Organizational justice, burnout, and turnover intention of social workers in China

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2020. Summary: High turnover rate among Chinese social work practitioners is a big challenge facing the nation’s social work profession. Turnover intention, the determinant predictor of actual turnover, has been widely used instead of the actual turnover. Among many predictors, burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy) was recognized as a key predictor of turnover intention. In addition, recently, organizational justice is getting more and more attention by social work scholars in affecting employees’ intention to leave the organization. This article aims to empirically test how different dimensions of organizational justice influence social workers’ turnover intention, regarding burnout as a mediator, and including the development and validation of a new organizational justice scale in Chinese context. Findings: In total, 616 social workers (223 from Beijing for Study 1 and 393 from Jiangmen for Study 2) participated in the study. The results revealed that interpersonal justice is the most important dimension for predicting social workers’ turnover intention, whereas cynicism plays a mediator role in that relationship. Application: Turnover is an organizational behavior. Therefore, it is more important for organization managers and policy makers to consider the factors from organizational conditions that are influencing turnover. This study provides the field of social work in China with solid evidence that more attention should be paid to management issues in solving the challenge of a high turnover rate.