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Toward an Inductive Theory of Stayers and Seekers in the Organization

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Abstract

This study takes a person-centered approach to enhance our understanding of job search and intentions to leave among currently employed individuals. Four categories of seekers and stayers in the organization were identified based on their unique patterns of turnover intentions, behaviors, and reasons: Embedded Stayers, Detached Stayers, Dissatisfied Seekers, and Script-Driven Seekers. We theorize that these prototypes are conceptually differentiated by two dimensions—the direction of action and the concreteness of plans. We also found meaningful associations between the probability of cluster membership and a variety of individual difference variables such as job satisfaction, motivational forces, and personality dispositions. Findings from the present study provide some useful insights for theory building and future empirical studies on individual differences in whether and why people intend to leave or stay in their jobs.

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Notes

  1. Initially, 473 individuals were recruited and participated in the study. To reduce the potential problem of random responding, responses from those who finished the survey in less than 500 s were eliminated from the analysis (N = 65).

  2. Note that the direction of the Bs is reversed as the reference cluster group changes.

  3. We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this analysis.

  4. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out and giving us further insights into how the stayer-seeker profiles may unfold over time.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Chuck Hulin, Tom Lee, Howard Weiss, Carl Maertz, and Deborah Rupp for reading earlier drafts of this manuscript and providing insightful comments and recommendations for improving the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Sang Eun Woo

  2. Department of Management, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA

    David G. Allen

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  1. Sang Eun Woo
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  2. David G. Allen
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Correspondence to Sang Eun Woo.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Descriptive statistics of Unclustered Data

See Table 8.

Table 8 Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations of all study variables
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Appendix 2: Cross-validation Results

See Tables 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.

Table 9 Comparison of LC cluster models based on turnover intentions, job search behaviors, and reasons
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Table 10 Means and standard deviations of indicators in three latent classes (3-cluster solution)
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Table 11 Means and standard deviations of job satisfaction, motivational forces, and dispositional characteristics in four latent classes
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Table 12 Multinomial logistic regression analyses of predicting stayer-seeker cluster membership
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Table 13 Multinomial logistic regression analysis of predicting stayer-seeker cluster membership from all predictors entered simultaneously in a single model
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Woo, S.E., Allen, D.G. Toward an Inductive Theory of Stayers and Seekers in the Organization. J Bus Psychol 29, 683–703 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-013-9303-z

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