Career paths to the top: How boundaries of an organizational field shape executives’ career mobility and career advancement

Prior research offers mixed findings on how inter-organizational mobility affects the speed of executive career advancement. This ambiguity may stem from overlooking the institutional context that shapes how mobility is rewarded depending on organizations’ relative positions within or outside an organizational field. Drawing on institutional theory and boundary theory, we examine how organizational field structuration and boundaries shape executives’ career trajectories and the time it takes to reach top positions. Specifically, we examine different types of mobility: career entry, mobility confined to either the center or the periphery of the field, mobility across the internal center-periphery boundary, and mobility across the external field boundary. Using career data from 1109 top executives in leading professional service firms, our analyses show that starting a career within the field is associated with faster career advancement than starting outside. Mobility within the center speeds advancement only for executives who ultimately reach top positions in central organizations, while mobility across the internal field boundary yields asymmetric outcomes depending on direction and destination. Careers involving mobility across the external field boundary are associated with slower progression to top positions. We also find that careers within a single organization provide a particularly fast path to the top.