Determinants of Relationship Continuity : A Mediational Study of Relationship Quality and Word of Mouth

Employees are claimed to be one the important strategic key asset of organization. In today's competitive world, departing of the skilled employees is immense dilemma for organizations especially at managerial level. Organizations not have only bear the cost of hiring and training of these mangers but also these managers act as intellectual capital as they possess knowledge and information of the key strategic areas. This study attempts to study the factors such as self-efficacy, work environment and workplace bullying behavior which governs the psychological patterns of employees in an organization. This paper studied behavioral factors of employees not only proves to be the reason for financial benefits of organization but also become a source of retaining skilled employees within organization which was referred to as relationship continuity in this paper. Structural Equation modeling technique is used to analyze the behavioral pattern of employees of Textile mills from Multan Region through Purposive sampling technique with resulting in 552 respondents. Thus, results from the study enfolded interesting insights identifying the factors which can be a source to improve and retain the skilled labor of the organization and utilizing them for creating the organizational image.


Introduction
The biggest challenge for today's organization is the lack of availability of skilled and competent staff because of increasing rate of turnover and unwillingness of fresh university graduates to enter organizations in industrial areas both at managerial and operational levels (Zhang & Wu, 2004).Almost every organization faces the dilemma of losing its skilled employees, many studies related to Organization Behavior lay emphasis on improving the relationship of the organization with its customers and employees.Rynes and Cable (2003), explained that employees are the most integral part of any organization and should be considered as important asset of the organization.As suggested by Todd and Micheal (2006), that organizations that provide their employee's with the environment in which they can enhance their capabilities and pursue their goals, those organizations have better chances of progressive future through employee commitment and thus are better adapted to retaining their skilled employees with them.
The study of behavioral factors of employees not only proves to be the reason for financial benefits of organization but also become a source of retaining skilled labor within organization.Employees not only feel honor but also seek to develop relationship with such organization which are reputed for taking care of its employees.But, this discussion is limited to the paradigm of Customer-Organization relationship, whereas this study explores them from Employee-Organization perspective.Studying from employees' perspective would highlight important antecedents of Relationship Continuity with the organization.Employees are backbone of any organization, with each departing employee, an organization has to not only face deficit of skilled labor but also insufficiency at intellectual level as a departing employee takes away his experience and knowledge of key strategic area, employee turnover is a key concern today in Textile sector of Multan.
and Relationship Quality.The study was conducted in Pakistani context and the data collection process was self-administered.As suggested by Armstrong (2008), who stressed that employees with higher level of "learning SE" are more committed to their jobs and had developed positive attitude towards their organization because of their higher commitment and career proficiency.Workplace bulling behavior is same as any personality trait explaining a person's behavior in a particular way, some inside feelings or thoughts that may results in a person to show particular forms of behavior, in this instance for example a person being aggressive or not in interpersonal relations (Pieterson, 2007).Moos (1974) found that "available descriptions of social environments appeared to be inadequate, as they did not include a description of the psychosocial characteristics and social climate of environments".De Wulf et al. (2001), established the fact that each employee is intrinsically different from one another so, their motivation to continue their relation with the organization is different as well.If the employee feels that his relationship quality is superior with the organization than other employees he may be more willing to continue his relation with the organization than any other employee of the organization.

