The Dialectics of the Exit Interview: A Fresh Look at Conversations About Organizational Disengagement

Despite being a staple of human resource management since the 1920s, the exit interview (EI) has contributed information about employee turnover that has produced as much skepticism as confidence regarding its authenticity. As the EI is a situated conversation about organizational disengagement, research on relevant communication phenomena is applied to extend our understanding of the EI. A model of the EI is presented that is based on two dialectical processes that address the conversational purposes of the interviewee and interviewer. Petronio’s treatise on the reveal-conceal dialectic is used to identify factors that influence the departing employees’ self-revelations, that is, the authenticity of personal information regarding their reasons for voluntarily leaving their jobs. Lamiell’s dialectic process is used to account for the interviewer’s sense of authenticity-inauthenticity about the departing employee’s responses.