The loss of human capital, social capital and stars: Collective turnover and unit-level performance

Recent years have witnessed significant research interest in unit and organizational performance consequences associated with collective-level turnover. In a relatively short period of time, a number of empirical studies have examined the relationship between varying rates of employee turnover and unit- or firm-level performance. This work suggests that as employee turnover rates increase, organizational effectiveness decreases. While empirical work has outpaced conceptual developments, recent theoretical developments include Nyberg and Ployhart's (2013) context emergent turnover (CET) theory and Hausknecht and Holwerda's (2013) capacity-based model. I test theoretical arguments contained in this conceptual work and extend current empirical work by examining the performance implications of employee turnover quality including human capital and social capital losses, as opposed to a simple focus on the quantity of employee departures. Using a large, unique and proprietary sample of academics, I find that after first controlling for rates of turnover, unit-level performance suffers in response to the loss of employees possessing higher levels of human capital. Moreover, social capital losses associated with departures exacerbate the effect of human capital losses on unit performance. I also find evidence supporting the importance of "star" performers (Aguinis & O'Boyle, 2014) in that unit-level performance suffers disproportionately in response to the loss of these employees and their social capital. Overall, this study contributes to multiple streams of literature, including collective turnover, multilevel human capital theory, social capital and research about star performers.