Organizational Exit Research Articles

“None of Us Wanted to be at This Party, But What a Guest List”: How Technology Workers Position Themselves on LinkedIn Following Layoffs

Mass layoffs offer a unique and understudied context to understand how affected workers communicate the involuntary, collective nature of their organizational exit. In this study, we explored the communicative strategies that workers affected by mass layoffs in the technology industry used to engage in impression management by analyzing LinkedIn posts ( N = 362). Our findings showed that workers engaged in proactive impression management by drawing on targets of identification (such as positioning themselves within the collective group of affected workers and highlighting their former membership with prestigious companies) to minimize blame for their layoff and signal their employability. Our findings also suggest that, amid environmental shock and in digital environments, individuals enact remarkably similar communicative strategies to one another, suggesting that this type of organizational exit announcement is a distinct emergent genre for impression management. We discuss our findings’ implications for our understanding of organizational exit and work-related online impression management behavior.

What is this thing called misfit? A systematic review into how employee misfit has been defined and researched

AbstractSince 2015, there was a significant surge of interest in employee misfit. These studies demonstrate that although misfit is generally associated with negative outcomes such as organizational exit, social isolation, and depressive states, it can also be viewed more positively as an opportunity for job crafting, growth, and development. In these studies, misfit has been conceptualized, defined, and measured in a myriad of different ways making the interpretation of results problematic. This systematic review investigates how scholars have approached misfit with the goals of documenting and organizing the various ways it has been conceptualized and measured to highlight the main themes and forms of empirical misfit research. The systematic review surfaced 107 studies in 91 papers investigating workplace misfit within the domain of person-environment fit. Close analysis of the design and construction of these studies reveals that misfit has largely been conceptualized atomistically or as value incongruence and there is considerable variation in the way that researchers have defined the concept. It has mainly been measured using atomistic and molar measures rather than molecular ones, which are more suited to misfit investigation. The paper ends with a discussion of the elusiveness of misfit with an argument that it is an umbrella concept beyond definition. Instead, researchers take perspectives on the topic and six different perspectives of employee misfit are identified and defined. Avenues for future research are outlined for each perspective. There is also a discussion of the methodological challenges currently limiting misfit research.

The Career Consequences of Workplace Protest Participation: Theory and Evidence from the NFL “Take a Knee” Movement

Despite recognizing potential ramifications for employees who protest in the workplace, researchers rarely explore the career consequences that stem from such instances of workplace protest participation. We integrated research on employee activism, workplace deviance, and careers to theorize that workplace protest represents a perceived deviation from workplace norms that can influence an individual’s organizational and labor market mobility outcomes. We investigated this premise with the 2016 National Football League “take a knee” protests as a strategic research setting. The results indicate that protesting is associated with an increase in organizational exit although this effect is moderated by the degree to which the organization is sensitive to the underlying social movement (with an organization’s movement sensitivity operationalized with a four-part index composed of the team’s managers, personnel decision makers, owners, and customers). Protesting also is associated with labor market sorting across organizations as players who protest are more likely to make subsequent transitions to more movement-sensitive teams compared with players who do not protest. Overall, our findings offer contributions for research on employee activism, workplace deviance, and careers.

The Career Consequences of Workplace Protest Participation: Theory and Evidence from the NFL “Take a Knee” Movement

Despite recognizing potential ramifications for employees who protest in the workplace, researchers rarely explore the career consequences that stem from such instances of workplace protest participation. We integrated research on employee activism, workplace deviance, and careers to theorize that workplace protest represents a perceived deviation from workplace norms that can influence an individual’s organizational and labor market mobility outcomes. We investigated this premise with the 2016 National Football League “take a knee” protests as a strategic research setting. The results indicate that protesting is associated with an increase in organizational exit although this effect is moderated by the degree to which the organization is sensitive to the underlying social movement (with an organization’s movement sensitivity operationalized with a four-part index composed of the team’s managers, personnel decision makers, owners, and customers). Protesting also is associated with labor market sorting across organizations as players who protest are more likely to make subsequent transitions to more movement-sensitive teams compared with players who do not protest. Overall, our findings offer contributions for research on employee activism, workplace deviance, and careers.

Breathing New Life into Organizational Mortality Research: A Multi-Theoretic Treatment

This discussion focuses on the importance of understanding organizational mortality and argues for a renewed focus on this critical area of research. Organizations have changed in fundamental ways since the previous era of organizational mortality research and require a fresh look if we are to understand how these changes might impact the risks and consequences of failure. Furthermore, the tendency of organizational exit rates to cluster around recessionary periods would suggest that refocusing on the subject now could be particularly prescient. To this end, a number of theoretical perspectives are reviewed and possible extensions are proposed. Potential avenues for theory synthesis and integration are discussed.

