LAUSR

Many organizations aim to increase the representation of women in their workforce, yet such efforts are often challenged by women’s relatively higher propensity to leave a job compared to men. Overlooked so far has been the temporal relationship between the representation of women and an organization’s collective employee turnover. We suggest that a substantive and rapid increase in the representation of women positively affects women and results in positive spillover effects for men, leading to a decrease in collective turnover. In our theoretical development, we explain how higher representation of women is associated with higher job embeddedness for all employees, which results in a subsequent decrease in collective employee turnover. We use latent curve model (LCM) analysis to examine a population of 499 organizations over a 14-year time span, and find support for our hypotheses. We suggest opportunities for future research and offer implications for practicing managers.