Career Development International

Employee well-being and turnover intention: evidence from a developing country with Muslim culture
Weiwei Wu, Muhammad Rafiq, Tachia Corinna Chin,
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Weiwei Wu, Muhammad Rafiq, Tachia Corinna Chin, "Employee well-being and turnover intention: evidence from a
developing country with Muslim culture", Career Development International, https://doi.org/10.1108/CDI-04-2017-0072
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 Employee wellbeing and turnover intention: Evidence from a developing
country with Muslim culture

Abstract
Purpose – Facing a new round of global industrial restructuring, it is vital for less-developed
yet populous regions to build a happy, engaged workforce to achieve competitiveness. This
study integrates an indigenous cultural perspective (i.e., Muslim religious belief) with the job
embeddedness theory to delve into employee wellbeing-turnover issues in a large developing
country ingrained with Muslim culture.
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Design/Methodology/Approach –We conducted a questionnaire survey on employees from

the media sector in the Muslim country, Pakistan. The data was analysed using moderated
hierarchical regression models (investigating three-way interactions), while the significance
tests of simple slopes and simple slope differences were also used to support our analysis.
Findings – Results suggest that all predictors analysed (Muslim religious belief,
organisational embeddedness, life satisfaction, and work engagement) were negatively and
significantly related to turnover intention. Furthermore, the employee wellbeing-turnover
intention mechanisms are jointly moderated by Muslim religious belief and organizational
embeddedness.
Research limitations/implications – The research considers turnover intention as an
outcome of a three-way interaction among employee wellbeing, Muslim religious belief, and
organisation embeddedness, thus proposing insightful implications for other developing-
country enterprises, particularly those ingrained with Muslim culture.
Originality value – We propose a novel model which demonstrates the effects of employee
work-and life-related wellbeing on turnover intention from a unique angle by incorporating
Muslim religious belief with organizational embeddedness, contributing to the existing body
of knowledge. The applicability of Western concepts to immature markets is also examined.

Introduction
Developing nations in Asia are facing increasing pressure to attain a higher level of

automation and digitalization under a new round of global industrial restructuring, causing

1
 the problems regarding employee turnover and wellbeing becoming more and more

pronounced in nations that have large populations, as it is difficult for those relatively poor

economies to build a happy, engaged workforce whilst manual jobs are disappearing (Chin

and Liu, 2017; Chin, 2015; Scanlan et al., 2013). Organisations in these countries may need

to manage more diversified and crucial labour -related challenges caused by racism and

religious convictions. The Muslim population reached 2.14 billion in 2016, with about 50%

living in Asia’s developing and emerging regions1, and it is therefore of great importance to
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address workforce issues by integrating the perspectives of organisational behaviour (OB)

and culture in such contexts.

However, there has been a dearth of studies demonstrating the wellbeing-turnover

relations in populous developing markets ora synthesized view of OB and culture. To fill the

above-mentioned gap, we chose a background setting that embodies the contextual

characteristics of a typical developing economy and also use a prominent cultural factor that

reflects local people’s belief and values, as a moderator to frame our research model. This

research incorporates the perspectives of job embeddedness and the Muslim religion to

investigate the mechanisms between employee wellbeing and turnover intention in a fast

growing but less developed country, Pakistan, the World’s 6th largest country with 207

million inhabitants.

The literature indicates that high employee turnover may result in a variety of dilemmas

and unfavourable consequences for both individuals and organisations, especially those

pertaining to the loss of direct and indirect cost in human resource management (HRM)

1
http://www.muslimpopulation.com/World/

2
 practices (Nuhn et al., 2016; Chin et al., 2016b; Cho et al., 2014; Jawahar et al., 2012). The

traditional turnover models mostly concentrate on addressing why employees decide to leave

are too narrow to provide a holistic view (Lee and Mitchell, 1994). However, the job

embeddedness theory can better explain why people choose to stay with organisations and

has been introduced into the discussion of employee turnover issues in recent years (Allen et

al., 2016; Dawley and Andrews, 2012). This theory explicitly highlights the importance of

employee perceptions on the fits and links between their jobs and surrounding working
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conditions, and implicitly details what people would lose if they quit (Mitchell et al., 2001).

It offers a broader hypothetical structure that integrates personal perceptions with social and

organisational aspects to explicate the factors confining employees to a specific environment

(Charlier et al., 2016; Peltokorpi et al., 2015; Bambacas and Kulik, 2013; Jiang et al., 2012).

We therefore argue that job embeddedness appears to be suitable for expounding the

employee wellbeing-turnover associations in our research setting, as the uniqueness of the

working surroundings ingrained in Muslim religion can be presented.

Notwithstanding, Muslim culture has been set as the context in this current study,

deeper, intrinsic Muslim belief rooted in people’s unconscious shared values and norms is

intricately linked to the social game of living and may (Hofstede et al., 2010), be better

addressed. Islamic religiousness that galvanises Muslims with each other can be

characterised by a series of acculturation events happening in all aspects of people’s daily

lives. Hence, in order to capture Pakistanis’ cultural mindset more precisely, we adopt the

culture-as-moderator framework (Kashif, Zarkada, and Thurasamy, 2017; Chin, 2014, 2015)

to test the moderating effect of Muslim religious belief on the wellbeing-turnover relations.

