Keywords

Career Management, Training and Development, Entrepreneurial Approach, Performance Management, Job Security, Multiple Case Studies, Qualitative Method.

Introduction

Employees and Managers with entrepreneurial attitude are innovative, proactive, achievement-oriented people who embrace change and search for new opportunities to improve the present state. Entrepreneurial employees have abilities to think out of the box, to achieve goals of the organizations in a faster and proper manner irrespective of barriers in resources, such as time money or technology. Therefore, to succeed in professional life employees as well as managers must take entrepreneurial approach to career management (Reimers-Hild, 2010). Career management is one core component of an HRM framework that provided a beneficial platform to the managers and employees of the organization. Gould (1979) proposed that career-management component usually is comprised of career strategy, enrichment and satisfaction. In this study, researchers have done multiple case studies in twelve organizations of Bangladesh with in-depth interviews of eighty-seven participants to find the themes and codes of career management to connect those with employee rights protocols and to re-design it for the improvement of career management component, as a whole improvement and innovation of a new HRM framework.

Literature Review

Various scholars have observed and analysed situations regarding career management in distinct companies. Based on career management programs employees’ job satisfaction and motivation level increases or decreases. When employees lack access to formal training and development, human resource management (HRM) outcomes resulted in negative effects such as motivation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Susomrith & Coetzer, 2015). That’s why there can be ways of formal trainings in the organizations, as for example, on-job-training, seminars, workshops, professional certifications and etc. In 2004 Ohlott stressed the importance of on job work experience, easy transitions to new work assignments, through continuous learning and development (Ohlott, 2004). Learning opportunities, which were often enhanced by on-job assignments, were associated with greater work satisfaction (Prince, 2005). According to Simons et al. (2015), seminars and workshops have two dimensions, firstly to support senior management’s decision-making and secondly, to create communications between the top management and the employees to release visions and to efface misunderstandings. Polidoro (2013) stated that certifications became relevant social keys to assist decision-making under uncertainty. As for example certification of a candidate assisted employers in reducing uncertainty during recruitment or promotion (Landry, 2016).

Meanwhile, Andalib & Darun (2018) mentioned that performance management is also considered a part of career management, which has a positive relationship with the employees’ motivation and their performances because of job satisfaction enhancement and psychological attachment to work since employees’ performances are appraised, recognized and they receive a reward or increment through this process (Armstrong, 2011). This process also encourages entrepreneurial instinct of an employee because employees become more independent and innovative when their work is appraised and acknowledged. Sacramento (2013) scrutinized that once promoted, employees paid more attention to obtain goals and successes because promotion endorses a significantly positive relationship to employees’ creativity, encouragement, confidence and openness. However, as per Andalib (2018) explained that employees proportionately withdraw their effort at work if the increment falls short of their expectations. Significantly, the promotion oriented transfer of an employee from position‐to‐higher position within organizations is a ubiquitous feature of organizational life that increases job satisfaction.

Kauhanen & Nätti (2015) discussed that job security must be included as a key dimension in ‘career management’ component. As per Turner & Lingard (2016), job security removes employees’ threat feeling of losing job suddenly, prevents stress, strains and detrimental impact on health, and rather increases motivation. Andalib et al. (2019) mentioned that inclusion of job security dimension creates a mandatory regulation regarding termination policy and resignation policy that specifies the notice period before any of these acts, which should be minimum ‘a month’. Moreover, Sylvia (2014) opined that social exposure also enhances job security by removing threat of job loss and sense of identity because every employee wants recognition, appreciation and value even though they are a part of a larger group that should be reflected in career management component. From previous scholars’ works the emphasized points are acknowledged and matched with the found themes from analysis of this research.

Methodology

Qualitative Approach with philosophical notions and paradigms named ontology and methodology has been taken to collect both from literature and from cases, store, analyse and validate data by following Creswell (2013); Auerbach & Silverstein (2003). Multiple case studies has enabled this study to utilize their narratives by allowing other evidence to be presented as it emerges and thus a logical chain of evidence is established (Yin, 2009). However, in this study as per Eisenhardt (1989); Miles et. al (2014) twelve cases and eighty seven particiants are purposefully chosen by setting three crieria, which are Dhaka based factory, Employees are more than 200, Uses heavy machines.

Collected data are stored in NVIVOMAc various forms like: Transcripts, Voice records, Annual reports, Company documents, Scholars’ Articles and works and then these data has been validated by shadowing Auerbach and Silverstein, Stake and Creswell’s viewpoints, which are conformity-confirm the final codes from the participants, reflexivity-intake researchers’ expert stances to critically analyse and judge the complex pathways, justifiability-step by step detailed procedures that is done in an ‘end to end’ way during the research and, transferability-join the codes and re-engineer the overall component. Researchers here analyzed and coded data as per Auerbach & Silverstein (2003) and connected these data with employee rights protocols as per Checkland (2010) soft systems technique.

