Some changes, like taking down and reposting jobs, can lead to positive consequences, like more stable jobs and incumbents who remain in the organisations. It can allow the organisations to learn, create a better organisational structure and even undertake new work.
This finding is consistent with past research that found changes in job descriptions can allow organisations to adapt to a variety of situations by developing structures and strategies that fit the circumstances.
However, we observed that most of the other types of job changes in our study resulted in negative consequences, like job instability, protracted conflict over job territory and the exit of the incumbent and dissolution of the job.
For example, the job candidate mentioned earlier who was offered a job different from the one he applied for ended up in a conflict with the sales director, and his job never transitioned to the full-cycle sales job he had been promised at hiring. He was gone within a year and his position was not filled.
This finding is consistent with past research that found that changing jobs around individual job holders can result in bias, favouritism, low morale and undesirable and unpredictable power struggles.
HIRING INEQUALITY
The dynamic nature of job descriptions has the potential to produce inequality in the hiring process, since not all job applicants understand that jobs can change between posting and hiring.
Those who do understand will have a distinct advantage over those who don’t because they know to apply for jobs even when their preferences and qualifications don’t line up with the job posting. This knowledge may align with individual demographics.
This may be particularly bad for women and members of other under-represented groups who are less comfortable applying for jobs where they do not fit the stated qualifications. Prior evidence has shown that women tend to apply for the jobs they are already well-qualified for while men apply to the jobs they aspire to be qualified for.
Women also may be less likely than men to apply for jobs with the expectation that the jobs will evolve to fit their skills and preferences. If more women are aware of the results from our study, it could result in more applying for jobs that seem outside their area of expertise.
Lisa Cohen is Associate Professor, Business Administration at McGill University. Sara Mahabadi is Assistant Professor at Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.
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