Why can’t I get out? The mediating role of internal inertial forces in the relationship between job embeddedness and the perceived likelihood of leaving: a test of the theory of career inaction
通过四项研究（三个情景实验和一个实地调查）检验了工作嵌入通过内部惯性力量影响离职感知可能性的中介机制，并发现个人特征（如性别、年龄、教育水平、主动性人格）不调节这一关系，支持了职业不作为理论。
People who are embedded in their organization are less likely to leave their organization, even when they desire or intend to do so. Yet, so far, it remains largely unclear why this happens. The theory of career inaction states that highly embedded people who are less likely to realize a desire to leave because they get internally paralysed by several inertial forces when thinking about leaving. According to this theory, every person in the same situation is at least to some degree susceptible to these inertial forces and, thus, the relationship between job embeddedness and the inertial forces should not depend much on personal characteristics. Via three vignette studies and one field study, we examined whether the relationship between job embeddedness and the perceived likelihood of leaving is mediated by internal inertial forces. In the field study, we also explored whether personal characteristics (i.e. gender, age, educational level, and proactive personality) indeed did not moderate the relationship between job embeddedness and the internal inertial forces. In all four studies, inertial forces were found to mediate the relationship between on-the-job embeddedness and the perceived likelihood of leaving. For the relationship between off-the-job embeddedness and the perceived likelihood of leaving, we found mediation in the first three studies, but not in the survey study. Finally, we found no moderation effects of personal characteristics in the field study. Our results thus confirm several of the propositions in the theory of career inaction.