A Key to Successful Intra-Organizational Job Transfers

Each year more than 500,000 people accept intra-
organizational job transfers requiring them to
move across town, across the state, or around the
world. Companies spend an average of $40,000 on each
move. It is in both the transferees, and the
company s best interest that these transitions are
successful. Besides crossing a physical
boundary when moving, transferees must also cross
the inclusionary boundary at the new work site
before they can again become fully functional
employees. However, research indicates that the
organization cannot grant the employee access to
cross this inclusionary boundary. Permission can
only come from the other members in the new work
center. Research has shown that as much as 70% of
the knowledge a transferee must acquire in the new
work center is tacit, contextual, informal,
unofficial, shared, and emergent only within that
work center. To move from an organizational outsider
to an organizational insider, the transferee must
successfully develop a set of informational points
of contact and a set of friends that will provide
this information. These webs of inclusion are
critical to successful assimilation.