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4 Managing managerial careers
N. Bozionelos and Y. Baruch
Although a universal definition is by no means simple to arrive at, a career
can be seen as a sequence of work- related experiences that unfold through
time (e.g. Arthur et al., 1989). Every working person has a career. And
careers have to be managed. Yet managing the careers of managers is
more complex and sophisticated than management of careers for rank-
and- file employees.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a manager is ‘a person
responsible for controlling or administering an organisation or group of
staff’. What distinguishes someone with managerial responsibilities from
other employees, therefore, is that this person (1) is in charge of multiple
resources (including money, materials, technology, space and people),
and (2) has to make decisions about how to combine, process, utilise and
develop these resources in order to achieve certain outcomes that add
value to the business, the firm or the function. Although someone may
claim that virtually all individuals who perform work are charged with
such responsibilities, a fundamental difference between a manager and
someone without managerial tasks is that the manager bears responsibility
for the output (including behaviours) of those he/she is in charge of. The
manager is accountable for the actions and output of others, while non-
managerial employees normally are not. In this respect, therefore, manag-
ers share characteristics with leaders, though being a good manager does
not always require exceptional leadership capabilities (e.g. see Bono and
Judge, 2004). It is because of the complexity inherent in managerial work
that managerial careers require careful long- and short- term planning,
while the burden should be shared between the employer and manager.
Although not every manager is a leader, every leader is a manager, at
least within the organisational context. Leaders are self- motivated, and
normally aim to be at the helm, including leading their own careers. This
is where the employer needs to balance the two: employer and individual
needs and wants (Herriot and Pemberton, 1996). A properly designed
career management system can harmonise the two sets of needs as well as
ensure that the burden in career leadership is shared (Baruch, 2006).
As seen, the importance of managers lies in the very nature of their
work: they are responsible for output that requires the synergistic effort of
others along with combination and optimisation in the use of resources.
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Managing managerial careers 63
Because of the nature of their tasks, to deliver results managers need
to have multiple talents and skills, some of which are generic and some
specific to a sector or profession (Baruch et al., 2005). These can include
various domains of technical knowledge, ability to motivate, coordinate
or control, as well as the capacity to plan and to forecast. Negotiation
skills and vision are necessary additions to the list as one moves towards
the upper echelons.
CAREER SYSTEMS FOR MANAGERIAL
EMPLOYEES
A career system is basically a set of principles, rules and procedures that
control the entry, service and exit of employees over time (e.g. Baruch,
2004). The position of the manager is cherished in many cultures because
of the complex nature of the work he/she performs and the importance of
that work for organisational and firm outcomes. This has pushed employ-
ers to introduce career systems that allow them to: groom promising
employees towards becoming managers; further develop them once they
have assumed managerial responsibilities; and retain them by offering
rewards that include moves upwards. Upward moves are desired even
when people hold career orientations that focus on dynamism and are
distanced from the principles of corporate bureaucracy (Vinkenburg and
Weber, 2012). Continuous progress and promotion compose an essential
part of careers systems for managerial employees.
As a consequence of the diverse nature of skills, abilities and capaci-
ties required, becoming a manager necessitates development and experi-
ence, which is equated with amassment of human capital. Indeed, most
individuals who eventually find themselves in managerial positions and
pursue managerial careers do not start with this aspiration. In most cases
they start with non- managerial responsibilities (e.g. technicians, engineers,
accountants, operational workers, assistant professors), and after accu-
mulation of diverse skills, some of which come with experience, either find
themselves or proactively push themselves into managerial posts and then
into managerial careers. Indeed, proactivity is a significant factor in mana-
gerial career success (Seibert et al., 2001). The timing is mostly planned
(i.e. as part of a career system within a firm, or as an intentional search
for a job that involves managerial responsibilities). However, there are
cases where this comes as a response to urgent needs (e.g. a construction
engineer on a mission in a remote site receives a call from the construction
manager of the site who tells him: ‘I am off sick for the next few days; you
are now in charge!’).
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64 Handbook of research on managing managers
THE NATURE OF MANAGERIAL CAREERS
The definition of careers presented above is perfectly applicable to man-
agers, maybe with the added condition that work- related experiences are
somehow relevant and build on each other. That is, each position assumes
possession of skills and capacities that have been developed in previous
posts or in other relevant experiences, such as management or executive
development programmes (e.g. Griesbach and Grand, 2013).
Inherent in a career, and especially in a managerial career, is the element
of advancement or success. Advancement means increases in responsibil-
ity, but also in remuneration and, especially, status. This last element is
critical. Systematic research finds that status and its achievement (promo-
tion) are highly valued by individuals. For example, Bozionelos (1996)
compared two virtually identical organisations and found that employ-
ees reported significantly more satisfaction with their careers in the one
with the tallest hierarchy. In addition, monetary rewards (such as mere
increases in salary or bonuses) or simply augmented responsibilities –
while certainly important – cannot substitute for lack of prospects for pro-
motion or status achievement. For example, research by Moss et al. (2008)
indicated that firms often have to add hierarchical layers to their structures
so they can offer promotions to retain their able managers; purely increas-
ing responsibilities and salaries is not effective. In line with this, Taylor et
al. (1996) found that lack of promotion opportunities was associated with
poorer affection for and less identification with the employer.
