Managers' Careers and Organizational Change

Abstract

It can be said that career patterns often reflect an organization's human resource solutions to critical business problems a reflection of business strategy and organizational culture as well as a resource for creating new strategy. Organizations grow and perpetuate themselves not only because of their products, but also because of their people. The large organization generally creates career patterns through which people move, become committed to the organization, and become capable of managing larger parts of the business. What happens when organizations go through a significant change? Are existing career patterns able to produce an appropriate new mix of executives, or do career patterns inhibit large-scale transformation? In this article we examine managerial career patterns and the way in which they can be structured to facilitate organizational adaptation and change. Specifically, we argue that managerial careers ought to have logical, linear, rational, planned characteristics as well as opportunistic, incremental characteristics. Consider the following experiences of two organizations one private and the other military. A large manufacturing firm recently began hiring middleand upper-level managers and specialists to help the company regain its competitive position in its markets. By itself this was not a particularly noteworthy event. However, this firm had never hired for any but entry-level positions in the past, had always developed and promoted its own top management from within, and had elaborate, stable career patterns and management training programs that were regarded as the industry standard. Why, then, did it begin hiring experienced managers from other firms? Historically, this company had been quite dominant in its markets. Driven by a stable manufacturing technology, its product lines were highly profitable, and product marketing was almost nonexistent. The company was reputed to be a safe, secure employer, almost never firing employees. Then a series of unforeseen changes shook this firm out of its complacency. Government regulations changed, opening the way for more competition. Foreign-based manufacturers began producing the same product at much lower cost, and competitors undertook technological developments that threatened the firm's preeminence. These changes caused top management to pursue a process of transformation in which marketing and new product development were to become the driving force. To implement these changes, middleand seniorlevel managers were hired from outside. These people were to run the complacent businesses more aggressively, with a sharp eye on costs. The effect, of course, was to displace managers who for years had been nurtured through the management development process. Marketing talent was also hired to help recapture market share. Older employees, long since plateaued, were invited to retire early, while those who did not retire were downgraded as a way to cut costs. The results? Market share has continued to decline, new product development is lagging, and morale among lower and middle managers is down as career opportunities have been truncated by the new practice of outside hiring. The firm also discovered that a significant marketing presence cannot be created overnight, especially in a culture that was dominated so strongly by manufacturing. As a result, high talent MBAs in marketing were hired but not used effectively, and high turnover among this group resulted. Finally, the middleand senior-level managers brought in to run the businesses have not experienced much success, so the legitimacy of this tactic is in doubt. Top management now talks about promotion from within, and slower mobility through the ranks so the next generation of general managers will know the businesses before being asked to run them. During World War 11 the Allies were in need of a Commander-in-Chief with skills rather different from those of the typical general. In his book, The Professional Soldier, Morris Janowitz recounts Dwight Eisenhower's military career as a counterexample to typical military promotion patterns.' Eisenhower was probably best classified as a staff specialist. He had relatively little command experience, the norm for executive careers in the military. However, he had experience dating from the 1920s and 1930s as a negotiator and interpreter between the military and the War Policies Commission, which was a long-range planning group consisting of cabinet secretaries and members of Congress. In this job he interpreted the military's point of view to the politicians, and vice versa. He went on to staff assignments for General MacArthur in which his ability to handle politically sensitive assignments further contributed to his success.