Research On The Influence Of Internal Mobility Heterogeneity On Employees Career Growth

With the development of big data and technologies,organizational boundaries have gradually blurred,employment relationships have become increasingly unstable,and organizational talent management and individual career development face new opportunities and challenges.Companies begin to introduce market-based rules into internal mobility practices to activate and retain employees,leading the Internal Labor Market(ILM)to gradually change from a traditional bureaucratic mechanism to a market-based one.However,the traditional internal labor market theory,which is mainly based on the hierarchy,lacks sufficient explanatory strength for the current market-oriented and borderless internal mobility phenomenon.In addition,limited by the availability of internal personnel data in the enterprise,the existing literature has insufficient research on the internal mobility process and the mechanism of its interaction with career growth.Therefore,it is difficult to provide more realistic guidance for internal mobility and employees career growth.Based on the research background,this study believes that there are two issues worthy of in-depth discussion.What are the internal mobility patterns with marketization as a typical feature? How do employees achieve career growth through internal mobility? This article introduces a heterogeneous perspective to explore the influences of internal mobility patterns on career growth.In study 1,this paper focuses on the theme of "the pattern,motivation,and process of internal mobility heterogeneity." This part uses case study methods to explore and induce the heterogeneity of internal mobility and employees’ adaptation.To further concretize some of the case study results and test the main logic of the case study,study 2 was conducted to explore the research question of "How does the destinations of internal mobility affect employees’ career growth?" Analyzing panel data involving 20,777 employees of a large Internet high-tech company from 2014 to 2018 identifies and discusses the process mechanism and boundaries of different destinations of internal mobility that affect employees’ career growth from the perspective of profile heterogeneity.The research question of study 3is "How does the internal mobility patterns affect the career growth of technical employees." This part is based on the time series heterogeneity dimension,mining the internal mobility pattern of the company’s technical employees,and further conducts an empirical test on how different internal mobility patterns affect employee career growth.The research conclusions of this paper are as follows.First,the case study of study 1found that the internal mobility of employees has two heterogeneous levels: profile heterogeneity and serial heterogeneity.Moreover,the profile heterogeneity is constituted by the functional heterogeneity and role heterogeneity.The employees’ functional sequence constitutes serial heterogeneity.Second,study 2 identified four internal mobility destinations from the functional heterogeneity and role heterogeneity of internal mobility: Transferal Mobility,Rotational Mobility,Airborne Mobility,and Intrusive Mobility.Compared with Transferal Mobility,the employee Rotational Mobility has a weaker positive effect on their career growth;35 years old can alleviate the negative effect of the Rotational Mobility on the employee’s career growth.Compared with Transferal Mobility,Airborne Mobility has a stronger positive effect on career growth;and the team size can magnify the positive effect.Third,study 3 uses big data analysis and cluster analysis to identify four mobility patterns of technical staff: continuous pattern,wait-and-see expansion pattern,straightforward expansion pattern,and divergent pattern.Compared with the continuous model,both the wait-and-see expansion pattern and straightforward expansion pattern positively impact the long-term career growth of employees,and the latter has a greater positive effect.The divergent model has not had a significant impact on career growth when compared with the continuous model.It may be a less economic mobility pattern than the continuous model.The study has several theory contributions.First,it reveals the heterogeneity patterns and process of internal mobility,breaks through the traditional internal labor market theory on the homogeneity of internal mobility assumptions,and enriches and expands the research field of internal mobility processes.Second,the study tests the effects of the internal mobility destinations under profile heterogeneity on employees’ career growth.Third,based on the big data analysis method,this study also explores technical employees’ mobility patterns under serial heterogeneity and then explores the effects of different mobility patterns on their career growth.These conclusions have critical theoretical contributions to the literature on employee internal mobility and their career growth and essential decision-making reference for the practice of corporate internal mobility programs and human capital development.