THE CENTRALITY OF CAREERS IN LIFE
What must also be borne in mind is that objectively defined success
(e.g. how fast one advances) does not always correspond to people’s
own feelings about their careers (Dries, Pepermans and Karlier, 2008).
Whether managers feel successful is just as important as whether they are
seen by others as successful (see Baruch and Bozionelos, 2010). It is, there-
fore, critical for employers to make certain that what they offer to their
managers also registers with managers themselves.
Finally, careers are a central part of life for most people (Newport,
2013), and those who feel successful in their careers are more likely to
feel accomplished and satisfied with their lives in general (e.g. Judge et
al., 2010). The centrality of careers is epitomised in the case of managers
who tend to work longer hours than most others (Williams and Boushey,
2010), have strong status aspirations, and assume responsibilities that
concern the fate of teams, departments, divisions or whole firms. The
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Managing managerial careers 65
managerial role has its own identity that develops gradually and goes
beyond professional identity (e.g. identification with one’s technical
subject specialisation or operational role) (Austin et al., 2013; Sveningsson
and Alvesson, 2003).
MANAGERIAL CAREERS: A BOUNDARYLESSNESS
PERSPECTIVE
A construct that can assist us to better understand managerial careers is
that of the boundaryless career (Arthur, 1994). ‘Boundarylessness’ is a
celebrated term in careers literature. It was introduced to denote changes
in career patterns that started in the 1980s as a consequence of the turmoil
in the economy that increased competition and globalisation.
PHYSICAL CAREER BOUNDARYLESSNESS
The notion of boundarylessness is quite broad (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau,
1996) and can be utilised flexibly. A meaning that is usually ascribed to
it is the shift from careers pursued within single organisations towards
careers pursued across organisational borders. This certainly applies to
managerial careers. Many managers move across firms in order to acquire
the skills and experience needed to advance their careers. This ‘physical’
movement has apparently been increasing in frequency from the 1980s
onwards (Baruch et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2014).
THE TRADITIONAL CAREER
The idea of physical boundarylessness contrasts with the notion of the
traditional career, which has been the archetypical career form. The tra-
ditional career assumes that individuals spend most or all parts of their
working lives with the same employer. It is with that particular employer
that they will grow professionally, and it is the employer who has the main
responsibility to provide opportunities for development, and the struc-
tures to achieve promotion and to ascend the organisational hierarchy.
The traditional career effectively represents the first theorisation of
career, and has its roots in the social and economic conditions that prevailed
in the few decades that preceded and followed the Second World War. The
relatively steady and strong economic growth that characterised that era
necessitated the synergistic work of people who performed disparate roles,
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66 Handbook of research on managing managers
as well as people and structures that coordinated these. As a consequence,
we saw the evolution of large organisational entities, sometimes referred
to as ‘bureaucracies’, with clearly prescribed roles, hierarchies and rules
for movement across and through them. It is within such structures that
features that have come to symbolise the traditional career were observed
(Baruch and Bozionelos, 2010). These include long- term employment,
relatively steady upwards advancement accompanied by increases in job
scope and responsibility, and employee development that is planned and
sponsored by the employer (Reitman and Schneer, 2008; Sullivan, 1999).
The idea behind the traditional career has been that individuals would
normally join employers in technical or office roles, and then advance
steadily to assume increasingly managerial roles. Advancement would
occur naturally as a result of performance and loyalty (Rosenbaum, 1979),
and the management of the career would be taken care of mostly by the
employer without placing particular burdens or concerns on employees
(e.g. Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). Some individuals would eventually rise
to assume positions in the senior management or the board or become
CEOs, while some others would stop at lower levels. A major assumption
was that individuals could stay with their employers for as long as they
wished. Of course, one issue with such assumptions is that, even with the
best planning, chance events may play a critical role in future career direc-
tions (Grimland et al., 2012); thus such planning has to be flexible, with
the adoption of broad career paths.
THE ADVENT OF THE BOUNDARYLESS CAREER
The template of the traditional career was challenged in the 1980s, starting
mostly in the Anglo- Saxon countries, such as the USA and the UK, and
then spreading to other societies such as Japan. Indeed, as evidence cor-
roborates, average job tenure declined from the mid- 1970s until the early
2000s (e.g. Farber, 2008). That has largely been the result of (a) intensifica-
tion in competition imposed by broadening globalisation, and (b) acceler-
ating pace of technological progress that renders specialisations and jobs
redundant, with the associated need for completely new jobs. Hence many
firms started managing their employees in ways that departed from the
principles dictated by the notion of traditional career. In addition, many
employers saw the elimination of managerial jobs and the truncation of
managerial hierarchies as a way to cut costs and improve efficiency.
