A path model for career option and intention to quit among Railway medical officers

Abstract

The author examined the relationship between career option and intention to quit among medical officers of the Indian Railways (IR). Given the extant literature, the proposed path model included (a) the participants background variables of age, experience, and sex contributing to career option and (b) the successive intervening variables of continuity commitment, organizational identification, and job satisfaction between career option and intention to quit. The relationships among these variables were predicted through a set of eight hypotheses. Data collected from 175 medical officers of IR were encouraging for the model. At the measurement level, the five hypothesized constructs of career option, continuity commitment, identification with the Indian Railways, job satisfaction, and intention to quit the job did have such a structure in a confirmatory factor analysis. At the causal level, the age, experience, and sex of the participants contributed to career option. Career option had a direct effect on intention to quit and a set of sequential indirect effects through continuity commitment, organizational identification, and job satisfaction. Switching of the order of continuity commitment, organizational identification, and job satisfaction in two alternative path models resulted in worse fit indices than the hypothesized path model. Findings showed that career option adversely affects continuity commitment, but that continuity commitment builds on identification with IR and adds to job satisfaction. Consequently, the positive direct effect of career option on intention effect is mitigated by a combination of negative and positive indirect effects through continuity commitment, organizational identification, and job satisfaction. In addition to the conceptual clarity about the causal orders of the measured variables, findings have an important applied implication for IR. To retain medical doctors in the Indian Railways, for example, IR has to initiate activities directing at building continuity commitment and organizational identification.