Abstract
AbstractTwo new concepts, employees' Expectations of Organizational Mobility (EOM) and Workplace Social Inclusion (WSI), were developed in part from the burgeoning literature on social capital. Two independent tests of the hypotheses in two different organizations found that the greater employees' EOM, the lower their WSI, which in turn was associated with lower employee job performance ratings. Further, the mediating role of WSI was confirmed. Our findings support the arguments of those who have warned that employees' EOM, and implicitly the human resources philosophy of ‘employability’ that encourages such expectations, is associated with comparatively worse individual job performance via lower levels of employee WSI. The value of these concepts for current employability debates, for the use of subjective supervisory judgments in performance appraisal ratings and for researchers interested in organization‐based communal social capital, is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Highlights
Popular press and career advice publications increasingly emphasize that employees should expect to be organizationally mobile throughout their work lives (e.g., Smith, Perry, Dillon, & Smart, 2000)
We propose that employee expectations that they will be organizationally mobile across employers are dysfunctional for the development of the kind of workplace social inclusion required for success in many settings, which in turn will be reflected in comparatively
We propose that the concept of employee’s expectations of organizational mobility is sufficiently different from related concepts in the field of organizational behavior to merit a distinctive concept and measure—here called Expectations of Organizational Mobility (EOM)
Summary
Popular press and career advice publications increasingly emphasize that employees should expect to be organizationally mobile throughout their work lives (e.g., Smith, Perry, Dillon, & Smart, 2000). Many scholars (e.g., Leana & Van Buren, 1999) have suggested that employees expecting to be organizationally mobile will behave differently than those expecting a more secure tenure. Their arguments have not been put to direct test. We build on the ideas of those who have suggested that employees who expect that they must be organizationally mobile will act differently than those who do not by theoretically expanding others’ arguments with ideas derived from the organizational and sociology literatures on social capital. We propose that employee expectations that they will be organizationally mobile across employers are dysfunctional for the development of the kind of workplace social inclusion required for success in many settings, which in turn will be reflected in comparatively
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