Summary

Employee turnover—or voluntary resignation from employing organizations—affects both the welfare of leavers and employers. Given its import, scholarly inquiries during the 20th century have identified its causes, manifestations, and consequences. Classic theories focused on why employees quit, highlighting job dissatisfaction, job alternatives, and critical events prompting thoughts of quitting (“shocks”). Since the 21st century, scholars increasingly examined job embeddedness (forces constraining incumbents from leaving jobs), recognizing that the motives for why incumbents stay are not mirror opposites of oft-studied motives for why they leave. Empirical evidence for these perspectives, their deficiencies, and their refinements are discussed. Turnover research also investigated different types of turnover—notably, dysfunctional turnover (stellar performers leaving), collective turnover (unit-level quit rates), and turnover contagion (turnover inducing more turnover). Lastly, emerging work on different forms of job embeddedness, as well as its “dark side,” are examined.