Executive Loyalty and Employer Attributes

An employee´s attachment to their employer is one of the central topics across the social sciences. We examine an important aspect of attachment, job search, in the context of executive jobs using a unique data set from a prominent executive search firm that identifies whether executives have declined or pursued offers of employment at other companies. This measure offers an improvement over previous studies on attachment, which rely on actual turnover and, as such, are confounded by opportunities in the labor market.