Keywords

Job secession; Internal corporate social responsibility; Employee; Public listed company; Sustainable performance; Human resource.

Introduction

Job satisfaction is a dream of every employee and a good indicator of job continuity decision. Studies have found that employees’ satisfaction is a factor that influences employee turnover (Wang et al., 2020). Chen et al. (2019) stated that employee turnover is influenced by the level of job satisfaction and reduce contribution to corporate objectives. When employees are dissatisfied in their jobs, it reduces commitment to job continuity. A comprehensive internal corporate social responsibility practice (ICSR) is significant to reducing the risk of employees’ turnover and enhances employees’ intention to stay in the job. Meanwhile, ICSR is a responsibility that was built on the organizational strategy to cater for employee wellbeing and satisfaction. It is also a practice that enhances employee benefit and promotes mutual engagement. ICSR involves provision of series of internal social benefits like good financial package, care and support, conducive work style, friendliness within the organization, rewards and recognition which promote commitment and performance. Yet, corporate social responsibility’s internal dimension has been widely neglected in the literature.

Over the years, challenges of internal social benefits often force employees to abruptly terminate their job contracts. Internal social benefits like salary and benefits, social support, bonus, and other internal organization factors were known to influence job satisfaction and it is the level of satisfactions that determine decision to stay or leave (Hee & Jing, 2018). Ilmi et al. (2019) reported that many business organizations are facing the problem of voluntary employees’ turnover in the recent times. Effective human resource management could promote employees’ job continuity intention and reduce high cost of (re)training, recruitment, and shortage of experts. Studies have shown that internal organizational incentives related to friendly work environment is an influential factor to job commitment (Sinniah & Kamil, 2017; Andrew & Sofian, 2012; Lee, 2020).

Employee turnover is a global problem that costs organizations up to USD 550 billion per year (Forbes, 2019). For example, Perks (2019) reported that 65% of global employees leave their jobs annually due to poor job incentives. Meanwhile, 76.8% of employee turnover can be avoided if organizations were conscious of ICSR practice towards employee job continuity decision. For example, organization like GOOGLE has developed an algorithm to determine which employees are most likely to leave or become a retention problem so that they can act and plan accordingly. Hawlett Packard also developed a “Flight Risk” score to determine which employee is likely to leave their jobs in order to concentrate on those that the organization intended to retain. Organizations need to be focused on both business and human resource strategies. Part of these strategies is the study of the influence of ICSR on employee job continuity decision. In 2019, the global turnover rate stood at 22% on the average according to the turnover survey conducted by (Suggests, 2019), out of which retirement constitutes 1%, involuntary turnover 6%, and voluntary employee turnover 15%. Based on this finding, organizations should promote employee job continuity decision. The need to investigate the relationship between ICSR and job continuity decision to solve the problem of increasing rate of employee turnover is inevitable at the moment. In 2018, the global average turnover was 5.27% and it was increased to 27% in 2019 (Institute, 2019). However, it was reported in 2019 that its cost organization two-year salary of a leaving employee to replace a new one (Suggests, 2019). Another global employee retention statistic 2019 shows that 27% of employees left their jobs voluntarily on a yearly basis and this accounts for 88% of increase in the global employee turnover between 2010 to 2019 (Darina, 2019). The hardest part of the employee turnover is that it occurs within the first year of resumption. For example, (Institute, 2019) found that 9. 38% employees quit their jobs within the first year of resumption while others done so within the first 180 days.

In Malaysia for instance, Chin (2018) found that employee turnover increased from 0.9% in 2012 to 13.2 in 2018. Ilmi et al. (2019) also reported that Malaysia voluntary turnover rate stands at 9.5%, the third highest among the South East Asian countries. The study explains further that 78.13% of companies are facing the problem of employee turnover within the country. Analysis (2018) published that average turnover rate in Malaysia was 20% and that involuntary turnover stood at 6% in overall rating analysis.

