Understanding Quiet Quitting as a Modern Withdrawal Behaviour: An OB and HRM Systematic Review

Abstract

 Quiet quitting, or systematically restricting discretionary effort to the minimum required under contract, has emerged as a major organizational challenge since 2022. A systematic literature review synthesizes the evidence from 25 studies (2022-2025) to develop an integrated model of quiet quitting’s antecedents, mechanisms, consequences, and stakeholder interpretations. Organizational culture toxicity was noted as the primary driver in the university-employee studies with a rate of 44 per cent, then it communicates through workplace relationships deterioration and job demands-resources imbalance to burnout and 4quiet quitting adoption. Loss of autonomy was the most mentioned stressor with 40% of the studies finding that quitting quietly was an act of reclaiming autonomy. Feeling tired of your job can cause quiet quitting the new trend gaining much momentum. Measurable losses include a 37–53% decrease in productivity, a 47–53% drop in innovation, and widespread withholding of knowledge. Four theories share the same reasons that employees retaliate against employers: Social Exchange Theory, Job Demands-Resources model, Psychological Contract theory, and Stress-Coping theory. These include reciprocity violations, resource depletion, and contract breach. According to employees, a quiet quitting is just a healthy work boundary. However, organizations and managers consider it a threat to performance which is why they prefer a solution to the problem than symptoms. The six-theme model integrates propositions from stakeholder theory and stress theories to show how organizational conditions shape workplace relationships which then lead to burnout and strain which in turn results in adoption of quiet quitting and organizational outcomes. Quiet quitting should not be treated as an employee behaviour issue but as a systems diagnostic signal for culture transformation, autonomy restoration, manager training and workload rebalancing. When organizations address systemically the roots of quiet quitting such as culture, autonomy, and fairness they can achieve engagement through system health, not simply compliance mechanisms.