Moreover, taking together the foregoing arguments, we also examine the respective and joint

3
 moderating roles of Muslim religious belief and organisational embeddedness in affecting

wellbeing-turnover links.

The primary theoretical contribution of this study is to propose a novel model that

characterises the relationships of employee work-and life-related wellbeing with turnover

intention from a new angle by incorporating Muslim religious belief with organisational

embeddedness. As such, this research presents the impact of Muslim culture on HRM
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practices may also offer insightful managerial implications to other developing country

organisations, particularly those in the Muslim World.

Theory and hypotheses

Employee wellbeing refers to an individual’s feelings about positive or negative

consequences in relation to undertaking specific job tasks in a particular life setting (Zheng et

al., 2016; Van Woerkom and Meyers, 2015). A review of literature indicates that work-

related wellbeing predictors and outcomes, such as job satisfaction, work engagement,

burnout and several others, have been reported widely (Bakker, 2015; Hakanen and

Schaufeli, 2012), while life-related wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction), despite its important role

in the studies on happiness (Straume and Vittersø, 2015), has been largely neglected in the

field of management (Erdogan et al., 2012). However, life satisfaction as a typical subjective

wellbeing measure, can reflect people’s perceptions of happiness from deeper, broader

aspects than does work-related wellbeing, ranging from self-realisation, work-family conflict

to life as a whole (Ilies et al., 2015; Brunetto et al., 2014; Diener, 2000; Haar and Roche,

2010). It is therefore imperative to take into account both work- and life- related domains to

4
 elucidate employee wellbeing issues, drawing together the two variables and examining their

effects on turnover intention.

However, to date there have been no consistent views on how to assess subjective work-

related wellbeing, owing to the multi-faceted complexities, nuances, and perturbations

embedded in the nature of this concept (Page and Vella-Brodrick, 2009). More specifically,

work-related wellbeing should be characterised by a measure that can embody the basic crux
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of employees’ happiness and hard work. Work engagement is a concept defined as “a

positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind” (Bakker and Demerouti, 2008: 209); it

particularly implies an underlying motivation generating employees’ happiness which

enables people to heavily invest valuable resources, such as time and effort, into their jobs.

Engaged employees usually exhibit more productive work behaviour because of the positive

emotions they perceive at work, resulting in scholars suggesting the use of work engagement

to mirror work-related wellbeing (Khan et al., 2015; Schaufeli and Van Rhenen, 2006).

Whereas the intrinsic motivation lying in the nature of work engagement is significantly

affected by cultural factors (Chin, 2015; Hofstede et al., 2010), it seems plausible to regard

work engagement as a representative variable of work-related wellbeing in our research

context, namely a Muslim nation.

In many developing and transitional economies, work ethic is significantly associated

with an individual’s religious faith as this determines the extent to which he/she feels

obligated to society (Garg, 2017; Gupta et al., 2014). While legal and market systems may

not be robust enough to protect employees’ wellbeing in such contexts, religious conviction

and ancient social customs are very likely to play a crucial role in influencing employees’

perception of wellbeing (Abdelzaher et al., 2017). We will explore the synergy of Muslim

5
 religious belief and organisational embeddedness on the wellbeing-turnover relations in this

study.

Life satisfaction and turnover intention

The term “life satisfaction”, that embodies a person’s overall happiness and positive attitude

towards his/her life, is derived from the concept of “happiness” (Crooker and Near, 1998),

despite other terms bearing similar meanings such as life adjustment, quality of life, and joy.
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Life satisfaction can be defined as a cognitive and judgmental process in which individuals

ascertain their level of satisfaction by comparing their circumstances to their expectations

based on self set standards (Diener et al., 1985).

Individuals with higher life satisfaction are believed to be more comfortable with taking

risks, be more creative and more open-minded, thus showing positive behavioural outcomes

in the workplace (Erdogan et al., 2012; Wright and Huang, 2012). People from diverse

cultures may experience different levels of wellbeing in the same organisation (Blau et al.,

2013; Kwon, 2008). For instance, for European people religious faith may largely influence

their leisure activities (e.g., holiday celebration and Sunday mass) but not working attitudes

(Halman and Draulans, 2006), while Muslim societies define faith as a guiding principle for

everything. According to Achour et al. (2015), Muslims see work as a part of life and see all

kinds of wellbeing challenges as a whole, They view the burdens of work overload, overtime,

spouses’ complaint, family financial problems, and the like, as a synthesised test from God,

because they believe that their performance will provide the desired satisfaction in the light of

God’s will. Trust in God means the sharing of all kinds of problems with the Divine, creating

positive feelings and acceptance of the adversities in life and at work (Achour et al., 2015).

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 Quranic prayers at mosques help people solve problems, shield against depression, ease

mental and physical burdens, and most importantly give meaning to both personal and

professional lives.

Religious practices can be seen as a hinge facilitating people to produce important,

precious spiritual resources that coalesce their life and work. According to the conservation

of resource (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, 2001), the workers with more resources often tend
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to avoid resource loss or the threat of loss, and are even eager to seek further resources

(Jawahar et al., 2012). Following this logic in Muslim societies, life satisfaction as a

reflection of people’s piety to God influences all aspects of their jobs and reinforce or reduce

employees’ willingness to stay with their organisations. As such, it is plausible to assume

that life satisfaction should significantly relate to people’s work-related attitudes within our

research context. We hypothesize that:

H1. Life satisfaction will be negatively related to turnover intention in a Muslim cultural

context.

