CAREER DEVELOPMENT IN A LEARNING ORGANIZATION

Abstract

Thesis title: Career Development in a Learning Organization This study is focused on identifying the facilitating role of the learning organizations in the process of individuals’ careers development. The research has undertaken the study of the part of the process of Organizational Development, where capacity development in terms of Career Development of the staff is carried out to enhance the capabilities of the organization. The study establishes the fact that if the objectives of the two processes are merged together then a synergetic effect is created which enhances the pace of both the process. The theoretical framework of this study has taken career development as dependent variable, Organizational Development strategies is the Independent Variable. This study analyzes the reliance of the introduction of knowledge sharing strategy of OD on the individual capacity development. The main construct of this study is to see the significance of the correlation between the processes of career development and Organizational Development. The theoretical frame work has been studied in two different context i.e the learning organizations’ and the conventional organization and a comparative analysis of the two have been carried out establishing certain results. Keeping in view the qualitative nature of the study, three different tools have been employed by this study including Participant Observation, Questionnaire and Structured interviews. The conclusion of the study indicated that the Learning Organizations context is more supportive to the process of career development as compared to the Conventional context. It was also concluded that the management of both the organizations are undoubtedly clear about the positive contribution of the capacity development process to organization’s benefit but the role performed by the management in these two different context is different from each other. The recommendations of this study include a model for integrating HR activities of the organization with the career development process.