Birds, Birds, Birds: Co-Worker Similarity, Workplace Diversity, and Voluntary Turnover

Boris Hirsch, Elke Jahn and Thomas Zwick

No 12333, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We investigate how the demographic composition of the workforce along the sex, nationality, education, age, and tenure dimension affects voluntary turnover. Fitting duration models for workers' job-to-job moves that control for workplace fixed effects in a representative sample of large manufacturing plants in Germany during 1975–2016, we find that larger co-worker similarity in all five dimensions substantially depresses voluntary turnover whereas workplace diversity is of limited importance. In line with conventional wisdom, which has that birds of one feather flock together, our results suggest that workers prefer having co-workers of their kind and place less value on diverse workplaces.

Keywords: workplace diversity; co-worker similarity; workforce demography; voluntary turnover (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J19 J21 J62 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2019-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Forthcoming - revised version published as 'Birds, Birds, Birds: Co-Worker Similarity, Workplace Diversity and Job Switches' in: British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2020, 58 (3), 690-718

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Working Paper: Birds, Birds, Birds: Co-worker Similarity, Workplace Diversity, and Voluntary Turnover (2019)
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