high employees are more engaged in Organizational Commitment, Higher Job Performance (Malhotra and Singh 2016), reduce Absenteeism (Eisenberger et al., 1986) and it reduce Turnover Intention (Rahman and Nas 2013). Hereby, it proves that conceptualized POCS as the “quality” of SET that occur between employee and employer.

Considering the foregoing arguments across the above mentioned theoretical perspectives, our third and fourth hypothesis is therefore;

Hypothesis 3 and 4;

(H3) Perceived Organizational Career Support is negatively related to Turnover Intention.

(H4) Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities are negatively related to Turnover Intention.

METHODOLOGY

The current study has adopted a predictive cross-sectional, non-experimental study design using the casual-comparative descriptive survey method of data collection. Furthermore, it solely demonstrates the correlational study design to measure the association between two or more naturally occurring variables rather than a quasi-experiment design to introduce a change to one of the variables and to monitor the causal effect. The present research design is secondhand to compare many variables (Taylor et al. 2006). The two predictor variables of the current study are Perceived Organizational Career Support (POCS) and Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities (SAO). The outcome variables of the present study are Job-related Affect (JA) and Turnover intention (TI). The arguments conceptualized up by the researcher are graphically represented in the figure 1. (Appendix 1)

The target population of the study encompassed English-speaking, Non-managerial, Administrative Executive-level employees in the Apparel Industry in Sri Lanka. A total amount of 150 participants took part in the research findings and it was selected from the above-mentioned target population using Convenience Sampling Strategy. Probability Sampling was not second handed in this research due to the limited access to the total number of target population. The survey technique was used to collect data from individuals who were currently working in the Apparel Sector in Sri Lanka with their voluntary participation. Furthermore, when elaborating on the nature of the sample, both female and male informants were randomly selected with the age limit of 20 and 65 years. The data used for this research was collected in October 2023; the data was collected using one questionnaire along with demographics. Data collection was fulfilled with a standardized questionnaire in English comprising a demographic section and four previously validated scales to measure: Perceived Organizational Career Support, Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities, Job-related Affect, and Turnover Intention.

The researcher employed the Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation and hierarchical Regression to establish the relationship and impact of the two dimensions of career growth antecedents; Perceived Organizational Career Support (POCS) and Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities (SAO) on employees’ Job-related Affect (JA) and Turnover Intention (TI). Spearman’s correlation was performed to examine the relationships among Perceived Organizational Career Support (POCS), Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement A closer look on the separate variables association was elaborated as follows; if consider predictor variable of POCS’ association with outcome variables of the study; there was a significant weak positive relationship between POCS and Job- related affect: Anxiety-Contentment (r = .265, p < .05), there was a significant moderate positive association between POCS and Job- related Affect: Depression – Enthusiasm (r = .429, p < .05). (See Table 1).

There was a significant moderate negative relationship between POCS and Turnover Intention (r = -.401, p < .05).if review the association among SAO with outcome variables of the study, it evident that SAO is positively associated with Job- related Affect: Anxiety-Contentment at a significant level (r = .222, p < .05), SAO is highly positively related with Job- related Affect: Depression – Enthusiasm (r = .516, p < .05) at a significant level, finally by the side of the significant level SAO is negatively correlated with Turnover Intention (r = .337, p < .05).

Regression analysis was performed to analyse the influence of POCS and SAO on JA and TI. The Multiple Regression Model with two predictor variables (POCS and SAO) on JA was measured by two sub scales of JA. The first sub scale of JA: Anxiety -Contentment (JA: ANX-CONT) produced a R2 value of .096, which indicated that 9.6% of the variation in Job-related Affect could be explained by POCS and SAO. The p-value of the ANOVA table was less than .001 (which is significant), indicating that at least one of the variables – either POCS or SAO; can predict the Anxiety-Contentment dimension of the JA construct. From the coefficients table (please refer to table 2), the results showed that the p-values of POCS and SAO were not significant (.105 and .197, respectively). Therefore, POCS and SAO are not significant predictors of the Anxiety-Contentment dimension of JA (POCS: β = .186, p > .05); (SAO: β = .147, p > .05).

