My manager moved! Manager mobility and subordinates' career outcomes
Journal
Organization Science
Subject
Organisational Behaviour
Publishing details
Authors / Editors
Baek M; Bidwell M; Keller J R
Biographies
Publication Year
2022
Abstract
How do managers’ moves across jobs affect the subordinates they leave behind? Manager mobility disrupts established manager-subordinate relationships, as subordinates must now learn to work with a replacement. We explore how this relational disruption affects subordinates’ objective career success—specifically, their financial rewards and subsequent promotion chances. We argue that manager mobility may have both positive and negative implications for subordinate outcomes. The loss of an established relationship may reduce subordinates’ performance and managers’ propensity to reward them; on the other hand, relational disruption may make subordinates more willing and able to seek out valuable opportunities elsewhere in the organization. We also argue that these effects are likely to be greatest for those subordinates who had worked with the previous manager for longer. Using eight years of personnel data from the U.S. offices of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, we show how managers’ mobility is associated with a decrease in subordinates’ financial rewards but an increase in their promotion prospects.
Keywords
Careers; Employee mobility; Promotions; Relational embeddedness
Available on ECCH
No
