Taking It or Leaving It

Abstract

It is widely argued that organizations are becoming increasingly unstable, This is a trend that threatens to impair the operation of internal labor markets and undermine other bureaucratic or corporatist incentives that raise workers' commitment to their employers. Using longitudinal case study data, the author supports the hypothesis that organizational instability raises workers' propensities to quit their jobs (independent of whether or not job security is threatened). This finding suggests that labor market and turnover research that fails to take change into account may be seriously flawed and raises a number of important questions that might be addressed in future research.