Ambitious Targets and Moderate Competition: How Companies Retain R&D Talent for Longer
Retaining qualified employees is one of the key challenges that companies face. Researchers from Ulm University (Prof. Mischa Seiter), WU Vienna (Prof. Isabella Grabner), the University of Krems (Prof. Markus Wabnegg) and ZU Friedrichshafen (Dr Henning Wirth) have investigated how companies can better retain their creative employees.
What was investigated?
The study is based on data from 249 employees of a German high-tech manufacturing company. The study investigated how performance-related management mechanisms - in particular target agreements and promotion competition - influence the intention of creative specialists in the R&D sector to change jobs.
What was investigated?
Result 1
R&D employees show a high willingness to leave the company.
Result 2
R&D employees are less likely to change jobs if they are confronted with challenging personal goals.
Result 3
R&D employees show a higher intention to change jobs when they are exposed to intense competition for promotions.
Literature:
Grabner, I., Seiter, M., Wabnegg, M., & Wirth, H. (2024). The role of target difficulty and career tournaments in retaining creative R&D employees. Contemporary Accounting Research, 41(2), 1058-1088. https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12931
More informations:
Prof Dr Mischa Seiter, Institute of Business Analytics, Ulm University,
Mail: mischa.seiter@uni-ulm.de