Organisational mobility: an empirical study of organisational career outcomes as indicated by changes in an individual's job and job environment

Organisational career outcomes are often related to organisational mobility which is described in the literature as movement of individuals between organisational positions. The outcomes are usually described in terms of rate, direction and patterns. Two factors suggest this is a narrow perspective of organisational mobility: 1) this simple description masks the variety in the situations which give rise to mobility outcomes; 2) this approach fails to explain the changes which can occur whilst an individual is within an organisational position. These factors can be accommodated by considering organisational mobility outcomes in terms of changes in an individual's job and job environment. An analysis of the literature revealed the following dimensions to be the most appropriate descriptors of this change: job duties, organisational relationships, physical environment, remuneration, job opportunities and job involvements. An empirical study of these changes over time revealed that organisational mobility outcomes can be meaningfully represented as a multidimensional spectrum of change circumstances. An analysis revealed that several significant dimensions strongly influenced the variation amongst the sets of change circumstances. Relating the change circumstances to these dimensions identified several characteristic groupings of circumstances: associated with interpositional changes; associated with organisation structure changes; associated with changes in job duties and organisational relationships; associated with cyclical or reoccurring duties; those characterised by very little change. The analysis also revealed that the outcomes can be described at different levels of generality. This allows mobility patterns to be described in broad terms or in terms which reflect the variety of situations which give rise to mobility outcomes.