Work engagement and turnover intention

As noted above, work engagement as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind

characterised by vigour, dedication, and absorption”(Bakker and Demerouti, 2008) has drawn

a lot of attention in the literature. Vigour refers to a high level of spirit and willingness

invested during employment; dedication refers to high participation, enthusiasm, and sense of

gratification at work; and absorption refers to being fully concentrated and engrossed in

one’s work so that time passes quickly (Khoreva et al., 2016; Bakker et al., 2008).

Consequently, work engagement is closely linked to a person’s positive feelings, behaviours

7
 and intentions (Saks, 2006).

Working, from an Islamic perspective, is a compulsory activity as per the view of the

needs of human beings and desideratum to justify balance in an individual’s life (Ali, 1988).

Given religious adherence (El-Sayyad, 1993) Islam obliges workers to endeavour to do their

work in a dedicated way to the best of their abilities with the conviction of not-working as an

obstruction to devotion to God (Syed and Ali, 2010). The Holy Prophet Muhammad said
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that: “The worker, if employed, and take what is right and gives what is right, is like a

mujahid (struggle in the cause of God) till return home” (Al-Tabarani, 1983:134). The

Prophet also said: “When any man does any work, God wishes him to give it perfection and

grace”. Taken together, we argue that Islam faith, as a predominant religious force, helps

acquire spiritual resources that could evoke a profound inner motivation process driving

people to be more engaged at work, despite the fact that these teachings may be manifested in

the forms of religious rituals or congregations (Bickerton et al., 2014).

The Muslim culture exhorts workers to perform all of their legitimate duties with

dedication towards their organisations, and may amplify the impact of work engagement on

behavioural outcomes to a certain extent. Referring to the COR theory, the more valuable

resources engaged employees accumulate at the workplace, the more reluctant they may feel

to quit their organisations due to the fear of losing the resources in their possession

(Halbesleben et al., 2014). While work engagement is believed to diminish turnover

intention (Khoreva and van Zalk, 2016), we postulate:

H2. Work engagement will be negatively related to turnover intention in a Muslim

cultural context.

8
 Moderating role of Muslim religious belief

According to Holland et al. (1998), religious belief is defined as “the system of beliefs an

individual holds regarding the importance of religious faith in his or her life”. For instance, a

Muslim believer must obey with procedures and principles laid out by Islam. Allah says in

the Quran “in deed, Allah conferred a great favour on the believers when He sent among

them a messenger (Muhammad S.A.W) from themselves” (refer to Qur’an, 3:164) (Sav et al.,
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2014). Previous research documents that religious belief, as a typical cultural factor, can be a

powerful control over or even shape individual attitudes and behaviours (Lynn et al., 2011;

Abu-Raiya, and Pargament, 2011). In many cases, religious belief bestows psychological

support and mental poise upon employees in the workplace (Kaliampos and Roussi, 2017;

Kashif ef al. 2017; Weiß and Süß, 2017; Joshanloo and Weijers, 2016), thus incurring more

favourable outcomes, such as greater well-being (Hossain and Rizvi, 2016), better

performance (Osman‐Gani et al., 2013), better career development (Duffy, 2006), less job-

stress (Cummings and Pargament, 2012) and lower turnover intention (Beehner and

Blackwell, 2016).

Within our research context (i.e. Islamic societies), consistent with the aforementioned

contentions, employee turnover intention and relevant HRM practices have been seen to be

significantly affected by Muslim religious tradition (e.g., Abu Bakar et al., 2016; Branine and

Pollard, 2010). More specifically, Muslim employees regard the job as a sacred obligation to

please Allah and fulfill his will (Abu Bakar et al., 2016); it is generally not easy for them to

quit a job without God’s instruction because of their strong faith that Allah will not renege on

His side of the exchange with human beings, and will give pious Muslims the return in this

life or the better rewards in the Hereafter— Allah loves those who do good (refer to Qur’an,

9
 3:148).

Built upon the COR theoretical framework, the spiritual resources derived from religious

belief should be seen as a distinctive category of personal resources (Halbesleben et al., 2014;

Bickerton et al., 2014). Such resources appear to be especially instrumental for employees in

coping with a variety of stress-strain relationships at work. It is because religious faith, just

like all other critical cultural factors, could alter people’s emotions, perceptions and values.
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For example, it can transform religious people’s cognizance of job stressors from a threat

against performance to a holy task for personal spiritual growth (Kaliampos and Roussi,

2017; Kashif et al. 2017). Hence, from the COR viewpoint, we argue that religious belief

that helps accumulate certain psychological resources may act as a moderator alleviating or

strengthening the attitude-behaviour links among employees, which echoes the widely-

applied culture-as-moderator framework (Chin et al., 2016a, 2016b; Bambaca and Kulik,

2013; Branine and Pollard, 2010; Ramesh and Gelfand, 2010).

Taken together the arguments above, we hypothesise:

H3. Muslim religious belief will moderate the negative relationship between life

satisfaction and turnover intention, such that this negative relationship will be

stronger when employees are more embedded.

H4. Muslim religious belief will moderate the negative relationship between work

engagement and turnover intention, such that this negative relationship will be

stronger when employees are more embedded.

