The textbook talks very briefly about particular career
issues that affect individuals within the organization: technical &
professional workers, women, dual-career couples, and global career
tracks. I can personally relate to three
of those topic, which I will incorporate into my summaries and explanations
below.
Technical Workers and Management
The book talks about the reluctance of many technical and
professional workers over moving into management roles. The central theme of their careers involves
solving problems and puzzles, rather than managing individuals who do that. Their skills may be more grounded in
technical expertise rather than managerial, and simply promoting such a person
into a managerial role as a reward runs the risk of disastrous consequences.
When I began my current job in July of 2000, my department’s
management consisted of the department manager and the network
administrator. The network administrator
was my direct supervisor, and his role was to oversee the work of the
technicians as we maintained the technology of the schools. The department manager’s role was to oversee
the business-related aspects of our department and to act as the liaison
between our department and the rest of the district. She served as the public face of our
department, allowing the rest of us to quietly bury ourselves in a nest of
cables and computer parts.
Around 2008, our department manager – after having been
promoted even further through the chain of executives of the district –
retired. Rather than hiring or
appointing a direct replacement for her, the district promoted my boss to be
the director of the department, which meant that he now held the dual
responsibility of managing the technical aspects of our work as well as
overseeing the business side by combining his role as network administrator and
director of technology. This presented a
particular challenge for him because, although he always had the capability of
performing the business functions, his heart lies in technology and solving
technical puzzles. In fact, immediately
after the transition, while a bunch of us were out at the bar after work, he
lamented over his beer that he missed being elbows-deep inside a computer
rather than working on the following year’s budget.
This scenario illustrates a challenge faced by companies and
HR departments. When an individual
reaches various points of advancement and growth opportunities, the employer is
faced with either limited available options within the technical track, or the
singular opportunity of management. The
challenge arises when faced with the possibility that the individual may be a
skilled technical worker but not necessarily a good manager. Companies understand that having a manager in
place with the technical skills means that subordinates will grant respect for
that person’s knowledge and abilities, but whether those skills translate into
areas of responsibility that are more business focused rather than technically
focused is rarely clear. (Roberts &
Biddle, 1994) .
Dual-Career Couples
I work in the information technology department of a local
school district, and have been involved in technology professionally since
1997. My wife works in the bankruptcy
department for a medium-sized law firm and has been involved in bankruptcy law
for about the same amount of time. I
chose my career, but my wife fell into hers.
If she had the opportunity to do it all over again, she would have
likely chosen some other career path, but at our age and circumstances, the
opportunity for a “do over” is limited.
Whether the household consists of two working parents or the
household is that of a single-parent worker, accommodations need to be made or
allowed for in order to deal with unexpected situations with family members,
such as children. Home responsibilities
must be balanced with work responsibilities, and it can be a common occurrence
for one to spill over into the other out of necessity. Given that psychological contracts between
workers and employers are rarely – if ever – codified by law, both sides may
have particular expectations of the other, and conflicts arise when those
expectations don’t align.
Considering that studies have shown that workers who are
allowed more latitude in autonomy on the job exhibit higher organizational
commitment, it behooves HR and the company to keep such allowances in mind when
a worker and his or her spouse both must split their respective
responsibilities at home and on the job. (Ahmad, Azim, Omar, & Silong, 2012)
Because my wife was only recently hired at her company, her
flexibility is more limited than mine, as I’ve been with my employer for over
12 years. Additionally, my department is
notorious for its relaxed attitude and flexibility that gives us the leeway to
get our jobs done. Thus, when our son
was hospitalized recently for a respiratory illness, we both had to take time
off, although it was less of an issue with me because of my longevity with my
employer.
Global Careers and Families
My first professional job was at an international trading
and commodity brokerage firm, where I worked from 1992 to 1997. Although not well-known outside of the
industry, this company and its competitors were big behind-the-scenes players in
all sorts of industries: steel, automotive, electronics, consumer goods, and so
on. Anything that required shipping and
warehousing of large quantities of goods that departed one country and arrived
in another, or even domestic orders, this company managed it all.