Resisting and Persisting through Organizational Exit: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Disclosing Sexual Harassment in Collegiate Debate

Collegiate debate has documented extensive problems with sexual harassment. This manuscript uses the first author’s layered account of sexual harassment experienced as a collegiate debater, her transition to a different university, and the management of private information with her family. Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory and a plethora of studies provide a theoretical lens of the first author’s autoethnographic experience. We advance CPM theory by examining how young adult children manage their privacy through constructing more rigid privacy boundaries than their adolescent counterparts and provide the first look at how disclosure can both enable and constrain victims/survivors of sexual harassment, as well as interrogate the way in which survivors can own their experiences and perpetrators be held accountable within the debate community.

Invest until the End? Examining Camp Counselor Experiences of Inevitable Exit, Identification, and Support

This research examined how camp counselors anticipate and experience inevitable exit from roles centrally characterized as requiring intensive emotional work. This study extended previous inquiry on planned exit from organizations, examining the way known exit shapes socialization, identification, and social support in helping professions. The researchers analyzed counselor membership and exit experiences through three primary themes regarding inevitable exit, identification, and support. This study theoretically contributes to current scholarship on organizational exit and offers practical insight regarding member care in the workplace, specifically demonstrating that members often hyper-invest or completely withdraw as they anticipate inevitable exit from emotionally-intensive roles.

Making Sense of Leaders’ Exits: Extending Exit Socialization Research through Sensemaking

ABSTRACT Changes in leadership are common in organizations, bringing about change and uncertainty for remaining organizational members. Organizational exit research commonly examines exit experiences from the perspective of exiting organizational members. We utilize sensemaking theory to explore remaining organizational members’ experiences surrounding a leader’s exit, thereby contributing to and extending this body of literature. We collected narratives from 53 participants who experienced a leader’s exit using a qualitative online survey. Results of our thematic analysis identify two important sensemaking experiences: learning about the leader’s exit and using cues to anticipate the future. Our discussion includes theoretical implications for sensemaking theory, organizational socialization, and studying remaining member experiences as a part of the organizational exit process.

Disrupting institutional erasure: Organizational exit, remembrance, value, and the need to matter

AbstractNearing the end of my career, this narrative reflects my thoughts as I enter unknown territory—exiting my postsecondary institution and entering retirement. After a lifetime of working, this piece lays bare my (a) thoughts about being a Black female professor continually fighting for credibility in an academic war zone during my career and (b) apprehension as I ponder the aging process and what the future holds. My desire is not only to be accorded faculty emeritus status but to be remembered as an asset. Don't we all want to be viewed as valuable? Consistent with the scholarship about psychological needs to matter, after retirement, I want to reflect on my career believing my colleagues remember the importance of my presence, their ability to depend on me, and how much better academic life would be where I still on board.

Examining the Experiences of Remaining Employees after a Coworker Dismissal: Initial Message Characteristics, Information Seeking, Uncertainty, and Perceived Social Costs

Organizational exit can be turbulent. This study examines the communication surrounding coworker dismissal, including how remaining employees learn about a coworker’s dismissal and what predicts remaining employees’ information seeking, uncertainty, and perceptions of social costs related to information seeking. Statistical and content analyses were conducted on survey data gathered from 220 participants. Remaining employees most often learned about their coworker’s dismissal from another coworker or the remaining employees’ immediate supervisor; via individual, face-to-face meetings; with moderate formality; at some point within a day of the dismissal; with varying content. Age predicted uncertainty and perceived social costs of information seeking. Message characteristics predicted uncertainty, while interaction frequency predicted the perceived social costs of information seeking. Uncertainty did not predict information-seeking strategy use. Greater perceived social costs predicted less overt questioning and greater observing and testing. This study extends uncertainty reduction and management theories and offers managers advice about communicating coworker terminations.

Broadening Vision Around Values: An Integrative Two-Factor Theory of Workplace Value Congruence

Value congruence is an important determinant of human behavior in organizations. It influences positive states for workers (e.g., a sense of belonging, job satisfaction, and positive affect) and is beneficial for organizational work practices (e.g., commitment, citizenship behaviors, and tenure). Conversely, value incongruence leads to negative states (e.g., out-groups, organizational exit, and depressive symptoms). To date, values have been conceptualized context-free (e.g., human or personal values) or disaggregatedly in the work environment (e.g., work values, political values, leadership values, and cultural values) and value congruence has been viewed almost exclusively as a positive construct. Based on the underlying theories of variation theory, salient value similarity hypothesis, self-categorization theory, and signaling theory, and adopting the ‘similarity leads to attraction’ and ‘dissimilarity leads to repulsion’ hypotheses, we develop an integrative two-factor theory of value congruence. This model integrates work, political, cultural, and leadership values, and conceptualizes the impact of congruency and incongruency as two separate psychological processes. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research.

