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WHEN COWORKERS AND MANAGERS QUIT: THE EFFECTS OF TURNOVER AND SHARED VALUES ON PERFORMANCE

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Abstract

We examined the relationship between work unit, direct management, and overall management turnover and performance improvement following an intervention in fifty work units in multiple organizations in eight countries. Direct management turnover was negatively related to performance improvement, while work unit and overall management turnover were not. We also investigated shared values as a moderator of the turnover-performance relationship and found that high shared values buffered the negative effect of overall management turnover on performance improvement. The results are noteworthy, as they point to the importance of examining turnover at different organizational levels and identifying moderators of the turnover-performance relationship.

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Notes

  1. At the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer, we trichotomized the turnover data into 0% (i.e., very low turnover), 1–10% (i.e., moderate turnover), and greater than 10% (i.e., high turnover). However, the distributions were problematic, such that for both direct and overall management turnover, there was a large sample size for low (15 and 14 respectively) and high (11 each) turnover but only one instance of moderate turnover for each. Thus, due to these distributions, we opted to leave turnover as a dichotomy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

    Kristen M. Watrous & Ann H. Huffman

  2. University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA

    Robert D. Pritchard

  3. Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843-4235, USA

    Kristen M. Watrous

Authors
  1. Kristen M. Watrous
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  2. Ann H. Huffman
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  3. Robert D. Pritchard
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Correspondence to Kristen M. Watrous.

Additional information

Parts of this paper were presented at the 18th annual convention of the Society for the Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, Illinois, 2004.

Ann Huffman currently holds a dual assistant professorship in psychology and business at Northern Arizona University.

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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Watrous, K.M., Huffman, A.H. & Pritchard, R.D. WHEN COWORKERS AND MANAGERS QUIT: THE EFFECTS OF TURNOVER AND SHARED VALUES ON PERFORMANCE. J Bus Psychol 21, 103–126 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-005-9021-2

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