Similarly, the R2 value for the second sub scale of JA, Depression-Enthusiasm (JA: DEP-ENTHU), R2 value was .326, which indicated that 32.6% of variation in job-related affect could be explained by the predict POCS and SAO. The p- value of the ANOVA table was less than .001 (which is significant), indicating that at least one of the variables – either POCS or SAO; can predict Depression-Enthusiasm dimension of the JA construct. From the coefficients table (please refer to table 3.1 and 3.2), the results showed the p-value of POCS were not significant (.056). However, the p-value of SAO is .000 (p <.05) therefore, only SAO is the predictor of JA (POCS: β = .189, p > .05); (SAO: β = .420, p < .05).

Therefore, grounded on the results, Hypothesis 1 (H1); was proved that Perceived Organizational Career Support will be positively related to the Job-related Affect was not supported as the p-value was greater than .05 (= 186 (JA: ANX-CONT) and 189 (JA: DEP-ENTHU), p >.05). Furthermore, Hypothesis 2 (H2), was predicted that Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities will be positively related to the Job-related Affect of Depression-Enthusiasm was supported. (= .147 (JA: ANX-CONT) and .420(JA: DEP-ENTHU), p < .05).

Conversely to that R2 value is .191, which indicated that 19.1% of the variation in Turnover Intention could be explained by the predict POCS and SAO. The p- value of the ANOVA table was less than .001 (which is significant), indicating that at least one of the variables – either POCS or SAO; can predict TI. From the coefficients table (please refer to Appendix VI), the results showed the p-value of SAO were not significant (.228), Thus, SAO is not a significant predictor of TI. However, the p-value of POCS is .002 (p < 0.05) therefore, only POCS is the predictor of TI (POCS: β = -.333 p < .05); (SAO: β = -.130, p > .05). Based on the results, Hypothesis 3 (H3); which predicted that Perceived Organizational Career Support will be negatively related to the Turnover Intention was supported, (= -.333, p < .05). Additionally, Hypothesis 4 (H4); which predicted that Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities will be negatively related to the Turnover Intention was not supported (= -.130, p > .05) (See Figure 2).

FINDINGS

The main purpose of the present study was to specify the importance of employees’ career-related insights and attitudes in persuading their Turnover Intention and Affective Well-being; it is vital to examine the relationships among these career variables, Turnover Intention, and Job-related affect in Sri Lankan Apparel Industry to boost the productivity of the sector and enhance the well-being of its employees (Hom, Mitchell, Lee, and Griffeth 2012). Social Exchange Theory (SET) empathised that the constructive favours which are offered by the employer or the institution will positively influence the employee’s positive insight toward work, and it will not harm the employee’s Well-being.

Therefore, it proves that Perceived Organisational Career Support (POCS) and Satisfaction with Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities (SAO) will influence the Affective Well-being of the employees and will increase their retention. The present study was designed within the framework of SET and tends to investigate the association among Perceived Organisational Career Support and Satisfaction with such Perceived Career Advancement Opportunities on Job-related Affect (JA), and Turnover Intention (TI) of executives involved in the Apparel Industry in Sri Lanka.

First, it was predicted that POCS would have a positive influence on JA, however the results did not support this prediction. The results indicated that employee affective well-being is not affected by the employees’ beliefs about organisational antecedents which value their contributions to the organisation. Second, it was expected that SAO would have a positive impact on JA. This hypothesis is supported by the study. These results supported that the employees who perceive that there are Career Advancement Opportunities available within the organisation experience Affective Well-begin and positive attitudes towards the organisation. Third, it was mainly hypothesized that POCS would have a negative influence on TI. This hypothesis was also supported. The findings revealed that when employees believe they have been rewarded by their organisation, their turnover intention decreases. The current findings indicate that POCS may be a viable technique for reducing voluntary employee turnover. The final hypothesis proposed that SAO could have a considerable detrimental effect on TI. The results did not support this forecast. It demonstrates that employees’ turnover intentions were unaffected by their level of satisfaction with the officialdom’s promotion chances.

Theoretical/Practical Implications

Social Exchange Theory (Gouldner 1960) proposed that if the employees perceive that the organisation gives credibility to their contribution it proves that the Turnover Intention reduces, and their positive attitudes about their jobs for the organisation increase therefore it will impress on their Affective Well-being (Akgunduz and Sanli 2015). Therefore, employees return the favour to the organisation rather than impairing it. In testing this argument results indicated that POCS and SAO increases employee’s well-being and it decreases their Turnover Intention (Chiang and Hsieh 2012). In order to return the favour to the organization, employees who perceive that they are valued and their career advancement rights are protected tend to demonstrate positive attitudes towards organisation.

