Colliding conflicting perspectives: the rhetoric and reality of employee turnover - evidence from the Indian BPO industry

This study provides a deeper exploration of the qualitative thematic structures of conflicting accounts between employee reasons to quit and managerial strategies to prevent employee turnover in six business process outsourcing firms. Such differences in cognition and action between the two constituencies suggest that the decision to quit is not a linear and rational process as highlighted in most extant employee turnover models. We present a novel conceptualisation of why employees quit. Our findings suggest that employees are more attached to a place or people rather than the organisation per se. Intergenerational differences between the employees and their managers and the ineffectiveness of actual human resource practices suggest the prevalence of 'push systems' in the case organisations. Implications for theory and practice are addressed.