Relationship between Employee Turnover Intent and Learned Helplessness:A Study of Research Gap

The present study aims to review the existing literature pertaining to turnover intentions and learned helplessness. Further, the researcher aims to identify the research gap in the study of these two concepts. Turnover which is the reverse of retention depicts the number of employees leaving the organization. In order to increase retention, it is very important to first identify the antecedents of employee turnover. The conception of learned helplessness has been developed by Overmier and Seligman. When an individual learns that the result of the events is outside the control of the resources he has, then he feels the phenomenon of learned helplessness, which can be described as learning disability. Firstly, the in-depth review of the existing literature pertaining to both the concepts has been done. Secondly, the paper consists of review of studies examining the interrelationship between turnover intent and learned helplessness. Results of the study indicate that there exists lot of research work done individually on the concepts of learned helplessness and turnover intentions. But, there is a dearth of literature pertaining to the relationship between these two variables. It provides an outlook to further research scope. The relationship between the variables can be explored empirically in various industrial settings.