Moving Out and Back In: Unpacking Boomerang Employment and its Consequences

Abstract

As employee mobility drastically increases for the modern workforce, returning to one’s previous employer (“boomerang” employment) is increasingly becoming a career pattern pursued by both job seekers and organizations. Having crossed inter-organizational boundaries at least twice (upon turnover and re-entry), boomerangs characterize a unique and understudied type of mobility within and between organizations. Five papers comprising this symposium explore (1) what boomerangs bring to the table both in terms of their own performance behaviors and their influence on the behaviors of their coworkers and (2) how boomerang employment differs from other types of employee mobility patterns, e.g., stayers, multiple movers, and alumni who do not become boomerangs. Leveraging the hybrid nature of boomerang employment, this symposium seeks to deepen our understanding of the boomerang phenomenon while contributing to broader scholarship on employee mobility, careers, and human resources. In with the Old? Examining When Boomerang Employees Outperform New Hires Presenter: JR Keller; Cornell U. Presenter: Rebecca Rheinhardt Kehoe; Cornell U. Presenter: Matthew James Bidwell; U. of Pennsylvania Returning Employees: They Are Back But Are They Here To Stay? Presenter: John E. Delery; U. of Arkansas Presenter: Dorothea Roumpi; Pennsylvania State U. Presenter: Samantha A. Conroy; Colorado State U. You Can’t Go Home Again: Cooperative Performance Behavior Between Boomerang and Incumbent Employees Presenter: Thorsten Grohsjean; Bocconi U. Presenter: Gina Dokko; U. of California, Davis Presenter: Philip Yang; U. of Tuebingen Are Boomerangs More Like Movers or Stayers? Somewhere in Between? Or Something Else? Presenter: Rhett Andrew Brymer; U. of Cincinnati Presenter: Yeongsu Kim; U. of Massachusetts - Amherst Presenter: John Mawdsley; HEC Paris Presenter: Peter D Sherer; U. of Calgary Presenter: Robert Leonard; Miami U. Ohio Going Backwards to Move Forward: The Link Between Career Competencies and Boomerang Employment Presenter: Rebecca M. Paluch; Sauder School of Business, U. of British Columbia Presenter: Yuna Cho; Yale School of Management