California Management Review

Abstract

Increased workforce mobility imposes a significant cost on many organizations because of the negative impact departing employees have on informal networks. The turnover of well-connected employees disrupts networks important to innovation, best practice transfer, and project execution. Yet while network losses can be quite costly, they are typically invisible to most organizations’ financial and performance management systems. Using network data, this article shows how managers formulate three different kinds of strategies, namely, identifying flight risks in advance of departure, investing in key people in the network to improve retention, and improving network connectivity to enable it to be maintained in the face of turnover.

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