An Examination of Whether and How Prevention Climate Alters the Influence of Turnover on Performance

Abstract

Recent meta-analytic studies imply that groups often find ways of neutralizing turnover’s harmful effects and that important moderators of the turnover–performance relationship must be missing from the literature. Building on theory and findings related to the threat–rigidity effect, we suggest that groups tend to respond maladaptively to turnover when group norms promote the idea that turnover is threatening. Specifically, we suggest that prevention climate—that is, a climate focused on minimizing mistakes and costs—largely determines the degree to which group norms encourage members to view turnover as threatening and, in turn, the degree to which groups become less adaptive and perform worse in response to turnover. Across a sample of 232 groups, we found evidence that turnover is indeed more negatively related to performance for those groups with a strong prevention climate. Further, in a controlled laboratory context where we manipulated turnover and prevention climate, we found causal evidence supporting our full conceptual model. Our work advances research on turnover by identifying an important moderator and an underlying mechanism of the turnover–performance relationship.