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

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).

Resources flexibility the extent to which a resource can be applied to a wide range of alternative uses

Coordination flexibility the extent to which the organization can rethink and redeploy resources.

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).

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

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.