The Relationships Between Employability, Emotional Exhaustion, and Turnover Intention: the Moderation of Perceived Career Opportunity

In the boundaryless career era, employability is valued by both employees and employers. In this study, we investigated the effects of employability on employees’ strain and turnover intention in the Chinese setting, focusing on the moderating role of perceived career opportunity (PCO). We collected two-wave data from a sample of 214 employees over a three-month period. The results showed that employability was negatively related to emotional exhaustion and nonsignificantly related to turnover intention after controlling for baseline levels. Further, we found that PCO moderated the relationships between employability, emotional exhaustion, and turnover intention. Specifically, the negative relationship between employability and emotional exhaustion was strong (weak) when PCO within the organization was high (low). Employability was negatively related to turnover intention only when PCO was high. Our study highlights that PCO should be given more attention in the employability research.

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