Ethical Climate and Job Attitude in Fashion Retail Employees’ Turnover Intention, and Perceived Organizational Sustainability Performance: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Abstract:The relationship between the fashion retail industry's working environment and the high rate of employee turnover has been highlighted as one of the key concerns for negative organizational performance in both the short and long term. This relationship creates a need to investigate the ethical climate within fashion retail businesses, employees' attitudes toward their jobs, and employees' turnover intention, as these factors can influence organizations' performance including their likelihood of achieving the triple bottom lines of sustainability. Based on social exchange and human and social capital theories, this study investigated how employees' ethical climate and turnover intention are affected by both individual-and organizational-level factors, and their impact on the triple bottom lines of organizational sustainability performance. This study empirically tested a structural model based on the survey responses from 278 U.S. fashion retail employees. The findings show that an ethical climate can enhance employees' job attitude as well as all three dimensions of organizational sustainability performance-financial, social, and environmental. Creating an ethical climate in an organization can decrease employees' turnover intention, but also employees' attitudes towards their jobs lowers their turnover intention. The study's findings reveal that not only can employees' attitudes toward their jobs impact organizational sustainability performance, but creating an ethical working environment is another important way to improve organizational sustainability performance.

The moral responsibility of corporate sustainability as perceived by fashion retail employees: a USA‐China cross‐cultural comparison study

“…Although previous literature found smaller firms could have a greater influence on employees' levels of moral responsibility, our findings showed that US employees' expectations for corporate sustainability are higher than Chinese employees' expectations, regardless of firm size and marital status. This finding supports Lee and Ha-Brookshire's (2017) results which demonstrate that US employees' perceptions and behaviour toward corporate sustainability did not differ according to firm size. This might be because regardless of the organization's size, employees might expect corporations to implement sustainability as an imperative long-term goal, particularly in the fashion retail industry.…”

“…The more bureaucratic the system is, the more difficult and challenging it is to shift the organizational culture and influence employees' perceptions (Adams & Hardwick, ; Donaldson, ). However, a recent study by Lee and Ha‐Brookshire () found that employees' perceptions and behaviour towards corporate sustainability did not differ according to firm size; these inconsistent findings have been noticed by Treviño et al () who suggest further research on this topic. Particularly, given the characteristics of the fashion retail industry previously discussed, this gap is thought to be prevalent between the US and Chinese fashion retail industries.…”

“…Corporate sustainability refers to business strategies that satisfy the needs of both the enterprise and its stakeholders by supporting and enriching social and environmental welfare (Lee & Ha‐Brookshire, ). It emphasizes that organizations should take into account both the short‐term and long‐term aspects of the stakeholders' needs and should not compromise their ability to meet future needs while addressing current concerns (Dyllick & Hockerts, ).…”

Sustainability Issues in Textile and Apparel Supply Chains

“…Lee and Ha-Brookshire [24] examined several factors within fashion retail businesses, including the ethical climate, employees' attitudes toward their jobs, and employees' turnover intention, that affect organizational performance in triple bottom line terms. Data from 278 U.S. fashion retail employees were analyzed using structural equation modeling.…”

Perceived Financial Sustainability of Tourism Enterprises: Do Green Human Resource Management Practices Really Matter?

“…The reported Cronbachalpha for each dimension is: 0.84, 0.83, 0.87, and 0.87 respectively (Tang et al, 2017). PFS scale is developed using :(A) The 3-item measure developed by Lee & Brookshire (2017). It assumes a value between 1 and 5, where 1 indicates -strongly disagree‖ and 5 indicates -strongly agree‖, (the reported Cronbach alpha is 0.87).…”