The End is Just the Beginning: Turnover Events and Their Impact Across Space and Time

Abstract

Turnover is not only the ending of an employment relationship, it is also the potential beginning of another cycle of turnover. In fact, turnover events can increase, decrease, or have no effect on turnover cognitions and decisions of those that remain in the organization. Despite this, we know very little about what happens to organizational members after turnover events occur. To address this gap, we develop Turnover Event Theory (TET). TET is a multi-level theory that describes how turnover events activate individual and collective attention and the subsequent appraisal and deliberation processes arising from turnover events. By describing the psychological and social processes that follow a turnover event, TET provides a needed explanation of how a turnover event may facilitate or restrain downstream turnover events. We develop specific propositions to better understand this phenomenon and offer guidelines for future theoretical and empirical work.