Resumen de Employee Empowerment and Turnover Intention in the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy

Sun Young Kim, Sergio Fernandez

• Reducing employee turnover in the U.S. federal government has been an ongoing goal of policymakers in Washington, D.C. A large literature emerging during the last three decades has identified a range of antecedents of turnover intention and actual turnover, including individual characteristics, employee attitudes, organizational conditions, and managerial practices. Little research has been done, however, on the impact of employee empowerment as a multifaceted managerial approach on turnover options in the public sector. This study proposes a theoretical model of the direct and indirect effects of employee empowerment on turnover intention in the U.S. federal bureaucracy. The model is tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and data from the U.S. Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS). The empirical results support the hypothesized model. Employee empowerment has negative direct and indirect effects on turnover intention. In addition, the negative effect is greater on the likelihood of intention to leave to another federal agency and intention to leave the federal government than on the intention to retire