Job embeddedness: is it always a good thing?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the explanatory power of reactance theory and power dependence theory in predicting the moderating effect of job embeddedness on the organizational trust-workplace deviance relationship. Design/Methodology/Approach – Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of nurses ( n =353) via an online survey organization. The data were analyzed using hierarchical regression. Findings – Job embeddedness significantly moderated the organizational trust-workplace deviance relationship such that participants who experienced low organizational trust and high job embeddedness engaged in more workplace deviance than those experiencing low organizational trust and low job embeddedness. Practical implications – Organizations should attempt to build and maintain employees’ organizational trust since employees who lack organizational trust are more likely to act deviantly. Additionally, organizations should realize that job embeddedness is not always beneficial. Therefore, organizations should seek to reduce negative perceptions of job embeddedness by alerting employees (especially those who are the most distrusting) of other job opportunities and providing more generalizable skill training, to enhance employees’ perceptions of mobility. Originality value – This study demonstrates that job embeddedness can be applied to models (i.e., the organizational trust-workplace deviance relationship) beyond those that have previously included turnover as an outcome (i.e., Lee et al. , 2014), and that such influences may be negative. More notably, the results provide evidence supporting the notion of the negative side of job embeddedness.