An Integral Model for Forecasting of Voluntary Personnel Turnover in the Mexican Maquiladora Industry
2002; University of South Florida St. Petersburg; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1042-6337
AutoresMarco Polo Tello, Walter E. Greene, Monica D. Garcia,
Tópico(s)Regional Development and Innovation
ResumoABSTRACT To determine the main causes for voluntary personnel turnover in the maquiladora industry, a 60-items survey was conducted at Tijuana, Mexico with a sample of 761 on-site workers. Thirty-eight statistically significant voluntary personnel turnover variables were detected. Most of them were of economic, organizational, labor, and social nature. The 17 most significant variables evolved in the generation of a linear probability model. The integral model estimates the probability of a worker to voluntarily quit, and it could be used as a guide for selecting of personnel. INTRODUCTION The Mexican maquiladora industry is having increasing impact on commercial and economic development in the United States-Mexico border region (Santibaflez, 2001). Approximately 4,000 Mexican assembly plants or maquiladoras are established nationwide employing more than 1,300,000 workers (Sunoo, 2000; Noyola, 2001). The biggest group of plants is concentrated in Tijuana. According to Carson (1998), there are about 1,000 maquiladoras established in Tijuana, which employ approximately 200,000 workers. An important problem in the maquiladora industry on the Mexican border with the United States is the high rate of voluntary personnel turnover (Sunoo, 2000). Usually, this turnover was in the 6% to 15% range per month in Tijuana (Clement, 1988) while the rates were in the same range per year for the rest of Mexico. One important reason to study the voluntary turnover is the economic aspect. The phenomenon represents some inherent costs to the maquiladora. Previous studies have estimated personnel turnover costs. The costs were $300 dollars for supervision, $30 dollars for recruitment, and up to $400 dollars for turnover. Maquiladora entrepreneurs identify different causes of the phenomenon. As a result, there was a need for research of the Mexican laborforce. Tijuana was selected for this study because of the concentrated volume of maquiladoras and the high rates of voluntary turnover exhibited there. The objectives of the present paper are: 1. To determine the most important causes for voluntary personnel turnover in Tijuana's maquiladora industry. 2. To analyze the effects of those causes and some of the implications for the organizations involved. 3. To suggest some administrative solutions to effectively lessen the problem. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Voluntary personnel turnover has been studied from economic, psychological and managerial perspectives, at industry or economy sector levels. Nonetheless, only a few studies have analyzed the causes in order to develop an integral model to forecast the phenomenon at the individual level. Williams and Passe-Smith (1990) studied turnover and recruitment in the maquiladora industry using a sample of 186 female workers. Mueller and Price (1990) developed an integrated model incorporating variables from the economic, psychological, and sociological determinants of voluntary turnover for a sample of 135 nurses. More recently, Miller, Horn, & Gomez-Mejia (2001) found that profit-sharing and saving plans would result in a lower turnover in a sample of 115 maquiladoras. Therefore, one would expect that the reasons that the motivation for a person to abandon his employment might vary between the search for a working alternative and the follow-through of personal objectives. Accordingly, a conceptual schema could be developed to explain the personnel turnover problem. Williams and Passe-Smith (1990) identified three groups of factors contributing to the turnover on Mexican maquiladoras, namely sociocultural values, wage levels, and labor issues. Mueller and Price (1990) suggested that an integrated model of turnover should be a synthesis of explanatory variables not only from an economic perspective, but psychological and sociological perspectives. Furthermore, contrary to the standard economic theory, Kim (1999) found that voluntary turnover does not necessarily decline when a company pays higher wages than its competitors. …
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