Coding has four stages:

1. Raw data generation

2. Categorized coding

3. Generate Themes

4. Build theory to re-engineer the career management component.

Findings and Discussion

Themes and Categorized Codes

Andalib (2018) revealed that the found evidences indicate basic three themes of this component that got generated after coding are training and development, performance management, job security. So, in the multiple case analysis, the conditions of these themes are also examined and derived, which are seen as strongly capable or weakly capable or hybrid. Career management component were found in cases 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 12 as strongly capable, whereas in cases 2, 7, 8 and 9 were found as weakly capable and in case 10 was found as a Hybrid. In this research, categorized codes were rated accordingly with High (++) and Low (+) variances. Based on cases theme 1 named ‘training and development’ has been viewed as either rigorous or partly rigorous, whereas theme 2 named ‘Performance management’ has been viewed as ‘strongly linked’ or ‘weakly linked’ and theme 3 named ‘job security’ has been viewed as ‘sense of security’ or lacking security’. Table 1 shows interview result.

Table 1: In-Depth Interview Analysis Of Component Career Management
Themes	Training and Development (TR)	Performance Management (PM)	Job Security (JS)
Case 1 Strongly capable	++Rigorous “We provide training to everyone. But, we always give our employees ‘on-the- job trainings"	++Strongly Linked “Yes, we do have KPIs for individuals and we do evaluation monthly, quarterly & yearly. Employees are satisfied with their scores.”	++Sense of Security “Employees feel very safe and secured because of brand-name and employee benefits.”
Case 2 Weakly Capable	+Partly rigorous "HR executive from case 2 said, “We will also start with some professional counselling sessions soon.”	+Weakly Linked, “We do Performance management every year but we are developing the process yet.”	+Lacking Security, “Look, every company face this and employees will never feel secure at work.”
Case 3 Strongly capable	+Partly rigorous “Ya, we are looking for some overseas external counsellor specially for the top management?.”	+Weakly Linked “KPIs for labours are on monthly basis but for white collar job holders on a yearly basis, this has been confusion among the labours.”	++Sense of Security “employees or employers both have to give one month’s notice before the termination of the job, so there is no uncertainty or insecurity of losing job suddenly”.
Case 4 Strongly capable	++Rigorous, “Our company provides thorough training to the employees.”	++Strongly Linked, “Yes we have PME and we do it yearly.”	++Sense of Security, “Our employees feel very secure because of brand name and for individual job roles.”
Case 5 Strongly capable	++Rigorous “Every year we have a fixed budget for training to the employees and we try to give training to each & every employee of the company in different methods.”	++Strongly Linked “We have annual basic pay increment that affects the overall salary in a positive manner, this increment also depends on the Performance management system”	++Sense of Security, “Employees feel home at work because even though being professionals we have maintained a family friendly atmosphere.”
Case 6 Strongly capable	++Rigorous, “We have training department separately and it is highly active.”	++Strongly Linked, “We have very analytical PME system and we evaluate performance in one to one sessions.”	++Sense of Security, “We are the biggest brand in Bangladesh ? people desire to work here and yes when they are recruited they feel very secure from the very beginning.”
Case 7 Weakly Capable	+Partly rigorous, “Training processes are at development phase now but our top most bosses go for training abroad.”	+Weakly Linked “We will introduce a PME system soon to resolve all these issues.”	+Lacking Security “For the employers it is also difficult to keep the labours with pay whereas they have no specific job line?”
Case 8 Weakly Capable	+Partly rigorous, “we provide on job training and some seminars to the employees.”	+Weakly Linked “We have KPI for the employees however, sometimes we find employees have more demands on scores like promotions or increments, which they do not deserve.”	+Lacking Security, “There are drawbacks for which employees might not feel completely secured at work.”
Case 9 Weakly Capable	+Partly rigorous “In the factory, sometimes we have seminars and workshops on certain topics like ‘fire-service in emergency case’, ‘BL Code awareness’ ?”	+Weakly Linked “Even if we introduce PME system promotions, increments and transfers depend on Govt.”	+Lacking Security “Since, promotions and increments are pretty less, employees sometimes suffer in insecurity and they fear there might be downsized if company earns less revenue.”
Case 10 Hybrid	++Rigorous, “we provide on job training, workshops, seminars and also abroad trainings to the deserved ones.”	+Weakly Linked, “We do not have any PME inter-linked tool”	++Sense of Security, “because of the brand name employees do feel secure.”
Case 11 Strongly capable	++Rigorous, “We provide all sorts of training, seminars, workshops, discussion sessions along with abroad and out station trainings as per govt. requirement for a job role.”	++Strongly Linked “Our promotion depends on the govt. policies since, we are under government. No matter what we do, have to wait until certain period of time fixed for promotion, the process hinders because of the internal political pressure.”	++Sense of Security, “Anyone gets into the government job feels secure because there will be hardly any sacking.”
Case 12 Strongly capable	++Rigorous, “We provide on job training and the necessary trainings that is guided by HR department.”	++Strongly Linked, “We have in-house tool to evaluate performance of employees.”	++Sense of Security, “Our employees usually feel secure about their job in our company.”