The above led to regular resorting to redundancies as a way to
contain costs, utilisation of short- term contracts with increasingly larger
proportions of the workforce, and gradually heightened expectations
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Managing managerial careers 67
from employees to be more active and proactive in taking care of their
own careers (Baruch, 1998; Baruch and Bozionelos, 2010). For example,
over the years employers are becoming more reluctant to sponsor employ-
ees during long- term educational attainments, and more keen to offer
seminars or workshops on career management (Baruch, 2009). Firms
do not have the resources or will to cater for the developmental needs of
their employees; neither can they be certain they will grow or even be in
business in the long term to accommodate all current workforces. Hence
a solution is to remove responsibility for career development from them
and transfer it to employees. As a consequence, people increasingly need
to move across firms in order to stay in employment and accumulate
career- enhancing work experience (Baruch, 1998, 2001). In this respect,
therefore, the careers of managers have progressively become more
boundaryless from a physical perspective.
THE BOUNDARYLESS MENTALITY
However, boundarylessness not only refers to actual physical movement,
but also to being alert to threats and opportunities by means of constantly
monitoring the internal and external labour market and being prepared to
move – whether this is voluntary (e.g. grasping an opportunity for a better
or career value- adding job) or involuntary (e.g. a redundancy) – (Baruch,
2006; Briscoe et al., 2006; Sullivan and Arthur, 2006). This necessitates
self- direction in career movement and ability to reshape one’s mind set
(Hall, 2004). It also goes hand in hand with the growing need for resilience
(London, 1983; Betz, 2007) in order to bounce back from unfortunate
events (e.g. redundancy, unrealised promotion or favourable transfer due
to lower than forecasted expansion, verbal agreement for a job that was
not eventually materialised because the employer- to- be faced difficulties
and reconsidered its hiring tactics) whose likelihood has risen in the past
three decades.
Overall, therefore, managerial careers have been shifting over the years
towards the upper poles of both dimensions of the boundaryless con-
tinuum: actual mobility and mental preparedness to move.
BOUNDARYLESSNESS IN FUNCTIONS, TASKS AND
SKILLS
Apart from the crossing of borders between firms, however, another
reason boundarylessness is highly pertinent to managers is the very nature
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68 Handbook of research on managing managers
of managerial work, which crosses the lines of organisational functions,
tasks and activities. An office manager, for example, must have knowledge
of products and processes in the office – which normally involves multiple
stages and specialisations – and make appropriate decisions; have some
knowledge of internal or external customer relations; and have some
leadership skills, but also competence in the human resources domain to
handle issues that may arise between employees. A general manager needs
to possess the above knowledge and skills extended to various functions
within the firm, plus the ability to develop a vision, along with strategic
plans (Allen and Gilmore, 1993; Austin et al., 2013). And the switch
between different tasks and activities is relentless and chaotic in the sense
that it does not have any orderly or even predictable pattern (Kornberger
et al., 2011), which makes the managerial role especially demanding.
Hence managerial careers can also be placed along another continuum:
at the one end we have a purely bounded form of career in terms of scope of
knowledge, skills and capacities (e.g. a technical specialist or operational-
level employee without any managerial responsibilities) and at the other
end we have a totally boundaryless form (e.g. a general manager or an
executive). Individuals can be placed on different points of the continuum,
depending on the career system in which they find themselves. Someone
with future managerial aspirations who has just completed a technical
degree and occupies a specialty position within a firm finds him/herself on
the one side, while an accomplished general manager or a CEO finds him/
herself on the other side. And an experienced project manager may be seen
as falling somewhere around the mid- point of the continuum.
Managerial careers normally start somewhere near the ‘bounded’ pole
and, as individuals progress, gradually shift towards the ‘boundaryless’ end.
Of course, only very few will reach that end because only a few ever ascend
to the top echelons. For most the journey plateaus around the mid- point.
Functional managers and executives, however, increasingly need to have
skills and abilities that extend over many different domains and functions
(Hassard et al., 2009). A prime example is the position of the chief informa-
tion officer, which came into existence after the mid- 1990s as a response
to firms’ need for executives with the ability to both understand new
technologies and apply these to business strategy (Groysberg et al., 2011).
LEARNING AS A KEY PROCESS IN
CONTEMPORARY MANAGERIAL CAREERS
What goes in parallel with the shift towards the boundaryless end of
the continuum is the increasing need for constant learning. Learning
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Managing managerial careers 69
has always been a main aspect of careers, especially managerial careers
(Karaevli and Hall, 2006). This is because for managers boundaryless-
ness extends to functions, tasks and skills. As they move from specialists
towards generalists and strategists, managers need to master new technical
knowledge and skills, such as accounts, costing, basic finance, marketing
and supply chain, but also to acquire skills that are less concrete in nature
yet still critical to their success, such as people management, leadership,
negotiation and alliance building.
