This article goes into a critical analysis of the concept of employability, its development across historical periods, its components, and different strategic approaches to enhance workers' employability throughout their career. Given the need for a systematic analysis and more empirical research in the field, the authors come up with the so-called employability—link model that is aimed to guide future practitioners and researchers as far as their specific choices as regard core components of the concept that ought to be made. The article concludes with a thorough onset of possible future research questions that are assumed to be of importance given the current labor market situation. The employability—link model has implications for individual and organizational career interventions aimed at increasing life-long employability.
First-level managers are increasingly held accountable for the training and development of their team members. In order to explore how this HRD responsibility is executed, HRD officers of 23 innovative companies were interviewed. Delegation of HRD responsibility to first-level managers turns out to be a feasible option, providing certain conditions are met. Three distinct HRD roles of first-level managers can be observed: an analytic role, a supportive role and a trainer role.
Seven cases, all Dutch organisations, are analysed on the relation between organisation characteristics and types of training on the job on the basis of contingency theory. Effectiveness and efficiency, dictated by a competitive environment, influence decisions regarding internal structure, including the form of the HRD function. Contingency theory predicts that the internal structure, resulting from differentiation of components, mediates between such pressures of the environment and the pressure of the operating core, which tries to perform productively according to norms of rationality. The actions of differentiated components of the internal structure must be coordinated. The tendency to differentiate a separate training function off the job can be at odds with the tendency to bind training activities on the job strictly to the priorities of productive work. However, in this article we propose that this opposition can be overcome when the chosen type of on-thejob training 'matches' the type of organisation and that matching types as a rule are more effective.
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