Perceived Organizational Career Support results in the number of benefits such as employee Affective Well-being, Retention, Career success, Positive Self-esteem, and Job and Career Satisfaction (Liu et al. 2015). The results reported in the present study do not support that POCS appears to be the potential strategy to enhance positive JA. Therefore, the relationship between POCS and the work outcomes will be stronger once the Positive Affectivity is high (Sears, Zhang, and Han 2016). However, it has been proved that there is no significant association between POCS and JA in the Sri Lankan context of the Apparel Sector; Executive level employees. This might be a result of organizational and cultural differences in Europe and South Asia.

Conversely, the results replicated that when employees perceived that there are Career Advancement Opportunities available within the organization it will enhance the satisfaction with the promotion culture of the organization therefore it will increase the Affective Well-being of the employees. Thus, the association between SAO and JA has been significantly proved in the Sri Lankan context. Nonetheless, scholars have similar arguments as well (Rahimand and Siti-Rohaida 2015).

In this research, it was found that when employees perceive that the organization values their contribution then it will decrease their Turnover Intention. These findings pointed out that when employees realize organizational management practices are aimed to promote employees and facilitate their career growth thus in return it will reduce their intention to leave the organization, therefore, has been proved that there is a negative association between the POCS and TI. This will support the results of past researchers on POCS and TI (Kurtessis et al. 2017; Guan et al. 2015; and Umar et al. 2013). In addition to that this research shows that Satisfaction with Perceived Career Opportunities does not affect the voluntary Turnover Intention of employees. According to the findings, employee’s desire to endure to work in their organizations is not affected by the chances for advancement and satisfaction with such opportunities on the job.

Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research

There are a few drawbacks to this work that will be highlighted by future researches. Initial, the collection only contained three prominent organisations in the Sri Lankan apparel sector, which may limit the generalisability of this study’s outcomes. Following that, the non-probability sampling approach was used for the second time in this investigation. The researchers’ desire to convince all employees in the sampling is reflected through this liking. Additionally, this study has exclusively examined the career growth antecedents; organizational support, and satisfaction with advancement opportunities from the employees’ perspective. Thus, future research could aim to identify both manager’s (employer) and employee’s perceptions of these elements. Hence, it will provide an overall picture of career growth and it will help to match both employee and employer perceptions. Lastly, the data collection period is encouraged to cover at least one organizational Performance Management cycle (1 year) in two phases (Before April promotion schemes and After April promotions).

CONCLUSION

The results have showcased that the satisfaction element of career advancement has directly contributed to Job-related affect since satisfaction is contentment of one’s wishes or needs. According to motivational theories in psychology; Herzberg’s Influential Need Theory (1960) of motivational factors has clearly explained that Motivational Factors are related to growth needs such as promotions, responsibilities, and advancement respectively. Per Herzberg when growth factors are inattentive it will lead to employees’ dissatisfaction. Thus, the present study results proved that Satisfaction with Perceived Career Opportunities is positively associated with the Affective Well-being of employees in the Sri Lankan Apparel Context. Furthermore, the results have proved that less organizational career support will lead to employee intention to leave the organization. The Social Exchange Theory solely describes that there is a negotiable exchange; based on a subjective cost-benefit analysis between employees and employer. Hence, organizational career support plays a critical role in enhancing employee retention. In a nutshell, if the employees tend to perceive that the employer is valuing their contribution and career interests, they will not maltreat the organization. Therefore, it is proved that in Sri Lankan Apparel Context Perceived Organizational Career Support is negatively associated with Turnover Intention.

Based on the results there are two important managerial implications; (1) Therefore, as employers they are responsible for designing the organizational climate; to ensure that their employees’ contributions are praised and employee’s personal career interests are cared. (2) Also, they should provide satisfactory advancement opportunities within the organization for employees’ career growth. In this way, employees feel supported by their organizations; career advancement culture has been designed with fairness hence it will increase employees’ Affective Well-being and consequently it will decrease the Voluntary Turnover Intention.