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 Moderating effect of organisational embeddedness

In 2001, Mitchell et al. introduced the concept of job embeddedness consisting of three forces

(i.e., fit, links, and sacrifice) elucidating as to why people stay with their organisations.

Specifically, fit refers to the degree of an individuals’ compatibility with their organisations

in terms of their skills, abilities, interest, and values. Links encompass the ties that individuals

have with their colleagues and work activities. Finally, sacrifice is defined as the totality of
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losses which an individual would incur by leaving the organization (Ng and Feldman, 2011,

2007). Job embeddedness, therefore, can provide a more holistic picture of how people’s

being integrated into a job-related social web (Mitchell et al., 2001; Peltokorpi et al., 2015).

While it captures the intrinsic complexity of an employees’ perceived comfort and

satisfaction with their working conditions, a large body of research has adopted this construct

to predict employee retention and withdrawal behaviours (Allen et al., 2016; Charlier et al.,

2016; Bambacas and Kulik, 2013).

Some researchers argue that the definition above has taken too many directions and

conceptually characterises two domains, i.e., on-the-job/organisation-related embeddedness

and off- the-job/community-related embeddedness (Allen et al., 2016; Dawley ad Andrews,

2012). Studies have examined the respective effects of organisational and community

embeddedness on outcome variables (Charlier et al., 2016; Bambacas and Kulik, 2013).

Evidence indicates that off-the-job embeddedness seems more suitable in exploring the

impact of a job that moves between geographically distant areas, but offers little insight into a

job that moves within a country or an isomorphic cultural community (Peltokorpi et al.,

2015). Accordingly, this study will focus on on-the-job/organisational embeddedness.

11
 As mentioned, a deeper level of organisational embeddedness could emotionally and

functionally bind an individual to his/her job and organisation more tightly. Referring to the

COR perspective, the higher the number of the links between the person and organisation, the

more the competitive resources an employee could access and accumulate within an

organisation or through corporate networks. We argue that organisational embeddedness is

likely to strengthen the relationships between wellbeing and turnover intention.

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Therefore, we postulate:

H5. Organisational embeddedness will moderate the negative relationship between life

satisfaction and turnover intention, such that this negative relationship will be

stronger when employees are more embedded.

H6. Organisational embeddedness will moderate the negative relationship between

work engagement and turnover intention, such that this negative relationship will be

stronger when employees are more embedded.

Joint moderating effect of Muslim religious belief and organisational

embeddedness

Taking together the foregoing arguments, we further contend that it may be appropriate

and meaningful to investigate the joint moderating mechanism of Muslim religious belief and

organisational embeddedness on wellbeing-turnover relations. The two assumptions above

implicitly indicate that under a condition where the levels of Muslim religious belief and

organisational embeddedness are both high, employee wellbeing may affect turnover

intention. More specifically, we posit that employee turnover intention is the outcome of a

three-way interaction involving employee’s wellbeing (life satisfaction and work

12
 engagement), Muslim religious belief, and organisational embeddedness. Our proposed

research model is shown in Figure 1.

H7. Life satisfaction, Muslim religious belief, and organisational embeddedness interact

to affect employee turnover intention in such a way that when Muslim religious

belief and organisational embeddedness are both high, life satisfaction has the

strongest negative relationship with the employee turnover intention in a Muslim

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context.

H8. Work engagement, Muslim religious belief, and organisational embeddedness

interact to affect employee turnover intention in such a way that when Muslim

religious belief and organisational embeddedness are both high, work engagement

has the strongest negative relationship with the employee turnover intention in a

Muslim context.

--------------------------------
Insert Figure 1 about here
--------------------------------

Methods

Research context

The media business can to a certain extent, reflect a society’s cultural and political ideology

(Dickinson and Memon, 2012). Since the liberalisation and privatisation of the media

industry in 2002, the media sector has continued to flourish, and providing increasing

13
 employment opportunities in Pakistan (Joseph, 2016; Hassan, 2014), with the number of

licensed satellite TV channels growing from just 3 in 2000 to 93 in 2016, as per the statistical

data from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.

Pakistan has the most vibrant media landscape among the Islamic countries, despite the

existence of some political pressure and censorship (Joseph, 2016; Dickinson and Memon,

2012). However, at least 71 media workers were reported killed between 2001 and 2015,
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Pakistan is now ranked as the fifth most dangerous country for journalists and media

personnel2. Worse yet, several media tycoons in this country have carried out mass sackings

without adequate compensations since 2012, due to the economic downturn3. High turnover

rates and the wellbeing of retrenched staff have incurred serious concerns. As a result,

Pakistan’s media sector provides an intriguing background for our study.

Participants and procedures

To determine criteria for the data collection, we referred to the Gallup Pakistan TV’s rating

analysis and initially selected the top fourteen media channels. We contacted top

management and HR professionals of all selected corporations to discuss our study and

request support. As a result, 7 of 14 firms showed willingness to participate in our surveys;

the HR directors of all participating organisations were supportive in terms of encouraging

participation and distributing questionnaires. The data was collected over a period of six

months. Our surveys measured self-report levels related to life satisfaction, work

2
https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/9553-71-journalists-killed-in-pakistan-since-2001-report

3
http://www.journalismpakistan.com/news-detail.php?newsid=3319

14
 engagement, Muslim religious belief, organisational embeddedness and turnover intention.

For insuring that all the respondents were Muslims, we asked the participants to report their

religious belief and relevant demographic information. Participation was discretionary and

the responses were treated with confidentially.

