An organizational perspective on brain drain: What can organizations do to stop it?

Abstract

Brain drain is one of the major issues plaguing industries driven by knowledge workers in global south. Although it represents an excessively large component of total international human migration, organizational level factors as antecedents of brain drain remain mostly unexplored, although many of these migrants are already employed and, thus, organizational factors may influence their decision to migrate. This study, which draws from 260 professionals in the IT-BPO sector of Sri Lanka, shows that career growth opportunities, incentives, and perceived organizational politics (POP) directly influence brain drain. In addition, when employees perceive a high degree of organizational politics, presence of favorable career growth opportunities do not reduce migration intentions. Furthermore, although the workload is found not to cause brain drain, a close examination of the data and literature indicates that the relationship is likely to depend on several organizational and personal factors which lie beyond the scope of the present paper. This paper concludes by highlighting the importance of using the organizational theory to explain brain drain and several important implications for practice.

Keywords:

• Brain drain
• Migration intentions
• Career growth opportunities
• Workload
• Incentives
• Organizational politics
• High skilled migration
• Knowledge workers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this manuscript are available from the corresponding author (J A S K Jayakody), upon reasonable request.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.