Interactive organizational commitment and hardiness in public accountants' turnover

Purpose – The overall purpose of the study is to build upon and add to a turnover model for public accounting. This study examines two components of organizational commitment, affective and continuance, and attempts to reconcile mixed results found in prior studies. An interaction of the two components and the personality trait of hardiness are explored. Design/methodology/approach – One hundred and twenty‐eight public accountants from three firms participated in the study by completing self‐report questionnaires. Established scales for the variables of interest were employed, and OLS regression was used to test hypotheses. Findings – The results indicate that affective commitment is the most salient component of commitment in predicting turnover, but an interaction of continuance and affective commitment is also significant. The results also indicate that hardiness is a significant personality variable in predicting turnover. Research limitations/implications – Generalizability of results may be limited as participation was limited to three firms. Theoretical implications include establishing the relative saliency of the commitment components to turnover in public accountants and building the turnover model by adding a commitment interaction and personality hardiness. Practical implications – Management of public accounting firms can better focus on strategy to emotionally attach individuals to a firm and prevent undesirable turnover. To better assist recruiters in hiring, firms can incorporate hardiness into its pre‐hire fit assessment to gauge compatibility. Originality/value – In addition to clarifying results from prior studies, this paper introduces interactive commitment and personality hardiness to a model of public accounting turnover.