THE IMPACT OF PERCEIVED ORGANIZATION CULTURE AND PERSONALITY TRAITS ON THE TURNOVER INTENTION OF THE SALES FORCE IN THE FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS INDUSTRY IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

Organization Culture concerning the Turnover Intentions of the employees under the impacts of Job satisfaction and Personality Traits has been identified as an area with limited attention in the sales profession in the empirical research arena although there are certain studies found in the western countries with conclusions recommending more studies in deferent contexts. Organization culture has been identified as one of the antecedents towards turnover intentions. Meanwhile, job satisfaction has been named a concept that mediates the relationship between organizational culture and turnover intention. Also, the employees' personality traits have been suggested as a variable that could moderate the same relationship. Based on that, the objective of this research is to review the concepts of organization culture and how that affects the turnover intentions of the sales force in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry in Sri Lanka with the mediating effect of job satisfaction and moderated by personality traits. Theoretical justifications and empirical support were constructed in line with the positivism research philosophy to build arguments in creating hypotheses proposed. The 'Organization Culture theory' of Cameron and Quinn (1999) was taken as the base to construct the proposed research direction through the theoretical philosophy. Empirical journal articles, published books, and data on the industry were used to build the study's research tools. The discussion was established to rationalize the future research directions in line with the main empirical arguments made. Five hundred respondents were reached under the adopted quantitative research strategy. The research approach was a Cluster sampling model, and 391 properly filled data samples were considered for final analysis after following the process for data screening. The further descriptive statistical method and SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) were used for hypotheses testing. The findings indicated a significant relationship between organization culture and turnover intention amongst the sales force in the FMCG industry in Sri Lanka. Further, there is a significant relationship between Organizational Culture on Job Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction on Turnover Intentions. Also, it is found that Job Satisfaction mediates with the Organizational Culture on Turnover Intention while there is no moderation effect of Personality Traits with Organizational Culture on Turnover Intention. The findings demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between the job satisfaction and turnover intention in the sales force of the FMCG industry in Sri Lanka and this phenomenon is critically analyzed and explained under literature, industrial and psychological perspectives. Under the above results, the proposed managerial implications outlined the significance of the culture of the organization in order to mitigate the sales force turnover. As the organizations with a strong market or hierarchy culture are positively related to the turnover intention of the sales force, more attention is needed to develop a clan or adhocracy culture in order to reduce attrition. However, although the sales force is satisfied with their job that does not guarantee their staying with the organization. The organizations interested on managing the turnover have to focus their attention on developing organizational commitment of their sales force. The research concludes with the importance of adding new knowledge in the less studied area of sales force turnover concerning organization culture, job satisfaction, and personality traits to improve the FMCG industry's productivity and efficiencies in Sri Lanka. Also, it provides a clear direction for the future research studies.