Human Capital Flow: Investigating Employee Movement Into and Out of Organizations

This symposium includes five papers that showcase the broadening range of research on human capital flow, or overall employee movement into and out of organizations (Call et al; 2015; Nyberg & Ployhart, 2013; Reilly et al., 2014). The first two papers incorporate employee inflow, looking at specific groups of employees entering the organization as well as how staffing models, corporate culture, and reputational crises influence hiring rates and job openings. The next two papers address employee outflow, investigating predictors of turnover intentions and how organizations can manage offboarding and employee exit. The final paper examines how inflow practices influence outflow destination. Taken together, the papers in this symposium use a variety of methods including theoretical development, quantitative analysis, and qualitative analysis to reflect the importance of understanding antecedents and outcomes associated with human capital flow. Refugee Entry into Organizations: Understanding Divergent Staffing Models and Onboarding Presenter: Vickie Coleman Gallagher; Department of Management, Cleveland State U. Presenter: Karen Dunwoodie; Deakin U. Presenter: Tracy Hopkins Porter; Cleveland State U. Reputation Disrupted: Organizational Crises Impact on Collective Human Capital Flow Presenter: Natalia Lorinkova; Georgetown U. Presenter: Erin E. Makarius; U. of Akron Presenter: Charles Edward Stevens; Lehigh U. Presenter: Debmalya Mukherjee; U. of Akron Organizational Entrenchment: An Examination of its Unique Value in Understanding Turnover Intentions Presenter: Ana Carolina De Aguiar Rodrigues; U. of Sao Paulo (FEA/USP) Presenter: Howard Klein; Ohio State U. Presenter: Yuhan Zhan; Ohio State U. You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello: A Proactive Approach to Employee Offboarding and Organizational Exit Presenter: Alison M. Dachner; John Carroll U. Presenter: Erin E. Makarius; U. of Akron Who Comes, Who Leaves and Where To: How Hiring Source Affects Leavers’ Destinations Presenter: Huimiao Zheng; - Presenter: Rhett Andrew Brymer; U. of Cincinnati

Saying Hello and Waving Goodbye: Intra-Organizational Tie Formation when Brokers Leave

Brokers, who serve as indirect ties between others, can play an important role in the formation of new collaborative relationships. Yet we know little about how the mobility of such individuals changes the role that they play. In this paper, I explore the how the organizational exit of individuals in brokerage positions influences tie formation between previously unconnected workers. Whereas these exiting individuals may be expected to play a lesser role in the formation of new collaborative relationships, I argue that they may in fact play a greater role as their exit will both stimulate demand for such helpful brokering among the workers they will leave behind and alter the costs of this type of brokering. I explore the impact of brokers on tie formation using data on employees engaged in scientific research within a single organization. Using journal article co-authorship to identify collaborative ties, I find support for my argument. Furthermore, I show how the role of exiting brokers varies depending upon the nature of their exit, tie strength, and the relative status of the brokers. In so doing, this paper illuminates how new tie formation is shaped by the mobility of brokers, extending our understanding of the dynamics of collaborative networks within organizational settings, brokerage, and the effects of employee mobility.

The influence of employee performance appraisal cynicism on intent to quit and sportsmanship

PurposeUsing job demands–resources (JD–R) theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of job demands (difficult performance appraisal (PA) objectives) and job resources (performance feedback and leader member exchange (LMX)) on employee reports of PA cynicism. The paper also investigates the consequences of PA cynicism on intent to quit and bad sportsmanship.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data on PA demands and resources, PA cynicism and turnover intentions were obtained from employees. Supervisors rated their employees’ level of sportsmanship.FindingsContrary to the predictions of JD–R theory, the authors found that employees are most likely to be cynical when they experience high levels of job resources (LMX and performance feedback) and high levels of job demands (difficult objectives).Research limitations/implicationsThe study demonstrates that PA cynicism matters – employees with higher levels of PA cynicism were more likely to contemplate leaving the organization; employees with high levels of PA cynicism are rated as bad sports by their supervisors.Practical implicationsEmployees are sensitive to gaps between the description and reality of a PA process which can trigger thoughts of organizational exit and ineffective work behaviors. human resource managers need to ensure that employees regard the PA process as valuable, useful and worth their time and effort.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to the PA literature by investigating the role of both job resources and demands. PA research has focused on the specification of job demands, underplaying the role of job resources in employee attitudes toward PA.

