Intraorganizational mobility and employees’ work-related contact patterns: evidence from panel data in the European Commission

Vantaggiato, Francesca P., Murdoch, Zuzana, Kassim, Hussein, Geys, Benny and Connolly, Sara (2024) Intraorganizational mobility and employees’ work-related contact patterns: evidence from panel data in the European Commission. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 34 (4). pp. 598-610. ISSN 1053-1858

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Abstract

Programs to encourage staff to move within public-sector organizations have become increasingly widespread in recent decades. Yet, although there are some anecdotal accounts, the effects of such intraorganizational mobility remain largely unexplored. Building on insights from organization theory and social psychology, we argue that intraorganizational mobility entails an important trade-off: it undermines movers’ depth of work-related contacts within the (new) department, while it increases the breadth of their work-related contacts outside it. Our empirical analysis evaluates this trade-off using a two-way fixed effects model for a longitudinal dataset of movers (N = 149) and stayers (N = 473) across two survey waves among European Commission officials in 2014 and 2018. Our main findings confirm that intraorganizational mobility is connected in opposing ways to employees’ intra- and extra-departmental work-related contact patterns. In line with theoretical expectations, we find these relationships to be stronger for employees who have previously experienced intraorganizational moves (“repeat-movers”).

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	european commission,job mobility,social interactions,sociology and political science,public administration,marketing ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3312
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	04 Jun 2026 14:56
Last Modified:	04 Jun 2026 14:56
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103283
DOI:	10.1093/jopart/muae014

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