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Voluntary early turnover in public accounting: Culture profiles and socialization tactics
Abstract
This study investigates whether voluntary early turnover is predictably related to congruence of culture profiles and CPA firm socialization tactics used to assimilate new hires into the organization. High levels of professional accounting staff turnover, especially occurring early in professional careers and at increasing rates, has been identified as a serious and costly problem for public accounting firms. Current estimates of turnover occurring within the first year of employment are as high as 20%. Costs for recruiting and training replacements range from $5,000 to \$20,000 per replacement. In addition to impact of these immediate costs associated with high rates of early turnover, long-term impact on the firm includes indirect costs associated with the possibility of adverse impact on firm/client relationships and a diminished pool of human capital from which to draw future firm managers and partners. Although prior research has identified a broad spectrum of demographic and cognitive factors associated with turnover, such factors generally account for very little of the variance in turnover behavior and their use in hiring and personnel decisions raises difficult legal issues. These issues motivate researchers and public accounting firms to understand better the more controllable factors associated with early turnover. The Dillard-Ferris conceptual model of work behavior provides a basis to investigate the relationships among individual difference factors, organizational factors and early turnover. For this study, early turnover is defined to be turnover occurring within the first fifteen months of employment. A sample drawn from twenty-three regional and small CPA firms in the upper midwest provides data on individual difference characteristics and employment specific characteristics. Fifteen months later, a turnover group is compared with a non-turnover group from the original cohort using multivariate logistic regression. Results indicate that after consideration of firm controllable factors (culture congruence and socialization tactics), individual difference factors provide no further explanation of early turnover behavior.
Subject Area
Accounting|Occupational psychology
Recommended Citation
Lawrence, Leonare E, "Voluntary early turnover in public accounting: Culture profiles and socialization tactics" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9805512.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9805512