Week 4 Discussion
Traditional career paths emphasize strict upward mobility within an organization. How does mobility differ in organizations with innovative/alternative career paths? List three innovative/alternative career paths discussed in the text and describe how mobility occurs in each. Have you ever worked with an organization that utilized any of these methods? What is your opinion of these mobility paths?
Week 4 Discussion: Mobility Paths
An innovative career path allows people to have various sets of skills and perform different jobs. An innovative career path doesn’t limit the boundaries of a person in a career aspect with the same skills. It is correct that the job differs in organizations with innovative career paths in contrast to traditional career paths. In the traditional career path, there is a strict process that has to be followed so that growth can take place. In the traditional career path, an employee progresses vertically upward in the organization from one specific job to the next. Here is a traditional process, the person will take one step ahead and will move upward and mobility will take place through the strict process. In the traditional career path, career growth will take place because the way to choose the career is fived and one has to move on those ways so that they can able to grow in the work (Belapurkar, 2021, p.2).
In the case of the innovation career path, there is no growth. Innovators usually start from scratch and keep going horizontally in terms of finding newer ways to work. An innovative organization will never have upper mobility it is as the person is an innovator and they are there in the organization because of its innovation. One can never go upward in a career path when he is an innovator. In traditional mobility, the person moves upward with the role changes with the experiences but in the case of the innovation path, the growth is as the person is there because it innovates work.
The three innovative/alternative career paths are stated below-
Parallel tracks – This is one such approach that was mentioned in the career path. In the case of parallel track mobility, it is seen that it allows a person to pursue one primary career track and a second career track of less importance. In this case, the technical specialist has to shift from the technical to the managerial part so that they can get a good end-status job. Here it allows the person to be focused on one work and which is the primary work. Here in the case of the parallel, the main focus is on the first and the primary work which the person has started rather than the secondary work. Here the person mainly focuses on the thing that he is doing without seeing any innovation at the work. The person here wants to do the same work for the growth and all other things are the second part of it.
Lattice mobility- Another innovative approach is the “lattice mobility” path, which was upward, lateral, and downward movement options. In this case, the option is provided to the employer to move according to their liking as they do not need to be in the same place or work for growth (Lara-Mondragón, Dorchak & MacAlister, 2022, p.5). Here the person can move according to their wants and growth. This can also be called the career progressive pathway because there is no restriction related to the past way that was to start and which things need to choose. The person can move according to their preference and get growth in the work as well. This place the person to work according to their preferences and this mobility allows working accordingly to their preferences without being constant to the one place for the work.
Lateral track -A third innovative function is that of the “lateral track”, which allows the individual to move sideways to manage all of the functions. Here in this case the people change their occupations without substantially improving their economic prospects. Here the person changes the occupation so that their economic condition can be improved. The change is broader here as the full change in the work takes place.
The idea here is that anyone they have learned the necessary skills to do the job can be promoted as they can also provide great contributions to the organization. that there are two benefits to this type of career path because one it enables the company to be flexible and if there is slower growth in the work it’s necessary to use alternative ways to utilize the employee’s talents. I have worked in a company where employees stayed at a level and did various tasks many of which were not traditional to the role and this was beneficial to the company; this is considered a lateral track system.
According to me, mobility is done by the person because they want to bring change in their work and their partner. According to me, a lateral track system is good for constant employees where they are and not looking to advance but enjoying doing and learning new tasks (Merminod et al. 2021, p.12605). There is also a lattice mobility path that provides upward, downward, and lateral movement. I prefer that mobility is important for people for their growth in the workplace and one should always look at this so that the new changes can be there in the workplace as well. According to me, all mobility is important according to the changes that the person wants in their work and one such mobility which is mostly preferred is where the person joins and changes according to their preferences which nay problem. The person should choose mobility where there enjoy working rather than just want to do the work without any changes.
References
Belapurkar, V. (2021). Regulation of Lateral Mobility of Amyloid Precursor Protein by an Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Gene: Picalm (Doctoral dissertation).
Lara-Mondragón, C. M., Dorchak, A., & MacAlister, C. A. (2022). O-glycosylation of the extracellular domain of pollen class I formins modulates their plasma membrane mobility. Journal of Experimental Botany, 73(12), 3929-3945.
Merino, S., Edison, J. R., Fang, H., Hagan, M. F., & Rogers, W. B. (2021). Avidity and surface mobility in multivalent ligand–receptor binding. Nanoscale, 13(29), 12602-12612.