However, less attention has been given to ICSR as a remedy to employee turnover globally (Brieger et al., 2020; Hur et al., 2019). Prior studies on employees’ turnover did not address issues relating to employee job continuity decision based on internal corporate social responsibility (ICSR) practice. Also, most of the available statistics on employees’ survey are commonly found in the website of private recruiters’ organizations or Bloggers and others like Forbes, USA department of labor and statistics, International Labor Organization’s website, World Bank, European Union newsletter on labor and productivity including the main street journals. Hence, the requirement to promote academic research contribution on this issue initiates this study. Additionally, the problem of intentional job discontinuity has been a common phenomenon amongst global employees for decades which remain unsolved. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between ICSR practice and employee job continuity decision.

Literature Review

Internal Corporate Social Responsibility (ICSR)

To survive and remain competitive in the present market structure, organizations need to implement different strategies that will project their images as socially responsible. Employment pressure has made top managements reconsidered effects of job on employees’ wellbeing by using available management strategy to cater for their needs. Part of this initiative is ICSR practice. ICSR may be employed as a profit-making strategy since it motivates employees to work better as well as promoting job retention (Hur et al., 2019).

Academic researchers have investigated and explained the nature and motives behind ICSR practice and positive progress has been made in these regards. Some researchers have analysed ICSR theoretically by explaining its connections to organisations, stakeholders, and society (Carroll, 1991; Al-Abdallah & Ahmed, 2018; Islam et al., 2018). There has been growing awareness in the organizational behavioural studies about the critical role of stakeholders to the survival of business organizations. Some of these stakeholders maintain a proximity relationship with organisations; among them are the employees who occupy internal task environment, while others stand as external business partners. These include suppliers, customers, creditors, and regulatory bodies with whom organizations interact. It is obvious that an organization’s success depends on the efficiency of its employees and therefore, effective management of their needs through ICSR practice will sustain an economic relationship between them. As ICSR refers to the management of employees or actions that promote job commitment and satisfaction, organisations could effectively increase employee job continuity decision by developing the culture of effective ICSR practice.

Employee Job Continuity Decision

The concept of job continuity originated from the organizational identity approach with an aim to understand valuable practices that boost positive behaviors toward achieving corporate’s goal of profit maximization. Job continuity has proven to be valuable to theories and practices. Organizations need to carefully study what can be done to minimize both voluntary and involuntary job discontinuity among employees. Promoting good ICSR practice is one of the solutions to that effect. Organizations that experience high level of job discontinuity tend to lose talented and experienced employees which leads to poor performance, redundant growth, and development. As employees are always interested in having high status within organizations, it is important to determine what factors positively influence their choice of a good organizational identification and performance. Sanusi and Johl (2020) posited that employee job continuity promotes organizational identification and sustainable performance. Employees with strong sense of job continuity tend to show positive feelings towards achieving business objectives. Therefore, organization that experience continuous voluntary employee job discontinuity should implement a strong policy that enhances ICSR practice. ICSR can be a model for creating, retaining, utilizing and promoting innovative employee performance (Hur et al., 2019).

One of the tools to eliminate loss of skillful workforce is to encourage employees’ intention to job continuity. Qualified employees hold critical position in an organizational growth and development and therefore, employees’ satisfaction should be focused on performance strategies. Employee job continuity decision if promoted can have a significant positive effect on an organization’s workforce and business operations. It makes the difference especially in public listed companies where it is difficult to recruit suitable employees due to high labour competition.

Organization Practice

Work setting

An understanding of how employees can be influenced by the nature of work setting within the organization is central to the study of job continuity decision since it is a system designed to generate good participating behavior and attitude in task accomplishment. A careful design of an office and other relevant accommodations can shape the desire for full participation in corporate affairs (Robertson, 1994). Nowadays, employees are confronted with many stimuli within internal work environment which influence both positive and negative decision on job continuity decision. Stimuli are physical characteristics that can influence physiological and psychological response to job. One of these is the work setting. This can have a powerful influence on employees’ attitudes and behaviors towards performance (Janssen, 2000). The best way to manage performance in a social system is to create conditions that encourage healthy social behaviors and task efficiency (Di Benedetto & Swadling, 2014) Since an organization’s performance is a function of the collective behaviors of its members, improvement can only occur when members are satisfied with the structure of the work settings.

Work settings have important implications for practitioners and academic researchers who are interested in the social management of employees and organizations. Thus, the process of organizational management requires a wide variety of activities designed to achieve certain objectives. It can also involve how members of an organization behave and relate with one another daily (Janssen, 2000). Therefore, managers need to arrange organizational features in a way that promotes free movement and interactions within the office. Effective intervention activities should be readily available as part of work setting to cater for an emergency.