A total of 424 responses were retrieved by the cut-off date for data collection. Six

responses were eliminated due to participants being non-Muslims, yielding a response rate of
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60 percent. Out of the 418 respondents, 220 participants (52.6 percent) were from the

Technical Department, and the remaining 198 (47.4 percent) were from the News

Department. The sample was comprised of 55.3 percent males and 44.7 percent females,

with the average age of 30.2 years (between 18 to 76 years old) and an average organisational

tenure of 5 years. Most of the respondents (41.4 percent) had a master’s degree, 34.0 percent

held a bachelor’s degree, 15.3 percent high school degree, 8.6 percent held MPhil degree and

less than 1 percent had a doctorate degree.

Measures

To measure the focal constructs we used previously validated items. A five-point Likert-type

scale was used for all perception items, with the exception of demographic items.

Life satisfaction. The five-item scale developed by Diener et al. (1985) was used to

evaluate life satisfaction. Sample items include “So far I have gotten the important things I

want in life,” and “In most ways my life is close to my ideal.” Cronbach’s alpha coefficient

for this scale was 0.85.

Work engagement. Work engagement was measured with the nine-item based on the

shortened version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli et al., 2006). This scale

15
 enabled us to clearly assess all three components of work engagement: vigour, dedication,

and absorption. Sample items included “At my work, I feel bursting with energy (vigour),”

“My job inspires me (dedication),” and “I get carried away when I am working (absorption).”

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed that the fit statistics for a single second-order

factor model of UWES:χ2 (27) = 101.87; the composite fit index (CFI) was 0.96; the Tucker-

Lewis Index (TLI) was = 0.95; the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was =

0.06. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the overall scale including three dimensions was 0.90.
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Muslim religious belief. Muslim religious belief was measured by a five-item scale

reflecting the level of belief in Allah; the items were chosen based on previous studies (Wilde

and Joseph, 1997); Skaggs and Youndt, 2004). Sample items included “I believe that Allah

helps people” and “Religion should govern all my actions.” Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for

this scale was 0.94.

Organisational embeddedness. Seven items developed by Crossley et al. (2007) were

used to assess the level of organisational embeddedness. Example items included “I feel

attached to this organisation,” and “I am tightly connected to this organisation.” Cronbach’s

alpha coefficient for this scale was 0.93.

Turnover intentions. Five items developed by Crossley et al. (2002) were used to assess

the level of turnover intention. Sample items are “I will quit this organisation as soon as

possible,” and “I may leave this organisation before too long.” Cronbach’s alpha coefficient

for this scale was 0.88.

Control variables. We controlled for gender, marital status, education and

organisational, tenure as these variables may influence turnover intention (Ding and Lin,

2006, Mobley et al., 1979). Gender and marital status both were coded as binary variables:

Gender (0= ‘female,' 1= ‘male’) and marital status (0= ‘single’ or ‘divorced,' 1= ‘married’).

16
 Measurement models

Before testing the relationships among constructs, CFA was undertaken using AMOS 20.0. We

compared our hypothetic five-factor model with alternative models (χ2 = 762.85; df =424;

χ2/df=1.79, p < 0.001; CFI= 0.96; RMSEA= 0.04), including a four-factor model where the

variables life satisfaction and work engagement were collapsed (χ2 = 1406.85; df =428;

χ2/df=3.33, p < 0.001; CFI= 0.89; RMSEA= 0.08), a three-factor model where the variables
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life satisfaction, work engagement, and turnover intention were collapsed (χ2 = 2191.50; df

=431; χ2/df=5.09, p < 0.001; CFI= 0.81; RMSEA= 0.10), a three-factor model where the

variables Muslim religious belief, organisational embeddedness, and turnover intention were

collapsed (χ2 = 3635.97.50; df =431; χ2/df=8.44, p < 0.001; CFI= 0.66; RMSEA= 0.14) , a

two-factor model where all the predictor’s variables were collapsed (χ2 = 4479.09; df =433;

χ2/df=10.34, p < 0.001; CFI= 0.58; RMSEA= 0.15), and a single latent variable model (χ2 =

5391.24; df =434; χ2/df=12.24, p < 0.001; CFI= 0.48; RMSEA= 0.17). CFA results revealed

that our hypothesized five-factor best fit to data relative to all alternative models.

Reliability, validity and common method variance

As reported above, Cronbach’s α of all measures were higher than 0.8, indicating a good

reliability. Then the convergent and discriminant validities were assessed to examine our

measurement model. The high values of AVE (>0.5) and CR (>0.7) provided support that all

items were successfully converged on and accounted for their fundamental constructs,

indicating a good convergent validity.

Discriminant validity measures whether two constructs are statistically different from

each other. Our results indicated that both the values of average shared variance (ASV) and

the values of maximum shared variance (MSV) were smaller than the AVE values.

17
 Moreover, Table II presents for each construct that the correlation is smaller than the square

roots of AVE. According to Hair et al. (2010), it can be concluded that our instruments had a

proper convergent and discriminant validity.

