Purpose

Mass lay-offs tremendously impact employees and companies. Helping people toward new employment could help organizations manage costs and reputation. The authors sought to test a model, based on regulatory focus theory, predicting which employees are more likely to consider leaving the company during this uncertain time (turnover intentions) and indirectly to engage in behavior to strengthen their external labor market position (mobility-oriented behavior).

Design/methodology/approach

With a mass lay-off impending, the authors studied employees (N = 326) in a financial services organization. The authors reasoned that employees' perception that they have higher (vs lower) qualifications than their job requires, may be able to spur turnover intentions for some because it enhances perception that movement to another job is desirable and feasible. The authors proposed perceptions of being overqualified vs perceptions of being underqualified only affect the turnover intentions and mobility-oriented behavior of promotion-focused employees.

Findings

Supporting the expectations, promotion-focused employees (but not prevention-focused employees) who perceived themselves to be overqualified, compared with promotion-focused employees who perceived themselves to be underqualified, showed higher turnover intentions and, indirectly, mobility-oriented behavior.

Originality/value

This research is one of few studies that have examined intentions and behavior of employees who are facing impending mass lay-off, as most lay-off research has studied survivors or victims post lay-off. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to apply a regulatory focus perspective on overqualification/underqualification, as well as to turnover intention and mobility behavior.

中文翻译：

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面临大规模裁员时谁想离开：对离职意向和流动导向行为的监管焦点视角

目的

大规模裁员对员工和公司产生了巨大影响。帮助人们找到新工作可以帮助组织管理成本和声誉。作者试图测试一个基于监管焦点理论的模型，预测哪些员工更有可能在这个不确定的时期考虑离开公司（离职意向），并间接参与加强其外部劳动力市场地位的行为（以流动为导向）行为）。

设计/方法/途径

由于大规模裁员迫在眉睫，作者研究了 一家金融服务机构的员工 ( N = 326)。作者推断，员工认为他们拥有比工作要求更高（相对更低）的资格，这可能会刺激一些人的离职意向，因为它增强了人们认为跳槽到另一份工作是可取和可行的。作者提出，对资历过高的看法与对资历不足的看法只会影响以晋升为重点的员工的离职意向和流动导向行为。

发现

与认为自己不合格的以晋升为中心的员工相比，与以晋升为中心的员工相比，认为自己资历过高的以晋升为中心的员工（而非以预防为中心的员工）支持期望，表现出更高的离职意向，并间接地表现出以流动为导向的行为。

原创性/价值

这项研究是为数不多的调查面临即将发生的大规模裁员的员工的意图和行为的研究之一，因为大多数裁员研究都研究了裁员后的幸存者或受害者。据作者所知，这是第一项将监管焦点应用于资格过高/资格不足以及离职意向和流动行为的研究。