Employees are the major office occupiers with certain degree of interconnectedness to administrative activities; therefore, the feature of a physical office arrangement can affect the behavior of an individual employee (Robertson, 1994). Thus, a good work setting with a good supervisor’s support, comfortable furniture, ventilation, noiseless, light, effective communication, wide workspace, and health and safety measures will promote productivity and employee job continuity decision. However, from the existing studies, work setting is rarely employed as a factor for employee resource management. Therefore, work setting is used as an independent variable in this study.

H1: Work setting is positively related to job continuity decision

Social support

Gyasi et al. (2020) explained divergent empirical results concerning direct influence of social support on employees’ social stability. It was reported that social support is a supportive service given to employees to enhance wellbeing. Emotional, instrumental, and information supports are the components of social support that are meant to increase employees’ wellbeing. Emotional support is the act of care, empathy, and love given to an employee as a valuable person in the organization. In social psychology, instrumental support is an assistance given to old age people, people with disabilities as well as retirees to promote their wellbeing. Same is applicable in assisting employees with loss of a spouse, jobs, sickness, and other related disasters (Shaw & Gant, 2004).

Instrumental support is a tangible assistance given to employees to supplement means of livelihood or to restore some specific losses. Instrumental support is opposite to emotional support and is uniquely associated with employees’ wellbeing. Coulson, (2005) found that receiving social support positively affects employees’ wellbeing. The practical implication of social support is that it reduces stress, anxiety, and improves physical and emotional wellbeing of employees (Gyasi et al., 2020). Additionally, the benefits of social support in relation to emotional and instrumental supports are well established in medical and psychology research. Social support is not commonly employed in organizational behavioral study of this nature. Absence of social support studies in human resource management could have adverse effects on its practical implementation. Emotional and instrumental supports to employees play critical roles in job motivation and it should be an interesting area of study in human resource management (HRM). It is observed in prior studies that social support is not commonly practiced unlike other incentives to job. Hence, in this study, it is recommended that mangers and top executives should formulate employee management policy with regards to social support system. Therefore, this study highlights the need to place more emphasis on understanding the role of social support and the degree to which it yields a positive psychological effect on employees’ decision to job continuity. Hence, it is used as an independent variable in this study.

H2: Social support is positively related to job continuity decision

Regular annual leave

Regular annual leave is a family-friendly employment benefit program set aside to balance the relationship between work and rest period. It includes a time off program and work-stress relieves opportunity made available by an organization to promote work life balance and job efficiency (Mulvaney, 2014). The major rationale behind regular annual leave is to enhance job stress management. Regular annual leave is common in today’s work system with evidence indicating nearly 40% of organizations in the United States provide this benefits (Diaz & Wallick, 2009). Also, nearly 80% of employees do enjoy the benefit of annual leave either with pay or not pay (Stoddard-Dare et al., 2019). The most common types of employment leave include annual leave (vacation leave), sick leave, maternity/paternity leave, study leave and sabbatical leave (Stoddard-Dare et al., 2019). Disparity exists in the actual amount of leave/time off available to employees in different organizations as well as countries. Mulvaney (2014) found that organizations offer an average range of 3 to 7 weeks to employees annually. Typically, annual leave given to employees is usually a few days/weeks per year except in the case of sabbatical leave that ranges from several months to years (Mulvaney, 2014).

Sabbatical is an annual leave given to employees to work on a project during the time off and it is usually accompanied with pay. Sabbatical leave is often called accumulated leave. (Diaz & Wallick, 2009) found that sabbatical leave in academic and health occupations positively affect employees’ morale and feelings of rejuvenation in the workplace, including retention, job satisfaction, and health improvement. Regular annual leave is a form of job enrichment that promote improved performance by balancing the roles between work and leisure (Galinsky et al., 2011). However, annual leave is scarcely used in this type of study and it is hence employed as an independent variable.

