Job Embeddedness: A Ten-year Literature Review and Proposed Guidelines

Abstract

Job embeddedness (JE) construct is a construct that is relatively new and still somewhat ‘hazy’ in its definition. A clearer understanding of what we know and what we still do not know about JE and its relationships would lend a better suggestion to future research directions for testing the JE construct. This study reviews 37 papers published between 2001 and 2011 that met the criteria of being quantitative and qualitative studies on JE. Through an inductive review, we unravel a model of (a) antecedents to JE that explains what factors affect JE, (b) moderating and mediating effect of JE and (c) an outcome of JE. Based on our review, we propose directions for future research that will bring greater understanding of the relationship between JE and other constructs.

Keywords

Job embeddedness retention turnover organizational commitment job satisfaction

Introduction

Most of the current theory and research on voluntary turnover argued that voluntary employee departure results from the perceived number and type of job alternatives and an individual’s level of job satisfaction. The empirical evidence indicates a modest relationship between levels of satisfaction and turnover but an inconsistent relationship between the perceived number and type of alternatives and turnover (Hom & Griffeth, 1995). Most turnover models also include two most frequently tested attitudinal constructs, namely, job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Holtom & O’ Neil, 2004; Mohapatra & Sharma, 2010), but the models developed along these paths, although successful in identifying turnover predictors, explain only a limited percentage of quits (Mallol, Holtom & Lee, 2007).

Table 1.

Dimensions of Job Embeddedness

	On the Job	Off the Job
Links	Formal and informal connections and support among the person and colleagues, work groups, supervisors, and the organization as a whole	Connections in a social and familial web, including non-work friends, spousal employment, groups, churches and community organizations
Fit	Degree to which the person’s personal values, career goals and future plans fit with the organization culture, experienced job and career realities	Fit with preferences for the general culture of the location of residence, including weather, amenities, political and religious climates and the arts
Sacrifice	What the person would sacrifice if she left the organization. Perceived costs of leaving the organization include giving up colleagues, perks, projects, benefits, job stability and advancement	What the person would sacrifice if she left the community. Perceived potential of loss of desirable community attributes, including school quality, neighbourhood safety and feeling of belonging

Source: Authors’ own.

Management researchers have and are still investigating the reasons as to why people decide to stay in an organization. Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski and Erez (2001b) have answered by introducing the concept of job embeddedness (JE), which is a force represented and is fairly heterogeneous and the items are formative, that is, the items cause embeddedness. Items under each dimension aggregate to form on-the-job and off-the-job aspects of one’s current state, and the dimensions in turn combine to become JE (Yao, Lee, Mitchell, Burton & Sablynski, 2004). JE explains beyond what is explained by job satisfaction and organizational commitment in predicting variance in individual turnover across diverse populations in many countries like in the US (e.g., Besich, 2005; Cunningham, Fink & Sagas, 2005; Holtom, Mitchell, Lee & Tidd 2006a; Mallol et al., 2007; Mitchell et al., 2001b), India (Ramesh & Gelfand, 2010) and Europe (Tanova & Holtom, 2008).

The critical aspects of JE are a three-by-two matrix with six dimensions: links, fit and sacrifice associated with an individual’s organization and with his or her community. For a detailed description on the dimensions of JE, please refer to Table 1.

The JE construct is one that is relatively new and still somewhat ‘hazy’ in its definition. A clearer understanding of how this construct is different from job satisfaction or organizational commitment is needed to show the potential overlap but still justify the distinction and need for the JE construct. For this article, a comprehensive literature review was undertaken to examine the current state of knowledge about JE, factors considered determinants of JE and the impact of JE on system outcomes. This review focuses on the recent research, and it also identifies the implications for further study.

Methodology

To identify studies for our review, we conducted an electronic search for the term. In particular, in the EBSCO host, Google search, Emerald and ProQuest databases. This initial search yielded 70 articles in many diverse journals, of which 37 research papers, eight conceptual and 29 empirical papers were included in the study. The rest of the articles were discarded from our pool because a reading of the abstract revealed that they were clearly not relevant for our review. The literature search is limited to the English language only and it includes the period from 2001 to December 2011, as the first paper on JE was published in 2001. The primary intent of the review was to examine the research in terms of how the evidence has advanced the knowledge in this area. Using predominant studies that were peer-reviewed assured a high level of quality, thereby promoting validity of the overall findings and conclusions. The paper is organized into the following sections. The first is the JE section, which explains the conceptual definition and dimensions followed by the methodology section. The following section, that is, factors influencing JE, presents a synopsis of the factors influencing JE, this section is finally followed by suggestions for future research directions.