Following the recommendations by Podsakoff et al. (2012), we conducted a series of

tests to exclude the possibility of common method variance (CMV). First, in light of

Harman’s single factor method (Podsakoff and Organ, 1986), we applied a CFA where all

variables were allowed to load onto one single factor. The model exhibited very poor fit (χ2 =
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5391.24; df =434; p < 0.001; CFI= 0.48; RMSEA= 0.17), implying that CMV may not be a

serious methodological problem. Secondly, we employed the CFA marker technique

(Williams et al., 2010) to ensure that the self-reported measures didn’t inflate the true

relationships between the variables. This approach required the inclusion of a variable that is

theoretically unrelated to the substantive variables in the study. In terms of our current study,

the human capital variable (Skaggs and Youndt, 2004; α = 0.48, the items were follows:

"Hires employees with high levels of prior experience" and "Hire employees with high levels

of education") were used as a theoretically unrelated marker variable.

Table I displays the results of the marker variable analysis. The fit statistics for the

method-C model, method-U model and method-R model were not better than those for the

baseline model. Specifically, the Chi-square difference tests comparing the baseline model

with method-C, method-U and method-R models were not significant (see Table I); the

results didn’t provide any evidence of common method bias. We also found that human

capital is not significantly related to other variables in our proposed model (refer to Table II).

The tests above indicated that the effect of CMV is relatively low in our research.

--------------------------------
Insert Table I about here

18
 --------------------------------

Results

Table II presents descriptive statistics and correlations of all variables in our study.

--------------------------------
Insert Table II about here
--------------------------------
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To test our hypotheses, we conducted moderated hierarchical regression analyses. First,

all interaction variables were mean-centered to avoid multicollinearity and enhance the

interpretability of the interacting effects (Cohen et al., 2003). Then, as shown in Table III,

we entered the control variables (Model 1), main effects (Model 2), the two-way interaction

terms (Model 3), and three-way interaction terms (Model 4) sequentially into the regression.

Finally, consistent with the approach used by Dawson and Richter (2006) we examined the

three-way interaction by comparing slopes, as illustrated in Table IV.

--------------------------------
Insert Table III about here
--------------------------------
In terms of Hypotheses 1 and 2, we expected that life satisfaction and work engagement

would negatively relate to turnover intention in a Muslim cultural context. Model 2 indicates

that both H1 (β = −0.31, p < 0.01) and H2 (β = −0.13, p < 0.05) were accepted.

As shown in Model 3, the results indicate that both Muslim religious belief and

organisational embeddedness had moderating effects on the life satisfaction-turnover and

work engagement-turnover relationships. Hence, H3 (β = −0.10, p < 0.05), H4 (β = −0.11, p

< 0.05), H5 (β = −0.10, p < 0.05) and H6 (β = −0.21, p <0 .001) are all accepted.

19
 According to Model 4, both life satisfaction and work engagement were moderated by

the joint effect of organisational embeddedness (β = −0.17, p < 0.001) and Muslim religious

belief (β = −0.16, p < 0.05). The three-way interactions were plotted in Figure 2 (life

satisfaction×organisational embeddedness× Muslim religious belief) and Figure 3 (work

engagement×organisational embeddedness×Muslim religious belief).

H7 predicted that the relationship between life satisfaction and turnover intention was
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moderated by Muslim religious belief and organisational embeddedness in such a way that

life satisfaction had the stronger negative relationship with turnover intention when Muslim

religious behaviour and organisational embeddedness were both high. As per Dawson and

Richter (2006), we carried out the significance tests of simple slopes and analysed simple

slope differences. As shown in Table IV, results suggested that life satisfaction had the

strongest negative impact on turnover intention when both Muslim religious belief and

organisational embeddedness were high (Slope a1; t = −2.31, p < 0.05), thus Hypothesis 7

was accepted.

--------------------------------
Insert Table IV about here
--------------------------------
Referring to Figure 2, the life satisfaction-turnover intention relationship became

statistically insignificant when organisational embeddedness was low, and/or Muslim

religious belief was low (see Slope a2, a3, and a4, p>0.1 see Table IV). Moreover, the

analysis of simple slope difference indicated that the interaction between life satisfaction and

20
 organisational embeddedness was significant when Muslim religious belief was high (Slope

a1 and a2, t = −1.20, p < 0.05, see Table IV). These findings further supported Hypothesis 7.

--------------------------------
Insert Figure 2 about here
--------------------------------
H8 predicted that the relationship between work engagement on and turnover intention

was moderated by Muslim religious belief and organisational embeddedness in such a way
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that work engagement had the stronger negative relationship with turnover intention when

Muslim religious behaviour and organisational embeddedness were both high.

In agreement with Dawson and Richter (2006) we found that work engagement had the

biggest influence on turnover intention when Muslim religious belief and organisational

embeddedness were both high (Slope b1; t = −2.33, p < 0.05), but also had significant

negative effect on turnover intention when Muslim religious belief was low yet

embeddedness was high (Slope b3; t = −1.13, p < 0.05, see Table IV). Hence, Hypothesis 8

was accepted.

Figure 3 shows the associations between work engagement and turnover intention were

statistically insignificant under two conditions- low embeddedness plus high religious belief

embeddedness or high embeddedness plus low religious belief (Slop b2 and b4, p > 0.1, see

Table IV). In addition, the simple slope difference highlighted that the interaction between

work engagement and organisational embeddedness was significant when Muslim religious

belief was high (Slope b1 and b2; t = −1.17, p < 0.05, see Table IV) while the interaction of

engagement and Muslim religious belief was significant when embeddedness was high

(Slope b1 and b3; t = −1.60, p < 0.05). There findings provided further support to Hypothesis

8.

