CAREER DEVELOPMENT IN A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

that exhibit maximum traits of a learning organization if not all of them. These
characteristics have been highlighted in the literature review chapter with more details.
In today’s world where quality of performance is valued, the opportunities offered
by organizations for high performing employees exist in abundance. Therefore, retention
of competent employees has become a challenge for the organization. Given the
competition for proficient employees, organizations with orthodox exploitative views and
practices of keeping their productive employees under stress to prove their worth on
continual basis for survival have to revisit their paradigm. Once an employee establishes
his/her worth for an organization then it is in the interest of the organization to retain such
an employee as its Human Capital.
Employees’ career development on the other hand is a strategy that provides an
impetus for a longer term association, and hence a healthier relationship flourishes on
both sides, i.e., between the employees and organization. According to Newstorm (2007)
the commitment of the employees to remain with the organization is stronger and longer
when they experience their own success.
Now days, career development of employees has become an integral part of the
HRD strategy of an organization in response to the need of improving performance and
gaining competitive edge. Gaining a specific status is not an ultimate target for a
Learning Organization. It continues to develop through perpetual adaptation in order to
manage the environmental changes while progressing towards its set targets.
As adaptation by the organization is with the purpose to effectively respond to
changing circumstances, such a capability could be attained by these organizations
through its Human Resource. To be able to effectively respond to the environmental
changes, a very broad spectrum of information database incorporating variety of aspects
related to process management and decision making is needed. Such kind of knowledge
and awareness about the existing issues is found among the Human Resource (HR) of an
organization. Furthermore, the use of such interventions is based on the individual
learning and absorbing capacity, which again brings us to the HR of the organization.
Armstrong (2006) comments that a classic OD approach is based on the concept that in
order to respond to any change an organization requires a complex educational strategy.