When the farm-gate becomes a revolving door: An institutional approach to high labour turnover

Lotte Staelens and Céline Louche ()
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Lotte Staelens: UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University = Université de Gand

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Abstract: By adopting an institutional theory lens, the aim of the article is to better understand the actions and mindset of managers toward high labour turnover in the cut-flower industry in Ethiopia. Our mixed-method approach explores the ways in which managers deal with, and legitimize, high levels of labour turnover. Our results show that they engage in three types of practices – predicting, containing and accommodating – whose objective is to make labour turnover tolerable, rather than reduce it. Interestingly, managers do not legitimize their practices through the use of cost-benefit arguments, as the literature would have suggested, but blame the institutional context. This article highlights the context-dependent aspects of labour turnover and explains how managers may find themselves in a deadlock situation. It informs the debate in human resource management research about managerial practices at the bottom of global value chains.

Keywords: cut-flower industry; Ethiopia; global value chains; high labour turnover; institutional theory; intensive labour industries; legitimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06-05
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Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://audencia.hal.science/hal-01636921v2
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Published in Human Relations, 2017, 70 (12), pp.1464 - 1485. ⟨10.1177/0018726717702209⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01636921

DOI: 10.1177/0018726717702209

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