Managerial Mobility and its Effect on Subordinates’ Career Outcomes

• In Event: 3513 - Inequality and Mobility

Abstract

How managerial mobility shapes our career outcomes? To date, research on managerial influence on subordinates has primarily focused on the role of managerial attributes or personal fit between managers and subordinates. Instead, we suggest that the career paths of managers, notably how long they have been in their jobs and how long they stay in their jobs can have important effects on the rewards and mobility of their subordinates. Controlling for subordinates’ moves, we show how managerial job tenure and the duration of the manager-subordinate relationship shape both the financial rewards and promotion prospects of subordinates in profound and unexpected ways. Using eight years of personnel data of employees working in the US offices of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, we find that managers’ job tenure increases managerial preference for stability in job and role assignment such that it negatively affects the subordinates’ promotion likelihood under the same manager. Longer duration of relationship benefits subordinates with higher rewards and higher likelihood of promotion under the same manager yet also comes with a downside: They become less likely to seek for promotion elsewhere as they become more reluctant to leave their current manager. The paper contributes to career interdependence and manager-subordinate literature by shedding light on how managerial mobility and career intersection shape subordinates’ career outcomes.

Authors

• Minseo Baek, The Wharton School

• Matthew James Bidwell, The Wharton School

• JR Keller, Cornell University