Sensitivity Analysis of Promotion Opportunities in Graded Organizations

Abstract

This paper extends earlier work on manpower mobility in hierarchical organizations and is concerned especially with the effects of changes in hiring and separation on opportunities for internal advancement. We make use of a fractional flow model of personnel to highlight the links between personnel flows and vacancy flows, and then derive formulae that can be used to simulate the impact of changes in grade-size targets, hiring policy and attrition rates on promotion opportunities for staff. The model is then illustrated by application to data on faculty staffing in a large university.

Keywords:

• manpower
• organizational mobility
• markov models
• human resource planning