Collective turnover: organization design and processes or contagion effects?

Purpose Using organization-level data, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how turnover spreads at different job levels (i.e. managers, non-managers) and how vacancy rate and manager span of control precipitate continued turnover. Design/methodology/approach Organization-level longitudinal data were collected quarterly from 40 Canadian organizations on various HR metrics from 2009 to 2012, totaling 232 observations. The authors used covariate balance propensity score (CBPS) weighting to make stronger causal inferences. Findings The organization-level data provided limited support for turnover spreading at different job levels. Instead, vacancy rate predicted subsequent non-manager turnover rates, whereas span of control predicted subsequent manager turnover rates. Practical implications The implications of this research are twofold. First, to offset continued turnover among non-managers, it may be wise for organizations to fill vacancies promptly, particularly when unfilled positions affect job demands and resources of those who remain. Second, to minimize ongoing manager turnover, organizations may benefit from redesigning work units to have smaller manager-to-employee ratios. Originality/value This study adds to the collective turnover literature by demonstrating that organizational factors play a substantive role in predicting continued manager and non-manager turnover. Moreover, by using longitudinal data and CBPS weighting, this research allowed for establishing temporal precedence and greater confidence that these factors play a causal role. Lastly, this research highlights how the factors precipitating collective turnover differ between managers and non-managers.

City Manager Turnover Revisited: Effects of the Institutional Structure and Length of Tenure on City Manager Turnover

This study attempts to test a well-known model of city manager turnover. We use a Binary TSCS (Time-Series Cross-Section) analysis to address the problem of duration dependence, which typically occurs when the assumption is that a turnover decision at a certain point of time is entirely independent of previous decisions in the turnover data. In essence, manager turnover should be understood not as a single event at a given point in time but rather as being affected by the duration of tenure. Our empirical analysis of turnover data from 156 large cities in the United States for the period 1984–1999 indicate that, particularly when the length of manager tenure was controlled for, political push factors had significant effects on city manager turnover that were not detected by means of the ordinary logit analysis. The result on time duration suggests that longer tenure can reduce the likelihood of city manager turnover.

Municipal accounting restatements and top financial manager turnover

We investigate whether municipal financial manager turnover is associated with accounting restatements. This analysis is motivated by the notion that suspect financial reporting could limit the ability of stakeholders to assess the use of public resources (GASB, 2006). The evidence suggests that municipalities disclosing accounting restatements are more likely to see changes in the top financial manager position than a control sample of non-restatement municipalities. Overall, our findings are consistent with associations between financial reporting quality and the labor market for municipal financial managers, and imply that governments should consider adding the prevalence of accounting failures as an input in the evaluation of top financial managers.

You’re Fired! New Evidence on Portfolio Manager Turnover and Performance

We study managerial turnover for both internally managed mutual funds and those managed externally by subadvisors. We argue that turnover of subadvisors provides sharper tests and helps address several unresolved issues and puzzles from the previous literature. We find dramatically stronger inverse relations between subadvisor departures and lagged returns, and new evidence on how past flow predicts turnover. We find no evidence of improvements in return performance related to departures, but flow improvements are associated with departures of poor past performers. Our findings represent new evidence on how investors, sponsors, and boards learn about and evaluate mutual fund management performance.