Reward contingency, unemployment, and functional turnover

Based on the valence model of expectancy theory and the Cornell model of jo b satisfaction, this field study investigated the relationship between rewa rd contingency, unemployment, pay satisfaction, job satisfaction, and funct ional turnover. The latter of which separates turnover into four categories : poor performing leavers, good performing leavers, poor performing stayers , and good performing stayers. It was conducted with a geographically dispe rsed sample of sales representatives (i.e., from 25 states and 66 cities), resulting in unemployment rates that ranged from 2 percent to 12 percent. T he sales representatives were employed by four companies that paid differen t combinations of salary and commissions, ranging from mostly salary and li ttle commission to 100 percent commission. A discriminant analysis accounte d for 62 percent of the variance in functional turnover and achieved an ove rall classification hit rate of 67 percent across the four functional turno ver groups. Follow-up univariate analyses indicated that objective reward c ontingency (R-2 = 0.34), state unemployment (R-2 = 0.11), State sales unemp loyment (R-2 = 0.08), education (R-2 = 0.09), and tenure (R-2 = 0.08) accou nted for most of the variance in functional turnover. Perceived reward cont ingency, pay satisfaction, job satisfaction, age, and gender were not relat ed to functional turnover.