However, in the decades that followed the 1970s the need for learning
has been increasing, along with the rise in physical and organisational
boundarylessness. During that period changes in career directions have
gradually become more frequent, while simultaneously certainty has
declined. As a result, individuals are constantly required to update and
upgrade their skills and maintain awareness of developments in their
fields, in adjacent fields and in the labour market in general. To that end,
contemporary careers are composed of large numbers of consecutive
learning cycles (Baruch and Bozionelos, 2010; Hall and Mirvis, 1995)
whose duration has been declining over the years.
Managers need to judge what skills and dexterities fit the needs of the
market and their career aspirations, work to acquire and master these,
and establish themselves and ‘cash’ these into the labour market; this
cycle must be repeated regularly if the manager is to remain employable
and with reasonable career prospects. As noted, in the past it was typical
for employers to plan and manage careers, and a set of practices had been
developed to enable them to extract the most from their managers (Baruch
and Peiperl, 2000). Most of these practices are still relevant, but nowadays
managers need to take a significant role themselves in the planning and
management of their own careers.
What is also important, and to some extent a paradox, is that in moving
up the managerial ladder individuals gradually and inevitably lose touch
with nuanced developments in their core technical area (e.g. being an
engineer or a scientist), but on the other hand they have to keep abreast
with developments in their industry and in areas that may influence its
direction. To illustrate, someone who started as engineer for a company
that supplies parts to the automotive industry and has gradually moved up
the managerial ladder must be aware not only of developments and events
within their own industry (e.g. new materials, new methods of production,
what competitors do), but also in other areas, such as information technol-
ogy, which may provide opportunities (e.g. novel ways of controlling or
operating or integrating parts into the vehicle), but also pose threats (e.g. a
competitor sees and exploits these first, or the product becomes redundant
because of these developments).
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70 Handbook of research on managing managers
This means that ability and motivation to learn are critical in managerial
careers. To that, one must add capacity and motivation to scan the envi-
ronment for new information. The pattern of increasing boundarylessness
in the course of managerial careers is depicted in Figure 4.1. As individuals
move from non- managerial positions towards the top echelons, skills but
also mentality becomes more boundaryless, accompanied by the need for
constant learning in increasingly disparate domains.
WHERE SHOULD RESPONSIBILITY FOR CAREER
MANAGEMENT LIE: IN INDIVIDUALS OR IN
FIRMS?
The above turns out to be a false dilemma because the responsibility
should be shared, and certainly must not be left entirely to the individual
manager. As already detailed above, managerial careers, along with
careers in most occupations and professions, have been turning increas-
ingly boundaryless in the physical sense. A key question that arises then is:
whose interests does extensive physical boundarylessness serve? This is in
turn reduced to whether short organisational tenures serve the careers of
managers, or the interests of employers, or both.
Technical skills,
specialisation
Leadership skills,
bridging across functions,
holistic picture
Coordination & motivation skills,
development of awareness of the
complexity of the rm
Cycles of learning with
increasing emphasis on
function bridging,
discipline crossing and
‘soft’ skills
Decision making & negotiation
skills, bridging across
organisations, total picture
Strategy/Senior level
Tactical/Middle level
Junior level
Technical/Operational level
Bounded Boundaryless
Figure 4.1 Managerial careers as a journey towards increasing
boundarylessness
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Managing managerial careers 71
THE ‘TRADITIONAL’ VERSUS THE ‘NEW CAREER
DEAL’
This question in essence directs us to a juxtaposition between the ‘tradi-
tional’ and the ‘new career deal’. The traditional career, which has already
been presented, has three core elements: secure employment; a steady
upward path provided that the individual fulfils his/her obligations; and
responsibility for development falling mostly on the employer. To clarify,
it does not mean that movement in traditional careers is always upwards.
Lateral or even downward movements are in order, provided that these
are part of a generic planned system (Peiperl and Baruch, 1997). In addi-
tion, responsibility for career development by the employer does not mean
that employees are just passive objects, obedient to commands imposed
by a rigid organisational system. Individual will, preferences and aspira-
tions are taken into account, and individual initiative is allowed or even
encouraged, provided that it fits the general strategy of the employer.
The ‘new career deal’, which inspired the notion of physical boundary-
lessness (Arthur, 1994), revolves around the following principles: limited
or no employment security; no guarantee of upward movement; and
responsibility for career development that primarily falls on employees
who, being alert, must identify their own opportunities for development
as well as career opportunities with the same or other employers. The
‘new career deal’ involves limited trust between employers and employees,
narrow feelings of mutual obligation, and expectations of a relationship of
limited duration that is normally monetarisable and requires immediate
reciprocation (i.e. prompt reward for achievement or service because the
future of the relationship is uncertain) (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau, 1996;
Baruch, 2001; Inkson et al., 2001). As seen, due to choices that many firms
made after the early 1980s, the ‘new career deal’ has earned ground to the
extent that it is viewed by many as the only realistic way.
