commitment

Once somebody feels resentment enough to start looking for jobs, the door is already

open and they’re halfway out. You know? So the university has essentially forced us

into a situation where we cannot proactively retain people. You know, we have been

able to retain a couple of people by countering, but we’ve lost probably 80 % of the

cases where people have gone out and gotten offers from other places.

In this quote, taken from an administrator expressing frustration with a university

policy, three contexts emerge that contextualize this study. The first context is the policy

defined as a comparable offer of employment at another institution. Although some faculty

resign from their positions without outside offers, outside offers and counter-offers are a

major component of departure decisions, retention efforts, and academic reward systems.

Faculty departure, and the factors that predict it have been widely studied by researchers

using national survey databases (Barnes et al. 1998; Rosser and Townsend 2006; Smart

1990; Zhou and Volkwein 2004), studying multiple universities or state systems (Daly and

Dee 2006; Johnsrud and Rosser 2002; Matier 1990), and single institutions (Gardner 2012;

Ryan et al. 2009). Because it is difficult to track faculty who left a university and because

providing explanations for departure can be complex and even uncomfortable, most

departure research utilizes faculty ‘‘intent to leave’’ as the best predictor of actual

departure. Decades of research suggests that this is an acceptable practice as ‘‘intent to

leave’’ indicators are highly correlated with actual departure (Bluedorn 1982; Rosser

2004). However, there are several limitations to this strategy. Many more individuals will

whether the university has favorable retention policies and practices. This is an important

limitation because faculty behavior is strongly affected by organizational practices and

policies (Birnbaum 1991; Blackburn and Lawrence 1995; Fairweather 1996, 2005).

The purpose of this study is to understand the influence of a policy requiring outside

offers for faculty salary increases on institutional retention efforts and faculty organiza-

tional commitment. Though little research has examined the issue of outside offers and

policies governing them, research suggests organizational commitment influences intent to

leave and departure (Daly and Dee 2006; Johnsrud and Rosser 2002). Here organizational

commitment refers to ‘‘the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and

involvement in a particular organization’’ (Mowday et al. 1982, p. 226). Daly and Dee

motion and tenure, merit pay, and allocation of space and travel funds, influence organi-

zational commitment, which in turn influences faculty departure (Daly and Dee 2006;

Johnsrud and Rosser 2002; Rosser 2004; Smart 1990; Zhou and Volkwein 2004). This

study adds to the literature by considering the explicit role of a policy governing outside

offers on organizational commitment and retention (Daly and Dee 2006; O’Meara 2011).

Policies governing outside offers are likely to impact faculty differently based on their

career stage. In this study, I focused on early career faculty. The rationale for studying

assistant professors and early associates (within 3 years of tenure) with regard to outside

offers was threefold. First, doctoral and research universities make significant investments

in faculty recruitment, and in faculty start-up packages with regard to funding for research

(Ponjuan et al. 2011; Trower 2012). It is true faculty departure overall causes disruption for

helpful for department chairs and deans trying to retain early career faculty. Second,

outside offers are often discussed in career advice columns and between mentors and

mentees as one of only a few ways faculty can raise their salaries (e.g. initial negotiation,

promotion, outside offers, administration). For example, Kreuter (2012) observed: ‘‘many

faculty members, especially junior faculty members, will at some point seek out a com-

peting job offer, in hopes of either leveraging a raise from their current employer or

landing a more lucrative new position. The game is simple: having a higher offer from

another institution is a way to say to your university, essentially, ‘The discipline values

me—do you?’’’ (p. 1). There is no data source to definitively know how many mentors or

department chairs encourage junior faculty to obtain outside offers as they are going up for

institutional goals. From this point on, when I refer to early career faculty I refer to

assistant professors and associate professors within 3 years of tenure.

This study examines the issue of outside offers from multiple vantage points, which

include: administrators who try to retain faculty, faculty who leave, and faculty who

consider leaving but remain. In doing so, it makes a strong contribution to understanding

how organizational policies and practices (such as the outside offer policy in this study)

influence organizational commitment and institutional efforts to retain early career faculty.

education field and markets. However, Schuster and Finkelstein (2006) used data from the

National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) to show that faculty moving fluidly

from one institution to another is becoming a smaller part of the field. Faculty have become

less mobile across all institutional types as the job market has become more crowded. At

the same time, the National Science Foundation (2006), National Institute of Health, and

private foundations have invested in programs aimed at retaining faculty in their institu-

tions and in academe. Leadership training programs for academic administrators focus on

strategies to retain good faculty, underscoring the costs to institutions and disruption to

teaching, research and service missions when faculty depart (e.g. Williams 2013).

The majority of studies on faculty departure and retention have used expectancy theory

they report higher levels of organizational commitment, which in turn strengthens intent to

stay (Daly and Dee 2006; Lindholm 2003).

