Shocks and final straws: Using exit-interview data to examine the unfolding model's decision paths

Human Resource Management

Volumn 51, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 25-46

  Kulik, Carol T ^a   Treuren, Gerry ^a   Bordia, Prashant ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA   (Australia)

^b AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Exit interviews; Shocks; Turnover; Unfolding model

Indexed keywords

EID: 84856294470     PISSN: 00904848     EISSN: 1099050X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20466     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. Allen, D. G., Shore, L. M., & Griffeth, R. W. (2003). The role of perceived organizational support and supportive human resource practices in the turnover process. Journal of Management, 29, 99-118.
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). 6354.0-Job Vacancies, Australia, May 2008, Cat. no. 6354.0. Canberra, Australia: Author.
3. Batt, R., & Valcour, P. M. (2003). Human resources practices as predictors of work-family outcomes and employee turnover. Industrial Relations, 42, 189-220.
4. Bordia, P., Restubog, S. L. D., Jimmieson, N. L., & Irmer, B. E. (2011). Haunted by the past: Effects of poor change management history on employee attitudes and turnover. Group & Organization Management, 36, 191-222.
5. Brewer, M. B., Dull, V., & Lui, L. (1981). Perceptions of the elderly: Stereotypes as prototypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 656-670.
6. Burton, J. P., Holtom, B. C., Sablynski, C. J., Mitchell, T. R., & Lee, T. W. (2010). The buffering effects of job embeddedness on negative shocks. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76(1), 42-51.
7. Cascio, W. F., & Boudreau, J. W. (2008). Investing in people: Financial impact of human resource initiatives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.
8. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). (2008). Recruitment, retention and turnover. Retrieved from.
9. Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20(1), 37-46.
10. Cohen, J. (1968). Weighted kappa: Nominal scale agreement with provision for scale disagreement or partial credit. Psychological Bulletin, 70, 213-220.
11. Cotton, J. L., & Tuttle, J. M. (1986). Employee turnover: A meta-analysis and review with implications for research. Academy of Management Review, 11, 55-70.
12. Dauten, D. A. (1980). Quitting: Knowing when to leave. New York, NY: Walter & Company.
13. Dixon-Kheir, C. (2001, January). Supervisors are key to keeping young talent. HRMagazine, pp. 139-142.
14. Donnelly, D. P., & Quirin, J. J. (2006). An extension of Lee and Mitchell's unfolding model of voluntary turnover. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27, 59-77.
15. Drost, D. A., O'Brien, F. P., & Marsh, S. (1988). Exit interviews: Master the possibilities. Personnel Administrator, 32(2), 104-110.
16. Eldridge, R. (2008). Conduct a proper analysis of exit data to find out why employees really leave. People Management, 14(4), 70.
17. Feinberg, R. A., & Jeppeson, N. (2000). Validity of exit interviews in retailing. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 7(3), 123-127.
18. Ferris, G. R., & Rowland, K. A. (1987). Tenure as a moderator of the absence-intent to leave relationship. Human Relations, 40, 225-266.
19. Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
20. Garretson, P., & Keel, K. S. (1982). The exit interview: Effective tool or meaningless gesture. Personnel, 59(40), 70-77.
21. Giacalone, R. A., Knouse, S. B., & Montagliani, A. (1997). Motivation for and prevention of honest responding in exit interviews and surveys. Journal of Psychology, 131, 438-448.
22. Giacalone, R. A., Stuckey, L., & Beard, J. W. (1996). Conditions influencing biased responding in exit interviews and surveys. Organizational Development Journal, 14(1), 27-39.
23. Griffeth, R. W., & Hom, P. W. (2001). Retaining valued employees. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
24. Griffeth, R. W., Hom, P. W., & Gaertner, S. (2000). A meta-analysis of antecedents and correlates of employee turnover: Update, moderator tests, and research implications for the next millennium. Journal of Management, 26, 463-488.
25. Harman, W. S., Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R., Felps, W., & Owens, B. P. (2007). The psychology of voluntary employee turnover. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 51-54.
26. Hilb, M. (1978). The standardised exit interview. Personnel Journal, 57(8), 237-336.
27. Hinrichs, J. R. (1971). Employees coming and going. Personnel, 48(1), 30-35.
28. Hinrichs, J. R. (1975). Measurement of reasons for resignation of professionals: Questionnaire versus company and consultant exit interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 530-532.
29. Holt, D., Rehg, M., Lin, J., & Miller, J. (2007). An application of the unfolding model to explain turnover in a sample of military officers. Human Resource Management, 46, 35-49.
30. Holtom, B. C., & Inderrieden, E. J. (2006). Integrating the unfolding model and job embeddedness model to better understand voluntary turnover. Journal of Managerial Issues, 18, 435-452.
31. Holtom, B. C., Mitchell, T. R., & Lee, T. W. (2006). Increasing human and social capital by applying job embeddedness theory. Organizational Dynamics, 35, 316-331.
32. Holtom, B. C., Mitchell, T. R., Lee, T. W., & Inderrieden, E. J. (2005). Shocks as causes of turnover: What they are and how organizations can manage them. Human Resource Management, 44, 337-352.
33. Hom, P. W., Roberson, L., & Ellis, A. D. (2008). Challenging conventional wisdom about who quits: Revelations from corporate America. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 1-34.