Self-Efficacy and Relationship Continuity
Self-efficacy can be a source of determining employee relationship continuity with his organization.Ming-Chan and Yen-Chun, (2012) found that there exists a positive relationship between a person's effort, self-efficacy and job performance and job satisfaction.Furthermore, as study of Viator (2010), signifies that the job satisfaction is known to have negative impact on the person's intension to leave the organization.Self-efficacy is one's self-confidence to perform tasks and according to Caprara et al. (2004), it acts as an active predictor of a person's ability to behave socially and can serve as a source to judge a person's cognitive competences.Self-efficacy can determine the way people interrelate within their social circle and display their social relationships Caprara et al. (2004).This leads to fact that person with self-efficacy would focus maintaining relationship so it hypothesized.H1: Self Efficacy has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity Employees who have positive opinion about their employer are more expected to have positive intrinsic opinion about their organization (Shinnar et al., 2004).Furthermore they explained that the behavior of these employees can be explained in three ways, firstly these employees are self-motivated to be involve in progression of the organization, secondly they are involved in self-conformation that is they are always engaged in positive word of mouth engagement towards their organization, thus they become unadvertised or a source of referrals or an advertisement for the organization for which organization has to bear zero cost, thirdly and lastly the employees are motivated to share the rewards and benefits of being associated with a very worthy organization with their friends and people whom they care for.Thus it can be hypothesized H1a: Self Efficacy has a significant relationship with Relationship Quality.H1aa: Self Efficacy has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity with mediating effect of Relationship Quality.Some other studies also suggest a significant relationship between Self Efficacy and Word of mouth.Bandura (1997), claims that youngsters with a high level of self-efficacy were performing better in their academic routine and social relations, are more expected to counter challenges in a persistent and moderately anxiety-free manner.Some researchers have highlighted a significant relationship between self-efficacy and many work-related outcomes, specifically job attitudes (Saks, 1995), training proficiency (Martocchio & Judge, 1997), and job performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998).
As Niu (2010), founded that SE has significant impact on teacher's career commitment and Jose et al. (2006) founded that employee's relationship proneness can determine employee's normative commitment.The execution of the three types of commitment and established that affective commitment can create behavioral loyalty in bank's employees (Jose et al., 2006) they also claimed that normative commitment if exist in employees than it can predict the intension of employees to stay with the same bank, furthermore they claimed that if all three types of commitments are combined than they can reduce benefit insensitivity and complaining attitude.Employees complaining can results in negative word of mouth also behavioral loyalty results in positive word of mouth as claimed by Zeithaml et al. (1996) thus it can be hypothesized that: H1b: Self Efficacy has a significant relationship with Word of Mouth The cognitive competences of an employee help to analyze the relationship it has with organization, and this can benefit organization in two ways (Shinnar et al., 2004).It enhances the motivation level of employees to work for progress and prosper of organization.It helps in creating cost free referrals thus help in establishing organization image (Shinnar et al., 2004).H1bb: Self Efficacy has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity with mediating effect of Word of Mouth

Workplace Bulling Behavior and Relationship Continuity
Work place bulling has a negative impact on interpersonal relationships, communication, and family functioning (Davenport, Schwartz, & Elliott, 1999).Sommers, Schell, and Vodanovich (2002), suggested that "if employees feel they have been treated unfairly by those in power in the organization, they may resort to using indirect and covert forms of retaliation".A person facing Bulling Behavior is continuously in the state of powerlessness (Saunders et al., 2007), this mental state leads him to isolation from work, which results in job insecurity (Greenhalgh & Rosenblatt, 1984;Mats, 2014).Thus, a person who has been constantly victim of WBB is always thinking of quitting the job which leads to hypothesized that: H2: Workplace Bullying Behavior has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity.Hogh et al. (2011) conclude that workplace bullying behavior leads the victim to think of deliberately resigning the job as a consequence of stressful circumstances caused by bulling behavior.Thus, it can be inferred that WBB may cause/lead to counterproductive behavior such as dissatisfaction at workplace resulting in turnover, lock of work interest.Thus, effecting quality relationships between employees and organization.Hence the following hypothesis can be formulated.
H2a: Workplace Bullying Behavior has a significant relationship with effect on Relationship Quality H2aa: Workplace Bullying Behavior has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity with mediating effect of Relationship Quality.
The victim of bulling behavior (employee) feels to be socially disconnected and such feeling impedes variety of behavioral responses (Leymann, 1996) one of such response having negative opinion about the organization and victim's turnover intension (Houshmand et al., 2012).Therefore, it can be assumed that an employee's facing bullying behavior would have negative opinion about the organization and would involve in creating negative word of mouth for the organization.Thus, it can be hypothesized that: -H2b: Workplace Bullying Behavior has a significant relationship with Word of Mouth.
It can be suggested that this negative impact does not remain confined within the professional relations but they also affect the employee's private lives.Some other researchers have also found that work place bulling behavior has negative impact on both individual and organization, work place bulling may result in increased employee absenteeism, lower individual and organizational performance (Einarsen et al., 2010).
H2bb: Workplace Bullying Behavior has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity with mediating effect of Word of Mouth

