title: One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research.
abstract: We review seminal publications on employee turnover during the 100-year existence of theJournal of Applied Psychology. Along with classic articles from this journal, we expand our review to include other publications that yielded key theoretical and methodological contributions to the turnover literature. We first describe how the earliest papers examined practical methods for turnover reduction or control and then explain how theory development and testing began in the mid-20th century and dominated the academic literature until the turn of the century. We then track 21st century interest in the psychology of staying (rather than leaving) and attitudinal trajectories in predicting turnover. Finally, we discuss the rising scholarship on collective turnover given the centrality of human capital flight to practitioners and to the field of human resource management strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Management, Arizona State University.
authors.forename: Peter W
authors.initials: PW
authors.lastname: Hom
authors.affiliation: Department of Management & Organization, University of Washington.
authors.forename: Thomas W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Management & Marketing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
authors.forename: Jason D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.affiliation: Human Resource Studies, Cornell University.
authors.forename: John P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Hausknecht
mesh_terms: D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D010563:Personnel Turnover; D011585:Psychology, Applied / Q000266:history / Q000379:methods*