Although a rich literature exists examining the various factors that influence faculty

departure (Daly and Dee 2006; Rosser 2004; Smart 1990;Xu2008), the literature on

outside offers and policies governing them is sparse. Yet several organizational and psy-

chological variables used in previous studies of employee and faculty turnover are

instructive in contextualizing potential faculty responses and institutional outcomes from

such policies. For example, it is possible to imagine faculty consider such a policy a natural

part of the higher education market and retrieve outside offers as a way to leverage greater

power, pay, resources and prestige on their campus. Gardner et al. (2010) observe that

an employee will seek and receive an outside offer. As Gardner (2012) observes, the more

mobile the employee and the greater their skill set, the more likely they will seek an

outside offer and be considered a real ‘‘threat’’ to leave the organization. Decisions about

whether to stay, go, or even to look at other positions are also influenced by what Maertz

and Griffeth (2004) call calculative forces and constituent forces. Calculative forces relate

to the probability of attaining important values and goals in the future through continued

membership in the organization. Calculative forces are based on ‘‘rational self-interest with

a future orientation’’ (Maertz and Griffeth 2004, p. 670), whereas constituent forces relate

to employee attachment to individual coworkers or groups within the organization who

they believe will stay. The more attached the employee is to individuals within the

opportunities negatively influenced faculty intent to stay.

Within the category of negative responses to a policy requiring outside offers to provide

salary raises, the concept of distributive justice is helpful. Distributive justice refers to ‘‘the

perceived fairness of the amounts of compensation employees receive’’ (Folger and Ko-

novsky 1989, p. 115), though the concept can be extended to other rewards besides pay,

such as lab space. Returning to the concept of expectancy theory, if faculty believe that

decisions about their pay should be made based on their teaching, research, and service

contributions, as opposed to their worth in the external market, they are not likely to

perceive distributive justice when colleagues receive higher salaries for outside offers.

Procedural justice refers to a perception of fairness in the processes used to allocate

resources (Lind 1988; Rawls 1971; Tyler et al. 1996). In this same case, faculty who

Along these same lines, requiring outside offers to get a salary increase may decrease

faculty organizational commitment. Outside offers may be sought most by faculty with less

organizational commitment to an organization, and seeing others receive pay increases for

obtaining them may cause resentment.

One of the few studies focused on outside offers was conducted by Matier (1990), who

gathered data from faculty who had received firm offers to leave their universities for other

work. He studied faculty decisions to stay or go in retrospect—with a questionnaire of

tenure-stream faculty at two universities (60 % of whom left given the opportunity, and

40 % of whom stayed). Matier (1990)found faculty do not leave simply because of the

‘‘pull’’ of an outside offer; they leave because there is a ‘‘push’’ element internally that

Administrators at [both case campuses] in anticipation of ‘‘raiding’’ during a bad

budget year had at least informally initiated practices of attempting to meet market

demand pressures by matching firm outside offers in an attempt to retain faculty.

turn was fracturing faculty morale at both the institutional and departmental levels

(p. 48).

Little research since Matier (1990) has examined policies governing outside offers.

worth. In addition, gender, race and ethnicity, and discipline may influence faculty views

of policies governing salaries and outside offers. For space reasons this paper focused on

the overall influences of the outside offer policy on early career faculty organizational

commitment and retention, rather than individual differences. The research question

guiding this study was: What impact did HWO University’s outside offer policy have on

institutional efforts to retain early career faculty and faculty organizational commitment?

Study Design

believed the policy influenced early career faculty retention and organizational commit-

ment (Creswell 2007; Levitt and March 1988; Weick 1995). Assuming participant expe-

role and identity (e.g. as department chair, leaving faculty member, remaining faculty

member), I sought out participants with varied roles and identities. Thus, in designing the

study I was interested in how the following parties made sense of HWO University’s

outside offer policy: (1) administrators involved in the retention of faculty (hereafter,

administrators) (2) early career faculty who received an outside offer and decided to leave

(leaving faculty) and (3) early career faculty who received an outside offer and decided to

stay (remaining faculty). Administrators were department chairs, institute directors, and

associate deans who had been involved in retention efforts in their college. In most cases,

administrators knew faculty well before they began retention conversations with them; in a

few cases, they didn’t know faculty well before retention efforts began.

and administrators at the department level, where many departure decisions were made, but

also to explore how department-level experiences were related to the institution-wide

outside offer policy. This case design was revelatory in that I had an opportunity to

‘‘observe and analyze a phenomenon previously inaccessible to scientific investigation’’

(Yin 2003, p. 42). In this case, I had unique access to many different kinds of faculty data

at HWO University through my role of evaluating initiatives aimed at improving faculty

retention, satisfaction, and professional growth. Most departure research has not explored

participant experiences of outside offers, or policies governing them (Matier 1990,isan

exception). At the same time, the single case study method was what Yin (2003) calls

typical in that the study institution is in many ways typical of public research universities

Interviews and focus groups have been found to be a particularly effective way to

understand how individuals make meaning of phenomena in their work environments

(Kezar and Eckel 2002; Mills et al. 2005; O’Meara 2004). Leaving faculty and remaining

faculty were interviewed between 2 months and 1 year after they made a departure

decision. Administrators (e.g. department chairs, institute directors, program directors, and

associate deans) who had been involved in trying to retain faculty were also interviewed.