Organizational Exit in Interorganizational Collaboration: From a Negotiated Cyclical Process View

Researchers have studied organizational exit primarily as a terminal process in which people engage in communication to manage and make sense of permanent closures of their relationships and member...

Isolating Structures of Sexual Harassment in Crowdsourced Data on Higher Education

This analysis of Karen Kelsky’s (founder of a blog called The Professor Is In) crowdsourced data on sexual harassment in higher education describes the communication processes involved in the widespread isolation and “chilling effect” of inadequate structural responses to sexual harassment. Through the lens of structuration theory, the data demonstrate how communicative processes of isolation are appropriated throughout higher education. The analysis highlights two themes in the data that demonstrate the role of (1) networks and professionalization and (2) the structural estrangement from agency in the (re)production of isolation and organizational exit. Finally, the analysis identifies resignification and participation in the crowdsourced survey as potentially empowering acts of resistance.

Exit Strategies in Interorganizational Collaboration: Setting the Stage for Re-Entry

Researchers have studied organizational exit primarily as a terminal process in which people engage in communication to manage and make sense of permanent closures of their relationships and membership. However, in interorganizational collaborations (IOCs), where individuals representing multiple organizations voluntarily come together and create a temporary alliance to address a shared problem, communication during the exit process can shape the collaborative partners’ post-exit relationships and future collaboration opportunities. To explore how such processes occur in the complex and dynamic environment of IOCs, this article develops a negotiated open process view of exit based on the Bona Fide Group Collaboration Model and presents a field study of IOCs in a regional planning context. Findings reveal three main strategies by which collaborative partners negotiated the open process of exit to secure their involvement in a future IOC. This article concludes with a discussion of implications for theorizing IOCs’ exit as part of a trajectory of ongoing collaborative relationships enacted by strategic communicative actions of collaborators.

“Embedded” at hire? Predicting the voluntary and involuntary turnover of new employees

SummaryEmbeddedness theory has been invoked to describe factors that constrain employee turnover, such as fit with the environment, interpersonal links, and potentially sacrificed benefits. In contrast with previous assumptions that embeddedness requires considerable time to develop on the job, we extend theory by demonstrating how biographical characteristics (i.e., biodata), assessed at or before the point of hire, are related to individual's propensity to be embedded, while also showing how such characteristics predict one's future turnover likelihood. Beyond voluntary turnover, we also build embeddedness‐based theoretical explanations for involuntary turnover (i.e., terminations). To test these ideas, we conducted two studies at and before employees' point of hire, respectively: Study 1 examined how assessed biodata items of new employees relate to established embeddedness measures, whereas Study 2 linked the same biodata items assessed during the application process to employees' future involuntary, avoidable voluntary, and unavoidable voluntary turnover. Study 1 results revealed various biodata items predicted embeddedness in two distinct samples. In Study 2, results showed that biodata predicted turnover forms in unique ways. Our study highlights the utility of point‐of‐hire embeddedness propensity as a means to explain organizational exit, thereby demonstrating how organizations can use embeddedness tenets for employee recruitment and selection purposes.

‘He’s a battler. He’s not a quitter:’ the narrative framing of Jerry Kill’s health-related organizational exit

ABSTRACTThe abrupt retirement of Jerry Kill, the University of Minnesota’s head football coach, for health reasons during the 2015 season ignited intensely emotional reactions from diverse organizational stakeholders. Our essay analyzes the public discourses surrounding Kill’s organizational exit. Specifically, we explore how audiences co-constructed multiple and conflicting narratives about his departure, concurrently praising and blaming Kill for his body management. We highlight how these discourses construct complex subjectivities for working individuals who experience chronic illness. We conclude by discussing how the narrative frames implicate broader discursive struggles between the cultural values of health and work.

Committing to refugee resettlement volunteering: Attaching, detaching and displacing organizational ties

As members of local host communities, volunteers play an important role in effective long-term refugee resettlement. This study investigated the nature of volunteer commitment by organizational volunteers who were assigned a front-line role in organizing material assistance and providing information about cultural practices for newly arrived refugees. Using interview data from volunteers, organizational representatives, and organizational recruitment and training documents, the study found that volunteers’ commitment was structured by the presence and absence of volunteer coordinators, the organization’s clients and volunteers’ significant others. While insufficient ties to the organization or strong, competing ties from significant others led volunteers to detach themselves from the organization, overly strong affective ties with refugees displaced organizational ties, leading to volunteers’ organizational exit. This study problematizes an individual-centric, psychological notion of commitment; instead, it situates commitment as a collective communicative process whereby relevant stakeholders negotiate the relationships that tie them together. It thus expands the range of voices present in decisions about commitment and provides new data on how organizational and relational others impact sustainable volunteer management.