21
 --------------------------------
Insert Figure 3 about here
--------------------------------

Discussion

The results provide full support to all eight hypotheses. Our contributions to the existing

body of knowledge is summarised as follows:

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First and foremost, although the critical roles of cultural factors in affecting employee

turnover have been acknowledged in the literature (Chin , 2015; Bambacas and Kulik, 2013),

this research following the culture-as-moderator framework is among the first to elucidate the

importance of Muslim religion on employee wellbeing-turnover relations in developing

economies. Our findings highlight the significance of the motivational function of a critical

spiritual resource, ie Muslim belief in a relatively poor yet populous region. This work

contributes to the HRM literature by addressing the intrinsic complexity of turnover intention

from the COR perspective in such context. While work engagement is significantly related to

people’s career plan (Bickerton et al., 2014; Duffy, 2006), we add to the career research by

suggesting that religiosity may be a precondition for workers to accumulate and reserve

precious resources for further career development in Muslim societies. In view of the

foregoing, we also examined the applicability of modern Western concepts in a traditional

Muslim country, where relevant labour issues have drawn limited attention to date.

Secondly, we contribute to the COR theory by outlining a series of potential and

dynamic resource generation trajectories in a Muslim context. Our findings suggest that the

extent to which employees are able to access valuable resources from an organisation could

22
 largely affect their willingness to stay or resign. The interactions clearly illustrate that

employee turnover intention will be significantly reduced when they perceive high levels of

organisational embeddedness and work engagement. Moreover, the three-way interactional

approach brings profound insights into the effective and efficient ways to mitigate turnover

intention, indicating that when one condition is present, the impact of other conditions is

amplified. In this sense, our paper presents fresh evidence bolstering the synergistic effects

of on-the-job factors (i.e., organisational embeddedness and work engagement) and off-the-
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job factors (i.e., life satisfaction and Muslim religious belief) in curbing unnecessary waste of

HR resources, as high turnover rates may incur rising costs in the recruiting, selecting, and

training new employees in organisations.

Thirdly, where prior studies focus mainly on the associations of work-related wellbeing

with turnover intention (Peltokorpi et al., 2015; Jiang et al., 2012), we include both work- and

non-work/life related wellbeing in the same model, as well as highlighting the joint

moderating effect of Muslim religious belief and organisational embeddedness on wellbeing-

turnover relations.

Practical implications

As far as practical implications, our study brings profound insights into the managing of

labour issues in the Muslim World where employee wellbeing-turnover relations are

interpreted in a unique Islamic way. For example, it is suggested that organisations should

not mandatorily constrain Muslim employees from performing their religious practices at the

workplace. Organisations are encouraged to provide a longer lunch break and prayer room for

them to do their noon prayer in congregation. HR managers from Western countries might

view the religious behaviours as counterproductive. Nevertheless, noon prayer can to a large

23
 extent energize and motivate Muslim employees, as such indirect organisational support is of

great importance to them (Achour et al., 2015; BeYousaf, 1997). Hence, it is particularly

instrumental for organisations to provide cross-cultural training, so as to avoid cultural

discrimination and enhance mutual understanding of workers from diversified cultures.

Managers should reflect on the values they create and foster in their organisational

culture. Kutcher et al. (2010) suggest that employees are appreciative when their
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organisations embody religious values, even if they were not themselves religious. For

example, there are different values across different religious affiliations: empathy, servant

orientation, and community (Miller-Perrin and Mancuso, 2014). These values are

successfully become part of organizations. To improve the quality of organizational

environment for employees, both managers and policy makers should recognize that

employees bring to work personal values inherent in their cultural backgrounds and religious

beliefs. Religious beliefs, similar to gender, age, and sex are an important aspect of

workplace diversity.

Apart from emphasising the vital role of religious faith, this research also suggests that

both working and non-working domains, once linked with organisational embeddedness, may

largely reduce turnover intention in a populous developing country like Pakistan. As per our

findings, the associations of work engagement and life satisfaction with turnover intention

can be significantly improved when individuals feel highly embedded in their organisations.

In terms of modern HRM practices, this requires executives to learn more about how to

increase employee satisfaction towards both life and work across borders, whereby they can

create a corporate system that fosters deeper organisational embeddedness to alleviate

turnover rates.

24
 Overall, along with ever-intensifying globalisation, this current study offers abundant

managerial implications for HR professionals, not only for those working in Muslim

countries but also for those in non-Muslim nations with large populations or diverse

workforces, e.g., the nations that heavily rely on Muslim workforce to fill their shortage of

skilled blue-collar workers, such as Australia, Canada, and Europe. Moreover, while

Gawader deep sea port opens a new chapter for the one belt one road initiative between

Pakistan and China, it is expected that more foreign investment will flow into Pakistan and
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nearby regions4. This research can facilitate multi-national enterprises to gain a better

understanding of workforce issues in such a context.

Similar to other research, the present study is also subjective to limitations. Our

results may be very context-specific as we only investigated firms in the media sector of

Pakistan. Future research is needed to examine whether our findings could be applied to other

industrial settings ingrained with Muslim culture. Moreover, although we have employed a

series of tests to exclude the interference of CMV, future research should aim avoid relevant

glitches by collecting data from more diverse sources (Hur et al., 2016).

