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When “Embedded” Means “Stuck”: Moderating Effects of Job Embeddedness in Adverse Work Environments

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David Allen at The University of Memphis
David Allen
Vesa Peltokorpi at Hiroshima University
Vesa Peltokorpi
Alex Rubenstein at University of Central Florida
Alex Rubenstein
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Abstract

Job embeddedness is predominately assumed to benefit employees, work groups, and organizations (e.g., higher performance, social cohesion, and lower voluntary turnover). Challenging this assumption, we examined the potentially negative outcomes that may occur if employees are embedded in an adverse work environment—feeling “stuck,” yet unable to exit a negative situation. More specifically, we considered two factors representing adverse work conditions: abusive supervision and job insecurity. Drawing from conservation of resources theory, we hypothesized that job embeddedness would moderate the relationship between these conditions and outcomes of voluntary turnover, physical health, emotional exhaustion, and sleep quality/quantity, such that employees embedded in more adverse environments would be less likely to quit, but would experience more negative personal outcomes. Results from two independent samples, one in Japan (N = 597) and one in the United States (N = 283), provide support for the hypothesized pattern of interaction effects, thereby highlighting a largely neglected “dark side” of job embeddedness.
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When “Embedded” Means “Stuck”: Moderating Effects of Job
Embeddedness in Adverse Work Environments
David G. Allen
Rutgers University and University of Warwick
Vesa Peltokorpi
Saitama University
Alex L. Rubenstein
University of Memphis
Job embeddedness is predominately assumed to benefit employees, work groups, and organizations (e.g.,
higher performance, social cohesion, and lower voluntary turnover). Challenging this assumption, we
examined the potentially negative outcomes that may occur if employees are embedded in an adverse
work environment—feeling “stuck,” yet unable to exit a negative situation. More specifically, we
considered two factors representing adverse work conditions: abusive supervision and job insecurity.
Drawing from conservation of resources theory, we hypothesized that job embeddedness would moderate
the relationship between these conditions and outcomes of voluntary turnover, physical health, emotional
exhaustion, and sleep quality/quantity, such that employees embedded in more adverse environments
would be less likely to quit, but would experience more negative personal outcomes. Results from two
independent samples, one in Japan (N⫽597) and one in the United States (N⫽283), provide support
for the hypothesized pattern of interaction effects, thereby highlighting a largely neglected “dark side”
of job embeddedness.
Keywords: job embeddedness, abusive supervision, physical health symptoms, employee retention
I ain’t gonna quit!
—Richard Gere as Ensign Mayo (An Officer and a Gentleman)
In a pivotal scene in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman
(Paramount Pictures, 1982), Ensign Zack Mayo is repeatedly
abused by his supervisor, drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Emil
Foley. Foley forces Mayo to perform excessive physical exercise,
coupled with various forms of verbal harassment (e.g., berating
Mayo’s character; insulting Mayo’s father) and distress (e.g., push-
ups face down into a mud puddle; calisthenics while being struck
in the face by a stream from a water hose), ultimately screaming at
Mayo that he should give up and quit. However, Mayo refuses to
quit. He has made significant investments and built meaningful
relationships that would be sacrificed if he left, and believes he has
little choice but to endure the abuse.
Although an extreme example of abusive supervision, this scene
illustrates a unique perspective as to the joint nature of unfavorable
work conditions along with being “stuck” or “embedded” in a
particular context. We know that employees regularly experience
work conditions that, although not as extreme as those faced by
Ensign Mayo, include abusive supervision, bullying, threats, ha-
rassment, job insecurity, and other forms of distress (e.g., Duffy,
Ganster, & Pagon, 2002;Martinko, Harvey, Brees, & Mackey,
2013). Although aversive work conditions such as abusive super-
vision are related to outcomes such as withdrawal, many employ-
ees who experience such difficulties choose to stay rather than
leave their jobs. We suggest this is at least partially attributable to
employee job embeddedness, defined as “the combined forces that
keep a person from leaving his or her job” (Yao, Lee, Mitchell,
Burton, & Sablynski, 2004, p. 159). Job embeddedness has gained
increased attention as a means to understand employee stay or
leave decisions (T. W. Lee, Burch, & Mitchell, 2014). A sizable
body of research has accumulated, relating embedding forces to
numerous important individual, group, and organizational out-
comes, most notably generally favorable criteria such as lower
voluntary turnover (T. R. Mitchell, Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, &
Erez, 2001), greater in- and extra-role performance (T. W. Lee,
Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton, & Holtom, 2004), and improved
attitudes (Jiang, Liu, McKay, Lee, & Mitchell, 2012). There is also
evidence that being embedded can buffer the effects of negative
workplace shocks on task and citizenship behaviors (Burton, Hol-
tom, Sablynski, Mitchell, & Lee, 2010) and on job search (Holtom,
Burton, & Crossley, 2012).
At first blush, these empirical findings suggest that greater
embeddedness is something that organizations should strategically
encourage (Hom et al., 2009;T. R. Mitchell et al., 2001), and
perhaps even something employees would themselves seek to
This article was published Online First August 25, 2016.
David G. Allen, School of Management & Labor Relations, Rutgers
University, and Warwick Business School, Industrial Relations Research
Unit, University of Warwick; Vesa Peltokorpi, Graduate School of Hu-
manities and Social Sciences, Saitama University; Alex L. Rubenstein,
Fogelman College of Business & Economics, University of Memphis.
Authorship order was determined randomly; all authors contributed
equally. We gratefully acknowledge the helpful feedback of Tom Lee,
Marion Eberly, and Chuck Pierce.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alex L.
Rubenstein, Department of Management, University of Memphis, 323 FCB
Building, Memphis, TN 38152. E-mail: rbnstein@memphis.edu
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Applied Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 101, No. 12, 1670–1686 0021-9010/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000134
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... Although previous research has discussed the detrimental effects of career lock, no scales exist for measuring subjective career lock (SCL) to enable us to understand individuals' own perceptions of their current career situations. Previous research has used various, closely related terms to refer to and measure similar phenomena, such as job lock (e.g., Fisher et al. 2016;Huysse-Gaytandjieva, Groot & Pavlova 2013a;Madrian 1994;Kapur 1998), workplace and occupational lockedin (Aronsson et al. 2019;Aronsson & Göransson 1999;Bernhard-Oettel et al. 2020;Fahlén et al. 2009;Muhonen 2010;Stengård et al. 2016), being stuck at work (Allen, Peltokorpi & Rubenstein 2016), reluctant staying (Hom et al. 2012;Sheridan et al. 2019), and staying unwillingly in a job (Böckerman et al. 2013). These prior studies have often utilized self-reports and sometimes longitudinal register data to combine one or multiple attitudinal (e.g., job dissatisfaction) and behavioral (e.g., job search, job immobility) attributes to define whether individuals are in a career lock position or not. ...
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