Causes and consequences of collective turnover: A meta-analytic review.

Abstract

Given growing interest in collective turnover (i.e., employee turnover at unit and organizational levels), the authors propose an organizing framework for its antecedents and consequences and test it using metaanalysis. Based on analysis of 694 effect sizes drawn from 82 studies, results generally support expected relationships across the 6 categories of collective turnover antecedents, with somewhat stronger and more consistent results for 2 categories: human resource management inducements/investments and job embeddedness signals. Turnover was negatively related to numerous performance outcomes, more strongly so for proximal rather than distal outcomes. Several theoretically grounded moderators help to explain average effect-size heterogeneity for both antecedents and consequences of turnover. Relationships generally did not vary according to turnover type (e.g., total or voluntary), although the relative absence of collective-level involuntary turnover studies is noted and remains an important avenue for future research. Given growing interest in collective turnover (i.e., employee turnover at unit and organizational levels), the authors propose an organizing framework for its antecedents and consequences and test it using meta-analysis. Based on analysis of 694 effect sizes drawn from 82 studies, results generally support expected relationships across the 6 categories of collective turnover antecedents, with somewhat stronger and more consistent results for 2 categories: human resource management inducements/investments and job embeddedness signals. Turnover was negatively related to numerous performance outcomes, more strongly so for proximal rather than distal outcomes. Several theoretically grounded moderators help to explain average effectsize heterogeneity for both antecedents and consequences of turnover. Relationships generally did not vary according to turnover type (e.g., total or voluntary), although the relative absence of collective-level involuntary turnover studies is noted and remains an important avenue for future research.Keywords: collective turnover, organizational performance, retention, meta-analysis Cause and Consequences 3The issue of collective turnover-that is, "the aggregate levels of employee departures that occur within groups, work units, or organizations" (Hausknecht & Trevor, 2011, p. 353)-has a long history in management and applied psychology research. Discussions of organizational-level turnover rates extend back nearly a century, as seen in early work addressing "rates of departure" (Greenwood, 1919, p. 187) and the "stability of employment" (Fish, 1917, p. 162). Topical interest further formalized via several influential accounts of collective turnover's causes and consequences (March & Simon, 1958;Mobley, 1982;Price, 1977;Staw, 1980). More recently, this attention has intensified in terms of empirical studies (e.g., Batt & Colvin, 2011;Shaw, Dineen, Fang, & Vellella, 2009;Siebert & Zubanov, 2009;Trevor & Nyberg, 2008), theoretical contributions (Dess & Shaw, 20...

Internal Corporate Social Responsibility and Performance: A Study of Publicly Traded Companies

“…: salary and benefits) and intangible (e.g. : training and development) incentives have been widely associated with lower voluntary turnover (Heavey, Holwerda, & Hausknecht, 2013). Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:…”

A Dimensional Analysis of the Relationship between Communication Satisfaction and Turnover Intention: The Mediating Role of Organizational Commitment

“…There is tremendously higher number of empirical turnover-related studies conducted in recent years; they showed that almost two third of empirical studies on turnover have been conducted in the last decade and this is an indication of the growing interest on the topic (Heavey et al, 2013). The growing interest can be attributed to recent trends such as technological advancement, globalization, and increase in knowledge-based work, which make it crucial for organizations to keep high quality employees now more than ever (Holtom et al, 2008).…”

“…The first turnover-related studies were conducted almost a century ago, when Fish (1917) and Greenwood (1919) assessed "stability of employment" and "rate of departure" respectively (Heavey et al, 2013). From then on, turnover including its antecedents and organizational outcomes has been studied extensively.…”

Human resource management practices and voluntary turnover: a study of internal workforce and external labor market contingencies

“…While individual-level research shows that employees often consider the available employment options before deciding to leave (Hom and Griffeth, 1995), meta-analyses at the organization-level have produced conflicting results. For instance, whereas one study found that regional and industry-specific unemployment rates had negative effects on overall turnover (Carsten and Spector, 1987), other studies report that unemployment rates have little to no effect on overall turnover or quit rates (Heavey, Holwerda, and Hausknecht, 2013). Research is needed to clarify these mixed findings.…”

“…1 We controlled for establishment size using the natural logarithm of total employees because larger establishments may have more sophisticated HR systems. We controlled for unionization rates because unionized employees may experience more inducement HR practices and unionization can influence turnover (Heavey et al, 2013). We were unable to obtain prior quit rate data, but we did obtain and control for 2007 overall turnover rates (i.e., including quits and dismissals) in the tests of Hypotheses 1 and 1 The level 2 groups were derived from industry subsector and province -inserting dummy variables for these constructs reduced the between-group variance in intercepts, but not slopes, in the multilevel model.…”