The Story of Why We Stay: A Review of Job Embeddedness

In this article, we examine the history and development of job embeddedness, beginning with the story of the idea’s conception, theoretical foundation, and original empirical structure as a major predictor of employee voluntary turnover. We then consider more recent expansions in the theoretical structure and empirical measurement of job embeddedness, exploring job embeddedness as a causal indicator model versus a reflective model. Next, we review some promising expansions of embeddedness to new domains (e.g., family embeddedness) as well as important contingency factors that enhance or diminish its impact. Finally, we describe how job embeddedness affects important organizational outcomes beyond turnover, including job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, innovation, and the development of social and human capital. Throughout the article, we provide our opinions on how the theory and research on embeddedness have progressed as well as ideas on how it can be improved.