CAVEATS OF THE ‘NEW CAREER DEAL’
However, there are caveats both with the above assumption and with the
‘new career deal’. First, the traditional career is still in existence and is
present in a substantial proportion of firms, organisations or individual
career deals (Baruch and Bozionelos, 2010). Hence the traditional career
is not an entity of the past but instead very much of the present and prob-
ably of the future. Indeed, national- level data from the USA indicate that
the decline in average length of time that managers were staying with their
firms reached a peak at the very beginning of the millennium, but from
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72 Handbook of research on managing managers
that point on managerial tenure has stabilised, with a slight upward ten-
dency (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). Second, and maybe more impor-
tant, the ‘new career deal’ is associated with a number of undesirable, to
say the least, ‘by- products’:
1. The uncertainty brought by employment insecurity leads to height-
ened levels of stress, which in turn brings physical and psychological
health problems (Cooper, 2006). In addition, fear of losing their jobs
makes it less likely for genuinely sick employees to stay out of work
to recover and regain their health (Livanos and Zangeidis, 2013),
which leads to a situation where employees who are unable to perform
find themselves attending work nevertheless. This means that the
‘new career deal’ comes with a more stressed, more burnt- out, more
accident- prone, less healthy and lower- performing workforce.
2. Reduced prospects for upward movement frequently operates as a
demotivator because, as already seen, for most people status represents
a major attraction. Indeed, empirical findings (Van Herpen et al.,
2005) imply that the flattened or ‘flexible’ organisational hierarchies
that are associated with the ‘new career deal’ may reduce the desire of
people to expend effort. This is especially so for managerial careers,
where status is a primary drive (Adamson et al., 1998). Instead, efforts
may be channelled into obtaining the desirable increase in status by
moving to another employer. Hence limited opportunities for upward
movement combined with low feelings of loyalty and felt obligation
may lead to a loss of good performers, who see moving to another
employer as the only way to enhance their careers.
3. Empirical evidence shows that there are no cross- generation differ-
ences in preference for employment security: millennials (i.e. those
born after 1981) indicate the same strong preference for secure
employment as those born before the Second World War and ‘baby
boomers’ (Dries, Pepermans and De Kerpel, 2008). This counters the
argument that elevated levels of stress due to employment insecurity
are associated only with past generations (e.g. baby boomers), who
were brought up and experienced their careers unfolding in the era
when the ‘traditional career deal’ was the dominant mentality.
ADDITIONAL FALSE ARGUMENTS FOR THE ‘NEW
CAREER DEAL’
Overall, the above points expose the ‘dark side’ of the ‘new career deal’
(Vardi and Kim, 2007). It appears, therefore, that the new deal does
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Managing managerial careers 73
not contain that many advantages either for individuals or for firms.
Nevertheless, there can still be some counter- argument: first, it can be
argued that the new deal provides firms with flexibility in workforce
deployment (regardless of the impact it has on the well- being and the
morale of that workforce); and, second, it can also be argued that it may
make no financial sense to invest in the development of employees, and
especially of managerial talent, that is time consuming and costly, in the
long term. Instead, it may be more sensible to ‘poach’, that is, to ‘buy’
directly good performers from other firms using the capital that would
have otherwise have been invested in the development of ‘mediocre’
employees.
If, however, the former argument were valid, then the alleged flexibility
of the ‘new career deal’ should be evident in bottom- line organisational
outcomes, such as firm performance. Alas, this does not appear to be the
case. At this point, it is important to differentiate between a ‘flexible work-
force’, which is a workforce with multiple talents that is motivated and
willing to expend effort for the employer, and ‘flexibility in the utilisation
of the workforce’, in the sense of using employees as disposable commodi-
ties purely according to what are perceived to be the needs of the moment.
Theory and empirical evidence on so- called high- performance work
systems (Appelbaum et al., 2001) suggests that those career systems that
abide by the ‘traditional deal’, and include employment security, oppor-
tunities for internal promotion, and investment in training and develop-
ment, are associated with firms’ enhanced financial performance (Patel
etal., 2013; Sun et al., 2007). This comes as a natural consequence of the
fact that employees who are offered such deals identify with and are genu-
inely interested in the future of their employers (Ng and Feldman, 2008).
The second argument overlaps with the idea of hiring accomplished
‘stars’, but empirical evidence also attests against it. Indeed, studies
(Groysberg, 2010; Groysberg et al., 2004) that have followed top perform-
ers (such as CEOs, investment bankers and management consultants)
find that their output drops dramatically once they join new employers
and does not recover at any point soon thereafter. Drop is also observed
in the performance of firms who poach these top performers. Ironically,
too, poached individuals do not stay long with their new employers either
(Groysberg et al., 2004). This phenomenon, which brings into question the
notion of ‘transferable skills’, can be attributed to factors that include: (a)
the importance of the firm environment for individual output; and (b) the
transmission of negative signals to the existing workforce who may inter-
pret the direct entry of outsiders as lack of employer interest in them and
lack of promotion opportunities.
