Are organisational politics responsible for turnover intention in French Firefighters?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of different facets of perceived organisational politics and workplace attitudes onto turnover intention in the French Fire and Rescue service.

Methodology

An electronic survey was administered to fire department employees (n = 255) to investigate the effects of different forms of perceived organisational politics (POP) onto turnover intention, and test for mediation by affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction with structural equation modelling (Lisrel 8.80).

Findings

Both pay-and-promotion and general perceived organisational politics indirectly predicted turnover intention in French firefighters, although the total effect of pay-and-promotion politics was greater than general politics. Affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction mediated the effect of perceived organisational politics onto turnover intention.

Practical implications

Public organisations, which have recently undergone reorganisations, should monitor perceptions of organisational politics to better understand the association with attitudes (such as affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction), as well as to predict turnover intention.

Originality/value

The study goes expands on the identification of various turnover intention's antecedents to contribute to consider understanding of its reasons, such as perceived organisational politics, where pay-and-promotion politics appears to be more salient factor than general politics. Affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction mediate the effects of POP onto turnover intention with nuanced effects. We also generated support for the order of factors in the model, where job satisfaction is a first-order predictor of turnover intention and organisational commitment second-order one. The POP Scale (Kacmar & Ferris, 1991) was validated in French.