H3: Regular annual leave is positively related to job continuity decision

Flexible work location

Flexible work location is a work arrangement that allows employees work in the place of their choices. It is also enabled employee combine work with other personal responsibilities. Mostly, it helps working parents fulfill the care giver’s responsibilities while at work (Galinsky et al., 2011). Flexible work location allows employees to spend more hours away from office while on duty. Some employers believe that the amount of hours spent at workplace indicates the level of employee efficiency and career dedication while others remain flexible in their thoughts (Damman & Henkens, 2020). However, the believe that flexible work location should be meant for working parents in the management career is over due, every employee irrespective of marital status has right to free time (Bal & Izak, 2020). Aside from the negative perception of some employers on flexible work location, some employees consider it as an effective work policy that promotes independence. Meanwhile, employees can develop job continuity decision based on the permission to enjoy flexible work location advantage.

Additionally, apart from the flexible work location arrangement, some organizations allow employees to substitute work hour flexibility with telecommuting. Telecommuting is a practice where an employee uses technology or information system to perform task at distance from the office. Employees can work at home doing other responsibilities without reducing the required amount of job quality and quantity. Flexible work location is an arrangement that pertains to job flexibility with the intention of promoting job satisfaction, autonomy, and performance (Lyttelton et al., 2020). Ter Hoeven and Van Zoonen, (2020) reported that flexible work location reduces absenteeism and improve work-family relationship. Therefore, flexible work location is used as an independent variable in this study.

H4: Flexible work location is positively related to job continuity decision

Above is the research model illustrating the relationship between ICSR and employee job continuity intention (Figure 1).

Methodology

Data Collection

This study adopts a quantitative research approach to study the relationship between ICSR and job continuity decision in public listed companies. Sample size was drawn from the available public listed company statistics in the Malaysian Stock Exchange. The selected respondents were both executive and non-executive full-time employees. Questionnaire was administered to each selected company (Sheehan, 2012) using a well-known online survey development tool. The initial data collection started by obtaining contact information from the company’s websites. Thereafter, an invitation letter and memo to participate in the survey were sent to the companies via electronic mail. Electronic mail provides an avenue for researchers to communicate with human resource manager of selected companies (Ruel et al., 2015). Data was collected via Google form; the Google form was a questionnaire instrument design to get responses from the selected respondents. The study adopted this method due to inability to have physical contact with the company’s representatives because of the ongoing COVID-19 movement restriction. The study faced the challenge of low response rate due to COVID-19 and the channel of distributing the questionnaire. Following the distribution of questionnaire links, researchers followed up the survey via telephone call and a remainder email seven days after the distribution. Follow up phone calls were also repeated 14 days later and continued until we got enough responses considered suitable for this pilot study. Out of 100 respondents selected for the preliminary study, 70 respondents completed the questionnaire which met the criteria of recommended sample size for the pilot study in quantitative research (Khamis & Kepler, 2010).

Instrument Development

Variables employed in this study were adopted from existing psychology and organization behavior studies (social support, work setting, regular annual leave, and flexible work location). Meanwhile, dependent variable; employee job continuity decision is a theoretical contribution intended to investigate job continuity decision of employees in the selected sector. Prior to distribution of the questionnaires, the adapted questionnaire instruments were validated using expertise from policy makers, practitioners, and academic staff in the form of face validity to ensure that the questionnaire items were correctly worded within the context of their usage. Minor adjustments and refinements were made based on the comments received (Goodman, 2001). The scale employed for this study was adapted from various relevant studies. For example, work setting 0.86 (Permadi et al., 2018), social support 0.85 (Lysaght et al., 2012), regular annual leave 0.71 (Aronsson & Gustafsson, 2005), flexible work location 0.83 (Giannikis & Mihail, 2011) and job continuity intention 0.74 (Thite & Russell, 2010). The questionnaire item scales were adapted due to their high internal consistency, that is, their Cronbach’s Alphas fulfilled the required threshold of 0.7 and above (see table 1). The scale consists of a five-point rating Likert scale whereby 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = Agree, and 5 = strongly agree.

Table 1 Frequency Table Summary Representing Employee’s Attributes
Year of experience	%	Education	%	Job position	%	Age	%	Gender	%
10-20 years	41.40%	Bachelor’s Degree	54.30%	Executive Employee	68.60%	41-50 years old	52.90%	Female	61.40%

Employee Attributes

Employee attributes are qualities and natural characteristics that distinguished one employee from another. It is a positive trait or characteristic that enhanced employee’s career opportunity. To know the frequency of employee’s attributes, the study conducts a descriptive analysis (Table 1). Years of experience, education, job position, age, and gender are the attributes considered in this study.

