Accrual Mobility: Job Mobility in Higher Education through Responsibility Accrual.

This article describes a process of career mobility identified as accrual mobility, a form of internal mobility in institutions of higher education. Accrual mobility occurs through evolved jobs in which the employee accrues responsibility and/or knowledge well beyond normal growth in the job. Essentially, a new position is developed, which may then be formally acknowledged by the institution. The result is movement not into fixed positions but into previously nonexistent jobs. Thus, we observe unplanned career mobility that unfolds around individual abilities and developing organizational issues. This process differs from most theories that assume that individuals move within a system of predefined, fixed positions. In addition, studies of mobility have tended to focus on industrial employment and interorganizational mobility. Tailor-made, or idiosyncratic jobs, have long been discussed in the literature on organizations. They have typically been noted, however, as a substantive problem for the organization [9, 20] or as a technical problem for certain types of formal mobility models [17]. In contrast, reports from higher education professionals and administrators suggest a positive role for accrual mobility and evolved jobs. This article seeks first to clarify the process of accrual mobility and then to review variables perceived by organizational members to affect the probability of evolved jobs. In the discussion, some possible implications of the