WHAT DOES INTERNAL MOBILITY MEAN FOR EXECUTIVES? A FOUR-FACED TYPOLOGY OF INTRA ORGANIZATIONAL MOBILITY

Abstract

Intra-organizational mobility is a Hr tool often used
in large French companies. It is nevertheless a disparate mix of practices described by many typologies in Human resources management on the basis
of its characteristics. However, there is no research
that seeks to understand the meaning of internal
mobility and capture it, through a phenomenological
approach, in its subjective reality. The purpose of
this research is to understand what intra-organizational mobility means for senior and junior executives of large companies according to their organizational contexts.
This qualitative research was conducted in a phenomenological approach; it is based on a case study
in five large French companies using intra-organizational mobility.
Our research shows that the meaning of intra-organizational mobility for executives varies according
to organizational contexts and can be compared to
Janus, the four-faced god. The research offers a
typology of the conceptions of intra-organizational
mobility: (i) Darwinian, (ii) military, (iii) hypocritical and (iv) brownian.