CAREER AND HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

CAREER AND HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT (DCE3117) Associate Prof. Dr. Roziah Mohd Rasdi Dept. of Professional Development & Continuing Education Faculty of Educational Studies Universiti Putra Malaysia roziah_m@upm.edu.my

Topic 4 ORGANIZATIONAL CAREER SYSTEM

An organization is a combination of brains, bodies and behaviors. Organization has an image of an identity, which may guide and activate individuals interpretation of certain issue and generate motivations. To survive and thrive, organization need to recruit right people and retain them Organization career management is the comprehensive system that organization apply to manage people’s careers

The Career Active System Triad (CAST) • The CAST perspective encompasses three level of analysis for understanding career management.

Strategic HRM, Strategic Career System • The HR strategy should be developed alongside the general strategy of organization, to acquire a cultural fit within the organization and with the outside environment. • Such strategic alignment should lead to high organizational effectiveness and performance (Holbeche, 1999) • Meshoulam and Baird (1987), provide five-scale level of strategy development: initiation, functional growth, controlled growth, functional integration, and strategic integration. Efficiency can be achieved when the level of HR strategy and organizational strategy match.

Flexibility and Competitive Advantage Flexibility means the ability to meet a variety of needs in a dynamic environment (both internal and external environment). Coordination flexibility the extent to which the organization can rethink and redeploy resources. Resources flexibility the extent to which a resource can be applied to a wide range of alternative uses

Strategic HRM Indicators of Resources and Coordination Flexibility

Flexibility as A Strategic Response • Organization embrace flexibility as a strategic option to gain competitiveness. • Functional flexibility means the ability of the organization to utilize people’s competencies in more than one role. • Numerical flexibility is manifested via different level of anticipated commitment and formal legal contractual ties. • Time and space flexibility are all about where and when jobs are done. This type of flexibility help both individual and organization. • Mind flexibility is the most important for the management of people and for career management as mind flexibility will enable and develop future types of flexibility in management.

The Blurring of Boundaries • Ashkenas et al (1995) wrote about the diminishing traditional boundaries within organization and mentioned the following four aspects to demonstrate the breaking of the of organizational structure: • Vertical - referred to the breaking down of rigid hierarchies. • Diminishing horizontal boundaries - merging the different department and units within an organization • External - distinction between the organization as such and the environment, is now not as clear cut as it was. • The last aspects is geography, many organizations now do not have a specific location.

Outsourcing • Obtaining (goods or a service) by contract from an outside supplier. • Activities such as developing a performance appraisal system, analysis of the outcome of the process, cultural training and recruitment and selection can be done by external agencies. • However some decision can only taken by the organization itself. • Tasks cannot be outsourced – mentoring (a positive facet), discipline (a negative one), industrial relation, career planning and income decision.

Alternative Work Arrangements • Telecommuting (also called as home working or teleworking) is the most effective and successful methods of alternative work arrangements. • Telecommuting was expected to be the next workplace revolution in the 1980’s, but more balanced views indicate that the growth of telecommuting is not match expectations. • Baruch and Nicholson (1997) identified four aspects for effective telecommuting. • Figure beside depicts four aspects, and indicate perhaps why telecommuting has not yet grown as much as many futurist forecasted (due to the overlap needed between the aspects). Individual; Personality; Situation Organization; Strategy: Culture Job; Nature; Technology Home and Family

The virtuous versus the vicious cycle of teleworking • Virtuous cycle Positive outcomes High efficiency. Quality of life, less stress Better Performance Cost Saving, image Environment and community improvements Antecedents Traits and characteristics Job profile, technology Policy, support mechanism Culture and infrastructure Teleworking processes Work/family balance IT intensity Distance management Legislation Individual Job Organization Nation Negative outcomes Isolation, poor career Poor performance Poor control Autistic society Vicious cycle

Possible benefits and shortcomings of teleworking

Alternative Work Arrangements • Multiple Part-Time (MPT) is a new alternative work arrangement, forming part of the emerging ‘New Deal’ in employment. • MTP represent a shift away from paternalistic and benevolent secure employment, to an emphasis on continuous responsibility for self-development and employability on the part of the employee. • Part time work grew very quickly and received much attention in academic research.

Alternative Work Arrangements • The evolution ofpart-time work has been linked mainly to four factors • High rate of unemployment in many develop countries. • The need of business firms to cut costs, to enhance operational flexibility, or to increase access to scarce human capital and to enlarge pool of talent upon which the organization can be build. • Increased participation of woman in the labor force • State incentives, aiming to increase employment rate have increased the use of part-time jobs.

Alternative Work Arrangements • Flexi-time – the flexibility to change the time of work from conventional 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. schedule. • Arrangement vary from starting and ending work earlier or later than ‘standard’ to working according to pressure when work is subject to different demands. • Job sharing – enables more than one person to share a certain role. • It came mostly as a response to the needs of working females and mothers, but might mean a loss of opportunities for advancement for those working under such arrangements.

