A critical review of the Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect literature: limitations, key challenges and directions for future research

The study of human behavior holds a prominent role in organizational behavior literature. For almost 45 years, the Exit, Voice, Loyalty and Neglect typology has attracted scholars’ interest and has been linked to employee responses towards dissatisfaction and problematic events in the workplace. This paper reviews the literature and identifies and addresses key theoretical and methodological deficiencies that the Exit, Voice, Loyalty and Neglect typology faces that have been either ignored or undeveloped. Moreover, by unpicking this typology as currently portrayed in the existing literature, it proposes key challenges that need to be addressed and provides directions for future research.