Careers, the Changing Structure of Organizations and the Design of Work

Posted on May 08, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

10 percent, means that millions of workers either are not working or are in jobs that do not correspond to their abilities and would not likely fit in with longer-term career goals.To meet the challenges of a highly competitive global marketplace, many organizations have made significant changes in their internal structure. Organizations have become “flatter” and more decentralized than the bureaucratic forms of organizational design that
existed through the second half of the 20th century. Customer-driven “horizontal” organizational structures contain fewer levels of management and use cross-functional autonomous work teams to manage virtually every process from manufacturing to marketing. Consequently, modern organizations employ a relatively small number of employees to handle core business functions, but use outsourcing and a large cadre of temporary or contingent workers to deal with secondary and back office activities.

In addition, contemporary organizations use network structures to form partnerships or networks with other organizations and individuals outside their formal boundaries. Not unlike a computer network, network organizations link a variety of firms together to provide the expertise, knowledge, and resources necessary to complete particular projects, manufacture specific products, or establish strategic alliances. Some scholars have used the term “boundaryless” to describe the characteristics of these organizations because the organization typically accomplishes its goals through collaboration with many resource providers that lie outside its boundaries. In sum, although bureaucratic organizations, with their emphasis on stability and predictability, will undoubtedly continue into the future, most organizations have opted for greater flexibility by utilizing a smaller permanent workforce with an extensive reliance on contingent, part-time, and contract workers and by creating a flatter hierarchy with fewer levels of management.

Another noticeable change in organizational management is the widespread adoption of team-based structures as a mechanism for task accomplishment, decision-making, problem-solving, and organizational design. The move to collaborative teams as a preferred means of organization has happened at all levels within corporate hierarchies, from the executive suite to the shop floor. Team-based structures involve the “structural empowerment” of workers, meaning that employees and teams of employees are given decision-making responsibility for an entire job or project and for knowing how that job or project fits within the organizational purpose and mission.

The move to team-based collaborative structures and the use of empowerment have significant implications for the type of work performed by managers and professionals. Managers and non-managers must be effective members and leaders of cross-functional and intra-organizational teams, and attain power and influence as they gain greater information and visibility through their participation in these groups. In addition, it is more difficult for managers in flatter, team-based organizations to supervise their people in a traditional manner and to monitor their performance closely.

Indeed, there are fewer managers in the organization to supervise anyone. And the managers who do remain derive their power from their expertise and the respect they have earned rather than from their position in the organizational hierarchy. Further, in order to advance, employees must be accomplished in self-management as the locus of responsibility shifts downward in the organization. These critical requirements include the flexibility to move skillfully from one project to another, the ability to interact with people from a variety of different functional areas, and the utilization of a more collaborative and participative interpersonal style.
Beyond structural changes, over the past several decades the nature of work has shifted in a number of ways, both in the type of work that is performed and in the way that work is designed and managed.

The Career Management Process for Life

For much of the industrialized world, labor-intensive and production-oriented work has been supplanted by knowledge-based and service-oriented occupations. Consequently, cognitive capability and technological and digital fluency become the skills that are most demanded by the majority of modern organizations.

Employees in today’s work environment need to make ongoing investments in themselves to ensure that their knowledge base and skill sets match those demanded by work organizations. By making these
investments, individuals increase their employability over the course of their careers.

Globalization and the Rise of World-Based Organizations

The worldwide fall of communism in the early 1990s combined with the emergence of various free trade agreements and economic cooperation zones has led to the rapid, inexorable shift to a globalized business world. The emergence of new world markets, foreign competition, and political realignments has forced both large and small organizations to adopt more global business strategies as a means to optimize competitiveness.

The presence of a global perspective has radically changed the face of business and, as a result, how careers develop within these multinational organizations.

The emergence of the multinational corporation (MNC), with extensive sales revenues coming from operations outside the company’s home country, has transformed managerial careers immensely. In many such firms, the route to the top now includes significant exposure to the management of international operations. These international experiences can include expatriation, wherein the employee who is a citizen of the country in which the parent MNC is located works in a foreign country at a branch or a subsidiary of the parent company.

In a reverse of this process, international careers can include repatriation where the expatriate is brought back to work in the home country. Both expatriation and repatriation hold career management challenges for individuals as they navigate differences between the home and host countries in terms of language, culture, business practices, and local customs.