Factors Influencing JE

Through our review of these 37 papers, we inductively developed the model of JE depicted in Figure 1. Within each category of our model are examples of relevant variables. The model is intended to depict the relationships among antecedents, the moderating and mediating role of JE and consequences of JE.

Mitchell et al. (2001) and Holtom and O’Neil (2004) found that JE predicted the intent to leave and voluntary turnover after the effects of gender, satisfaction, commitment, job search and perceived alternatives had been controlled. Cunningham et al. (2005) developed a global item measure, which was found to be stronger than the multi-item measure. Ramesh and Gelfand (2010) investigated the cross-cultural generalizability of the JE model by examining turnover in an individualistic country (United States) and in a collectivistic country (India) and extended the concept of JE by adding family embeddedness. Family embeddedness predicted a turnover above and beyond JE and found initial support for its utility in both the United States and India. Crossley, Bernett, Jex and Burnfield (2007), in their study, integrated JE into a traditional model (Mobley type) of turnover and developed a global measure of JE. A subsequent study by Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton and Holtom (2004) found that off the JE predicted turnover and absences. The JE predicted organizational citizenship and job performance and moderated the positive effect of volitional absences on turnover, the negative effect of job performance on turnover and the negative effect of citizenship on absences; the moderation was such that these effects were stronger for higher than for lower on the JE. Holtom et al. (2006a) found that both on-the-job and off-the-JE predicted performance.

Sekiguchi, Burton and Sablynski (2008) further explored that high JE plays a positive role in employee performance (e.g., providing additional resources to the employee) when the quality of leader member exchange (LMX) is high, but high JE plays a negative role (e.g., making the employees feel stuck) when the quality of LMX is low. Findings also suggested that the role of organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) becomes more salient when employees are highly embedded in their job and organization.

Giosan, Holtom and Watson (2005) found in their study that to enhance embeddedness the employers should focus on increasing perceived organizational and supervisor support, encourage employees to take advantage of benefit programme, provide them training opportunities, provide clearly defined rules for organizational newcomers as well as job incumbents. The authors further found that the fewer job alternatives a person perceives the higher the probability that they will exhibit high fit and perceive a larger sacrifice to leave the organization. Bergiel, Nguyen, Clenney and Taylor (2009) found that JE fully mediated the relationship among compensation, supervisory support, growth opportunity and employee’s intention to quit but training did not embed employees in their jobs.

Wheeler, Harris and Harvey (2010a) found that while participants who perceive effective human resource management (HRM) practices and high-quality LMX relationships report the highest levels of on-the-JE, the participants reporting lower-quality LMX relationships but high levels of HRM effectiveness experience the largest increase in on-the-JE.

Figure 1.

Source: Authors’ own.

Swider, Boswell and Zimmerman (2011) found that the job search–turnover relationship was stronger when employees had lower levels of JE and job satisfaction and higher levels of available alternatives. Chen, Chow and Wang’s study (2010) suggested that in the organizational context, open mindedness and organizational commitment have a positive impact on knowledge worker’s JE but empirical findings failed to establish any link between job autonomy and JE.

Ng and Feldman (2010) in their longitudinal study found that JE was positively related to innovation-related behaviour such that innovative ideas were stronger for individuals in the middle and late stages of their careers than for those in the early stage of their careers. The study found that although career stage moderates employees’ implementing ideas, it does not generate ideas and spread innovation. Hom et al. (2009) found that social exchange explains how a mutual- and over-investment employee–organization relationship (EOR) motivates greater workforce commitment and loyalty. This study enriches EOR perspectives by identifying JE as another mediator that is more enduring than social exchange.

At the individual level, JE also influences the social environment in retaining employees. Of particular interest in the context of this research is a study by Allen (2006) where socialization tactics enable organizations to actively embed new employees with organization only and not with community. Another study by Felps et al. (2009) forwarded a model of ‘turnover contagion’ in which the authors propagated that when a number of co-workers are looking for other jobs, it increases the salience and perceived viability of leaving for a focal employee, especially since immediate co-workers are likely targets for social comparison.

The study by Holtom et al. (2006) found that the shock-induced leavers (shock is a particular, jarring event that initiates the psychological analyses involved in quitting a job) have a statistically significant higher level of overall JE than non-shock-induced leavers do. It was also found that JE among stayers was higher than for both the shock-induced leavers and for non-shock-induced leavers. Off-the-JE decreases turnover, especially among women (Holtom, Mitchell, Lee & Eberly, 2008). Mallol, Holtom and Lee (2007) found that Hispanics exhibit different levels of JE from Caucasian workers and the JE model is a statistically significant predictor of voluntary turnover among respondents of all races. Halbesleben and Wheeler (2008) found that both engagement and embeddedness held a unique shared variance with performance and only embeddedness shared unique variance with turnover intention while engagement did not. Bowman (2009) found that LMX was negatively related to turnover intentions and job search behaviours and positively related to organizational JE. Organizational JE partially mediated the relationship between LMX and turnover intentions and job search behaviours.