Despite the erroneous belief that has been cultivated by particular
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74 Handbook of research on managing managers
populist authors and consultants, ‘talent’ is not particularly rare, and there
is plenty of it within each firm simply waiting to be developed (Cappelli,
2003; Pfeffer and Sutton, 2006). This is not limited to those who seem to
perform at the top (the so- called ‘A players’), but extends to the majority
of the workforce provided that appropriate selection processes and crite-
ria are in place (DeLong and Vijayaraghavan, 2003). High- profile cases,
such as Enron (Gladwell, 2002), of companies that followed the routes of
poaching talent, along with paying attention only to ‘A players’ (i.e.less
than 20 per cent of the workforce), illustrates that this is not a viable men-
tality. Long- term investment in the bulk of our existing workforce, in line
with the ‘traditional career deal’, is a better way to achieve sustainable
firm performance.
This is especially the case for managerial ranks because the mission of
management is intertwined with the fate of the employer (Griesbach and
Grand, 2013). If managers perform to their best, then the prospects for the
employer are maximised. For managers to give their maximum, however,
two conditions must be met: first, they must be fully embedded in the
firm, having complete knowledge of needs, circumstances and systems;
and, second, they must be sufficiently motivated to expend excessive effort
and utilise their full repertoire of skills and abilities for the employer. As
seen, those two conditions are most likely to be fulfilled under a career
management system that abides by the ‘traditional career deal’.
It appears, therefore, that it is in the interest of employers to have a very
strong stake in the careers of their managers instead of declaring detach-
ment from such responsibility. As they progress through managerial
ranks, employees will see their own future and development as tantamount
to the future survival and growth of the employer. To this end, we can talk
about a partnership in career ownership, but a partnership that is initiated
and cultivated by the employer.
PRINCIPLES OF CAREER SYSTEMS FOR
MANAGERIAL RANKS
Key features of the traditional career deal that should be incorporated
into managerial career systems include employment security, upward
career paths and internal promotion, and active interest of the employer
(by means of investment in training and development) in the future and
careers of its managers. To these one should add extensive and general
training and development, broad job descriptions and wide career paths.
These elements are in line with conclusions drawn in the domain of high-
performance work systems (Bamberger and Meshoulam, 2000), and they
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Managing managerial careers 75
signify the adaptation of the traditional career to the conditions of the
modern environment – something that is apparently feasible even with
relatively small firms (see Malhotra et al., 2013).
Training and development must be general and multi- directional,
because nowadays it is more difficult than in the past to know with cer-
tainty how organisational needs will evolve in the future. Broad and dis-
parate knowledge and skills will enable managers to adapt to change and
be ready for various contingencies, being able to for work their employer
while at the same time advancing their careers with that employer. The
purpose of broad job descriptions is complementary: these enable the
acquisition of a broader repertoire of skills, knowledge and capacities,
along with the assumption of more responsibilities. That will open more
career routes, which can accommodate changes in firm priorities accord-
ing to responses to external opportunities and threats, while at the same
time the manager will be able to add more value to the employer (see
also Karaevli and Hall, 2006). Wide career paths will to some extent be
a natural consequence of broad training and development and loose job
descriptions. Furthermore, wide career paths enhance the employer’s
ability to offer employment security and internal promotion opportuni-
ties because they enable more alternatives in terms of future positions and
responsibilities (see Malhotra et al., 2013). Finally, those three features in
concert will facilitate succession planning because they increase the pool of
abilities, skills and knowledge within the firm.
MANAGERIAL VS EXECUTIVE CAREERS
A system that abides by the above principles should deliver for junior,
middle and middle- upper managerial ranks. This is because in these
ranks there is ample room for development and progression due to large
numbers of individuals and jobs at these levels. However, questions arise
about managing careers at the top, where there are only few executives,
let alone the CEO suite: first, how can firms retain senior managers and
executives? And, second, how can firms select those who will lead them?
Retaining people who are at the top may be problematic because these
individuals may not see room for further career progression and because
they are likely to attract interest from other employers (Hamori et al.,
2012). Part of the answer to this is provided by the principles illustrated
above. If we groom our managerial army according to those principles, it
is less likely that our senior people will be lured by offers of others, at least
not prematurely. Contrary to popular belief, people who find themselves
in the executive suite have been with their employers a long time, and the
WILKINSON PRINT.indd 75 19/10/2015 11:56
76 Handbook of research on managing managers
longer they stay the faster they tend to reach the top (Hamori, 2010). To
illustrate, despite a relative drop since the late 1970s, the average Fortune
100 firm executive still spends more than 15 years or nearly two- thirds of
his/her working life with the same employer (Cappelli and Hamori, 2005).
This is because many firms prefer to have sufficient evidence that the
person has proved him/herself and is familiar with its enterprise.
The second issue is covered by a sound succession system (Baruch and
Peiperl, 2000). This is key to all management levels; hence the following
applies to all ranks despite using the executive level as reference point. A
sound succession system means: first, being transparent and perceived
as fair, because both of these aspects relate to employee loyalty, com-
mitment and effort expenditure (Cohen- Charash and Spector, 2001);
second, looking after the strategic interests of the employer. A sound
succession system appoints candidates who have talent, but also solid
knowledge of the capabilities of the firm and its internal social dynam-
ics, as well as the ability to position the firm within its industry. Someone
with a good track record in another employer does not necessarily fit that
profile. Unfortunately, many organisations do not have thorough succes-
sion systems in place; hence they often leave the task to executive search
firms or opt to appoint interim CEOs, which can lead to competitive
disadvantage (Ballinger and Marcel, 2010).
