ORGANIZATIONAL SIZE, LAYOFFS, AND QUITS IN NORWAY

This article documents and seeks to explain the relationships between an organization's size and a person's probability of experiencing inte rorganizational mobility (i.e., quits and layoffs). Our analyses are b ased on data from a broadly representative panel study of Norwegian or ganizations and their employees. We find that employees of larger esta blishments in the private sector are less likely to be laid off and to quit their jobs. We then test possible explanations of these relation ships between organization size and mobility. We find that larger orga nizations in the private sector have lower quit rates mainly because t hey are more likely to be unionized. The relationship between size and layoffs, on the other hand, remained significant even after we contro lled for our explanatory variables. There was no relationship between size and quits in the public sector.