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Pathways to Green(er) Pastures: Reward Bundles, Human Capital, and Turnover Decisions in a Semi-Profession

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Abstract

This study brings together turnover and job design research to investigate how reward bundling and job fit generate staying and leaving decisions among one particular group of “semi-professionals”: urban schoolteachers with different types of human capital. Using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), I analyze survey and interview data from 40 middle and high school teachers in one urban school district: 20 stayers and 20 leavers. The analysis identifies combinations or “bundles” of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that work together to motivate staying and leaving decisions. For all stayers, administrative support appears to serve as a compensating differential for the absence of other rewards. For all leavers, reward bundles simultaneously lacking student attachment and collegiality, or combining more stable teacher human capital resources in the school with the lack of administrative support, each promote leaving decisions. Further, results suggest that teachers with different types of human capital react to these bundles differently. This paper explores three of the fourteen bundles specific to teachers with selective college backgrounds, high SAT scores, or National Board Teaching Certification. The findings have implications for semi-professions in which workers carefully weigh their often contradictory set of working conditions and are prone to leave their workplace or occupation for any kind of “greener pasture.”

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Notes

  1. Building on other turnover literature (Quartz et al. 2009), the types of leavers based on their particular career destinations are further examined in the Data and Results sections.

  2. The sample includes only one case of retirement, where the teacher received a job offer to teach full time at a local private school.

  3. “Insufficient” as used in the theory of insufficient justifications has no relationship with the language of sufficiency in QCA methods.

  4. While there were two local private colleges in this city that are selective (i.e., “elite”), they mostly placed their teacher candidates in the local suburban schools for student teaching; thus, their subsequent anticipated fit in the urban district is lower.

  5. Among the exiters, only one respondent completely left the education field; the other six shifted their roles within education-related professions/occupations.

  6. In QCA, the language of “conditions” is generally used in lieu of “variables,” once they are sorted in terms of interpretable categories rather than measured on a scale.

  7. A traditionally certified teacher holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education, in contrast to an alternate-route teacher, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in a non-Education field but has earned a post-baccalaureate teaching certificate.

  8. Four of the five teachers in this pathway lacked collegiality and influential stayers in their schools; three lacked autonomy (t*c*i).

  9. Often, teachers in this group were long-time stayers prior to the decline of administrative support. This lack of support co-occurs with a loss of collegial support.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Richard Rubinson, Linda Renzulli, Martha Crowley, Anne Kronberg, Anand Swaminathan, and Emily Hubbard for their helpful comments on earlier drafts, and Claude Rubinson, Oliver Cowart, and Thomas Kersen for their technical help. This study was supported in part by the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning through a self-directed, paid research internship.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Emory University, Tarbutton Hall, 1555 Dickey Drive, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Jennifer L. Nelson

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Correspondence to Jennifer L. Nelson.

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Nelson, J.L. Pathways to Green(er) Pastures: Reward Bundles, Human Capital, and Turnover Decisions in a Semi-Profession. Qual Sociol 40, 23–57 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-016-9348-1

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