Data Analysis

Normality and Reliability Test

As part of the established procedures in multiple regression analysis, this study validates the proposed research model by conducting a normality test to check whether the sample data has been drawn from a normality distributed population with some degree of tolerance (Salmerón Gómez et al., 2016). The rule of thumb in normality test is that a variable is normally distributed if its Skewness and Kurtosis have value between -1.0 and +1.0. Meaning that the relationship between the variables in this study exhibited a clear pattern of linearity followed by a reliability Cronbach’s Alpha test which was used to check internal consistency of the questionnaire items. Table 2 contains summary of normality validation and Cronbach’s Alpha.

Table 2 Summary of Normality and Reliability Test
Variable	Skewness	Kurtosis	Cronbach’s Alpha
Work Setting	-.110	-.392	0.826
Social Support	-.817	.931	0.885
Regular Annual Leave	-.447	-.302	0.905
Flexible Work Location	-.258	-.560	0.894
JCD	-532	.112	0.927

In the Table 2, The Cronbach’s Alpha value in this study is above 0.70, an indication that the questionnaire items is reliable and suitable for the study (Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). Both tests were conducted via the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software (Table 2).

Findings

Hypothesis Testing/Correlation Analysis

To test the four hypotheses proposed in this study (see table 3), multiple regression analysis was conducted using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Version 25. Regression analysis has been instrumental in modern research methodology hence, it is widely accepted within the management research (Green, 1991). Regression analysis is considered suitable in predicting the statistical influence of ICSR on job continuity intention. It is also appropriate in analyzing small sample size (Khamis & Kepler, 2010). Additionally, the research model is linear according to the highlights in Figure 1. Therefore, multiple regression analysis allows this study to evaluate statistical significance of each ICSR variables on employee job continuity decision.

Table 3 Correlation Coefficient With VIF
Model	Unstandardized Coefficients B	Std. Error	Standardized Coefficients Beta	t	Sig.	Zero Order	Correlations Partial	Part	Collinearity Statistics Tolerance	VIF
(Constant)	0.272	0.739		0.367	0.714
Work Settings	0.174	0.161	0.116	1.079	0.284	0.288	0.133	0.109	0.890	1.124
Social Support	0.144	0.120	0.145	1.204	0.233	0.364	0.148	0.122	0.708	1.412
Regular Annual Leave	0.257	0.106	0.289	2.432	0.018	0.392	0.289	0.246	0.726	1.378
Flexible Work Location	0.385	0.116	0.345	3.317	0.001	0.391	0.380	0.336	0.945	1.058

However, according to table (3) hypothesis one (H1) indicates that work setting has a negative effect on job continuity decision as P Value is = 0.284 instead of P to be ≤ 0.05. The proposed Hypothesis H1 is thus, rejected. Hypothesis two (H2) indicates that social support negatively affects employee job continuity decision as P Value is = 0.233 which is above the accepted threshold of p ≤ 0.05. Hence, Hypothesis H2 is rejected. However, hypothesis three (H3), regular annual leave has a positive relationship with job continuity decision as P Value is = 0.018 which is less than 0.05 (p<0.05( suggesting a significant positive relationship between regular annual leave and employee job continuity decision This hypothesis is thus accepted. Hypothesis four (H4) shows that flexible work location has a positive relationship with job continuity decision according to the P Value of 0.001 which is less than 0.05 (p < 0.05). Hence Hypothesis H4 is accepted.

Summary of Correlation Analysis

Correlation analysis is an important step preceding the regression analysis, its role is to validate the research hypotheses. The results in Table 4 show the level of significant correlation between independent variables and dependent variable in this study.

Table 4 (Summary of Correlation Analysis)
	WS1	SS1	RAL1	FWL1	JCD1
Work setting	1
Social support	0.032	1
Regular annual leave	0.073	0.0001	1
Flexible work location	0.080	0.323	0.921	1
Job continuity decision	0.0162	0.0022	0.0011	0.0011	1

Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a statistical technique that is used to check whether the means of two or more groups of variables are significantly different from one and others by comparing the means of different samples. In this study, the aggregate variability of the data set is significant as Table 5 shows that F-count is 14.158 with level of significance of 0.000. It shows that the given data set has a statistical influence on the study’s variables. Also, the variance between the mean squares is significant and proof that there is no similarity within the data set. Decision: the study accept the hypotheses since the p value associated with the F ratio is less than 0.05 at α level and reject the hypotheses whose α level is greater than 0.05. In this case, the p value equals .000, which is significant. Therefore, the data output is meaningful since the overall F ratio is statistically significant at 0.000.

