Talent Programs and the Retention Paradox: A quantitative investigation of narcissism's influence on the retention of talent program members

Sammanfattning: Talent has become one of the most important resources for organizations around the globe. Consequently, talent programs, such as trainee and graduate programs, have emerged to attract and retain top talent within organizations. Previous research concludes that talents exhibit higher job satisfaction than other employees, but an empirical problem remains in retaining these individuals. This points to an apparent retention paradox of talent programs, where talents are leaving organizations despite high levels of job satisfaction. A review of past research unveils a limited knowledge of talent program members and the retention of these individuals. The focus on states, and exclusion of individual personality traits has resulted in a limited insight into the characteristics of talent program members and factors contributing to the observed paradox. Narcissism has previously been related to higher turnover intentions, and therefore offers unique explanatory potential for the retention paradox. Accordingly, the thesis aims to investigate to what extent narcissism can explain the retention paradox observed for talent programs. With a quantitative, comparative approach, 228 talents and non-talents in 11 different organizations are surveyed. The primary findings lie in the multifaceted construct of narcissism, proving that entitlement has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intentions for talents, while no such result could be found for non-talents. The entitlement facet of narcissism thereby serves as a first step in better understanding the paradox of the coexistence of high job satisfaction and low retention rates for talent program members. The finding that traits may behave differently given the talent program context contributes both to the research gap by expanding the focus on the individual within the scarce field of talent programs, and offers managerial implications for practitioners aiming to yield benefit from investments made in retaining talent.