Harris, Wheeler and Kacmar (2011) applied the conservation of resources theory to explain LMX as a predictor of organizational JE. This study found organizational JE to be a predictor of the outcomes of job satisfaction, turnover intentions and actual turnover. Further, organizational JE was found to be an intermediary mechanism that mediates the LMX–outcome relationships. Wheeler, Harris and Sabylynski’s (2010b) study examined how employees invest abundant resources, such as, JE, into work effort, which mediates the JE–job performance relationship. Results suggested that employees are differentially motivated to invest resources into effort and performance. Holtom, Burton and Crossley (2010) found that people who are high in negative affectivity and experience shocks are less likely to remain embedded and consequently more likely to search for a new job and engage in counterproductive behaviours. This state of embeddedness helps to buffer negative events and reduces the probability of searching for a new job, engaging in counterproductive work behaviours, or both.

Five conceptual papers on JE have discussed the concept of JE and have made recommendations for integrating them into a comprehensive retention plan (Cohen, 2006; Holtom et al., 2006b; Holtom et al., 2008; Johnson, 2007; Mitchell, Holtom & Lee, 2001a). Yao et al. (2004) have explained the concept of JE, explained its relationship with other constructs and directed the attention towards methodological concerns. Shen and Hall (2009) introduced the concept of JE to research on international assignments to help explain how the processes of expatriation and repatriation might lead to strengthened person organization fit and career exploration. Gong, Chow and Ahlstrom (2011) proposed that in China, Chinese people’s frequency of speaking in their local dialect is related to their identification process with an organization or a community, which could in turn influence their decision to stay with their organization by developing JE.

Literature Gaps

Based on the literature review given in previous sections, it can be concluded that many facets of the phenomenon JE have remain unexplored:

There is variability across samples in terms of whether the organizational or community dimension of embeddedness predicts voluntary turnover. Allen (2006), Mallol et al. (2007) and Wheeler et al. (2010a) found on-the-JE to predict intention to quit and voluntary turnover. By contrast, Lee et al. (2004) have found only off-the-JE and Holtom et al. (2006) have found both the dimensions of JE to predict voluntary turnover. Thus, future research can investigate why community embeddedness is not a stable predictor of voluntary turnover. A research in this direction will help the organizations to design their embeddedness policies accordingly.

Most turnover models include two most frequently tested attitudinal constructs, namely, job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Holtom & O’ Neil, 2004). The overlap between the traditional model of voluntary turnover and the JE model occurs in the organizational commitment and job satisfaction dimension (for details, see Table 2). Lee et al. (2004) conducted an exploratory factor analysis where they found that items for job satisfaction, organizational commitment and the fit and sacrifice dimensions of on-the-JE loaded on the first factor, this proves a strong correlation between JE, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In the study by Felp et al. (2009), the authors found out the effect of co-workers’ JE on individual employee turnover and the results revealed that at the individual level it is organizational commitment that is the strongest predictor of voluntary turnover and not JE. Affective commitment has the highest correlation with organization embeddedness that varied between 0.41 and 0.76.

Three research studies by Van Dijk and Brown (2003) and Fletcher III (2005) found organizational commitment and Harman, Blum, Stefani and Taho (2009) found job satisfaction and not JE to be the largest predictor of intention to leave.

Table 2.

Details of Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment Scales Used and Their Impact on JE

