Influence of organizational rewards on organizational commitment and turnover intentions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between extrinsic, intrinsic and social rewards and two components of organizational commitment and finally Chinese workers turnover intention in public and private sector. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was utilized as the method for data collection. Structural equation modeling was utilized to examine survey data obtained from 202 employees in the southern part of China. Findings – The findings exhibit that extrinsic, social and intrinsic rewards were significantly related to affective and normative commitment. Findings suggest that satisfaction with extrinsic benefits, supervisor support, coworker support, autonomy, training and participation in decision making has substantial impact on employee’s affective and normative commitment. However, affective and normative commitment was negatively related to employee turnover intention. Research limitations/implications – This study covers different public and private-sector organization employees working in China. Therefore other geographical areas could be designated for future research endeavors with a bigger sample size. Practical implications – With the purpose of boosting employee commitment, managers must provide their employees with greater autonomy, appropriate training and participation in decision making in the organization, as well as enhancing supervisor and coworker support. Originality/value – This research investigates how Chinese employees with different categories of organizational rewards react to different kinds of organizational commitment and turnover intention in Chinese organizational context.