There were a number of factors that made purposeful (e.g., strategically selecting

individuals with rich information) and snowball sampling (adding participants as new cases

emerge) the best methods to recruit participants (Creswell 2007; Merriam 1998; Strauss

office and associate deans inside colleges as well as administrators who had been involved

in trying to retain faculty to identify initial lists of faculty who had recently left or were

leaving, or who had received an outside offer and decided to stay. At the end of interviews

and focus groups, participants were asked to identify additional individuals to participate,

and if they met study criteria these individuals were also invited. As interviews and focus

groups progressed primary contacts continued to send names and lists of faculty to invite as

new cases emerged.

About 80 % of the invited administrators (21 of 26), and 60 % of invited leaving and

remaining faculty (30 of 50) responded positively to invitations to participate. Adminis-

trators who declined participation noted other time commitments. Leaving and remaining

the potential for bias in this sampling process, the fact that participants were identified

from across the entire campus, formally through administrators and informally through

participants, and the lack of a pattern in participant response to the invitation (either among

those who accepted or declined) suggests that the sample was reflective of the range of

perspectives found in these different groups.

The research team for the interview and focus group part of this project included two

graduate students and me. We conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups that

lasted 60–75 minutes with 21 administrators involved in faculty retention efforts. Of the 21

administrators, 9 (42.9 %) were men, and 12 (57.1 %) were women. Eleven administrators

(52.4 %) were interviewed via focus group and ten (47.6 %) participated in an individual

overall thoughts about retaining faculty under the outside offer policy. Focus groups

provided useful data on common experiences as participants were able to build off each

other’s reflections on how the outside offer policy was experienced by them and their

faculty and how it influenced retention and organizational commitment. Individual inter-

views provided more in-depth examination of specific cases that administrators might not

have shared in a focus group with colleagues.

My research team and I also conducted 60–75 minute-long, semi-structured interviews

with 20 leaving faculty who had accepted outside offers and 10 remaining faculty who

There was recognition from several leaving and remaining faculty that getting outside

Another remaining faculty member explained:

Despite such recognition of this process as a common aspect of academic careers,

administrators, leaving, and remaining faculty consistently stated that HWO University’s

From the point of view of the faculty member, what the university is saying to them

whatever that is, can’t look through their achievements and make a preemptive

decision about retaining them.

A remaining faculty member echoed the same observation from her vantage point about

Overall, faculty resented this additional way (beyond promotion and tenure) that they

had to prove themselves to their institution.

All groups observed that the policy of requiring outside offers to increase faculty

salaries decreased loyalty to the institution by fostering resentment. Some leaving faculty

had pursued outside offers just to receive a pay raise at HWO University, which left a bad

taste in their mouths about HWO University just when the other campus was courting

them. Remaining faculty described feeling resentment that courting an outside offer was

the only way that they could receive a higher salary, given all of their contributions on

Faculty tended to describe feelings of decreased organizational commitment in two

ways. They noted the policy seemed ‘‘wrong’’ and ‘‘unethical,’’ and they observed it made

them feel less valued by HWO University. One remaining faculty member said:

more effort to reward strong faculty members than to tell them to ‘‘get a job offer.’’

There was also the issue of ethics. In the following comments from a leaving faculty

But I just felt like I shouldn’t have had to decide to leave for them to do such a thing.

I just didn’t feel this was the right way to do stuff.

Faculty noted the policy encouraged questionable professional ethics which in turn

motivated them to leave, or to feel less connected to HWO University if they stayed.

Though pursuit of outside offers for bargaining power was acknowledged as com-

monplace, and necessary under the current policy, most faculty were uncomfortable,

embarrassed, cynical, and resentful when discussing it. Both remaining and leaving faculty

noted that they did not want to be perceived as trying to trick either institution involved in

the negotiation, ‘‘string them along,’’ or upset the other campus, given the expense of

interviewing. They did not understand why some proactive measure was not in place to

reward highly productive faculty without outside offers. Thus, the outside offer policy

weakened faculty commitment to HWO University, because even in the cases where