A Synergistic Model of Organizational Career Development: Bridging the Gap Between Employees

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Date
2000
Authors
Bernes, Kerry B.
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Life-Role Development Group Limited
Abstract
This dissertation argues that, as our global economy becomes increasingly competitive, organizations will be forced to adopt a more comprehensive, future-oriented, and integrated approach to managing their human resources. Unfortunately, the era of restructuring, downsizing, and rightsizing has made this increasingly difficult. Other changes in the world of work (such as the shift from long-term working arrangements to temporary contract work; the less frequent use of concepts such as career paths, career hierarchies, and promotion from within; the increased outsourcing of non-essential tasks; and flattened hierarchies) have collectively put pressure on existing models of organizational career development. After critiquing current models of organizational career development, it is suggested that existing models have begun to lose their usefulness and that a new model of organizational career development needs to be created. Essentially, it is argued that there are two main problems with current models of organizational career development. First, there is a lack of emphasis on how personal visions and organizational visions can be used to facilitate both individual and organizational goals. Second, the existing models lack interactive and balancing processes to equilibrate changing individual and organizational needs. To address the above problems, a comprehensive model of organizational career development is proposed. To emphasize the role of personal and organizational visions, the constructivist literature on career development and the management literature on organizational vision and mission statements are synthesized and incorporated into the proposed model. Themes from systems theory provide the framework for the proposed model of organizational career development. Systematically parallel employee and organizational concepts and tasks are depicted for each level of the model. Balancing/interactive processes are utilized to bring the employee and the organization into closer alignment, thereby avoiding the situation of treating career development and organizational development as separate entities. A comprehensive framework for applying the model is also provided. Finally, an outline for validating the proposed model of organizational career development is suggested.
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Career development
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