Millennials' intention to stay and word-of-mouth referrals

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effect of organizational identification in the relationship between person-organization fit and intention to stay as well as word-of-mouth referrals. The study also examines the role of perceived external prestige as a moderator of the relationship between organizational identification and intention to stay and word-of-mouth referrals. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 2,649 millennial employees working in various companies located within the Central Thailand Industrial Estates. The hypothesized relationships were tested and analyzed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, hierarchical regression and a bootstrapping procedure. Findings The results revealed that the direct relationships between person-organization fit and intention to stay as well as word-of-mouth referrals were found to be partially mediated by organizational identification. In addition, perceived external prestige was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between organizational identification and word-of-mouth referrals, but found no effect on employee retention. Originality/value This study extends existing knowledge by assessing the relationships among person-organization fit, organizational identification and perceived external prestige as well as their impacts on intention to stay and word-of-mouth referrals by millennial employees, which has not been extensively investigated in the literature.