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APPENDIXES

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework
(Source: Developed by the researcher)

Figure 2: Proposed hypothesized research model
(Note: n = 150; p < .001 ***, p < 0.01 **, p<.05)

Table 1: Intercorrelations among the study variables

Variables	POCS	SAO	Anx-Con	Dep-Ent	TI
Mean (SD)	3.4 (.72)	3.14 (.74)	2.92 (.53)	3.08 (.51)	2.93 (.64)
POCS	(.216)
SAO	.667*** (.154)	(.154)
JA: Anx-Con	.265***	.222***	(.342)
JA: Dep-Ent	.429***	.516***	.635***	(.205)
TI	-.401***	-.337***	-.234***	-.324***	(.793)

Table 2: Descriptive statistics (Constructed by the researcher using SPSS: V24 statistics). Note: n = 150; p < .01. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients are displayed in parentheses along the diagonal; POCS = Perceived organizational career support, SAO = Satisfaction with perceived career advancement opportunities, JA = Job related Affect, JA: Anx-Con = Anxiety- contentment, JA: Dep-Enthu = Depression -enthusiasm, TI = Turnover intention.

Table 2: Regression analysis for POCS & SAO on TI

Model Summaryb
Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate	Durbin-Watson
1	.437a	.191	.180	.58478	1.187
a. Predictors: (Constant), SAO.ME, POCS.ME
b. Dependent Variable: TI.ME

 

ANOVAa
Model		Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	11.836	2	5.918	17.306	.000b
	Residual	50.270	147	.342
	Total	62.106	149
a. Dependent Variable: TI.ME
b. Predictors: (Constant), SAO.ME, POCS.ME

 

Coefficientsa
Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.	95.0% Confidence Interval for B
		B	Std. Error	Beta			Lower Bound	Upper Bound
1	(Constant)	4.299	.237		18.168	.000	3.831	4.766
	POCS.ME	-.297	.096	-.333	-3.094	.002	-.486	-.107
	SAO.ME	-.112	.093	-.130	-1.209	.228	-.296	.071
a. Dependent Variable: TI.ME

 

Model Summary
Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	.310a	.096	.083	.51585
a. Predictors: (Constant), SAO.ME, POCS.ME

 

ANOVAa
Model		Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	4.145	2	2.072	7.787	.001b
	Residual	39.118	147	.266
	Total	43.262	149
a. Dependent Variable: ANX.CONT
b. Predictors: (Constant), SAO.ME, POCS.ME

 

Coefficientsa
Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.	95.0% Confidence Interval for B
		B	Std. Error	Beta			Lower Bound	Upper Bound
1	(Constant)	2.117	.209		10.142	.000	1.704	2.529
	POCS.ME	.138	.085	.186	1.631	.105	-.029	.305
	SAO.ME	.106	.082	.147	1.296	.197	-.056	.268
a. Dependent Variable: ANX.CONT

 

Coefficientsa
Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.	95.0% Confidence Interval for B
		B	Std. Error	Beta			Lower Bound	Upper Bound
1	(Constant)	2.117	.209		10.142	.000	1.704	2.529
	POCS.ME	.138	.085	.186	1.631	.105	-.029	.305
	SAO.ME	.106	.082	.147	1.296	.197	-.056	.268
a. Dependent Variable: ANX.CONT

 

Coefficientsa
Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.	95.0% Confidence Interval for B
		B	Std. Error	Beta			Lower Bound	Upper Bound
1	(Constant)	2.117	.209		10.142	.000	1.704	2.529
	POCS.ME	.138	.085	.186	1.631	.105	-.029	.305
	SAO.ME	.106	.082	.147	1.296	.197	-.056	.268
a. Dependent Variable: ANX.CONT

 

Model Summary
Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	.571a	.326	.317	.42475
a. Predictors: (Constant), SAO.ME, POCS.ME

 

ANOVAa
Model		Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	12.853	2	6.427	35.622	.000b
	Residual	26.521	147	.180
	Total	39.374	149
a. Dependent Variable: Depression–enthusiasm
b. Predictors: (Constant), SAO.ME, POCS.ME

 

Coefficientsa
Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.	95.0% Confidence Interval for B
		B	Std. Error	Beta			Lower Bound	Upper Bound
1	(Constant)	1.720	.172		10.006	.000	1.380	2.059
	POCS.ME	.134	.070	.189	1.923	.056	-.004	.272
	SAO.ME	.288	.067	.420	4.274	.000	.155	.422
a. Dependent Variable: Depression–enthusiasm