THE RETENTION OF KNOWLEDGE WORKERS WITH THE UNFOLDING MODEL OF VOLUNTARY TURNOVER

In the next century, the American and world economies will be firmly g rounded in the information age. As such, retention of its key particip ant, namely, the knowledge worker, becomes critical to organizational well being. In this article, initial steps are taken toward understand ing how to retain knowledge workers, with a particular focus on engine ers. First, we apply a new and promising theory from the academic HRM literature (Hem & Griffeth 1995, pp. 85-86), the unfolding model of vo luntary turnover (Lee & Mitchell 1994), in order to understand the fou r prototypical ways that knowledge workers might leave their organizat ions. Second, three widely accepted taxonomic types of engineers and f ive standard HRM practices are identified. As a conceptual tool, we cr eated four matrices, with each corresponding to one of the four paths depicted by the unfolding model. Within each matrix, the five standard HRM functions were crossed with the three prototypical engineering ty pes. We then ask, given the characteristics of each decision path, how might each HRM function facilitate the retention of each type of engi neer? Finally, research implications are discussed.