Topic: Citizenship Behaviors, Counter-Productive Work Behavior, Job Performance
Publication: Journal
of Management (SEP)
Article: Organizational tenure and job performance
Authors: T.W.H.
Ng and D.C. Feldman
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger
It is
often intuited that employees who remain in an organization longer gain more
knowledge of their job and the organization and thus perform at a higher level
than employees with less tenure.
Indeed, it’s no secret that organizational tenure is common factor
considered in administrative decisions such as offering promotions and awarding
raises and other fringe benefits (e.g., pensions, vacation days). For many of us, anecdotal evidence
probably confirms the assumption that as tenure within the organization
increases, so does performance.
But what does the research say?
In a recent
meta-analysis of the relationship between organizational tenure and job
performance, Ng and Feldman (2010) combined data from 350 studies which
included nearly 250,000 research participants. Not surprisingly, the authors expected that organizational
tenure would be favorably related to various forms of job performance. Their findings generally confirmed that
organizational tenure is favorably
associated with performance. However,
the relationships between tenure and performance was quite weak overall.
While
there was modest positive association between organizational tenure and task
performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, the benefit of tenure
appears to drop as tenure increases.
