Unfolding Model Of Voluntary Turnover Research Articles

Who Considers Leaving a Job in a Pandemic?: Determinants of Online Job Search Behavior in COVID-19

Drawing from the unfolding model of voluntary turnover and behavioral immune system theory, we proposed and tested a theoretical model of how the perceived severity of a pandemic affects employees’ turnover intention as well as their virtual job-search behaviors. In an analysis of matched survey and mobile application usage data, we found that the perceived severity of COVID-19 is positively related to employees’ turnover intention, which is, in turn, positively related to the usage of mobile job-search apps. Our findings further disclosed that these relationships were weakened when employees perceived their organizations as more adaptive to COVID-19. When employees perceived their coworkers as more supportive in coping with COVID-19, however, the relationships were strengthened. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Abusive Supervision and Turnover Intentions: A Mediation-Moderation Perspective

This study intended to provide and test a unique model describing how abusive supervision increases workers’ turnover intentions, with a mediating role of emotional exhaustion and moderating role of self-esteem. We argued that emotional exhaustion exacerbates the association between abusive supervision and turnover intentions of the workers, while self-esteem buffers this relationship, based on the unfolding model of voluntary turnover as an overarching theory. The study design reflected that abusive supervision and turnover intentions are mediated by emotional exhaustion, while the relationship between abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion is further moderated by self-esteem. A well-structured and self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 290 respondents. The data were analyzed, and hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM. The study findings confirmed that there exists a positive and significant link between abusive supervision and turnover intentions through the indirect effect of emotional exhaustion. On the other hand, the findings regarding moderating effect indicates that self-esteem has a significant impact among abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion. This research identified a feasible way for supervisors to grasp how diverse the responses of various workers may be using the unfolding model. These research findings have important academic and practical implications for government representatives, policymakers, and entrepreneurial educational institutes that can use these findings.

How Do Employee Attitude Surveys Contribute to Staff Turnover Intentions in a University Setting?

This study aimed to determine the effect of employee attitude surveys on academic staff turnover intentions in chartered universities in Kenya. The specific objectives were; to determine the extent of employee attitude surveys practices among universities in Kenya; assess the level of turnover intentions among academic staff in chartered universities in Kenya, and determine the effect of employee attitude surveys practices on turnover intentions among academic staff in chartered universities in Kenya. The study was anchored on the Universalistic theory and the Unfolding model of voluntary turnover. A positivism research philosophy guided the study, and a descriptive cross-sectional survey design was used. The study obtained primary data from a representative sample of 364 academic staff members drawn from 15 chartered universities in Kenya. The study found that employee attitude surveys have been practized to a low extent and produced correspondingly low staff turnover intentions. Two dimensions of employee attitude surveys significantly negatively affect staff turnover intentions. The study called on future research to apply more robust statistical techniques anchored on mixed methods design for a more comprehensive explanation of the direction of the causal effects of attitude surveys on staff turnover intentions.

Turnback Intention: An Analysis of the Drivers of IT Professionals’ Intentions to Return to a Former Employer

Recent statistics indicate that most organizations prefer to fill IT vacancies by rehiring IT professionals who previously worked in the organization. Less is known about what drives IT professionals to “turnback,” a term we define as returning to employment with a former employer. To explain this important and rarely considered IT job mobility behavior, we build on job embeddedness theory and on the concepts of shocks and job dissatisfaction from, among others, the unfolding model of voluntary turnover to develop the theory of IT professional turnback. We perform fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of data collected from 248 IT professionals to draw conclusions about the intention among IT professionals to return to work for a former employer, and develop a midrange theory. Our results reveal two configurations contributing to high turnback intention and three configurations contributing to low turnback intention. Our model distinguishes between work shocks, personal shocks, and IT work shocks. IT shocks are a new category of shocks specific to the IT profession. We contribute theoretically by theorizing a behavior relevant to IT professionals and explaining attributes driving turnback intention.

