Towards a New Strategic Career Development Model:

Merging Organization and Individual Needs and Interests.

This article is an excerpt from Mr Baker’s Doctor of Education studies at QUT. His central question is: How can managers increase and sustain the productivity of their work force given the past, present and future challenges facing organizations? He argues that the solution for merging worker’s needs with organizational interests can be best served by the development and implementation of a career development model.

Need for a New Approach Towards Career Development

The dilemma for management of attracting and keeping motivated and talented staff is hardly a new concept. Balancing individual and organizational needs has been a perpetual issue for as long as organizations have existed. Over a quarter of a century ago, Katz (1964) made the point that “(a)t a practical level …we need to cope with such organizational realities as the attracting of people into organizations, holding them within the system, insuring reliable performance and, in addition, stimulating actions which are generally facultative of organizational accomplishment.” Katz used phrases such as “holding them”, “insuring reliable performance”, and ” stimulating actions”. These expressions illustrate the problem of maximising productivity. They focus on organizational outcomes at the expense of workers’ needs. The balance has been very much in favour of the organization. It could be argued that little has changed in the past 25 years.

This dilemma has come into sharper focus in recent times as employees are seeking a deeper sense of meaning from their work lives. According to Rolls (Chawla & Renesch, 1995:102), “(t)his search by employees, coupled with intense economic pressures … have resulted in a new relationship between people and organisations in the workplace as people address the pressing issues and try to find answers to staying solvent in a whitewater environment.” People want to increasingly define their lives and their work in their own terms. In general the evidence seems to indicate that employees want to enjoy work, to feel they can make a contribution, to feel respected as people, and to learn and grow. On the other hand, the workplace has not been a worker-friendly, flexible structure that would accommodate sociological changes. So the need for rapid responses to an increasingly competitive and customer-driven global marketplace have forced managers and organizational consultants to reinvent the organization and workers, living with their natural resistance and their feelings of upheaval and insecurity that change brings, have not responded in the way managers have planned. Organizational transformation however, deals with deeper and more pervasive issues such as personal growth, vision, trust, creativity, purpose, leadership, mastery, and cultivating organizational spirit.

These transformation issues have direct impact on the notion of career paths. Adamson (1997) acknowledges that for at least the last thirty years both theoretical and practical definitions of career have emphasised structure, succession and status. Career has therefore been viewed as the sequence of attempts to move onward and upward through organizational hierarchies. He argues that we need to accommodate new perspectives about career development that go beyond this narrow view. The career, in other words, should be seen as a “vehicle” for the continuous realisation of self. From the worker’s perspective, Simonsen (1997:15) points out that “(p)eople whose only career development planning involves the expectation of promotions to management or to higher levels of management may find themselves on an indefinite plateau or even downsized.” So the old systems of hierarchy, titles, putting oneself in line for the next higher position, career paths, and so on are contradictory to realities in today’s - and will be even more so in tomorrow’s - organizations. Is it any wonder that employees need help reframing their thinking about careers in this chaotic environment? With the old paradigms no longer viable, new ones must be developed and communicated by managers. As careers change, so must career planning and development resources both within and outside the organization.

Work, itself, is changing so fast that job descriptions are obsolete almost as quickly as they are written. It is not only job descriptions, but the nature of jobs themselves that are becoming antiquated. As Bridges (1994) points out, work is not going away but jobs are. The possibility that an individual can be hired to do a specific job and nothing else is long gone. People doing whatever needs to be done to make the business a success represent the new entrepreneurial

model. Many companies are asking employees to “act like an owner”. So, on the one hand, managers want workers to take more responsibility for their work, and on the other hand, they have traditionally focused almost exclusively on organizational output, which is what they have been measured against, at the expense of nurturing personal growth.

Career Development as Change Agent

Since jobs are no longer socially adaptable, the answer must be to create the post-job organization. It is ironic that most managers need employees to stop acting like job holders, yet they know only how to hire, pay, communicate with, and manage job holders. Most organizations also maintain policies, strategies, training programmes, and structures meant to enable employees to be more successful in their job activities. Ironically, a wave of job free workers intent on doing what needs to be done rather than doing their jobs would wreck most traditional organizations. Just as individuals need to rethink their assumptions and strategies, organizations too will have to rethink almost everything they do (Bridges, 1994).

Career development can be positioned as a change agent to bridge old and new realities, reinforce the messages of change needed, and educate employees about “what’s in it for them.” To be successful in this regard Pritchett and Pound (1996) claim that you must hit with enough shock effect to immobilize the old culture at least temporarily. An integrated and comprehensive career development system can affect the organization culture in several positive ways. Table II (Simonsen, 1997:22) below contrasts old elements of a typical culture with a new paradigm for individuals and their career development.

Table II The Changing Individual Paradigm

SOURCE: Simonsen, P. (1997). Promoting a Development Culture in Your Organization. California: Davies-Black, p.22.

The significant changes in work and the workplace we are experiencing today have created a need to think differently about our “human capital” in organizations. The main influence for this change has unquestionably been the rise in the competitive climate which in turn has stimulated employers and their managers to review, perhaps on an ongoing basis, their organizational structures and employment arrangements. The organizations that will emerge successfully from the turmoil of the 1990’s will reinvent themselves - the paternalism and dependency that evolved with the industrial age are no longer viable. Everywhere we hear that the old employment contract has changed. Most workers have heard that they need to change, but most companies have not yet recognised that the organizational culture needs to change as well. And of those companies that are aware that the reformations to be made must be so pervasive as to require a change of culture in the organization, some may not have defined the new culture that must emerge.

It seems that a possible solution could be the implementation of a comprehensive, integrated career development system that will provide the catalyst for bringing individual expectations in line with organizational realities. It could provide a framework for updating or creating systems that support new behaviour to achieve the results needed to survive and thrive. The approach to career development must align with, or support, the organization’s new or desired culture to make the greatest impact. Without understanding the forces driving the culture or a goal to create a development culture, many companies have tried to implement career development or other programmes that came to be referred to as “the flavour of the month.” While well meaning, they were not sustained because the components did not fit the new culture or cause enough change to contribute to the development of a desired new culture. This potential model warrants further investigation and must serve the collective interests of workers, management, owners, the organization and the state.

References

Adamson, S.J. (1997). ‘Career as a vehicle for the realization of self’, Career Development International, 2/5, 245-253.

Bridges, W. (1994). “The End of the Job”, Fortune, September, 50-57. (can be found in Hearn et al 1996)

Chawla, S. & Renesch, J. (ed.). (1995). Learning Organizations: Developing Cultures for Tomorrow’s Workplace. Portland: Productivity Press.

Katz, D. (1964). “The motivational basis of organizational behaviour”, Behavioural Science, 9, 131-46.

Pritchett, P & Pound, R. (1993). High-velocity culture change. Dallas: Pritchett & Associates.

Simonsen, P. (1997). Promoting a Development Culture in Your Organization.California: Davies-Black