KMS2094 Career Development in Organization

Unit 1: Introduction to Career Development

Objectives
At the end of this unit, you will be
able to:
• Explain the meaning & centrality of
work
• Describe the changing nature of
careers
• Define what a career is
• Discuss the evolution of
employment relationships

Centrality of work?
• Would you work if you had won a
lottery or inherited a large sum of
money that would enable you to
quit working and still enjoy at
comfortable lifestyle?
• What would you choose?
– Stop working
– Continue working in the same job
– Continue working but under different
Conditions

Why work?
• Provides a sense of purpose, challenge,
self-fulfilment, development and money
• Source of identity, status as well as of
creativity and mastery (Jahoda, 1982)
• Offers opportunities for social networking
• Helps us pass the time and gives our life
structure
• Serve as a shelter and sanctuary from
home and family (Hochschild, 1997)
• Provides basic needs as well as
opportunities for achieving higher needs

Meaning of work
• Significant vehicle to reach
important goals
• Arena where valued goals are
pursued, expressed and attained
• Two approaches
– Means to attain goals extrinsic to the
work itself (e.g. pay) Hertzberg, 1996
– Sources of intrinsic satisfaction (e.g.
interest)
• Social & psychological functions of work
(Jahoda, 1982, Warr, 1987)

Latent functions of work

• To structure time
• Provide shared experiences and
social contact
• Promote social goals
• Grant status and identity
• Provide regular activities
(Jahoda, 1982)
• Three main dimensions of work
values/goals (Harding et. al. 1986)
– Personal development
– Pleasant climate
– Security and material rewards
• Three categories of work
values/goals (England & RuizQuintanilla, 1994)
– Social goals
– Expressive goals
– Instrumental goals
• Meaning of work for individuals
– Identify the basic values that people
associate with work

Contemporary career
dilemmas
• An engineer, 20 years out of university,
has been recently laid off in a
corporate downsizing move. She is
beginning to question her own
competence and drive to succeed
• A young physician realizes he chose a
career in medicine to please his
parents and dreads spending the next
40 years pursuing someone else’s
dreams
• A recent university graduate has been
unable to find employment in his
chosen field and has no idea about
what career options to pursue
• A busy mother in a dual-career
relationship is frustrated in her own
career because she receives little
support from her husband, children or
company

Changing landscape of
work & careers
• Changes – economic, political,
technological & cultural
– Affect world of work
• Level of uncertainty
– Play havoc with careers and lives

Types of changes
• Changes in the nature of work, employment
relationships, and psychological contracts
• Economic turmoil and disruptions
• The changing structure of organizations
and the design of work
• Globalization and the rise of world-based
organizations
• Advancements in technology and the
churning of jobs
• Changes in workforce diversity and
demographics
• Work and family life

Changes in the nature of work,

employment relationships, and
psychological contracts
• Rapid decline in job security
• Consistently high level of job
insecurity and job loss has become
the "new normal.“
• Desire of modern organizations to
remain flexible
– Way to enhance competitiveness
through increased cost-cutting and
flexibility
– Changes in the psychological contract
between employers and employees

PSYCHOLOGICAL
CONTRACT
The unspoken promise, not
present in the small print of the
employment contract, of what
the employer gives, and what
employees give in return
Levinson et.al., 1962

Change in psychological
contracts
• Move from relational contracts to
transactional contracts
–Shorter-term with performancebased pay
– Lower levels of commitment by
both parties
–An allowance for easy exit from
the implicit agreement

Implications of change
• Employees expected to be
– Flexible to accept new work assignments
– Willing to develop new skills in response to the
organization’s needs
• Organization does not offer promises of future
employment
– but “employability”
• Providing opportunities for continued
professional growth and development
• Shift from employment to employability
– Major implications for employees’ careers.

Economic turmoil and

disruptions
• Outcomes of turmoil
– Acceleration in the decline of the labor
force participation rate
– Substantial underemployment and
underutilization of the workforce,
especially among younger workers
– Surge in the number of people stuck in
involuntary part-time employment
– Consistently high level of chronic, longterm unemployment, especially among
older workers
• Reflect a sub-optimal utilization of
individual skills and human capital
The Changing Structure of
Organizations and the Design of Work
• Organizations have become
– "flatter" and more decentralized
– fewer levels of management
– use cross-functional autonomous work teams
• Implications
– Employ a relatively small number of
employees to handle core business functions
– Use outsourcing and a large cadre of
temporary or contingent workers to deal with
secondary and back office activities.
– Cognitive capability and technological and
digital fluency become the skills that are most
demanded

Globalization and the Rise of

World-Based Organizations
• Emergence of new world markets,
foreign competition, and political
realignments
– Forced organizations to adopt more
global business strategies
• Route to the top includes
significant exposure to the
management of international
operations
– Includes expatriation & repatriation
Advancements in Technology
and the Churning of Jobs
• Many careers have been altered profoundly
while others have disappeared completely
• Newly introduced technology is transformative
in nature, changing core occupations
• Many jobs with traditionally low barriers to entry
have already disappeared
• Churning of jobs - creation of new and more
technologically advanced jobs combined with
the elimination of old "lower-tech" occupations
• Examples: first-level customer service
personnel, toll booth operators, bank tellers,
grocery store clerks, and parking lot attendants

Changes in Workforce
Diversity and Demographics
• Culturally diverse workforce produced changes in
the way organizations function
– Labor force in the industrialized world has become
older, more female, and more diverse
– Put pressure on organizations to manage this
gender, racial, and ethnic diversity effectively
• Aging & ultimate retirement of the baby boom
generation
– Major implications (due to the sheer size of this
generation) on individual career management &
organizational human resource management
systems.
– Potential for this generation to increase retirement
age & block the advancement of a younger and
more upwardly mobile cohort of employees.

Work and Family Life

• Increased employment of women and men
with children present in the household
– Created new challenges of juggling work and
family commitments.
– Increase in number of single-parent
households
– Dual-earner couples and single parents must
learn to balance their careers with extensive
family responsibilities, often including the care
of elderly parents or other relatives
• Work and family roles altered by
technological advances
– Blurred the demarcation between these two
spheres of life.

What is a career?
• Structural property of an occupation or
organization
• Sequence of positions held by a typical
practitioner of the occupation
– Law student, law clerk, junior member of law firm,
senior member of law firm, judge and retirement
• Mobility path within a single organization or
multiple employers
– Sales representative, product manager, district
marketing manager, regional marketing manager,
divisional vice president of marketing with interspersed
staff assignments among these positions
• Property of an individual
– An acknowledgement that each person
pursues a unique career

Definitions of Career
Development
• “The pattern of work related experiences
that span the course of a person’s life”
Greenhaus, et. al. (2010)
• “An evolving sequence of a person’s
work experience over time”
Arthur, Hall & Lawrence (1989)
• “The sequence of employment-related
positions, roles, activities and
experiences encountered by a person”
Arnold (1997)

Career perspectives
• Individual perspective
– Important skills and knowledge for individuals
• Self understanding
• Ability to detect change in environment
• Ability to create opportunities for themselves
• Learn from mistakes
– To provide insights and create options
– Enhancing flexibility and adaptability
– Achieve career success and satisfaction
• Organizational perspective
– Process to help individuals plan careers
according to organization’s business
requirements and strategic directions