Career satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention : The effects of goal orientation, organizational learning culture and developmental feedback

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of personal characteristics (goal orientation) and contextual characteristics (organizational learning culture and developmental feedback) on employees' career satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention. Design/methodology/approach – Subjects were drawn from four Fortune Global 500 companies in Korea. Descriptive statistics and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to explain the variance in outcome variables. Findings – The results indicate that career satisfaction is predicted by organizational learning culture and performance goal orientation. Organizational learning culture, developmental feedback, and learning goal orientation are the significant predictors of organizational commitment. Finally, organizational learning culture, career satisfaction, and organizational commitment turn out to be the predictors of turnover intention. Practical implications – By enhancing organizational learning culture and by considering goal orientation, human resource development/organization development practitioners could play important roles in improving organizational commitment, in career satisfaction, and in decreasing turnover. Originality/value – The theoretical contribution of this paper lies in its inclusive approach encompassing both the personal and contextual factors (such as organizational learning, leadership, and personality) on career and organizational commitment research. It is an interesting finding that while performance goal is associated with career satisfaction, learning goal orientation is related with organizational commitment.