REINVENTING CAREER-DEVELOPMENT

During the long period of economic growth following World War II, we equated career development with promotion (primarily into management) and salary increases (usually double-digit). Since the late 80's, this definition of career development has become more of a myth than a reality for most employees. Flatter organizations and low economic growth have wreaked havoc with career ladders and careers as they had traditionally been ''developed.'' Downsizing and restructuring in hundreds of major companies (including ''rocks'' like IBM and Hewlett-Packard) have significantly altered traditional career development processes. A recent issue of Business Week [1] challenged us to deal with our economic issues by ''reinventing'' America. Likewise, if we are going to meet the competitiveness challenges of the 90's, we must ''reinvent'' career development and find new ways to stimulate employee willingness and ability to perform. Massive efforts to create ''total quality'' in organizations have, for the most part, not addressed what's in it for the individual employee, nor has total quality offered a replacement plan for the cornerstone strategies for rewarding employee performance.