Background: Development of technologies and high pace of changes made a modern organization highly dependent on the expertise and assistance of technology specialists. To be able to compete and be cost efficient, but at the same time be on the cutting-edge of technology development, is an essential requirement for doing business in the contemporary world. Moreover, this requirement became a solid ground for the emergence of a technical consulting industry and a new type of human resources - technical consultants. On the one hand, technical consultants are the main resources of technical consulting organizations, but on the other hand, technical consultants can cause harm to technical consulting organization, particularly, in the case of voluntary turnover. Aim: Through the qualitative analysis of the four technical consultants’ voluntary turnover stories in Sweden and based on the literature review, this master thesis opens up the door to the world of technical consultants. The aim of this work is to seek new insights into the problem of voluntary turnover in a new context of technical consultants and discover what role multiple identities and perceived promises play in voluntary turnover decision. Results: Technical consultants are a type of knowledge workers with non-traditional work arrangements. Empirical evidence demonstrates that technical consultants’ decision to quit can be described using "Eight motivational forces", but the framework should be extended, due to developing multiple identities and receiving perceived promises from multiple sources.

High rates of employee turnover in the legal sector are an internationally recognized problem. Despite persistent efforts from business law firms, many lawyers choose to leave their employer. This suggests these business law firms struggle with talent management and employee retention. Based on several concepts from organizational theory, this study investigates which motivational forces contribute to employee retention at Swedish business law firms. Data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with six respondents; working as associates, senior associate and partner at their respective firms. The empirical findings show that affective, contractual and calculative forces contribute most to lawyers choosing to stay at their law firms. Meanwhile, normative, alternative, behavioral, moral/ethical and constituent factors contributed little or nothing to employee retention. Complementary factors such as compensation, fringe benefits and work-life balance were also not regarded as decisive in the lawyers’ decisions to remain.