Human Resource Management (MGT302)

Dr Silvia Pirrioni

Tuesday, April 25

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Learning outcomes, 25th April 2023

• Discuss career assumptions

• Describe definitions of careers
• Discuss how careers are changing in organizations
• Explain how organizations can manage career development

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How To Chart A Career

What Plan
Career Development is a career? Discuss
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There are several ways in which one could chart a career plan. In today’s
Career Development: reviewing assumptions

• Is there only one occupation for which you are best suited?
• Is this based on your interests?
• Who influences your career choice?
• Do you have to make a decision about your future career at an early
age?
• Is this choice irreversible?
• Will your career move upward?
• What are your expectations of your future career?

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Career Development: definitions
• A career is a succession of related jobs arranged in a hierarchy of
prestige, through which persons move in an ordered (more or less
predictable) sequence (Wilensky, 1961)
• The sequence of employment-related positions, roles, activities and
experiences encountered by a person (Arnold et al 2016:538)

➢External career: objective; series of positions held by an individual

➢Internal career: subjective; the way an individual views and perceives
his/her career, his/her work and life
➢How do you measure career success?

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Career Development: definitions
• Career planning: how individuals plan and implement their own
career goals
A deliberate attempt by an individual to become aware of his/her skills,
interests, values, opportunities, constrains, choices and consequences
Identifying career related goals and establishing plans to achieve those goals
• Career management: how organizations plan and implement career
development programs
Organizational process of preparing, implementing and monitoring career plans
undertaken by individuals alone or within the organization’s career systems
(Bernardin and Russell, 2012)

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Career Development

• Career development system: formal, organized and planned effort to

achieve a balance between individual career needs and organizational
workforce requirements
Mechanism for meeting present and future human resource requirements
Aligning individual career development plans with the organization’s strategic
goals
Enhances career satisfaction, motivation, commitment and productivity

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Career Development Practices
• Internal vacancy notification
• Self-assessment tools
• Career planning workshops
• Opportunities for training and development
• Personal development plans
• Performance appraisal discussions
• Mentoring programmes
• Job assignment /rotation
• Succession planning

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Career Development: individual
responsibilities
• Focus on employability: developing competencies needed in the
marketplace
• Take control of their own career: self-management
• Self-assessment and career planning
• Set clear goals and define interests
• Do not become obsolete or too narrow in their specialism
• Invest in reputation building
• Develop collaboration skills to work in project teams
• Networking
• Develop adaptability and flexibility
• Commit to lifelong learning
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Career Development: organization
responsibilities
• Create career development programs to prevent turnover and
burnout
• Provide tools and opportunities to develop skills and remain
employable
• Create an environment for continual learning
• Provide opportunities for self-assessment: career counsellors and
career resource centers
• Train managers to act as coaches and mentors
• Work-life balance (childcare, elderly care responsibilities, flexible
working arrangements)

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Career Development Challenges

• Organizations delayering and downsizing: limited opportunities for

vertical career progression
• Limited job security
• Temporary, contingent workforce
• IT innovations
• Generation Y estimated to have between 15 to 25 jobs over their
lifetime

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Career Development

• Organizational Career: • Boundaryless Career:

continued series of upwards • Careers that unfold in multiple
moves within a single employment settings; working in
organisation. a number of organisations in
temporary capacity;
employment relationship is a
transactional contract of limited
duration

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Career Development
• Boundaryless careers - positive: provide personal fulfilment and
economic prosperity, particularly for workers with valuable and rare
skills who can negotiate equitable remuneration and benefits
• Boundaryless careers - negative: changing career patterns responsive
to employers’ need for flexibility (the logic of profit)
Workers with fungible skills have less power in negotiating remuneration and
benefits
(Van Buren, 2003)

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Career Development
• Employees are in a weaker bargaining position in the employment
relationship than the employers
• Without the provision of employability programmes, most workers
will find it difficult to work and at the same time
– maintain or upgrade their skills
- networking in the labour market in case they are made redundant
(Van Buren, 2003)

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Career Development
• Boundaryless careers are problematic because they unfairly shift risk from
employers to employees = the distribution of risk is unfair!
Employers as winners:
the use of short-term contracts contributes to flexibility, i.e. numerical flexibility
Lowers employment costs (i.e. health costs, pension scheme, holidays)
Less costs associated with the internal labour market (network maintenance costs;
stability costs, i.e. rewards and promotions to loyal employees)
Employees as losers:
Employees would generally prefer more stable employment relationships
Findings new job is costly and time consuming; older people and minorities find it
difficult to secure a new job, or a job with similar salary and benefits
(Van Buren, 2003)
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Career Development
Employees bear almost all of the risk:
• They need to invest time and effort in both general and firm specific
K&S
Traditionally, a long-term employment relationship would have some elements
of mutuality: the organisation would offer job security and promotion
opportunities in return of employees learning job/firm-specific knowledge
With boundaryless careers, employees need to learn job and firm specific
knowledge with no guarantee of stability and promotions
(Van Buren, 2003)

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Career Development
• Business ethics: firms have an obligation to fulfil fairness in the
relationships between the organisation and its stakeholders (employees
are an important stakeholder)
• If boundaryless careers are to work for all (employers, employees and
society), employers (who pay the stronger role) have to ensure
employability so that the collective stock of labour skills does not decline;
employability of employees will ensure both individual and collective
wellbeing.
• The responsibility for skill enhancement cannot rest on employees only
• Employers have an ethical and moral obligation to ensure their employees
remain employable in the external labour market
(Van Buren, 2003)

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Career Development 18

How do you feel

about the prospect
of a boundaryless
career?
Preparation for Thursday

1. Complete this Online self-assessment – O*NET Interest Profiler

2. Complete the Career Development Self-Assessment Exercise
uploaded on Moodle (bring a copy to class on Thursday).

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References
• Bernardin, H.J. & Russell, J.E.A. 2013. Human resource management,
6th int’l ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Van Buren, H.J. (2003). Boundaryless careers and employability
obligations, Business Ethics Quarterly, 13 (2): 131-149.

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