Table 5 Anova
		Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig
Between People		682.709	69	9.894
Within People	Between Items	221.835	31	7.156	14.158	0.000
	Residual	1081.133	2139	0.505
	Total	1302.969	2170	0.600
Total		1985.678	2239	0.887
Grand Mean = 3.6469

Summary of Regression Model

Table 6 represents the coefficient of correlation; (R) measures the strength of the linear relationship between the four independent variables with dependent variable. The value of R is 0.794 which proves that independent variables positively influenced dependent variable. The value of R2 is 0.631 which shows that the linear relationship in this model can explain 63.1% of employee job continuity decision.

Table 6 Summary of Regression Model
Model	R	R2	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	0.794a	0.631	0.393	0.71790
a. Predictors: (Constant),
b. Dependent Variable: JCD

Table 6: Testing the Goodness of Fit: Coefficient of Correlation (R) and Coefficient of Determination (R2): Result of R and R².

Discussion

This study examines how employee job continuity intention in the public listed companies influenced ICSR practice. Existing studies on ICSR posit that job incentives and wellbeing programme have a critical role to play in solving the problem of employee burnout and voluntary job resignation (Oruh et al., 2020). The results of this study suggest that ICSR influences employee job continuity decision However, not all ICSR factors employed in this study significantly influence job continuity decision. For example, work setting has no positive relationship with job continuity intention; this could be due to poor management of internal organization structure, inadequate experience in work setting, wrong inferences and understandings deduced from ICSR practice itself.

Management of organization performance is hinged upon the continuity of employee and without putting necessary resources in place of work, sustainable performance would remain a challenge for business organization. Study conducted by Maley et al. (2020) agrees to the findings that without effective employee management, poor performance is inevitable. Social support is another ICSR factor that has no positive influence on job continuity decision in this study. Meanwhile, organizations without social support for employees may face deviant behavior since social support is all about empathy, love, and care. This findings is similar to the result of (Gyasi et al., 2020).

On the other hand, regular annual leave is an important factor in predicting employee job continuity decision. Regular annual leave plays a crucial role in employee job continuity as it provides employees some chances to maximize extra time outside the work. Regular annual leave also enables employees to be more committed to their jobs. Adequate leave opportunities enable employees to have a better enjoyment of work life balance and to make a better decision on job continuity. Study conducted by Mulvaney, (2014) suggested that regular annual leave is essential in maintaining high quality work life. Regular annual leave has good implications for employee job continuity decision because it can enhance sustainable performance of organization. Hence, it is critical that public listed companies and other organizations promote regular annual leave as possible.

Flexible work location is another factor that positively influences job continuity decision This notion is according to the findings of (Bainbridge & Townsend, 2020) which highlighted the role of flexible work location on employee performance. Without adapting to the latest work style that promotes job and life satisfaction, organizations would have to rely on traditional work culture that easily discourages employee job continuity intention. Lack of job continuity decision would hinder operational, financial, and strategic goals of business organizations. Decisions to allow flexible work location lies in the ability to promote work life balance. Prior research also testifies to this view (Mullins et al., 2020). In the case of public listed company, the result is great since employees are becoming interesting in work life balance as a state-of-the-art to quality of work life. Hence, ICSR practice and its underlying factor of flexible work location is still undergoing organizational awareness. In fact, in the context of public listed company, many organizations have yet to implement all the relevant capabilities to leverage employee job continuity decision. Other studies have indicated that organizations are not fully ready to practice ICSR compared to high rate of external corporate social responsibility practice in the country (Ahmad et al., 2018). Lack of preparedness of global business organizations to practice ICSR can be attributed to over concentration on external corporate social responsibility practice to fulfill regulatory requirements and protect reputation.

