Determinants of job-hopping: an empirical study in Belgium

Kelly Steenackers and Marie-Anne Guerry

International Journal of Manpower, 2016, vol. 37, issue 3, 494-510

Abstract: Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of job-hopping. More specifically, the authors investigate the effect of age, gender, educational level, organizational size and sector on the job-hop frequency. Design/methodology/approach - – Due to a lack of an existing appropriate measure of job-hopping, the authors introduce a new measure, namely, the job-hop frequency. Based on the data collected from a survey in Belgium, a linear regression analysis is performed. Findings - – Through an empirical analysis, the authors show that age is negatively related to the job-hop frequency. Gender moderates this relationship. Therefore, the analysis supports the view that young women tend to job-hop significantly more than young men, but as they age, women are significantly more likely than men to remain within the same company. Furthermore, the authors find that the educational level has no influence on the job-hop behavior, indicating that having more job alternatives does not necessarily result in actual job-hop behavior. Both the sector and the size of the organization are found not to be significantly related to the job-hop frequency. Practical implications - – This research provides human resource managers more insight into the job-hop behavior of employees and offers some useful suggestions for their retention management. Originality/value - – Existing literature on turnover is very extensive, but literature on job-hopping remains rather underexplored. Therefore, the study extends previous research on voluntary turnover and job mobility by focussing on job-hopping in particular.

Keywords: Gender; Human resources; Determinants; Belgium; Generational differences; Job-hopping (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:37:y:2016:i:3:p:494-510

DOI: 10.1108/IJM-09-2014-0184

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Manpower is currently edited by Professor Adrian Ziderman

More articles in International Journal of Manpower from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().