A COMPREHENSIVE CASE STUDY OF ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF TURNOVER IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY APPROACH

Abstract

Administrative staff make up approximately 80% of the higher education workforce, yet their experiences with turnover and retention remain far less studied than those of faculty. This three-phase dissertation uses an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to examine administrative staff turnover at a higher education satellite campus through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). SDT proposes that the satisfaction or frustration of three basic psychological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, fundamentally influences motivation, well-being, and behavioral outcomes including turnover intention. The first phase of this study comprised a qualitative inquiry drawing on semi-structured interviews with nine former administrative staff members who voluntarily left a satellite campus between 2021 and 2025. A hybrid thematic analysis revealed the systematic frustration of all three basic psychological needs. Autonomy was eroded through centralized decision-making and limited workplace flexibility. Competence was frustrated by inadequate training, stalled career progression, and monotonous tasks. Relatedness was weakened by isolation, communication barriers, and geographic distance from the main campus. Three emergent constructs, asymmetric power dynamics, forced generalism, and benign neglect, explain how institutional design concentrates decision-making authority at the main campus while rendering satellite staff organizationally invisible, producing the structural conditions for need frustration that individual managerial interventions cannot address. The subsequent phase utilized a cross-sectional quantitative design with validated instruments including the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale, Maslach Burnout Inventory, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, Organizational Career Growth Scale, Work–Life Balance Scale, and Turnover Intention Scale with administrative staff (N = 447). Contrary to expectations, satellite and main campus staff did not differ significantly in need satisfaction, need frustration, or turnover intention, suggesting that need thwarting operates institution-wide rather than as a satellite-specific phenomenon. Hierarchical regression indicated that both need satisfaction (β = -.372, p < .001) and need frustration (β = .339, p < .001) emerged as significant independent predictors of turnover intention in the final model, with need frustration explaining incremental variance beyond need satisfaction (ΔR² = .061, p < .001). Overall need satisfaction showed the strongest negative correlation with turnover intention (r = −.603), while lack of career development showed the strongest positive association among stressors (r = .68). Parallel mediation analyses indicated that organizational stressors influenced turnover intention through both need satisfaction and need frustration; however, indirect effects via need frustration were consistently and significantly stronger across all models, supporting a pattern of differential rather than equivalent mediation. Overall, findings support a dual-process framework in which both reduced need support and active need thwarting contribute independently to turnover intention. The final phase provided a theory-informed assessment of an institutional well-being program using the Theory Coding Scheme (TCS) to evaluate alignment with SDT principles. Documentary analysis of program materials and public-facing web pages, combined with administrator interviews, established that the program received a TCS score of 2 out of 19 indicators, substantially below the average for occupational health interventions. A practitioner-led design philosophy grounded in the SAMHSA 8 Dimensions content taxonomy rather than behavior change theory, combined with a centralized oneness mandate producing uniform delivery across all campus locations, explains why the program's functional maturity has not translated into theoretical alignment with the psychological conditions driving turnover. The program functions as a thermometer rather than a treatment, monitoring individual well-being through participation metrics and health claims data without engaging the structural conditions that produce need frustration. Collectively, this multi-phase case study extends SDT to an understudied population and organizational context, providing empirical evidence that satellite campus structures systematically affect psychological need satisfaction through identifiable structural mechanisms. The findings demonstrate that need frustration, not merely need dissatisfaction, is the primary driver of administrative staff turnover, and that this mechanism operates institution-wide rather than exclusively at the satellite level. Current institutional wellness programming, assessed against the Theory Coding Scheme, addresses individual symptoms rather than the structural conditions responsible for departure. These results provide institutions with an empirical foundation and theoretical framework for building psychologically supportive administrative environments that reduce turnover costs and sustain the student-facing services that satellite campuses exist to provide.