Implications for Theory

Organizations need to develop a good understanding of ICSR to establish a good relationship with employees. Employee sustainability is increasingly becoming indispensable, given the high competitive nature of the present business environment (Janssen, 2000). Besides, employee turnover challenge is an obvious problem facing organizations. Public listed companies need to shift towards sustainable performance by focusing on labour sustainability. As an extension of attribution theory, employee job continuity decision can be a new frontier for public listed company’s resource capability advantage (Buss, 1978). That is, public listed company can develop a competitive advantage from employee job continuity decision if the behavior of employee towards job retention is favorable. And that the favorability of job continuity is attached to ICSR practice. The more sustainable, valuable, and innovative human resource of the organization is, the more successful is their operations. Study conducted by Kwon and Ahn (2020) also supports this argument by highlighting that organizations are striving to adopt sustainable method of production to boost a competitive edge and win rivalry competition. Employee job continuity decision will improve public listed company’s financial gains whilst concurrently reducing cost associated with employee turnover.

As new challenges emerge due to advanced technology innovation, new resource capabilities in form of employee stability that will drive changes towards competitive advantage should be consider necessary. However, attribution theory is still relevant today, particularly in understanding behavior of employees from the feelings, beliefs, and intention attributed to ICSR practice. Therefore, attribution theory is concerned about how employees attribute ICSR practice to a reason for job continuity. ICSR and job continuity are capabilities that can tackle the wave of job burnout challenge facing employees. Tackling the problem of voluntary job discontinuity in a socially sustainable manner has thus enhanced what constitutes a sustainable performance. This evidence increases the notion of every organization by conceptualized sustainable ways of tackling human resource challenges. Recent studies support that more companies are shifting away from the traditional method of task performance and begin to adopt a sustainable style of operation that will promote a competitive advantage.

Implications for Managers

Employees have other expectations from organizations different from the salary; they tend to look at their jobs as source of enjoyment and satisfaction. Some employees look at it as a determinant of quality of life with expectation to commit to those organizations that met their job needs. This study provides practitioner with those factor that can improve their employees' job continuity decision (e.g., work setting, social support, regular annual leave, and flexible work location). Our finding will promote the implementation of ICSR across all forms of business ownership including small and medium size businesses. This will ease the loss of resourceful employee while human resource practitioners can use it as a strategic planning for a sustainable performance.

Moreover, managers need to be conscious of employees’ happiness and commitments to job, because it is happiness that promotes commitment and job continuity decision. Managers are advised to allocate more financial resources to the practice of ICSR to promote job continuity decision. This study finds that regular annual leave and flexible work location have positive influence on employee job continuity decision. It is obvious the reason both factors impact on employee job continuity decision; for example, regular annual leave allows employees to be better focus on returning to work because the leave affords them to rest and take care of personal issues that have been unattended for a while. Likewise, flexible work location allows ease in accomplishing an office task. Therefore, employees would prefer to stay for long in organizations that do not compel them to show up in the office everyday as long as the job is done according to the expectation. If organizations provide the necessary incentives which promote job continuity decision, expected performance value is certain to be achieved.

Therefore, organizations irrespective of their listing status should not only focus on profit maximization, but also increase spending on ICSR practice to promote job continuity intention. Human resource managers and other related personnel should be actively involved in promoting ICSR towards job continuity decision. Secondly, active participation of labour union and other activists should be readily available to negotiate with organizations to spend more on employee management activity like ICSR practice for a sustainable job security. In addition, job continuity decision should be promoted since voluntary employees’ resignation can potentially lead to exposure of trade secrets if the concerned employees were found to work for the rivalry organizations.

Limitations and Future Research

The study used a small sample size because of low response rate engendered by the COVID-19 movement control order (MCO) at the time of data collection. Consequently, research outcomes may not be generalizable due to this problem. Future studies should employ larger sample size to make research findings more acceptable. Concerning methods, future studies could use qualitative methods instead of a quantitative method used in this study, and other factors that could influence ICSR practice on job continuity decision should be explored. Investigations should be extended to private companies as there is a lack of studies in this area. Focus should also be on non-listed companies (SMEs) and findings from such studies can be used to promote cross-sectional studies since ICSR is a key to the survival and sustainability of human resources management.

