ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews research on turnover antecedents that have long been neglected by turnover theories and research. Despite its theoretical prominence in classic thinking, turnover scholars poorly explained how prospective leavers find and secure job alternatives. We discuss how Steel’s cybernetic theory about job search can fill this void and how research on job search among the unemployed can illuminate the job search process for employees seeking to change jobs. We also highlight modern research on how leaders influence followers’ decisions to stay or leave, extending historic inquiry into followers’ attitudes toward leaders or their relationship quality. Leadership research now suggests that humble leaders can induce subordinates to stay, while leaders’ differentiation of subordinates into ingroups or outgroups, or their own departures, can prompt subordinates to leave. More directly, leaders may try to deter subordinates from defecting to other firms by monitoring signs of potential defections so that they can enact “employee guarding” tactics. Further, we review growing applications of social network methodology and how they can capture relational deterrents to leaving overlooked by self-report measures of peer affect. Finally, we discuss the nascent theory and research on how personality traits can affect the turnover process (e.g., withdrawal expectancies, job affect).