Here today, gone tomorrow: A mixed-method study on headhunter-intermediated recruitment practices

While unsolicited job offers are the strongest pull factor driving turnover, little is known about headhunters’ candidate contacts and outcomes. Drawing on the unfolding model of voluntary turnover (Lee & Mitchell, 1994) and research on headhunters, this study examines what kind of employees are contacted by headhunters and why some of them leave. Using the case of Japan, where subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations use extensively headhunters to recruit host country national employees (HCNs), we first conducted interviews with 131 expatriate managers (clients), contingency-based headhunters, and HCN employees (candidates). The findings suggest that headhunters’ contacts were guided by HCNs’ English proficiency, tenure, and previous placement by headhunters. The findings also suggest that headhunters’ contacts can drive up turnover. To further examine the antecedents and outcomes of headhunter contacts, we collected time-lagged survey data from 456 HCN employees in foreign subsidiaries. In addition to confirming our interview findings, the survey findings also suggest that headhunters’ contacts have a positive relationship with HCN employees’ voluntary turnover.

Momentary well-being matters: Daily fluctuations in hotel employees’ turnover intention

Drawing on affective events theory and the unfolding model of voluntary turnover, the dynamic nature of emotional dissonance, job autonomy, subjective well-being (SWB), and turnover intention are examined in a daily diary study. The study's design employs an experience sampling method. Participants are full-time employees in guest-facing positions in full-service or luxury hotels in the United States. Sixty-five participants completed a one-time baseline survey and a daily diary study twice per day for at least five working days, resulting in a total of 416 day-level observations. Within-person variance in turnover intention is predicted by day-level within-person SWB and emotional dissonance. This study shows that SWB and turnover intention are not stable phenomena among frontline hotel employees. Moreover, the study emphasizes the important moderating role of daily job autonomy and the moderating effects of person-level trait resilience. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are also discussed. • A daily diary study was conducted to explore the dynamic nature of subjective well-being (SWB) and turnover intention. • Emotional dissonance, job autonomy, SWB, and turnover intention fluctuate daily among frontline hotel employees. • Daily emotional dissonance influences both daily SWB and turnover intention. • Daily job autonomy reduces the negative influence of daily emotional dissonance on daily SWB and turnover intention. • Trait resilience mitigates the negative influence of daily emotional dissonance on SWB and turnover intention.

Impact of abusive supervision on intention to leave: a moderated mediation model of organizational-based self esteem and emotional exhaustion

This study was aimed to offer and test a novel model explaining how abusive supervision enhances employees’ intention to leave in a high-power distance society of Pakistan. Drawing from the unfolding model of voluntary turnover as an overarching theory, we proposed that emotional exhaustion will strengthen the relationship between abusive supervision and intention to leave, and organizational-based self esteem (OBSE) will mitigate this relationship. Data were collected from 277 respondents working in the banking sector of Pakistan at two points in time. Results showed that abusive supervision has both direct and indirect impact on intention to leave such that emotional exhaustion strengthens this relationship. It was also found that OBSE mitigates the mediated relationship between abusive supervision and intention to leave. The study brings evidence of abusive supervision and its impacts from a high-power distance-oriented country i.e., Pakistan.

How peers’ updates on social media influence job search

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which social media content via social contagion may affect the job behaviors of employed individuals. Specifically, by integrating the unfolding model of voluntary turnover and social comparison theory, this paper explores whether receiving an update about a peer’s career advancement on professional social networking sites (SNSs) increases an individual’s propensity to engage in job search.Design/methodology/approachIn this analysis, the authors matched individuals’ survey data (n=125) with information received from a recruiting agency on employees’ subsequent job search behavior (i.e., sending a resume to the agency).FindingsThe results indicate that the relationship between career advancement updates on SNSs and job search behavior was stronger for employees with higher perceived employability and, contrary to our hypothesis, for those more embedded within the organization.Practical implicationsMore employable and more embedded individuals perceive social cues from social media, and these cues positively relate to their job search behaviors. To address this trend, organizations could develop a social media strategy and implement retention measures to prevent the job search (and thus potential turnover) of employable and embedded individuals.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the job search literature by examining the role of professional SNSs in driving job search behavior among employed individuals.