Conclusion

As the turnover rate keeps increasing, this study considered the fact that companies can retain most of their lost employees if they could abide by the findings of this study. In this study, we explained that good ICSR practice is one of the main promoters of job continuity decision. Although, existing studies have been looking at compensation and benefits, rewards and promotion, work life balance, leadership, and career development as the main causes of employee turnover; meanwhile this study explored other dimensions that could influence employee job continuity using work setting, social support, regular annual leave, and flexible work location. These factors are rarely employed in employee retention related studies. Organizations that want to promote job continuity decision and retain their valuable employee should consider offering a good ICSR service that includes work setting, social support, regular annual leave, and flexible work location. We believe it is a valuable contribution to the existing human resource studies. Nevertheless, (Zenefits, 2019) reported that 18.63% of managers said recruitment is easier than employee retention. This is one of the reasons for analyzing the potential influence of work setting, social support, regular annual leave, and flexible work location on job continuity decision and it was found that regular annual leave and flexible work location strongly predict job continuity decision. It means that public listed companies in Malaysia are readily able to practice ICSR for job continuity decision. Moreover, all business organizations irrespective of listing status can immensely benefit from ICSR practice. Despite its small sample size, the findings of this research make good theoretical and managerial contributions. Also, employee job continuity decision could fit into United Nation Sustainable Development Goals Agenda. Business organizations can achieve sustainable economic performance whilst reducing employee turnover cost by encouraging job continuity decision. For example, labour intensive organizations can implement ICSR factors like work setting, social support, regular annual leave, and flexible work location to promote job continuity decision and increase performance efficiency. Performance efficiency could lead to better human resource management and competitive advantage. ICSR and job continuity decision can also promote product and service innovation. Likewise, job continuity decision can be a strategy to capture and utilize human skill for business survival and capability. Despite the persistent problem of employee turnover in the business organizations, managements seem to lack courage to increase finance on employee management. Therefore, public listed companies and others could possibly increase investment on ICSR practice to promote employee’s commitment to job continuity.

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Appendix

Table A1 Summary of Indicator Scores
Variable	Factor	Mean	SD
Work Setting α = 0.826	I maintained good working relationship with my colleagues. I enjoy good health and safety benefits at my organization I have strong connection with people in my organization. My organization is a friendly environment My job improves my emotional status. My office set up make it convenience for me to perform. My job improves my physical appearance.	4.1714 4.0000 3.8571 3.7571 3.7857 4.0000 3.9429	.61317 .81650 .74767 .78824 .84943 .76139 .89904
Social Support α = 0.885	I feel comfortable talking to my supervisor on personal problems. I constantly receive counselling and support each time I feel bored about life I sometimes received social service benefits that promote my purpose in life. My organization shows love and care regardless of what is happening to me. My organization constantly provides necessary job and life supporting information I can count on my supervisor to console me when I feel upset.	3.4143 3.0571 3.1571 3.2143 3.2714 3.2857	.92459 .97632 1.01633 .86632 .96190 .93472
Regular Annual Leave α = 0.905	My annual leave helps me to maintain work life balance. The number of leave days matches my work efforts. I enjoy my regular annual leave with pay. My organization mandate annual leave for us. The regular annual leave helps me to manage job stress. The annual leave has a positive effect on my job. My leave is an employment benefit.	3.2143 3.1571 3.2429 3.2571 3.6286 3.7000 3.4857	1.03410 0.95759 0.98445 0.98813 0.90364 0.89037 1.01785
Flexible Work Location α = 0.894	Flexible work location helps me to manage work and family effectively. My work location improves my work life balance. Flexibility of work location gives autonomy to do my work. Proper time allocation for different activities helps me to concentrate on my tasks. Convenience work location reduces burnout and absenteeism. Flexible work location makes me to be more productive. Flexible work location increases my job satisfaction.	3.8857 3.9571 3.6714 3.7571 3.7429 3.8571 3.9286	0.82608 0.75057 0.91242 0.84159 0.94310 0.88932 0.78614
Job Continuity Intention α= 0.927	I would like to continue working for my current organization for several years to come. It is likely that I will continue to work for my current organization for several years to come. Continuity of my job gives me social security. I’m proud to be part of my organization. My management provides all that made me proud of my job.	3.8143 3.6857 3.9714 4.0429 3.7857	0.92145 1.01500 0.76084 0.85864 0.99116