Arbeitspapier

Birds, birds, birds: Co-worker similarity, workplace diversity, and voluntary turnover

We investigate how the demographic composition of the workforce along the sex, nationality, education, age, and tenure dimension affects voluntary turnover. Fitting duration models for workers' job-to-job moves that control for workplace fixed effects in a representative sample of large manufacturing plants in Germany during 1975-2016, we find that larger co-worker similarity in all five dimensions substantially depresses voluntary turnover whereas workplace diversity is of limited importance. In line with conventional wisdom, which has that birds of one feather flock together, our results suggest that workers prefer having co-workers of their kind and place less value on diverse workplaces.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: Working Paper Series in Economics ; No. 387

Classification
Wirtschaft
Labor Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
Demographic Economics: Other
Subject
workforce demography
co-worker similarity
workplace diversity
voluntary turnover

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Hirsch, Boris
Jahn, Elke J.
Zwick, Thomas
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre
(where)
Lüneburg
(when)
2019

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Hirsch, Boris
  • Jahn, Elke J.
  • Zwick, Thomas
  • Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre

Time of origin

  • 2019

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