Work Environment and Relationship Continuity
Any study related to environment or personal space of work is incomplete without the incorporation of the social aspect.The advantage of including information about the social climate is that it helps to understand the behavior of the employees.Moreover, it helps to understand Individuals' expectations about the work setting and to measure that either these expectations are met or not thus it may also result in helping to improve and predict employee's satisfaction related to the organization (Moos, 1994).Hence it can be extracted that a satisfied employee will utter a positive word of mouth for the organization H3: Work Environment has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity H3a: Work Environment has a significant relationship with Relationship Quality.
Work environment is also known as important antecedent of RQ and RC.Which may further results in anxiety and depression and a person wanting to terminate his relationship with the organization.H3aa: Work Environment has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity with mediating effect of Relationship Quality.
According to Moos (1974) wok environment can determine certain behavioral characteristics of a person, the way he will perform and also his socializing process.Thus it can be inferred that a person with high level of job satisfaction will have positive word of mouth for the organization (Shinnar et al., 2004).Thus it can be said that H3b: Work Environment has a significant relationship with Word of Mouth.
As Moos (1994), stated social environmental costs its effects on employees, so a positive social environmental, cause an affirmative attitude WOM which will develop the attitude to continue a synergic relationship with organization.So it is hypothesized that: H3b: Work Environment has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity with mediating effect of Word of Mouth.

Word of Mouth and Relationship Continuity
An organization with employee's supportive repute have competitive position in market and better ability to retain its employees (Todd and Micheal, 2006) thus it can be inferred that.
H4: Word of Mouth has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity.

Relationship Quality and Relationship Continuity
It has been found by Basheer and Al-alak (2010) that the consequence of relationship quality has a positive word of mouth by the customer and it results in relationship continuity.Similarly, another research work conducted by Basheer and Al-alak (2010), stated that focus upon customer-employee relationship quality examines the relationship continuity as an outcome of relationship quality.Therefore, same results can be generalized for employee-organization relationship as employees are internal customers of organization.Thus, by improving the quality of relationship between employee and organization acts as one of the main ingredients of success for any organization which has been neglected field of relationship management (Shueh-Chin & Liang-Yin, 2014).H5: Relationship Quality has a significant relationship with Relationship Continuity.Kim and Cha (2002) implemented a previous research work done in this area and proposed a model of antecedents and consequences of the quality in the employee-customer relationship.The model specified that relationship quality has a significant relationship with relationship continuity of the customer.Same results can be generalized for the relationship quality of an employee with the organization as a mediator for employee's relationship continuity.

Data Collection and Sample Unit
The questionnaire items were measured on 5-point Likert scale ranging from "1-5" from strongly agree to strongly disagree.This research work uses employees of textile industry as population.Data is collected from the selected textile mills operational in Multan region.Target population for the study is employees of textile industry preferably the managers.For this study the technique of Purposive sampling is used.Ltd.In this study the number of cases per predictor is eight thus leading to a sample size of 552.Self-administered questionnaires are used for the purpose of data collection.Each employee was contacted personally and directions were given personally to fill the questionnaire.

