A Synergistic Model of Organizational Career Development: Bridging the Gap Between Employees
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Date
2000
Authors
Bernes, Kerry B.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
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.
Description
Keywords
Career development