Employees, Careers, and Job Creation

This is a new age for both workers and companies. Organizations have attempted to downsize, reengineer, or restructure their way to greatness only to find that such dramatic change efforts fail to produce real long-term economic growth. In the process, these changes have wreaked havoc on the jobs, careers, and lives of employees everywhere. Yet, there are some workers and companies breaking new ground in finding successful alternatives to employee displacement and downsizing--in organizations that have discovered new and creative ways to link employee development and job creation with organizational economic growth.

In this new volume of the Professional Practice Series--the first to be published by Jossey-Bass--Manuel London brings together a group of research and practice experts to show how such leading companies as AT&T have responded to demands for change with programs that enhance career opportunities for individuals and stimulate organizational growth. In thirteen original chapters, London and his contributors detail how industrial and organizational psychologists, human resource professionals, and consultants have created innovative human resource development and training programs. These programs go beyond the traditional emphasis on interest surveys, career tracks, and interview skills to train employees in the abilities that actually create new jobs within organizations--skills such as entrepreneurial aptitude, work flexibility, and a value-added orientation.

Employees, Careers, and Job Creation shows how to predict the career opportunities that will open up in an organization's future, assess employee skills, develop training goals, and overcome such barriers to success as employee resistance to learning. It also offers examples of how organization and community-based support programs can assist displaced workers in the event layoffs prove inevitable.

1. Employee Development and Job Creation: Trends, Problems, Opportunities
Jennifer Jarrett, Joseph F. Coates

Part One: Career Development Programs in Changing Organizations

2. Organizational Growth and Employee Advancement: Tracking the Opportunities
Amy Hurley, Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld

3. Career Development in Downsizing Organizations: A Self-Affirmation Analysis
Joel Brockner, Robert J. Lee

4. Integrated Human Resource Development: Building Professional Competences and Communities
Edward M. Mone, Melissa A. Bilger

Part Two: New Patterns of Employment

5. Salvaging Displaced Employees: Job Obsolescence, Retraining, and Redeployment
H. G. Kaufman

6. Managing Part-Time and Temporary Employment Relationships: Individual Needs and Organizational Demands
Daniel C. Feldman

7. Creating and Managing a Resource Link: The Internal Contingent Work Force
James W. Smither

8. Developing Entrepreneurs: Skills for the "Wanna Be," "Gonna Be," and "Gotta Be Better" Employees
John Eggers

Part Three: Economic Development and Revitalized Careers

9. Supporting Career Transitions in a Time of Organizational Downsizing: The Michigan JOBS Program
Richard H. Price, Amiram D. Vinokur

10. Creating Opportunities for Displaced Workers: Center for Commercial Competitiveness
Larry Last, Robert W. E. Peterson, Jack Rappaport, Carin Webb

11. Engaging Displaced Employees in Job Creation: Experiences in High-Tech Firms
Gerrit Wolf, Joseph Pufahl, Jeff Casey, Manny London

12. Developing Computerized Outplacement Counseling Programs: The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and Base
Robert J. Vance, David V. Day

13. Coping with Job Loss: The Collective Activism of Community-Based Job Creation and Retention Strategies
Carrie R. Leana, Daniel C. Feldman

MANUEL LONDON is professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resource Management in the Harriman School of Management and Policy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. London spent twelve years at AT&T in a series of human resource and training positions as manager and researcher. He is the author of eight books, including Managing the Training Enterprise (Jossey-Bass, 1989).