Discontinuities in the Value of Relational Capital: The Effects on Employee Entrepreneurship and Mobility

We examine how a discontinuous increase in the value of an employee’s relational capital influences the employee’s mobility and entrepreneurship decisions in professional and business service contexts. Drawing on the unfolding model of voluntary turnover, we develop a theory proposing that positive shocks to external relational capital will catalyze employees to consider alternative employment options, thereby increasing the probability of exit. We further maintain that exit decisions in response to such shocks will be driven by a desire to appropriate more value, making these shocks strong predictors of employee entrepreneurship, especially when the employee works in an area that is peripheral to the firm’s core capabilities. Empirically, we construct a unique employee-employer linked database that tracks employment of lobbyists in the United States federal lobbying industry. Leveraging plausibly exogenous shocks to the value of an employee’s relational capital and a novel market-based measure of the employee’s position in the firm’s knowledge space, we report two sets of findings. First, an increase in the value of relational capital has a positive effect on the likelihood of mobility to established firms and employee entrepreneurship, with the effect for the latter stronger than the former. Second, the magnitude of the effect on employee entrepreneurship becomes stronger when the employee is peripheral to the firm’s core knowledge. Together, our results are consistent with a value creation-value appropriation rationale, where sudden increases in the value of an employee’s relational capital drive exit as a means to appropriate a greater portion of value created.

Should I stay or should I go? understanding employees’ decisions to leave after mergers in Hong Kong’s banking industry

Recently, Chinese firms are increasingly acquiring firms overseas. This is often followed by high levels of employee exit from the acquired firm, which can be problematic. To better understand this phenomenon, we use the unfolding model of voluntary turnover to examine why and how individual employees of Hong Kong-based banks make the decision to either stay or go after their bank is taken over by a Chinese bank. We obtain data from three major acquisitions of banks in Hong Kong by Chinese state-owned banks from 2004 to 2008. Our sample consists of 406 employees from the acquired banks as well as non-acquired banks. We find that employees that have left after being acquired are more likely to report experiencing a “shock” than are employees of non-merged banks and that this influences their decision to leave. We also find that in the merger context, male employees, front-line employees and officer-level employees have different leaving decision paths from their female, back-office, and non-officer-level counterparts respectively. No such differences are found in the non-merger context. In addition, we find that a retention bonus delays departure after the merger. These findings contribute to research and practice of managing employee turnover after cross-border acquisitions by Chinese firms.

A Study on the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Employee Turnover

Retaining talent continues to be an organizational issue, and surviving employees of a layoff are more likely to leave an organization voluntarily for alternative work. A quantitative method was used to explore emotional-intelligence levels of individuals, voluntary turnover, and voluntary turnover intention using Schutte et al.’s questionnaire. A significant statistical relationship was found between emotional intelligence and one of four components of the unfolding model of voluntary turnover.

Do teachers leave the profession or move to another school when they don’t fit?

Teacher turnover is an international issue of continuing concern in education. While different antecedents of teachers’ turnover intention have been identified, teachers’ fit within the school (i.e. person-organisation [P–O] fit) in the context of turnover intention is still an emerging field of research. Building on the unfolding model of voluntary turnover, this study investigates the moderating role of teachers’ perceived employability on teachers’ P–O fit–job satisfaction–turnover intention relationship. Using survey data from 997 teachers across 74 schools, we conducted moderated mediation analysis. The analysis revealed different results for the hypothesised relationships depending on the specific dimension of turnover (i.e. intention to leave the profession or intention to move to another school). While P–O fit is directly related to the intention to move to another school, no evidence was found for a direct relation between P–O fit and the intention to leave the profession. Moreover, the results showed that the relation between P–O fit and the intention to leave/intention to move is mediated by job satisfaction. Yet, only for intention to leave, a small but significant moderating effect of perceived employability was found. These findings provide insight into the psychological processes of teachers wanting to leave the teaching profession or move to another school. Limitations, suggestions for further research and implications are also discussed in this article.

