Understanding why do we stay in our jobs? A bibliometric and content analysis of job embeddedness in the past two decades (2001–2021)
| Date | 19 January 2024 |
| Pages | 309-339 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-12-2022-0549 |
| Published date | 19 January 2024 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Shubh Majumdarr,Shilpee A. Dasgupta |
Understanding why do we stay
in our jobs? A bibliometric
and content analysis of job
embeddedness in the past two
decades (2001–2021)
Shubh Majumdarr and Shilpee A. Dasgupta
Department of General Management Area, Indian Institute of Management Ranchi,
Ranchi, India
Abstract
Purpose –Job embeddedness is considered crucial for organizational success, as it promotes social capital and
helps to reduce turnover. A holistic review of job embeddedness remains elusive despite gaining researchers’
and practitioners’attention. Therefore, this study aims to synthesize the past literature to understand the
concepts and emerging themes in the domain. Further, it helps identify future research avenues and proposes a
comprehensive conceptual framework.
Design/methodology/approach –The study used bibliographic data of 263 Scopus-indexed publications
from inception, i.e. 2001 to 2021, which were subsequently analyzed using diverse bibliometric and content
analysis (TCCM) framework and software like Microsoft Excel, Vosviewer and “Biblioshiny”package in R
language.
Findings –The study analyzes the domain via performance analysis which sheds light on the increasing
publication trends and different significant contributors (authors, publications, countries, journals and
universities). Science mapping techniques such as keyword analysis identifies author keyword evolution and
trends. The content analysis showcases the dominance of diverse psychological theories applied in the domain.
Also, the bibliographic-coupling analysis highlights major clusters and associated research publications. The
study provides future research avenues, followed by a conceptual framework highlighting the antecedents,
moderators and outcomes of job embeddedness.
Originality/value –This studyis the first bibliometric and content analysis exploring job embeddedness and
will aid in developing a comprehensive understanding of the research topic.
Keywords Job embeddedness, Bibliometric review, Content analysis, Bibliographic-coupling
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
In 2021, amid the global economies’recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic disruptions, many
businesses worldwide were plagued with high employee turnover, as workers left their
decent-paying jobs in search of other career priorities (Cook, 2021); this phenomenon was
coined “The Great Resignation”(Cohen, 2021). Zimmerman et al. (2020) identified
compensation level, noncore job responsibilities, occupational investment, and
moonlighting as factors for job change. Gautam and Gautam (2022), adding further
identified, occupation stress as one of the factors of employee turnover. Prior research
(Change et al., 2019;Mozammel and Haan, 2016) states that voluntary employee turnover
harms the business profitability due to loss of organizational knowledge and skills with
Why do we
stay in our
jobs?
309
Funding: This study has not received any internal or external funding.
Disclosure statement: The authors reported no potential competing interests.
Data availability statement: The research article provides the steps for the dataset created and
analyzed during the current study is accessible in the Scopus repository.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 8 December 2022
Revised 18 August 2023
19 December 2023
Accepted 19 December 2023
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 46 No. 2, 2024
pp. 309-339
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-12-2022-0549
further loss of time and money spent on recruitment and training. The impact of voluntary
employee turnover can be reduced and predicted by job embeddedness (Heritage et al., 2016;
Skelton et al., 2019), which tries to understand why employees stay in an organization.
Job embeddedness (JE) is defined by Mitchell et al. (2001) as a cluster of attributes based on
embedded figures and field theory impacting employee retention. It offers further insights
through links, fit, and sacrifice as sub-dimensions. Links are the formal and informal
connections that attach employees to a firm. Fit is a worker’s perceived organizational
compatibility, whereas the psychological cost of leaving the firm represents sacrifice. Further
classification can also be considered, such as on-the-job, off-the-job, and even at community
and organizational levels.
With increasing empirical evidence indicating the benefits of JE to the development of
social capital (Holtom et al., 2006), it is considered crucial for an organization’s success;
retaining talented employees acts as a prime competitive advantage (Michaels et al., 2001),
making employee retention critical for businesses. Also, due to the ever-inc reasing
organizational and personal costs of leaving a job (Chandra et al., 2023), businesses have
expressed a keen interest in the topic and aim to align their policies to support JE in their
workforce.
From a theoretical perspective, JE is a new way of understanding voluntary employee
turnover regarding why people stay rather than leave the organization. Several studies
across different demographics in the USA (Mallol et al., 2007) and Europe (Tanova and
Holtom, 2008) have supported JE’s incremental variation in turnover results with control
variables such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and exit intentions (Lee et al.,
2004). New studies have expanded JE’s scope further with the addition of domains such as the
influence of leadership (Collins et al., 2014;Eberly et al., 2017;Khan et al., 2020a), the potential
impact of culture (Gong et al., 2011;Wu et al., 2017) and reduction of cyberloafing (Fakoor
Saghih and Nosrati, 2021). The remarkable increase in publications on JE with considerable
theory and methodological approaches confirms that the field is mature. However, the
existing literature has not developed a clear roadmap of how the field has evolved. Therefore,
Figure 1 summarizes the crucial milestones of JE research.
Presently, there are five literature reviews, two meta-analyses, and two bibliometric
studies concerning the overall JE domain. The earliest literature review from 2012, when
Zhang et al. (2012) explored the theoretical aspects of JE and highlighted five areas that
required additional research, such as the composite vs global measures, the cultural
boundaries for JE, the measurement and conceptual issues associated with “community
embeddedness”and “links,”along the discriminant validity issues. Further Jiang et al. (2012),
via meta-analysis of 65 sample publications, found that on-the-job and off-the-job
embeddedness negatively related to actual turnover and turnover intentions. Further, the
above relationship was more robust in public organizations and female-dominated samples.
In 2014 Ghosh and Gurunathan (2014), reviewed 37 academic papers on JE between 2001 and
2011 and suggested a model addressing three broad topics: JE’s antecedents, moderating and
mediating effects, and outcomes. Lee et al., 2014 among the originators of the JE construct,
provided a review regarding JE as a causal indicator model, and covered its expansion into
new domains and its impact on different organizational outcomes beyond job turnover.
In 2020 (Shah et al., 2020), performed a detailed content analysis of 108 research articles which
helped to identify JE’s mediating role in the manufacturing and service industry with a
comprehensive framework. In 2022 Vashisht et al. (2022), performed a meta-analysis with 37
articles focusing on the relationship between work performance and JE and concluded with a
meta-analytic correlation between organizational citizenship behavior, task performance,
and job embeddedness. More recently Amankwaa et al. (2022), provided a brief bibliometric
analysis of the subject but then pur ely concentrated on examining th e impact of
transformational leadership on organizational and commun ity embeddedness in the
ER
46,2
310
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