Gottlieb et al. (1998) define five major alternative work arrangements: • Flexitime: allows employees to start and /or ending the working day earlier (or later) than usual. • Compressed hours: where employees work fewer (or no) hours some days, and longer hour on other days • Telecommuting: staff work from home for all part of the working week. • Part-time: staff work less than 30 hours a week. • Job sharing: two employees share the responsibility and benefits of one full time position

The pros and cons of alternative work arrangements

Organizational Developments and Career Systems • Herriot and Pemberton (1996) outlined four properties they feel an established career model should possess. . • Contextualization (i.e. taking into account not merely the organization, but also the business, political and economic environment). • The cyclical and processual nature of the model. • Subjectivity (rather than normativity) for the meaning of career success • The interactive nature of the relationship between the organization and the individual.

Organizational Developments and Career Systems • The core of this model is the requirement to match individual and organizational needs/wants and provisions. • Added to this are the concepts of procedural and distributive justice, as well as the development of relationships (or psychological contract to use another term) as an end output. • Procedural justice may be defined as the degree to which the rules and procedures specified by policies are properly followed whenever they are applied

Organizational Developments and Career Systems • In the organizational career context procedural justice concerns the means (rather than ends) of social justice decisions, i.e. the basis on which career decision are made. • Employees will be willing to accept organizational policies and practices if these are based on fair procedures. • They value not just being treated with dignity and respect, but also being provided with adequate information about these procedures.

Career Cone Model (Schein, 1978) • This represented a mould breaking approach to career modeling, from functional, hierarchical progress within a single sector to a multidisciplinary approach that enables sideways development

Strategic Career System The Sonnenfeld and Peiperl Model External-based selection criteria INTERNAL VS EXTERNAL BASED SELECTION CRITERIA Internal-based selection criteria Collectivistic-based promotion criteria Individualistic-based promotion criteria INDIVIDUALISTIC VERSUS COLLECTIVISTIC BASED PROMOTION CRITERIA

Figure 4.5 Contemporary careers: leaving the organization behind • Herriot and Pemberton have outline four properties they feel an established career model should possess. • Conceptualization (taking into account not merely the organization, but also the business, political and economic environment) • Cyclical and procession nature of the model • Subjectivity for the meaning of career success • Interactive nature in the sense of relationship between the organization and the individual.

Recruitment, Selection and Career System • To make sure there is a match between the individual and the nature and demands of the role within the specific organizational context. • There are two issue; • It is still desirable to recruit a person for a career, rather than for a job. • To make sure the right match is found, the organization needs to have as clear an idea as possible about the requirements for each positions.

New Deal: The changing nature of psychological contracts

Empowerment • Empowerments means ‘findings new ways to concentrate power in the hands of the people who need it most to get the job done –putting authority, responsibility, resources and rights at the most appropriate level for the task.’ • Empowerments is a part of a set motivational techniques designed to improve employee performance through increased levels of employee participation and self-determination. • Traditional paradigm were based predominantly on strong managerial control. • The modern concept of empowerment relates primarily to the delegation of decision-making power to people at lower organizational level, but empowerment means more than merely delegation.

Empowerment • Thomas and Velthouse (1990) define four components of empowerment: • Choice – not only providing employees with genuine job enrichment and opportunities to have their voice heard, but also giving them real power to control and influence work processes • Competence – enabling people to be confident of their capacity to make these choice; enhancing their self-efficacy as a pre-condition to making decisions and standing by them • Meaningfulness – valuing the work done by the empowered people • Impact – letting people have influence over what is going on in the organization, ensuring that their decisions make a difference. • All of these components apply to the transformed organizational career system. • Baruch (1998) model of empowerment offers four ways of classifying organizational approaches to empowerment.

Empowerment • Beliefs: the extent to which top management genuinely believe in the underlying ideas of empowerment and its potential benefits. • Fairness: the extent to which the approach of senior management to employees is fair and just/honest. • Beliefs determine whether career empowerment will be applied in the organization • Fairness implies the support and investment of the organization for the empowered people. High Dissociated Enlightened Fairness Fraudulent Miser Low Beliefs Low High

Evaluating Career System • Management should be able to evaluate the operational and performance quality of its unit, departments and subdivisions for two major reasons: • The need to be well acquainted with what is happening in the organization • In order to identify and isolate possible problems and difficulties which might be due to poor performance • One way to conduct an evaluation is to look at ‘customer satisfaction’ – one major customer is the employees itself. • Another means of evaluation is to measure the extent to which the unit has achieved its goal

Six Dimensions Model Of Evaluating Career System • Involvement: from a very low to a very high level of organizational involvement needed when dealing with the specific career practice • Sophistication and complexity: from very simple to highly sophisticated and complex • Strategic orientation: from very practical or ‘tactical’ to very strategic • Developmental focus: from low to high relevance for developing individuals. • Organizational decision-making focus: from low to high relevance for organizational decision-making processes. • Innovative: from very traditional or conventional, to innovative an unorthodox

CAREER AND HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT