Some Factors Influencing Labour Turnover: Personnel Managers' Views in Iraq

Labour turnover has been recognised and studied as a management problem for several decades. Interest in the issue increased significantly at the beginning of the 20th century, at about the same time as the scientific management movement began to develop. Over 1,500 publications on the topic of turnover are estimated to have appeared in this century. With this number of turnover studies published, it is surprising that there are still such large gaps in our understanding of the phenomenon. Not only are there more unanswered than answered questions about turnover, but we are only now learning the nature of some of the most important questions. In a small effort to fill some of the gaps, this article reports results from part of a large study of turnover amongst blue‐collar workers in manufacturing industry in Iraq.