	JE Scale	Organizational Commitment Scale	Job Satisfaction Scale
Allen (2006)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Bergiel et al. (2009)	Only on-the-JE Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Besich (2005)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Bowman (2009)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Chen et al. (2010)	Only on-the-JE Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Crossley et al. (2007)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Affective commitment and continuance commitment was controlled (Meyer and Allen’s scale 1997)	Job satisfaction was controlled (Russell, Spitzmuller, Lin, Stanton, Smith and Ironson (2004)
Cunningham et al. (2005)	Only on-the-JE Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Van Dijk and Brown (2003)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Measured using 15 item of Mowday, Porter and Steers’ scale (1982) (controlled)	Job satisfaction Minnesota Job Satisfaction (MSQ) (Weiss, Dawis, England and Lofquist’s scale, 20 items, 1967)
Felps et al. (2009)	Short scale of JE Holtom et al. (2006) 21 item	Measured affective commitment only (4 items adopted from Meyer, Allen and Smith’s, 1993) (controlled)	20 items a shortened version of Spector’s (1985) job satisfaction measure (controlled)
Fletcher III (2005)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	The organizational commitment scale (adopted from Allen & Meyer, 1990) consisted of 23 items (controlled)	The Job Satisfaction Scale (adapted from Spector, 1997) is a 36-item (controlled)
Giosan et al. (2005)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Halbesleben and Wheeler (2008)	Only on-the -JE Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Affective commitment was assessed using the six-item subscale created by Meyer and Allen (1997) (controlled)	Job satisfaction was assessed using the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss, Dawis, England & Lofquist, 1967) (controlled)
Harman et al. (2009)	Lee et al. (2004) six-items to measure off-the-job embeddedness and 14 items for on the job	14-item version of Meyer and Allen’s (1988) measure of affective commitment (controlled)	A shortened version of Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey (3 item) (controlled)
Holtom et al. (2006)	Developed and validated a short scale 18-item scale	Not controlled	Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey, a 36-item measure (controlled)
Holtom and O’Neill (2004)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Meyer and Allen’s organizational commitment scale (controlled)	A shortened version of Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey (3 item) (controlled)
Holtom and Inderrieden (2006)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Not controlled	15 items (Quinn and Shepard, 1974) (controlled)
Holtom et al. (2010)	Details about scale used not mentioned in the paper	Not controlled	Not controlled
Lee et al. (2004)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Meyer and Allen’s (1997) measure of affective commitment (controlled)	A shortened version of Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey (3 item) (controlled)
Mallol et al. (2007)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) scale	Meyer and Allen’s organizational commitment scale (controlled)	Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey, a 36-item measure (controlled)
Mitchell et al. (2001b)	Developed and validated original 40-item scale	Meyer and Allen’s organizational commitment scale (controlled)	Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey, a 36-item measure (controlled)
Ng and Feldman (2010)	Four or five items from each scale that had the strong factor loadings reported in the Mitchell et al. (2001) scale	Organizational commitment measured with Meyer, Allen and Smith’s (1993) six-item scale (controlled)	Not controlled
Ramesh and Gelfand (2010)	31 items Mitchell et al.’s (2001) creation of the new family embeddedness scale	Affective and normative from the Lee, Allen, Meyer and Rhee (2001) 10 items	A shortened version of Spector’s (1997) Job Satisfaction Survey (3 item) (controlled)
Sekiguchi et al. (2008)	On-the-JE with 10 items developed and tested by Lee et al. (2004)	Not controlled	Not controlled
Swider et al. (2011)	Composite of Lee et al.’s (2004) six job embeddedness dimensions consisting of 31 items	Not controlled	24-item job satisfaction Spector (1985) (used as a moderator)
Tanova and Holtom (2008)	16 items similar Holtom et al. (2006) scale	Not controlled	Single-item controlled
Wheeler et al. (2010a)	JE was assessed via Mitchell et al.’s (2001) 34-item scale	Not controlled	Not controlled
Wheeler et al. (2010b)	Details of scales used are not available in the paper	Details of scales used are not available in the paper	Details of scales used are not available in the paper
Harris et al. (2011)	Twelve items taken from the Mitchell et al.’s (2001) organizational job embeddedness	Not controlled	Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins and Klesh (1979) three-item scale (not controlled)
Hom et al. (2009)	Mitchell et al.’s (2001) on-the-JE scale	Not controlled	Not controlled

Source: Authors’ own.

In summary, the above construct similarities with JE warrant empirical papers to distinguish them from JE. If we are to continue to treat embeddedness as a unique construct, we must ensure that it is indeed independent of similar concepts so that it adds unique value to the nomological network.

Authors, such as, Holtom et al. (2006), recommend that managers need to understand how and to what extent their employees are currently embedded in order to effectively design and implement JE-based retention strategies. More research examining the influence of factors, such as, organizational justice, career commitment, professional commitment, leadership style and personal disposition (core self-evaluation, that is, self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control and neuroticism) and high levels of communication and accuracy are believed to provide insight into possible educational interventions that instil organizational loyalty. More evidence is required to determine the interdependence of organizational characteristics associated with workload, management style, stress, empowerment and autonomy, promotional opportunities, work schedules and realistic job previews, which would help decision-makers better understand how intervention is to be directed.

A study of the relationship between JE and HRM practices, such as, performance appraisal or employee selection or employee recognition, training system, technology, career plans, compensation and succession plan, should test the idea and help managers to identify which HRM components best address different organizational needs as it would especially be of significant value for researchers to incorporate JE into human resources (HR) practices.

The liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991 witnessed new industries and high growth leading to an intense competition for human resources with demand for human resources rapidly outstripping supply. According to Budhwar and Varma (2010), in India, acquiring, managing and retaining talent is a major issue. JE as a retention construct can play an important role in retaining employees in India. The existing studies on JE are mostly restricted to the West. The Indian scenario has remained largely unexplored.

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