Internal Labor Markets: Dying or Transforming Into Internal Career Networks?

Observers have been debating the effect that business re- structuring has had on employees' intra-firm career opportunities (aka the internal labor market). In their recent investigation, Chris Benner (University of California) and Ferran Mane (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain) used data fro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Academy of Management perspectives 2011-08, Vol.25 (3), p.82-84
Main Authors: Bozionelos, Nikos, Polychroniou, Panagiotis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Benner, Chris
Business networking
Business organization
Business structures
Call centers
Call centres
Career development
Careers
Corporate governance
Employment opportunities
External diseconomies
Firm theory
Human resources
Industrial market
International
Labor market
Labor markets
Labour market
Mane, Ferran
Networks
Occupational promotion
Organizational change
Quality circles
RESEARCH BRIEFS
Review articles
Teamwork
Training courses
University research
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Observers have been debating the effect that business re- structuring has had on employees' intra-firm career opportunities (aka the internal labor market). In their recent investigation, Chris Benner (University of California) and Ferran Mane (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain) used data from nearly 1,800 call centers in 16 countries to address call-center related questions. Benner and Mane found that the volume of promotions from call centers to other business units was substantial, albeit somewhat smaller than the volume of promotions internal to call centers. Their results suggested substantial differences in the drivers of internal and external promotion opportunities. In particular, Benner and Mane found that HR practices that cultivate general skills, such as teamwork and quality circles, played a more potent role in external than in internal promotion opportunities. Overall, Benner and Mane demonstrated that networked labor markets seem to be operating within firms, something that challenges the traditional definition of internal labor markets.
ISSN:1558-9080
1943-4529
DOI:10.5465/AMP.2011.63886536