Self Awareness and Career Management - Essay Example

? How do the concepts of job mobility and embeddedness help us to understand whether highly paid bankers might move to another organisation in the hope of a larger bonus? Give examples of individuals. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to verify the notion whether the highly paid bankers switch organisations in order to earn high bonuses or not. This verification will be done by employing the tools of job mobility and embeddedness. Job mobility is one of the constituting factors behind the decision to terminate their jobs by employee. (Cole, 1979) The conscious thoughts and planning along with small successive changes affect the decision of the mobility. The willingness of workers to move from one place to another in order to get hold on better work is generally called job mobility (Griffeth & Hom, 2004). The factors that trigger this notion by indulging employees are collectively known as job embeddedness (OECD, 2001). The concept of job embeddedness is hired to ensure the job stability by forecasting a banker’s potential to quit (Allen, 2006). The concept of job embeddedness was presented by Mitchell and his colleagues in 2001 in order to explicate why some employees want to leave their job whilst others do not. For them there are certain factors such as association with the community, cost of quitting the job, etc. that do not let them leave the job. Empirical studies show that embeddedness is all about encouraging higher performance ergo retaining employees by embedding their co-workers (Liao, 2010). Mitchell and his colleagues identified three factors: links, fit, and sacrifice. Links means the connection between people and activities whilst fits refer to how well the job and its communities fit with other aspects of peoples’ lives. And the last element is sacrifice which refers to whatever the person loses once he quits his job. (Shultz et al, 2007) One has to recognize the role of job satisfaction in the decision making process for a person. For them if a person is satisfied with the job, he will not think of quitting but the likelihood of quitting becomes higher in the case of dissatisfaction (Shultz, 2007). Job Mobility Many researchers imply the study of job mobility for the analysis of the labourers’ behaviours against different job offers (Rooney & Hepworth, 2009). No worker is said to be able to get a job best suited to his demands and capabilities in the first phase of his job career (EUROPA, 2008). This leads the workers to be always in search of such firms which value their skills more than their present employers (Liao, Martocchio & Joshi, 2010). Thus, there can be three main types of job mobility: employment mobility, job-to-job mobility, and occupational mobility; and some of the factors that affect it are: job tenure, rate of bonuses and chances of growth (Winget, 2007). The rate of job mobility varies from one country to another depending upon the respective economic conditions as well as the demands of the workers. The data published by Eurobarometer (2005) on the job mobility rate is displayed underneath. The researchers believe that the tendency of job mobility is greater in the lower-wage jobs than highly paid ones (Delfgaauw, 2006, p.78; OECD, 1999). Farber (1999) has studied the job-changes by employing the data from the Current Population Survey and found out that the job tenure is one of the key determinants to job changes. The greater the job tenure is the lesser will be the chances of job mobility. This study also reveals that the wages offered by the firms also vary with the job experience in the respective firm (Madrian, 1993). The same rule applies to the banking sector where big bankers move to the job with high salary or bonuses offerings. The fact is testified by a bulletin of the ‘Evening Standard’ 2004, (a UK newspaper), according to which a group of senior bankers had quit the ‘Fox-Pitt, Kelton’ (an investment bank of UK) in order to join the rival company of Citigroup. In addition to this, fourteen analysts and traders had quit the “Merger & Acquisitions Research Centre (MARC)” to join “Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.” (West & Nicholson, 1988). The above stated statistics and reports show that there is a positive relation between job mobility and a larger bonus (Murray, 2002). The concept of bonus is debatable as, to some scholars and writers, whilst the belief that they increase the efficiency of employees. A bonus is one of the factors that generate distorted behaviours like envy and inequity within an organization. Jenkins (2010) suggested that if few bankers want to quit for the sake of bonus, we should let them go because London is not deficient in ethical and less culpable bankers. Besides high bonuses, there can be various other reasons for changing a job, and the attainment of increased productivity level is one amongst them (Estes, 2010). To put it briefly, the negativity and positivity of a bonus has not been proven yet, however Jenkins (2010) pointed out that there is no logic for highly paid bankers to switch their job just