“It gave everybody a voice”: dissent expression through COVID-19 and the Great Resignation

ABSTRACTSince the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation, the U.S. has seen nearly 100 million people leave their organizations.Footnote1 Such record-breaking transformations call for an investigation into how dissent shapes organizational life, particularly in times of complexity. In this essay, we argue dissent expression manifested through frustration and inconsistency illuminate opportunities for organizations to create healthier, happier, and more sustainable workplaces. Grounded by dissent and organizational retention and turnover literature, data for this research were collected through 25 semistructured qualitative interviews with employees who chose to stay with their organization through COVID-19 and analyzed using Tracy’s (2020) phronetic iterative approach. The findings of this study lead to two important theoretical contributions. First, the cyclical process of dissent offers unique opportunities for organizational members to exercise their voice and their organizations to provide community. Second, these findings call for the increased use of qualitative methodology in dissent scholarship, encouraging researchers to seek out “thick description” uniquely accessible through qualitative data immersion.Footnote2 Practical findings from these data present avenues for practitioners to facilitate dissent expression within organizations to encourage retention and promote organizational health.KEYWORDS: dissentorganizational retentionorganizational turnoverCOVID-19Great Resignation AcknowledgementsThe findings reported in the manuscript are original and have not been published previously. Authors have complied with American Psychological Association ethical standards in the treatment of our data.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Greg Iacurci, “2022 was the ‘Real Year of the Great Resignation,’ Says Economist,” CNBC, 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/01/why-2022-was-the-real-year-of-the-great-resignation.html.2 Sarah J. Tracy, Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), p. 3.3 Joseph Fuller and William Kerr, “The Great Resignation Didn’t Start with the Pandemic,” Harvard Business Review, 2022, https://hbr.org/2022/03/the-great-resignation-didnt-start-with-the-pandemic.4 G. Iacurci, “2022 was the ‘Real Year of the Great Resignation,’ Says Economist.”5 Theodore A. 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