Definition and Measurement of Constructs
Self-efficacy is defined as perceptions of a persons that are specific to the person's self-system that indicate that how will a person act individually, socially, specifically continuity of his relationship and his personality coherence depends on the level of person's self-efficacy (Bandura, 1999).Eight items Uni-dimensional scale of NGSE (New General Scale of Self Efficacy) developed by Chen and Gully (1997) will be used to measure the construct of Self Efficacy.
Work place Bulling Behavior is a widely researched construct, in any organization if the employee is faced with bullying behavior than he is constantly looking over their shoulders in order to avoid that behavior, bullying can include issues like figure pointing, blaming, harassment, mobbing, personal or physical assault, that might results in lowering the self-confidence and overall productivity of an employee (Sutton, 2007).Workplace bullying behavior is operationally defined as the behavior of employer, peer or colleague that negatively affects an employee performance, bullying can be related to work, personal or physical.A revised scale of scale workplace bullying behavior named as NAQ-R (negative act questionnaire revised) developed by Einarsen and Hoel (2001) has been used to measure the construct of work place bullying behavior.The scale consists of 22 items and it has three dimensions: 1) Person and work related bullying.
Work environment for this research work is based on the definition of (Moos, 1994), who states that the work environment is not only the physical space around the employee of the organization but also include the relationship with peers, and the degree to which the organization's environment is dynamic and allows its employees can maintain their pace with the changes in organization and also to the fact that how much employees are encouraged to peruse their personal goals.A fourteen items scale of work environment will use to measure the construct of work environment developed by Moos (1994).The scale consists of three dimensions 1) System maintenance and change dimension.

3) Person related dimension (goal orientation).
Relationship quality is a construct that can be represented by two indicators, trust and satisfaction.Items to measure relationship quality were adapted from Hennig-Thurau (2002) the scale was validated by Ndubisi (2007).
Relationship continuity (RC) measures the strength of the relationship between employee and organization.As RC can be defined as a social exchange between managers and employees in which the two parties relate with each other on the basis of shared obligations, respect, and trust (Blau, 1964).A uni-dimensional scale adapted from Lusch and Brown (1996) and Ganesan (1994) will be used to measure the construct of relationship continuity.
Word-of-mouth (WOM) is defined as "an interpersonal communication that is specifically independent of the organization's marketing activities, organizational substance, and its products" (Bone, 1995).This study discusses the dynamics of WOM as interpersonal communication between employees belonging to same or different organizations or with other member of society regarding the operational and interpersonal side of their organization.A unidimensional scale is used which measures the level of employees' WOM consisting of 3 items

Demographics
Gender, Age, Marital Status, Job Tenure, Educational Qualification are the demographic components that are discussed in this part.This part will give overview about the male and female participants, their ages, salary, job tenure, education and their marital status respectively.Result shows that out of 552 respondents, 459 are male and 93 are females.It means that male respondents are major portion of the respondents which is 83.2% of the total.While females are in minority hence are sharing only 16.8% of the total sample size.Reason of low portion of female respondents could be that in Textile sector, mostly males are working.Marital status table is showing married participant ratio on higher side.Out of 552 respondents 369 respondents are married which is having 66.8% possession in the table which is twice as compare to low ratio of 33.2% single respondents which is half of the married participants.Age table clearly indicates that 73.3% respondents belongs to less than 40 years.It means that comparatively young age persons make their decisions to stay or leave the organization.In other words, they are in a better position to take the decision to continue relationship with the organization or not.Educational qualification table clearly indicating that 44% respondents are highly qualified.It demonstrates that qualified persons have clearly understood the main idea of different constructs and responded very well.Job tenure table shows that 4-6 years have 33% representation and 23% respondents have 13 years and above job tenure.25 % of the respondents fall in the salary range of 21,000 to 30,000 and 20% respondents fall in the salary range of 31,000 to 40,000.

Normality & Multicollinearity
In this part, basic assumptions of normality and multicollinearity are verified.Normality is checked through Kurtosis and Skewness.Before moving towards Standard Equation Modeling (SEM) checking the assumption of normality is very much important, as SEM cannot proceed with abnormal data set.This study also used histogram in order to determine the normality, histogram bell shaped curve represents normal data.Table 1 represents that all the values for skewness are less than 1 and for kurtosis are less than 3 that depict that the data set is normally distributed.For accessing the multicollinearity issues of the data set two measures have been employed.These are known as variance inflation factor (VIF) and tolerance.If the data set is free from the issues of multicollinearity than the unique contribution of each variable towards dependent variable can be determined easily.For this sake correlation table is tabulated and it is assured that none of the correlation exceed 0.7 at p-value=0.000.The value of tolerance should be higher than .1 and value of VIF should be less than 10.