Table 2 shows Case results, where Training & Development stands for TR, Performance Management Evaluation stands for PM, Job Security stands for JS, On Job training stands for OJT, Seminars and Workshops stands for SW, Counselling stands for CS, Professional Certification stands for PC, Promotion stands for PR, Increment stands for INR, Transfer stands for TR, Termination Policy stands for TP, Social exposure stands for SE, Reward System stands for RS. Here, the categorized codes OJT/SW/CS/PC, KPI/PR/INR/TR and TP/SE/RS are rated as ‘++’ that stands for high, or as ‘+’ that stands for low. The themes are rated consecutively as per cases for Training & Development as Rigorous or partly rigorous, for Career Management as ‘Strongly Linked or Weakly Linked’ and Job Security as Sense of Security or Lacking Security. Therefore, outcome of each case has been found as strongly capable or Weakly Capable or Hybrid for the ‘Career Management component.

Table 2: Cross Case Analysis For Hrm Component Career Management
Themes	Training & Development (TR)				Performance Management (PM)				Job Security (JS)			Outcome
Categories	OJT	SW	CS	PC	KPI	PR	INR	TR	TP	SE	RS
Case 1	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Rigorous				Strongly Linked
Case 2	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	Weakly Capable
	Partly rigorous				Weakly Linked
Case 3	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Partly rigorous				Weakly Linked
Case 4	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Rigorous				Strongly Linked
Case 5	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Rigorous				Strongly Linked
Case 6	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Rigorous				Strongly Linked
Case 7	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	Weakly Capable
	Partly rigorous				Weakly Linked
Case 8	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	Weakly Capable
	Partly rigorous				Weakly Linked
Case 9	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	Weakly Capable
	Partly rigorous				Weakly Linked
Case 10	++	++	++	++	+	+	+	+	++	++	++	Hybrid
	Rigorous				Weakly Linked
Case 11	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Rigorous				Strongly Linked
Case 12	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	++	Strongly Capable
	Rigorous				Strongly Linked

Career Management (CM) Connections

HRM component Career Management (P3) got connected with other HRM components named Organization Culture, OC (P6), Relationship between leaders and employees, RLE (P4) and International Employee Rights Standards, IERS (P4). Career Management has three themes, which were training & development, TR, performance management, PM and job security, JS and all eleven categorized codes. Training and development theme connected to all categorized codes of OC and RLE. On the other hand, the performance management theme was connected to values, philosophies, objectives of OC and ‘administration of justice, leadership style of RLE. Job security was connected to leadership style (Figure 1).

Few categorized codes were connected to UDHR articles, (Article 6: recognition right as a person before law, Article 25:(1) standardized living right for health and welfare of thyself and thy family besides security of unemployment, illness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lacking in livelihood, (2) Special care, protection and assistance for motherhood and childhood (United Nations, 1945). These codes were connected to ILO conventions (C053, C067) and with some BDL sections (ILO, 2012). Meanwhile, Theme ‘training & development’ got linked with ILO conventions (C053-Officers' Competency Certificates Convention, 1936 (No. 53), performance management got linked with BDL section-14: In certain cases 1 year/6 months and computation of wages (Sec-14) and job security got linked with ILO conventions (C157-Maintenance of Social Security Rights Convention, 1982 (No. 157) (United Nations,1945;Bangladesh Federation, 2009). Component career management was also linked with ILO conventions: C067-Hours of Work and Rest Periods (Road Transport) Convention, 1939 (No. 67), C076 - Wages, Hours of Work and Manning Convention, 1946 (No. 76) C153- Hours of Work and Rest Periods (Road Transport) Convention, 1979 (No. 153), Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No.1) and BDL sections Canteen (Sec 92), Rest House (Sec 93), Child Room (Sec 94), Recreation and education facilities in the tea plantation (Sec 95), Daily working hour (Sec 100), Interval for rest or merely worker in any institution (Sec 101), Weekly work hours (Sec 102), Weekly Holidays any working labour in any institution shall (Sec 103), Compensatory weekly holiday (Sec 104) (Bangladesh Federation, 2009; IL0, 2012).

Conclusion

Aim of this study has been met by creating the connections of career management component with employee rights and other components. Eighty-seven participants’ direct detailed interviews, where they discussed about their experiences, assumptions and opinions regarding their career management in their respective organizations have helped the researcher to re-design career management component, which is a step ahead to build the new HRM framework (Andalib & Darun, 2018). Therefore, this study has significantly has contributed in the knowledge of literature as well as in the direct field of HRM by disclosing a pathway to construct the new HRM framework.

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