Does Turnover Spread through Network Ties? Network Turnover Contagion as Resource Loss

Abstract

Does turnover travel through social networks and, if so, how? Extant literature suggests that turnover can spread from one departing employee to another through a social influence process. While this assumes the existence of social relations, we lack understanding of whether and how different types of relations affect the contagion process. We build on the turnover literature, which conceives social relations as resources individuals lose when their contacts leave, to distinguish between different types of social relations (instrumental, expressive, energy) and resource providers (peers, supervisors) and examine how their loss relates to turnover contagion. We draw on a unique network dataset of 1,432 employees in the Chinese subsidiary of a Dutch multinational including employees’ date of voluntary departure (271 turnover events). We estimate models inspired from the Relational Event Framework to trace the spread of departures through social ties over time and account for the effect of each departure on the networks of remaining employees. Our results are consistent with considering turnover contagion as resource loss. However, they also suggest that contagion is triggered when losing access to specific resources from particular providers. We elaborate on our results to propose a theory of network turnover contagion.