Testing the unfolding model of voluntary turnover on construction professionals

Employee turnover affects performance and competitiveness of companies. Traditional voluntary employee turnover models attempting to predict voluntary turnover are based on job satisfaction. A recent model that breaks away from this tradition is the unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover (UMVT) which takes account of additional factors such as labour market forces, economy and habit. UMVT has been tested in various industries. However, in the construction sector UMVT is tested for the first time in this study. A convenience sample of 320 construction professionals was taken from the Global Construction Consultants, Davis Langdon. The sample provided useable online survey data from 104 respondents who had voluntarily left their previous employers in the last four years. The results reveal that UMVT’s ability to interpret voluntary employee turnover among construction professionals was weak. In contrast to previous studies of UMVT, a significant number of respondents (80.8%) followed paths other than the original five theorized paths. As a result, a new extended version of the UMVT is proposed that includes two new paths that have been theorized, which add to the understanding of voluntary employee turnover and may, in the long term, help support human resource management in construction professional practices to predict and manage voluntary employee turnover.

The Construction and Contributions of “Implications for Practice”: What's in Them and What Might They Offer?

“Most reviewers’ checklists of leading management journals list the criterion, “relevance for practice.” Authors comply with this criterion by pointing out what implications their results might have for practice. Evidence in the form of successful implementations of the results in practice is not required. Essentially, the authors are only supposed to point out what implications practitioners, as they socially construct them, can possibly draw from their results. If the reviewers’ construction of relevance is in accordance with the author’s, the criterion of relevance has been met . . .” (Kieser & Leiner, 2009: 522–523; italics in original).

Testing and extending the unfolding model of voluntary turnover to it professionals

AbstractThis study examines the turnover decision processes of information technology (IT) personnel for the first time. Our theoretical guide for this investigation was the unfolding model of voluntary turnover (Lee & Mitchell, 1994), the preeminent turnover process model. Most of the 124 leavers used three new decision paths that shared the characteristic of including an alternative job search and evaluation; another significant number used the original five theorized paths. In sharp contrast to earlier findings on the unfolding model, the majority of respondents (88%) reported following paths not among the original five theorized paths.This result strongly suggests that IT professionals likely take numerous routes in deciding to leave current employment, most of which involve some search for and consideration of alternative jobs. A general conclusion for human resource managers is to assume that IT professionals are aware of alternative opportunities and to consider early interventions emphasizing the relative benefits of the current job over labor market competitors. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

An application of the unfolding model to explain turnover in a sample of military officers

AbstractQuestionnaire data from 182Air Force officers who had voluntarily separated from the service were used to test Lee and Mitchell's (1994) unfolding model of voluntary turnover. Specifically, Lee and Mitchell predict five distinct paths to voluntary turnover, explaining the sequence of deliberate and impulsive decisions individuals make as they choose to leave organizations, where individuals interpret an organizational event, assess their relation to the workplace, evaluate options, and enact a response. Results indicate that 47% of the participants followed those five paths. Model modifications were made that reflect the unique nature of military service where members have preexisting plans to leave the service after a defined period or event.These modifications capture an additional 36% to explain 83% of the turnover decisions.The implications of these findings are addressed. ©2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

