The making of leadership: What is the contribution of internal mobility?

Résumé 0

While leadership is a recurring theme in large companies and a complete field of research in HRM, there is no research that seeks to understand precisely the role played by internal mobility in the making of leadership. This qualitative research is based on the case study of three major international groups and of a major French institution, all using internal mobility to develop leadership. The contribution of the research lies in the emergence of a grid of leadership skills that are targeted and developed by internal mobility programs. The existence of this grid, which consists of four key skills (organizational commitment, sense of responsibility, social plasticity, and self-development) poses several crucial questions that are examined. The research leads to four managerial recommendations regarding the capacity of organizations to produce a particular type of leadership based on their organizational culture and the developments they wish to spark.