Lost in a Downturn? Examining the Effects of Industry Embeddedness, Layoff Procedural Justice, Industry Insecurity, and Job Search on Industry Turnover

Employee downsizing efforts are becoming inevitable in today’s increasingly hypercompetitive global economy (Cascio, 2015), leaving industries with fractured talent pools. Utilizing data collected from a diverse sample of recently laid off workers from the oil and gas industry and drawing from literature on embeddedness (Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, & Erez, 2001) and, relatedly, aspects of the unfolding model of voluntary turnover (Lee & Mitchell, 1994), I develop the current study’s main predictor, industry embeddedness, and argue and test for its negative relationship with industry turnover. Subsequently, I propose and estimate three conditional models whereby industry embeddedness interacts with perceptions of layoff procedural justice, industry insecurity, and job search directed outside the industry to influence industry turnover. Surprisingly, while none of the hypothesized conditional effects were supported, study results did show two significant interaction effects – low levels of perceived layoff procedural justice and high levels of industry insecurity strengthen the negative relationship between industry embeddedness and industry turnover. Lastly, several practical and research implications are suggested serving to grow our understanding of the career mobility of layoff victims.