Reliability and Validity
Reliability of the data was assessed in order to determine whether there exists internal consistency of the data or not.To check the reliability SPSS-20's feature of reliability check was used.It was assured that reliability for the data set collected for all the construct is .721.supported by the work done by Hogh et al. (2011).
The p-value= 0.000suggests with loading of -0.568 that suggests there is a significant relationship between workplace bullying behavior and relationship quality.So the hypothesis gets accepted that states that workplace bullying behavior has significant impact on relationship quality this finding is consistent with the study conducted by Chen et al. (2011).Also the p value = 0.038 is significant for the relationship between the WB-RQ-RC which states that relationship quality mediates the relationship between workplace bullying behavior and relationship continuity.
The p-value= 0.235with the standardized loading of -0.073 suggests that there is no significant relationship between workplace bullying behavior and word of mouth.Thus hypothesis gets rejected that word of mouth has a significant relationship with workplace bullying behavior.The employees who are facing bullying behavior in their organizations will have negative intension of relationship continuity with their organization.
The word of mouth does not mediate the relationship between workplace bullying behavior and relationship continuity as the p-value is insignificant with the value 0.340.But the negative value of standardized loading represents that a negative relationship exists.That signifies that an employee if faced with workplace bullying behavior in the organization would have negative opinion of the organization, and if that organization had negative reputation because of word of mouth of its employees, its employees would not like to continue their relation with that vary organization.
The p-value= 0.021 with good standardized loading of 0.990 suggests that there is a significant relationship between work environment and relationship continuity.So the hypothesis gets accepted that states that work environment has significant impact on relationship continuity.The results of this study are consistent with the study conducted by Moos, (1994) The p-value=0.008and standardized loading shows that there is a significant relationship between work environment and relationship quality.Also the results show that relationship quality mediates the relationship between work environment and relationship continuity.That shows that if organizations provide employees with effective work environment and provides its employees with conducive work environment meaning by had good relationship quality between employee and organization then it results in better relationship continuity between organization and employees.
The standardized loading for the relationship work environment and word of mouth is 0.430 with p-value of 0.020 that represents that the hypothesis got accepted that supports that a significant relationship exists between work environment and positive word of mouth by an employee.These results are consistent with the findings of (Shinnar et al., 2004).As for the mediating relationship of word of mouth the p-value 0.027 and standardized loadings of 0.836 shows that word of mouth partially mediates the relationship between work environment and relationship continuity.
The p-value= 0.010 with the standardized loading of 0.179 suggests that there is a significant relationship between relationship quality and relationship continuity.So, hypothesis states that relationship quality has significant impact on relationship continuity.
Hence, it signifies that if organizations have better employee-organization relationship there are greater chances of continuation of relation of employee with the organization.The results are consistent with the findings of Kim and Cha (2002).
The p-value= 0.020 with the standardized loading of 0.670 suggests that there is a significant relationship between relationship quality and relationship continuity.So, hypothesis states that relationship quality has significant impact on relationship continuity.The results are consistent with the findings of Basheer et al. (2010) and Todd and Micheal (2006).

Academic Implications
The constructs of relationship quality, word of mouth and relationship continuity have been widely studied in literature as customers oriented constructs.Literature locks studies focusing from employee-organization relationship perspective.The results of the study show that word of mouth and relationship quality mediates the relationship between self-efficacy, work environment, workplace bullying behavior and relationship continuity which is an important contribution in academic literature.Current study contributes lot in literature with new and unique relationship.It also provides new way to analyze employee word of mouth and relationship quality as a mediator which were not used simultaneously in any researcher.The study entails marketing concepts from management point of view.

