The mediating role of job stress in predicting retail banking employees´ turnover intentions in Taiwan

The Taiwanese government is moving forward in earnest to reform the local financial system with a series of mergers&acquisitions (M&A) to enhance its competitiveness after Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). Threatened by job insecurity in a global market, retail banking employees suffer from high job stress that may negatively impact their performance. To learn about job stress in depth, this study investigates the relationships among workplace factors, job stress, and turnover intentions in the Taiwanese retail banking sector. Empirical data collected from 255 Taiwanese retail banking employees and the results of multiple regression analysis provide evidence that role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload indeed have positive impacts on job stress but job autonomy has a negative impact on job stress as expected. Employees with higher levels of job stress are more likely to entertain turnover intentions, whereas those more strongly perceiving the fairness of rewards are less likely to have turnover intentions. Managerial implications are discussed and suggestions for future research are given.