Most evidence converges on the view that the best results are given by
‘relay succession’, a system where the newly appointed CEO has been with
the firm for some time and has worked with the predecessor before the
actual succession takes place. There can be more than one such individual,
and the advantage of the system is that potential successors have the oppor-
tunity to carry out in advance some tasks attached to the position. Further,
during the relay period there is an opportunity to make a thorough assess-
ment of the candidate(s). Such a system is strongly in line with the ‘tradi-
tional career deal’, and empirical research on CEO succession finds that it
offers the best long- term performance outcomes, followed by internal non-
relay succession, with external CEO hiring delivering the poorest medium-
and long- term results (Zhang and Rajagoalan, 2004, 2010).
MANAGERIAL CAREERS ACROSS CULTURES
Although managerial activities are an inherent part of every system that
is associated with some kind of output (whether service, manufactur-
ing or administration- oriented), the ‘manager’ is not equally celebrated
across cultures. Certainly the title of ‘manager’ is highly respected and
rewarded in Anglo- Saxon societies, but this is not the case, for example, in
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Managing managerial careers 77
Northern European and Germanic societies. In those societies it is rather
the engineer who is the celebrated hero (Hofstede, 1993).
These societies are structuralist in the sense that what is seen as impor-
tant is the structure of the system and the design of the procedure, which,
if properly accomplished, are believed to eliminate the need for leadership
and decision making – that is in essence the need for managerial talent.
For example, until very recently there were basically no business schools
in Germany, and specialist Master’s or Bachelor’s degrees are still argu-
ably more prestigious and valued than an undergraduate business degree
or an MBA. Therefore, although managerial careers did exist in Germany,
these may not have been formally labelled as such (but as engineering posi-
tions instead). Another difference in the mentality across cultures is that
movement across firms as a means to advance one’s career is not equally
acceptable. Having moved to three or four firms in the course of a mana-
gerial career may appear perfectly acceptable in the UK, but it is not so
in Germany or in Japan, where people are expected to show patience and
loyalty, and be groomed internally on the way to the top.
Nevertheless, as noted, the managerial role is global, and globalisation
is causing convergence in practices and mentalities. For example, degrees
in management and, especially, MBA programmes have appeared and are
multiplying even in countries with no prior tradition such as Germany and
Japan. As a result, nowadays most societies find themselves in a ‘hybrid’
state, in the sense that managerial career practices incorporate certain ele-
ments as responses to contemporary demands while at the same time they
remain anchored to other elements that are dictated by national culture and
tradition. To illustrate, Tzabbar et al. (2003) looked at career management
practices in Israel, which is a country with many Northern European and
Germanic cultural elements (Ronen and Shenkar, 1985). They found that
Israeli firms have responded to increased competition by incorporating
actual performance output into their evaluation and promotion systems
(instead of employing solely formal qualifications as they used to do in the
past), as well as introducing some elements of ‘poaching’ into their hiring
practices. On the other hand, however, Israeli firms have been reluctant to
delegate responsibility for career management to employees themselves,
keeping it mostly in the hands of their own human resource departments
instead, while they still – and despite some evidence of ‘poaching’ – believe
in a long- term developmental relationship with their managers (Tzabbar
et al., 2003). Similarly, most Indian firms have introduced reward and
career planning systems and have linked these to performance appraisal,
while many of them are now utilising sophisticated selection systems, such
as assessment centres, for key managerial appointments (Budhwar and
Baruch, 2003). On the other hand, however, the majority of Indian firms
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78 Handbook of research on managing managers
continue to abide by many career- related practices that are culturally
rooted, such as ascribed characteristics – including family and political
connections – in hiring and promotion, motivational systems that rely on
social incentives (e.g. maintaining good interpersonal relationships), and
a preference for long- term tenures and seniority- based reward systems
(Budhwar and Baruch, 2003).
Such hybridity may in fact be the optimal way to handle manage-
rial careers, considering that cultural elements are deeply rooted and
impose limits to the transferability of career- related management practices
(Bozionelos and Wang, 2007; Segalla et al., 2001). Nevertheless, it is likely
that certain mentalities confer universal benefits; hence it may be worth
adopting these across the board. For example, career systems in Germany
and Japan, which are two very economically successful countries, largely
rely on job security, long- term relationship and internal promotion,
requiring individuals to prove their loyalty and industrious nature while
they reward them with employment certainty, personal development,
advancement and pride. Such systems are certainly worthy of modelling
by everyone, including countries with a long tradition of strong emphasis
on managerial roles, such as the Anglo- Saxon countries.