for the sake of more bonuses. Job Embeddedness Generally it is a composition of all those factors that determines the decision of the worker whether to stay on job or to switch to some other one. Some of these factors are: family commitment, bonus rate, salary, job demands, and the relation with the co-workers, etc. The chance for a job quitting is less in the case of a worker who is more engrossed in his job. This is mostly because of the fact that he will have to face more disruption if he quits (Denney, 2003; Haraven, 1993). For example, if the demands of a worker are being satisfied appropriately and he has much to do in the form of ample responsibilities in an organization, there is no need for him to quit (Gruber & Madrain, 1999). This is mainly because of the reason that in case of a job-quit he will have to make readjustments at the new work place (Branham, 2005). Contrarily, if he is not embedded in his job due to lack of responsibility or fewer bonuses, then he will probably think to move on for a higher wage offer (EUROPA, 2010). However, this does not mean that a person who is already getting higher wages cannot quit his job hoping for larger bonuses. The most probable reason for his quitting from a highly paid job can be because of the inability of the marginal utility of money to decrease with its increasing use (Cole, 1979). In order to analyze the relation between job embeddedness and the job quitting decision in the hope of higher bonuses, we will have to see the job embedded theory in detail. Appraisal of Job Embeddedness theory: The three main dimensions of the theory are: fit, links and sacrifice. A ‘fit’ means the compatibility and the comfort level of the worker with an organisation. A job embeddedness of a worker will be greater if the goals of the worker match the culture and the environment of the organization (Ospina, 1996). However, this assumption of the theory is not necessarily true for all cases. Bankers or any other highly paid workers may leave the job in order to reap big bonus offers by other organisation (Miller, 1998). The theory suggests that the workers will be more committed to an organisation if the connections between the organisation, its environment and the family of the worker are denser. In the case of fewer connections, the likelihood of job-quitting will be comparatively greater (Perrewe & Ganster, 2007). The elements of sacrifice including pay scale, bonuses and chances to progress, come last in this connection. Thus, we can say that the level of embeddedness will be greater in the case of handsome pays and bonuses, but it is not true for all the cases as highly paid workers can also quit in the lure of more bonuses and other opportunities (Suri, 1981; Garton, 2008, p.257). CONCLUSION The construct of job embeddedness examines why people stay within their companies. Job embeddedness is a conglomeration of links, fits and sacrifice. Links are defined as a time period spends on a job. The longer a person will stay the greater will be its links and connections in an organization (Shultz et al, 2007). Fit is a name given to similarity between a person’s characteristics and the work context. Lastly, the cost of leaving a job is known as a sacrifice. (Liao, 2010) Embeddedness theorists are of the view that the construct of the embeddedness involves various items like the perception of the working staff, job satisfaction, the compatibility with the company, the environment of the work place, and skills utilization on the job, etc. In addition, elements like compatibility between career’s interest and the job, and one’s ability to express himself in the capacity of his job can also be included while measuring the job fit (Liao, 2010). The overall level of embeddedness will be higher if a person has flexible vocational interests. If the organisational fit of a person is low initially, even then his embeddedness will remain high due to the elasticity in his vocational interests. On the same lines, Job mobility greatly depends upon the relation between the employees and employers. Better relationing means a smaller chance of mobility whilst the problematic relationships between employers and employees provoke a worker to move to other job (Cole, 1979). The attraction of monetary benefits and bonuses is far greater than the concept of job embeddedness. In a nutshell, job mobility and embeddedness can influence the quitting decision of a highly paid banker in the hope of more bonuses but not every time. References Allen, D. G. 2006. Do organizational socialization tactics influence newcomer embeddedness and turnover? Journal of Management, 32: 237–256. Branham, L., 2005. Seven hidden reasons employees leave. USA: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn, p.123-26. Cole, R. E., 1979. Work, mobility, and participation: a comparative study of American and Japanese industry. California: University of California Press, p. 115-117. Delfgaauw, J., 2006. Wonderful and woeful work: incentives, selection, turnover, and worker's motivation. New York: Rozenberg Publishers, p.76-95. 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