Newcomer and Incumbent Exit After Comobility Hiring Events

ABSTRACT

Newcomers comprise substantial portions of modern workforces, yet they represent high exit risks due to their lack of embeddedness in their new firms. Organizations often source new employees via comobility, wherein newcomers join simultaneously from another firm. Despite the prevalence of comobility and other affiliation‐based hiring practices, research to date has not considered if, when, or how those affiliations affect newcomer retention. We also have scant research on the effects of such comobile, affiliation‐based hiring on incumbent retention, a vital consideration for organizations. Integrating comobility and turnover event theorizing, we explore how comobility affects subsequent exit likelihood. We argue that comovers benefit from the embeddedness fortified through shared ties and work structures with other comovers, increasing their retention. Conversely, we posit that the arrival of comovers negatively impacts incumbents’ social and work structures, reducing incumbents’ job embeddedness and increasing their exit likelihoods. We expect these effects to be amplified when comobility groups are larger and have a leader. We test our framework in two archival analyses of United States (U.S.) college football coaches and U.S. law firm partners (2001‐2018). To investigate how comobility affects embeddedness with comovers and incumbents, we conducted an exploratory cross‐industry survey of full‐time U.S. workers and targeted interviews with comovers to illustrate the phenomenon.