A new perspective on job lock

Summary

This paper analyses the situation when employees fail to adapt to
overall job dissatisfaction. By combining the existing knowledge in
economics on job lock and in psychology on employees’ feeling of being
‘stuck’ at work, the paper explains why some employees fail to adapt
when dissatisfied with their job. Thus, the paper aims to expand our
understanding of why some employees are job locked or are ‘stuck’ at
their work even though dissatisfied. Using the British Household Panel Survey, the possibility of falling in a job-lock state is analyzed to
outline a set of factors that explain why employees differ in the way
they adjust to job dissatisfaction. We divide these factors into
socio-demographic features, personality attributes, type of occupation,
employment conditions, type of sector, and work-related contextual
features. Based on results of probit regression analysis, we provide
evidence that all these group of factors can jointly predict the state
of job dissatisfaction, the absence of job turnover and job lock (being
‘stuck’ at job). Moreover, our results suggest that the adaptation to
job dissatisfaction could be better understood if personality attributes
(such as self-esteem) are included in the analysis. Thus, this study
expands our understanding of how and why employees might feel ‘stuck’ at
work and fall in a state of job lock.