34. Hsieh, H.-F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15, 1277-1288.
35. Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33, 671-679.
36. Lee, T. H., Gerhart, B., Weller, I., & Trevor, C. O. (2008). Understanding voluntary turnover: Path-specific job satisfaction effects and the importance of unsolicited job offers. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 651-671.
37. Lee, T. W. (1996). Why employees quit. In L. R. Beach (Ed.), Decision making in the workplace: A unified perspective (pp. 73-90). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
38. Lee, T. W., & Maurer, S. D. (1997). The retention of knowledge workers with the unfolding model of voluntary turnover. Human Resource Management Review, 7, 247-275.
39. Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R. (1991). The unfolding aspects of organizational commitment and anticipated job satisfaction on voluntary employee turnover. Motivation and Emotion, 15(1), 99-121.
40. Lee, T. W., & Mitchell, T. R. (1994). An alternative approach: The unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover. Academy of Management Review, 19, 51-89.
41. Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B., McDaniel, L., & Hill, J. (1999). The unfolding model of voluntary turnover: A replication and extension. Academy of Management Journal, 42, 450-462.
42. Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R., & Sablynski, C. J. (1999). Qualitative research in organizational and vocational psychology, 1979-1999. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 55, 161-187.
43. Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R., Wise, L., & Fireman, S. (1996). An unfolding model of voluntary employee turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 5-36.
44. Lefkowitz, J., & Katz, M. L. (1969). Validity of exit interviews. Personnel Psychology, 22, 445-455.
45. Lyness, K. S., & Judiesch, M. K. (2001). Are female managers quitters? The relationships of gender, promotions, and family leaves of absence to voluntary turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 1167-1178.
46. Maclure, M., & Willett, W. C. (1987). Misinterpretation and misuse of the kappa statistic. American Journal of Epidemiology, 126, 161-169.
47. March, J. G., & Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. New York, NY: Wiley.
48. Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., & Lee, T. W. (2001). How to keep your best employees: Developing an effective retention policy. Academy of Management Executive, 15(4), 96-108.
49. Mitchell, T. R., Holtom, B. C., Lee, T. W., Sablynski, C. J., & Erez, M. (2001). Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 1102-1121.
50. Mitchell, T. R., & Lee, T. W. (2001). The unfolding model of voluntary turnover and job embeddedness: Foundations for a comprehensive theory of attachment. Research in Organizational Behavior, 23, 189-246.
51. Mobley, W. H. (1977). Intermediate linkages in the relationship between job satisfaction and employee turnover. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 237-240.
52. Morrell, K. (2005). Towards a typology of nursing turnover: The role of shocks in nurses' decisions to leave. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 49, 315-322.
53. Morrell, K., & Arnold, J. (2007). Look after they leap: Illustrating the value of retrospective reports in employee turnover. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18, 1683-1699.
54. Morrell, K., Loan-Clarke, J., Arnold, J., & Wilkinson, A. (2008). Mapping the decision to quit: A refinement and test of the unfolding model of voluntary turnover. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 57, 128-150.
55. Narayanan, L., Menon, S., & Spector, P. E. (1999). Stress in the workplace: A comparison of gender and occupations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20, 63-73.
56. Niederman, F., Sumner, M., & Maertz, C. (2007). Testing and extending the unfolding model of voluntary turnover to IT professionals. Human Resource Management, 46, 331-347.
57. Park, B., Ryan, C. S., & Judd, C. M. (1992). Role of meaningful subgroups in explaining differences in perceived variability for in-groups and out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 553-567.
58. Podsakoff, P., & Organ, D. (1986). Self-reports in organizational research: Problems and prospects. Journal of Management, 12, 531-544.
59. Potter, W. J., & Levine-Donnerstein, D. (1999). Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 27, 258-284.
60. Richards, Z., & Hewstone, M. (2001). Subtyping and subgrouping: Processes for the prevention and promotion of stereotype change. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(1), 52-73.
61. Rosch, E. (1975). Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 192-233.
62. Rosch, E., & Mervis, C. B. (1975). Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 573-605.
63. Rosse, J. G., & Miller, H. E. (1984). Relationships between absenteeism and other employee behaviors. In P. Goodman & R. Atkin (Eds.), Absenteeism (pp. 194-228). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
64. Somaya, D., & Williamson, I. O. (2008). Rethinking the "war for talent." MIT Sloan Management Review, 49(4), 29-34.
65. Steel, R. P., Griffeth, R. W., & Hom, P. W. (2002). Practical retention policy for the practical manager. Academy of Management Executive, 16(2), 149-162.
66. Weber, R., & Crocker, J. (1983). Cognitive processes in the revision of stereotypic beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 961-977.
67. Zaradona, J. L., & Camuso, M. A. (1985). A study of exit interviews: Does the last word count? Personnel, 62(3), 47-48.