GLOBAL MANAGERIAL CAREERS
Although international assignments have been common for a very long
time, what we call international or global careers are becoming increas-
ingly prevalent due to intensification of globalisation in recent decades. As
firms become global, their managers are expected to operate within such
an environment, while at the same time people are becoming increasingly
alert to and informed about employment opportunities in other countries
(Baruch et al., 2013). Hence, in contemporary managerial careers bounda-
rylessness extends to movement across national borders.
Traditional or organisational expatriation, which involves firms sending
managers abroad on a particular mission for a specific period of time,
has been a typical route for managers to gain international experience
(Baruch et al., 2013). Self- initiated expatriation, where individuals make
an employment move to another country on their own initiative and
without sponsorship from a home employer, also represents a widespread
phenomenon with an ever- growing trend (Altman and Baruch, 2012;
Bozionelos, 2014; Doherty et al., 2011). Although we have substantial
knowledge of organisational expatriation, much less is known about self-
initiated expatriation, apart from that it is apparently more challenging
given that self- expatriates must face logistical and adaptation problems
WILKINSON PRINT.indd 78 19/10/2015 11:56
Managing managerial careers 79
with their own personal resources (Bozionelos, 2009; Richardson, 2009;
Shaffer et al., 2012). To these forms of global mobility, which involve stays
of long duration (i.e. counted in years) in a single location, one should add
those that involve shorter but more frequent moves across borders, includ-
ing flex- patriation, in- shoring and globetrotting (Baruch et al., 2013).
Evidently, managing global careers adds complexity to the already-
convoluted operation of managing managerial careers. A major issue, for
example, in managing organisational expatriates is offering them a viable
career plan on their return. This is because during their absence many
changes take place in the headquarters country, including obsolescence of
their skills or even elimination of their whole function. To these one should
add the change at personal level (e.g. in values, identity) that occurs to
international assignees when abroad (Kraimer et al., 2012). The difficulty
of managing expatriates is reflected in their much greater than average
turnover rate on return from their mission (Brookfield Global Relocation
Services, 2010) – whether they leave their firms because of frustration or
because of ‘cashing in’ their newly acquired international skills and expe-
rience by negotiating better deals with other employers (Lazarova and
Cerdin, 2007). This underlines again the importance of broad career paths
as a principle in career management systems. Still, however, less than a
third of global firms have in place formal career management systems for
expatriates (Brookfield Global Relocation Services, 2013).
Another challenge that global employers face is to achieve coherence
across locations in practices and systems, such as performance appraisal
and rewards schemes. Yet documented differences in work- related values
(Malach- Pines and Kaspi- Baruch, 2008) might mean that certain prac-
tices cannot simply cross borders, and require either adaptation or design
anew for each country or region. As already noted, however, a universal
principle is that the design and administration of relevant systems must be
perceived as fair and transparent.
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Although we have accumulated substantial knowledge on managerial
careers, the fluidity of the environment (business, cultural, institutional,
legislative) requires continuous quest for further understanding. Some of
the issues that future research should consider include:
● how technological evolution may be changing the nature of manage-
rial careers by affecting requirements for knowledge, skills and abili-
ties as well as for bridging between functional and other boundaries;
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80 Handbook of research on managing managers
● what may be the effects on managerial careers of the so- called thin-
ning of managerial ranks (e.g. the emergence of the ‘hourglass’
organisational form that is composed mostly of executives and
operational workers but with very few managers in between);
● whether the increase in average managerial tenure that was observed
in the past decade is a permanent rather than a temporary phenom-
enon. This can function as an indicator of whether the ‘traditional
career deal’ – adapted to the contemporary environment – is on the
return;
● likewise, whether firms will increasingly demonstrate the desire to
regain responsibility for the careers of their managers, viewing them
as long- term assets and investing in them accordingly;
● whether convergence in managerial career practices across coun-
tries continues or whether national cultures will function as natural
inhibitor to this;
● whether traditional organisational expatriation will decline and
give way to other, more cost- efficient, forms of international
assignments;
● whether generalist management education, such as the MBA degree,
will continue to be highly valued or will be overshadowed by special-
ist and functionalist education.
CONCLUSION
In line with the role of the manager, managerial careers are inher-
ently complex. They extend throughout numerous domains and bridge
occupations, functions, skills, employers and national borders in a
dynamic and constantly evolving pattern. Challenges are continuous
and occur in ‘real time’, including changes in the very nature of work
(e.g. e- working, e- offices, e- leadership), and the nature of the workplace
and the society (e.g. increasingly multi- cultural workforces). Constant
learning is a key quality for success, along with adaptability, resilience
and proactivity.
Exactly because of the complexity of the modern business environment,
management is too important for employers to delegate the responsibility
for the careers of their own managers to the managers themselves. Career
systems that revolve around the principles of the ‘traditional deal’, as these
are adapted to modern circumstances, is the optimal way forward in this
respect. Such systems optimise the benefits for employers, for managers
themselves, and for the society in general.
WILKINSON PRINT.indd 80 19/10/2015 11:56
Managing managerial careers 81
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