Voluntary Employee Turnover: The Stepchild of German HR and Organizational Psychology Research

Abstract

The authors review the German voluntary turnover literature and examine how it reflects and extends the overall knowledge of employee turnover. First, the authors describe legal, institutional, and cultural influences specific to Germany that may affect voluntary turnover and its relationships with antecedents and outcomes. The authors then explain how research paradigms, which in German turnover research are primarily embedded in sociology and labor economics and to a lesser degree psychology and management, affect the lens by which voluntary turnover is examined. For instance, the variety of research perspectives leads to a variety of research questions, theories, data, and methodological approaches. Using these diverse perspectives, the authors explain how measurement and data quality concerns may hamper the understanding of turnover in cross-country/cross-cultural comparisons. This review further reveals many similarities with US-based turnover research, regarding the theories, methods, and results. The authors also find that turnover levels are, on average, considerably lower in Germany than in Anglo-Saxon labor markets. The authors suggest that the industry structure in Germany, coined by its strong and traditionally organized “Mittelstand” companies, may partly drive these findings. The authors close by identifying several research opportunities, available through advances in technology to improve the matching process, nonstandard work arrangements (such as in the gig economy), and a broader perspective on institutional peculiarities.

Citation

Tichy, N. and Weller, I. (2021), "Voluntary Employee Turnover: The Stepchild of German HR and Organizational Psychology Research", Allen, D.G. and Vardaman, J.M. (Ed.) Global Talent Retention: Understanding Employee Turnover Around the World (Talent Management), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 109-131. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-293-020211006