In addition, in order to achieve successful expatriation assignments and further the development of international personnel, organizations must properly support those employees undertaking international assignments.

Advancements in Technology and the Churning of Jobs

Advances in production and communication technology have changed the career and employment landscape forever. Many careers have been altered profoundly while others have disappeared completely. Newly introduced technology is not simply a substitute for old technology; it is transformative in nature, changing core occupations. Jobs with traditionally low barriers to entry have already disappeared and many more will follow. Examples of occupations supplanted to some extent by technology include first-level customer service personnel, toll booth operators, bank tellers, grocery store clerks, and parking lot attendants.

Other previously vital intermediaries, such as travel agents, insurance agents, and sales personnel, have increasingly diminished career opportunities. In addition, technology, in concert with shifting demands for products and services, will continue to create new occupations. The creation of new and more technologically advanced jobs combined with the elimination of old “lower-tech” occupations has been referred to as the churning of jobs.

As a technology-driven process, the churning of jobs produces new but unpredictable options, thereby making career management even more crucial in the years ahead.

As with other environmental factors, technological changes need to be forecast and then taken into account in career planning, goal-setting, and decision-making. Obviously, technological change is a double-edged sword because it simultaneously destroys industries and jobs while creating new ventures and career paths. What is required is a career management style that is flexible and attuned to the many technological changes that lie ahead in the world of work.

Changes in Workforce Diversity and Demographics

A more culturally diverse workforce has produced changes in the way organizations function. The labor force in the industrialized world has become older, more female, and more diverse. The increasing proportion of women, racial minorities, and immigrants in the workforce has put pressure on organizations to manage this gender, racial, and ethnic diversity effectively. But it has also challenged employees to understand different cultures, and to work cooperatively with others who might hold different values and perspectives.

Career success in many organizations can often depend on an employee’s ability to thrive in a multicultural environment. Of particular note, the aging and ultimate retirement of the baby boom generation represents a major demographic and sociological phenomenon that has far-reaching implications for individual career management and for organizational human resource management systems. The baby boom generation consists of the roughly 78 million people born in the United States during the 20-year period after World War II. For individuals who are part of this generation, career management is fraught with concerns and challenges, including dealing with the possibility of a plateaued career, maintaining a skill set that is desired by employers, and ultimately deciding on the timing of, and the financial planning for, retirement. At the same time, organizations must also recognize the needs of those younger individuals who were born after the baby boom. The potential exists for the ongoing presence of baby boom workers, who might be reluctant or financially unable to leave the workforce, to block the advancement of a younger and more upwardly mobile cohort of employees.

Work and Family Life

The management of work and family lives has posed a substantial challenge to employee and employer alike. The neat separation of work and family, where neither role interferes with the other, is now a distant memory. As of 2015, among married-couple families with children within the United States, 97 percent had at least one employed parent, and both parents worked in 61 percent of married-couple families. In 2015, 70 percent of married women in the United States with children under the age of 18 were participating in the workforce compared to just 45 percent in 1975 and 30 percent in 1960.

In addition, 64 percent of married women with children younger than age six were in the workforce in 2015, compared to only 37 percent in 1975 and only 19 percent in 1960.48 The employment participation rate for married women with children aged 6–17 was 74 percent in 2015, almost 50 percent higher than the rate in 1975 (52 percent) and nearly double the rate (39 percent) of 1960.

The burgeoning employment of women and men with children present in the household has created new challenges of juggling work and family commitments. Moreover, the divorce rate and a higher degree of out-of-wedlock births have substantially increased the number of single-parent households of which the vast majority headed by women with particularly intense work and family pressures.

Indeed, as of 2015, roughly 24 percent of all households in the United States with children under the age of 18 were single-parent households, and of these, 85 percent were headed by the mother. Dual-earner couples and single parents must learn to balance their careers with extensive family responsibilities, often including the care of elderly parents or other relatives. The 21st century is providing even more challenges to women and men pursuing demanding careers and active family and personal lives.

Work and family roles have also been altered by technological advances, which have blurred the demarcation between these two spheres of life. Widespread advances in communications technology have moved work activities from the office to the dining room or study, and even the most remote location can function as an office. These changes provide opportunities for achieving greater work–life balance but also require considerable support from spouses, children, and employers.