Standing on the Shoulders of Others: Career Interdependence in Job Mobility (original) (raw)

Measuring career mobility: An empirical comparison of six mobility indexes

1999

The current paper presents six indexes that can be used to characterize the course of a career during a particular time interval, respectively, (1) the total number of transitions during that interval; (2) the number of positive transitions; (3) the number of negative transitions; (4) the subtraction of the number of negative transitions from the number of positive transitions; (5) the relative uncommonness of the transitions; and (6) the subtraction of the number of negative transitions from the number of positive transitions, weighted by their uncommonness. Advantages and disadvantages of these six indexes are discussed. Further, an empirical example is presented that draws on data from a sample of 357 employed Dutch youth. Finally, our approach is compared to previous approaches (event-centered methods, such as survival analysis, and career-centered methods, such as clustering techniques). It is concluded that our simple approach complements these other approaches well.

Career mobility at the intersection between agent and structure: A conceptual model

Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 2009

The main aim of this paper is to extend the suitability of the concepts of the boundaryless and the protean career for the study of career mobility. To do so, we introduce a conceptual model that maps out the main factors determining and constraining transitions in careers. This model shows marks of European thinking on careers. It not only builds on aspects of both the boundaryless and protean career concepts, but also extends the focus by paying attention to the interplay between agency and structure. It adds to our understanding of the complex interplay between individual and structural factors shaping individuals' careers. An additional added value of the model is that it is built on insights from diverse research streams, including self-determination theory and turnover literature. The article concludes with a discussion of the main contributions of the model and directions for future research.

Comparing apples to apples: A qualitative investigation of career mobility patterns across four generations

Career Development International, 2012

Purpose -This study aims to compare the career patterns of Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation Xers and Millennials over the various stages of their careers to determine whether there have been notable shifts away from the "traditional" career model characterized by long-term linear, upward career movement, toward a "modern" career model characterized by increased job mobility, organizational mobility and multi-directional career movement. Design/methodology/approach -The retrospective career accounts of 105 Canadians were gathered through review of résumé information and semi-structured interviews. The job changes and organizational changes experienced by each respondent in each five-year career period (e.g. age 20-24, 25-29) and the direction of job changes (i.e. upward, downward, lateral or change of career track) were recorded. The generations were compared statistically on each of these measures through analysis of variance (ANOVA). Findings -Significant inter-generational differences were observed on all variables of interest, but the differences were largely restricted to the age 20-24 and 30-34 career stages.

Job Mismatches and Career Mobility

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

How Much Mobility? Careers, Promotions, and Wages

2015

The objective of this paper is to study the determinants of job mobility and the effect of job mobility on wages, considering not only the workers ’ career between firms, but also within firms, using a longitudinal matching employer-employee data set. The results obtained show a negative relationship between tenure and the probability of exit and that the new jobs tend to end early. Moreover, the career advancement within the firm has a negative impact on the probability to exit. Concerning wages, job separations can have a positive impact on wage growth, especially for the younger workers and also for industry changes. This shows that the workers ’ movements between employers and industries are important to enhance their career prospects.

Building career mobility: A critical exploration of career capital

Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling

Articles are accepted on the condition that authors assign copyright or licence the publication rights in their articles to the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling (NICEC). An important goal of NICEC is to encourage freedom of expression. Individual viewpoints expressed in the journal do not represent NICEC as a whole.

Sources of development and mobility: an empirical test of the boundaryless career concept

… . london. edu/docs/02-01. pdf, 2002

This study explored the relevance of the boundaryless career concept to the experiences of development offered to the workforce of seven different organizations. In specific it examined the meaning of the boundaryless career as developmental process and its link to different types of mobility. Measures of propensity to mobility were constructed via factor analysis and the hypotheses were tested using correlation and regression procedures using a sample of 1592 employees. The results provided some evidence as to how careers can be described by the boundaryless career concept. The relationship between propensity to mobility and career development was found to be stronger in the groups of females and clerical/administrative staff for whom both intra and inter-organizational mobility was associated with experiences of mentoring and coaching. Among groups with long tenure and over 50 years of age intraorganizational mobility was associated with training experiences. The results demonstrated the growing role of work relationships deriving from coaching, mentoring and job challenge which are more crucial resources for career development than training and lateral moves. Also the role of self-motivation and one's own wishes and interests was the most significant drive in generating career opportunities. However, the average employee did not expect to move between organizations and did expect to stay up to 10 years with their employers, which suggests the preference for the old model of career based on upward progression within one employer rather than for more flexible the boundaryless model.

Career progression: Getting‐on, getting‐by and going nowhere

Education Economics, 2005

This research examines factors that help or hinder the 'career progress' of individuals in NCDS through the labour market. We employ different measures of an individual's status based on earnings. To a large extent this paper is an empirical implementation of the Sicherman and Galor model of Career Mobility (Journal of Political Economy 1990) in that this paper attempts to chart exactly how people differ in their potential to make progress in their careers.

Mobility versus job stability: Assessing tenure and productivity outcomes

Research Policy, 2010

Based on the data from survey responses and publications of 1583 academic scientists in Spain, this paper examines the relationship between scientific performance and reward, considering tenure and permanent positions as key academic rewards in early phases of academic career and focusing especially on the mediating effect of mobile versus stable career paths. Although widely practiced, inbreeding has often been considered to be at odds with universalism and merit in science. Our findings indicate that inbred faculty does not get tenure with less scientific merits than PhDs from other institutions; we also find that non-mobile careers are a strong predictor of the timing of rewards in the form of early permanent positions. Our results question the assumption mainly based on US evidence that mobility enhances career. These findings must be interpreted in the context of organizational and institutional features of the Spanish academic system that promote the development of internal academic research job markets.