Does turnover destination matter? Differentiating antecedents of occupational change versus organizational change

Abstract

In this study, we seek to understand why some employees decide to leave organizations to change occupations instead of either changing organizations while staying in the same occupation or staying in the same job at the same organization. Moving beyond the existing focus on antecedents of occupational commitment and occupation withdrawal intentions, we employ an occupational embeddedness framework to examine five occupational factors as potential drivers of occupational change. Using a large dataset of 3201 professionals, our results indicate that several factors underlying the overarching concept of occupational embeddedness (e.g., wage level, non-core job duties, occupational investment, and moonlighting) were related to individuals' likelihood of changing occupations compared to changing organizations within the same occupation or staying at the same organization. Our findings suggest that specific turnover destination may be important to understanding why people leave jobs. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, along with practical implications at the occupational, organizational, and individual levels regarding how occupational turnover may be prevented.