The headquarters of this company was based in Tokyo,
Japan. Branch managers, department
managers, and senior executives were all based out of the Japanese locations,
and assigned to international offices for average periods of around five
years. This meant that managers had to
regularly uproot their families and move to foreign countries, adding stress to
the family dynamic.
Thus, it was common for the spouse of the transferred worker
to be a homemaker, and this was most often the wife of the male manager (in my
five years as an employee of this company, I had never met a female manager who
had been transferred from the Tokyo headquarters. Any female supervisor or executive was always
a national hire, and not a transferee, which meant that upward mobility in the
corporation as a whole was limited, and not just due to gender but national
origin).
A firm that expects to compete globally must have its decision-makers
fluent in the ways of the world, often from more of a literal sense than a
figurative idiom. Thus, workers who are
transferred to other countries are immersed first-hand to learn not just the
ways of conducting business in foreign cultures, but to learn those cultures
themselves – the customs of workers, citizens, local laws and behaviors,
communication methods and preferences.
The company then expects those employees who are successful to bring
back the knowledge and skills gained in these assignments to benefit the
company as a whole. (Furuya,
Stevens, Bird, Oddou, & Mendenhall, 2009)
When a worker is repatriated into his origin country – in this
case, Japan – he must not only readjust his new habits and patterns back to
that of Japan, but so too must his family.
Many of the managers with whom I worked had young children, and were
enrolled in local schools. While their
families had the benefit of a local Japanese-American subculture to reduce the
shock and aid in the transition to this foreign land of America, it was still not
an easy process. Kids may have had the
familiarity of Japanese school on weekends, but during the week, they attended
American school like any other child of their age, but with the added
disadvantage of acclimating to a foreign culture, speaking a language that bore
little resemblance to what little textbook English they have learned in schools
in Japan.
Thus, given the broadly encompassing consequences that come
from expatriation and repatriation, companies such as my former employer have
dedicated resources and contracts with business partners to aid in the
transition for their workers and their families, as benefits of the skills and
knowledge gained by their employees – on an aggregate level – far outweigh the
costs of support.
Conclusion
Traditionally and perhaps historically, it may seem
counter-productive and counter-intuitive for companies to provide
accommodations to workers that don’t have any direct bearing on the job. Any worker should be thrilled and privileged
to be offered a managerial position, with its attendant increase in pay and
prestige. Allowing a worker to take time
off is akin to paying that person to not be at his or her desk, when tending to
a sick child. Or when a worker returns
from an overseas assignment, it should be their responsibility to reacclimate
with their home country.
However, such a laissez-faire attitude would itself be the
counter-intuitive, counter-productive approach as that would instead contribute
to worker dissatisfaction, which can then snowball into turnover. A more accommodating approach from an HR
perspective may not have any direct or immediate benefit to the company, but a
wise decision-maker must look beyond the immediate and direct benefits. Granting workers some latitude and freedom,
and assuring the worker that he or she will be cared for raises the level of
trust on both sides, and both employer and employee benefit in the forms of a
steady and satisfying job, and a happy and loyal worker.
Works Cited
Ahmad, A., Azim, A. M., Omar, Z., & Silong, A. D.
(2012). Work-family psychological contract, job autonomy and organizational
commitment. Journal of Applied Sciences, 740.
Furuya, N., Stevens, M. J., Bird, A., Oddou, G., &
Mendenhall, M. (2009). Managing the Learning and Transfer of Global Management
Competence: Antecedents and Outcomes of Japanese Repatriation Effectiveness. Journal
of International Business Studies, 200-215.
Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2011). Human
Resource Management. Mason: South-Wester Cengage Learning.
Roberts, K., & Biddle, J. (1994). Questions
Associated with the Transition to Management. Human Resource Management
(1986-1998), 565-.
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