Limiting the brain drain: Determinants of employee organizational attachment in Lithuania

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of job‐ and organization‐related variables in explaining the attachment of Lithuanian employees to their current employer.

A total of 190 employees of a plastic manufacturing company located in an urban area in Lithuania completed a questionnaire containing 84 items describing job and organizational attributes. These data were analyzed using multivariate regression.

In multivariate analysis, job‐ and organization‐related variables each explained approximately equal proportions of the variance in employee attachment. When all of the job and organization‐related variables were used simultaneously to predict employee organizational attachment, only intrinsic job characteristics, opportunities for promotion and training, and communication to/from employees made significant unique contributions to explanation of employee organizational attachment. The job and organizational variables together explained 56 percent of the variance in attachment. While the organization‐related variables did not make a larger contribution to explanation of the variance in organizational attachment than to job‐related variables, organization‐related variables seem to explain how job‐related variables influence attachment.

The paper provides practical insights to organizational managers in Lithuania about the relative importance of job‐ and organization‐related aspects of the work environment in predicting employee attachment to an organization. These insights may help reduce the current out‐migration trends of workers and help Lithuanian companies compete more effectively in the European Union (EU).

Only a few studies have examined the influence of different variables in determining the strength of employee‐employer relationships in transitioning countries of Eastern Europe such as Lithuania. The paper contributes value by empirically examining the applicability of prevailing models of the determinants of employee organizational attachment to the employment environment of Lithuania, a country transitioning from the Soviet era as a member of the EU.