Managerial Implications
This research work can be seen as an important contribution as it can be helpful for the organization at many levels.It can help and improve the HR activities and managers in attaining and retaining the skilled employees that is important need for any organization to survive in this competitive world.Employees overall relationship with the organization can be improved by understanding the factors such as the impact of self-efficacy, workplace bullying behavior and work environment on relationship continuity.The current study is fruitful for manager in understanding the motives behind their desire to continue their relationship with their organization, also by understanding employees needs and wants the organization can develop better relation with their employees.
1) By improving the work environment the organizations can improve their relationship with their employees.
2) By reducing or eliminating the workplace bullying behavior organizations can establish a tier between.
3) Improving the employee-organization relationship can provide organizations cost of free referrals which may serve as source of new hiring, and also creating organization image as care-taker of its employees.
4) A good relationship quality can serve as important predictor of the employee relationship continuity, by understating this phenomenon the managers can jot down the resources & factors for improving employee-organization relationship.

Limitations and Future Research
The part of limitation is necessary in every type of research where we have to carefully see the issues.
Consideration of sample selection is narrow that is only textile sector of Multan region; results can be change if it may use other service sectors as well.Sampling technique, called convenient sampling is used to collect the data may also questionable for generalization.But for this specific study the data needs to be collected from managers of the textile mills as these are the employees that are highly demanded by the organizations and these are the employees that have information regarding the key resources and areas of the organizations, therefore it was necessary to use the method the convenient sampling as it is the technique that easily provides access to the person required for this analysis.
Similarly, directions for future research are that: 1) Model can be improved by adding and deleting few variables.
2) Model can be used for comparative analysis on the basis of gender and other demographic factors and fro validation in local and foreign industries.
3) Relationship continuity can be studied from so many dimensions such as tenure on the job, salary packages offered by the competitors and on the basis of other alternative available to the employees.
4) This research concept can be used with different sampling technique.
5) This research model can be used by enhancing the geographical coverage (not only concern of southern Punjab as use in this research).
6) A detailed study can be conducted on the basis of demographic factors that which demographic factor can become a reason for employee relationship continuity.
7) Current research concept can be applied on different population apart from textile sectors.
8) Longitudinal method, as data collection technique, can be used due to rapidly changing work environment and the facilities available as provided by the organizations to its employees.

Conclusion
Word of mouth and relationship quality can be seen as important antecedents of relationship continuity as supported by Ming-Chan and Yen-Chun (2012), focusing only customer's perspective.This research work is significant from other research work in a way that it studied these constructs from employee's perspectives and proved that relationship quality and word of mouth also mediates the relationship between self-efficacy, work environment and workplace bullying behavior.
This study supports to the theory presented by Ming-Chan and Yen-Chun (2012).The results indicate that direct relationship exist in case of workplace bullying behavior and relationship continuity, work environment and relationship continuity, whereas no direct relationship was found between self-efficacy and relationship continuity.Also the effect of mediational relationship is evaluated to be either full or partial mediator.It was determined that relationship quality partially mediates the relationship between workplace bullying behavior and relationship continuity, also between work environment and relationship continuity.But for self-efficacy it was found that relationship quality fully mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and relationship continuity.Whereas when word of mouth was used as a mediator it was determined that no mediational relationship exist in case of the relationship between workplace bullying behavior and relationship continuity, however word of mouth partially mediates the relationship between work environment and relationship continuity, whereas full mediation was observed in case of relationship between self-efficacy and relationship continuity.

Figure
Figure 1.Conceptual framework Employees are selected from Mahmood Textile Mill Ltd. (MTM), Roomi Fabrics Ltd., Hussain Textile Mills Ltd., Colony Textile Mills Ltd, and Ahmad Fine Textile Mills Ltd.Ahmad Hassan Textile Mills Ltd.Reliance Weaving Mill

Table 1 .
Descriptive statistics The reliability for relationship Quality is .722,for relationship Continuity is .817,for Word of Mouth is .815,for Self-Efficacy is .761,for Workplace Bullying Behavior is .815,for Work Environment it is .788.