An extension of Lee and Mitchell's unfolding model of voluntary turnover

AbstractLee and Mitchell (1994) proposed a decision process‐based voluntary turnover model, which identifies the psychological processes involved in the decision to quit a job. The current study tests and extends the Lee and Mitchell's (1994) unfolding model of voluntary turnover using a sample of voluntary ‘quitters’ and ‘stayers’. Survey and interview results from 84 practicing accountants suggest that the Lee and Mitchell's (1994) model does an excellent job of capturing employee decision process‐data in an accounting environment. Additional extension hypotheses pertaining to economic consequences and gender differences are also proposed and subsequently supported. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A model of expatriate withdrawal-related outcomes: Decision making from a dualistic adjustment perspective

Traditionally, one of the most frequently used outcomes of expatriate adjustment research has been premature return of expatriate employees. However, previous research has not considered premature return as an outcome of a particular type of decision that expatriates make. By adapting a decision-making perspective, we extend expatriate adjustment and international assignment literature in several different directions. To do so, we integrate decision-making, dualistic adjustment, the unfolding model of voluntary turnover [ Lee, T.W., & Mitchell, T.R., (1994). An alternative approach: The unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover. Academy of Management Review, 19, 51–89.], the evolutionary search model of turnover [ Steel, R.P. (2002). Turnover theory at the empirical interface: Problems of fit and function. Academy of Management Review, 27, 346–360.], and the motives approach to turnover [ Maertz, C. P., Jr., & Campion, M. A. (2004). Profiles in quitting: Integrating process and content turnover theory. Academy of Management Journal, 47, 566–582.; Maertz, C. P., Jr., & Griffeth, R. W. (2004). Eight motivational forces and voluntary turnover: A theoretical synthesis with implications for research. Journal of Management, 30, 667–683.] to propose multiple decision outcomes, rather than simply premature return, associated with international assignments. The proposed model provides a theoretical framework for considering criteria for examining these outcomes. Propositions and implications for future research and practice are discussed.

The Impact of Gender Differences on Job Satisfaction, Job Turnover, and Career Experiences of Information Systems Professionals

This research addresses the impact of gender differences upon the career experiences of information systems professionals, including the impact of gender differences on job satisfaction, job tasks, turnover behavior, job search activities, and job transitions. Our findings show that the career experiences of females and males in the IT field are relatively similar. One statistically significant finding was that job satisfaction was higher in current positions, as compared with prior ones but that was true for both genders. With respect to salaries, the mean salaries of male IT professionals in current positions in this sample were greater than the mean salaries of female IT professionals in current positions, but the differences were not statistically significant.In their unfolding model of voluntary turnover, Lee and Mitchell (44) argue that turnover is influenced by a variety of variables, including the occurrence of shocks, following scripts, searching for alternatives, experiencing an image violation, and by lack of job satisfaction. Since a large number of female and male respondents pointed to leaving their positions because of a “shock,” this may also point to the fact that external market forces can influence candidates to make career moves because of greater opportunities, salaries, and benefits in the IT field, even when they may have been fairly well-satisfied with their prior positions.

5. The unfolding model of voluntary turnover and job embeddedness: Foundations for a comprehensive theory of attachment

In this chapter, a comprehensive approach to understanding voluntary employee turnover and retention is described. First, the literature on employee turnover is briefly reviewed because many of our ideas are grounded in existing theory and research. Second, our recent theory on why and how people leave the organization (called theUnfolding Model of Voluntary Turnover) is detailed. In particular, two empirical studies that confirm and refine the model's major propositions are summarized. Third, our analysis of why people stay is explained. This approach to understanding employee retention is grounded in the development, measurement and test of a construct called jobembeddedness. In addition, two empirical studies that competitively test and refine the embeddedness construct are summarized. Fourth, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of organizational attachment, our preliminary ideas about the integration of the unfolding model and job embeddedness are offered. In our last section, the implications of this work are discussed. More specifically, we identify a number of ways that our theoretical constructs and empirical research fundamentally change or challenge many basic assumptions about traditional theory and research on employee turnover and retention. Finally, our concluding comments focus on how an organization can apply these ideas to increase attachment through embeddedness and/or to reduce turnover by understanding the tenets of the unfolding model.