Conclusion

‘Once people are happy, they incline towards more open-minded and innovative in their

ideas; people who are unhappy, worried or dissatisfied incline towards ‘narrow-mindedness’

and rigid thinking’ (Donovan et al., 2002). Employee wellbeing, therefore, remains a hot

topic in management studies. However, the meaning of work has been continuously

changing nowadays, as employees of younger generations may be keen to seek a career that

4
Ziad, Haider. “Baluchis, Beijing, and Pakistan’s Gwadar Port.” GeorgeTown Journal of International Affairs, 2005: 95-103

25
 enriches their life rather than just a job that is their basic livelihood (Akkermans and Tim,

2017; Chin et al., 2016). Facing harsh employment challenges and a more complex labour

market in a global landscape, it is vital to identify the critical contextual factors that are

meaningful to the workforce of a specific region. Our research, as an exciting initial step,

responds to this strategic quest by providing feasible suggestions for firms to shape Muslims’

working behaviour and devise their career development plans.

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26
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 Organizational
embeddedness

Muslim religious
belief
Life
satisfaction

Turnover
intention
Work
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engagement

Figure 1. Research Model

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 Table I. Model comparisons for CFA models with marker variable.

Model χ2 (df) CFI TLI RMSEA △χ2 Model comparison

CFA with marker variable 868.16 (490) 0.96 0.95 0.04
Baseline model 1013.90 (489) 0.95 0.94 0.05
Method-C 1013.18 (488) 0.95 0.94 0.05 .72 (1) vs. baseline
Method-U 985.01 (458) 0.94 0.94 0.05 28.17 (32) vs. Method-C
Method-R 997.94 (468) 0.94 0.94 0.05 12.93 (21) vs. Method-U
Notes: Baseline model: Correlations between the marker variable and all other variables are forced to zero.
Method-C: From the baseline model, factor loadings from the marker variable to each substantive indicator are
added and constrained to be equal (noncongeneric perspective).
Method-U: From the baseline model, factor loadings from the marker variable to each substantive indicator
added and freely estimated (congeneric perspective).
Method-R: From the baseline model, independent-dependent variable correlation was constrained to its value
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from the baseline model.

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 Table II. Descriptive statistics and bivaraite correlations of all study variables

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1.Turnover intention 1
2.Organizational embeddedness −0.26** 1
3.Muslim religious belief −0.32** 0.42** 1
4.Work engagement −0.35** 0.50** 0.53** 1
5.Life satisfaction −0.42** 0.14** 0.32** 0.38** 1
6.Gender −0.02 −0.07 −0.05 −0.10* −0.03 1
7.Marital status −0.14** −0.03 0.06 0.01 0.14** −0.07 1
8.Education −0.03 −0.02 −0.02 −0.15** 0.08 0.09 0.15** 1
9.Organizational tenure −0.11* 0.01 −0.02 0.03 0.04 −0.05 0.40** 0.04 1
10.Human Capital (MV) −0.06 0.03 0.09 0.04 0.07 0.03 0.01 −.08 0.03 1
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Mean 2.65 3.85 3.98 3.53 3.69 0.55 0.72 2.46 2.00 3.97
Standard deviation 0.99 0.96 0.98 1.11 1.19 0.50 0.45 0.91 1.17 0.98
Notes: N = 418. aFor gender, 1 = male. 0 = female; MV = marker variable. **p < .01; *p < .05.

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 Table III. Hierarchical regression results

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 (Two-way Model 4 (Three-

(Controls) (Predictors) interactions) way interactions)
Gender −0.03 −0.05 −0.03 −0.02
Marital status −0.12* −0.08 −0.09 −0.06
Education −0.01 −0.02 −0.02 −0.02
Tenure −0.06 −0.06 −0.05 −0.06
Life satisfaction (LS) −0.31** −0.26*** −0.21***
Work engagement (WE) −0.13* −0.25*** −0.25***
Muslim religious belief (MRB) −0.10* −0.18** −0.23**
Organizational embeddedness (OE) −0.12* −0.09* −0.07
LS×MRB −0.10* −0.12*
LS×OE −0.10* −0.17***
WE×MRB −0.11* −0.17**
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WE×OE −0.21*** −0.26***

MRB×OE −0.16**
LS×MRB×OE −0.17***
WE×MRB×OE −0.22***
R2 0.02 0.25 0.32 0.35
∆R2 0.23** 0.07** 0.03**

Notes: N = 418. Standardized coefficients are shown. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

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Figure 2. Effects of three-way interaction regarding life satisfaction
 Table IV. Slope difference

H7 H8
Pairs of slopes
Slope a T Slope b T
1 (High MRB, High OE ) −0.65 −2.31* −0.63 −2.33*
2 (High MRB, Low OE ) −0.03 −0.01 −0.08 −0.02
3 (Low MRB, High OE ) −0.07 −0.03 −0.31 −1.13*
4 (Low MRB, Low OE ) −0.09 −0.02 −0.05 −0.02
Slope difference
(1) and (2) −1.20* −1.17*
(1) and (3) −1.09 −1.60*
(1) and (4) −0.15 −0.13
(2) and (3) −0.01 −0.61
(2) and (4) −0.02 −0.02
(3) and (4) −0.01 −0.24
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Notes: * p < .05; ** p < .01

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Figure 3. Effects of three-way interaction regarding work engagement