The Adoption of Job Rotation: Testing the Theories

This paper tests three possible explanations for why firms adopt job rotation: employee learning (rotation makes employees more versatile), employer learning (through rotation, employers learn more about individual workers' strengths), and employee motivation (rotation mitigates boredom). Where...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Industrial & labor relations review 2006-07, Vol.59 (4), p.653-666
Main Authors: Eriksson, Tor, Ortega, Jaime
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Correlation analysis
Denmark
Employee development
Employees
Employers
Hierarchy
Human capital
Human Resources
Hypothesis testing
Job rotation
Labor Force
Labour relations
Learning
Management
Motivation
Recruitment
Studies
Work Environment
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Summary:This paper tests three possible explanations for why firms adopt job rotation: employee learning (rotation makes employees more versatile), employer learning (through rotation, employers learn more about individual workers' strengths), and employee motivation (rotation mitigates boredom). Whereas previous studies have examined either establishment characteristics or a single firm's personnel records, this study merges information from a detailed survey of Danish private sector firms with linked employer-employee panel data, allowing firm characteristics, work force characteristics, and firms' human resource management practices to be included as explanatory variables. The results reject the employee motivation hypothesis, but support the employee learning and, especially, the employer learning hypotheses. Firms allocating more resources to training were more likely to rotate workers; rotation schemes were more common in less hierarchical firms and in firms with shorter average employee tenure; and both firm growth rates and firms' use of nation-wide recruitment were positively associated with rotation schemes.
ISSN:0019-7939
2162-271X
DOI:10.1177/001979390605900407