MANAGING PEOPLE, INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Managing People, Information and Knowledge

Managing People, Information and Knowledge

Answer 1)

Mentoring and Leadership

The management models and theories about the process of career development need to consider the needs of individual and expectations from the job. Career identity has often been considered essential in helping individuals to deal with the shifting boundaries of contemporary careers development. Compared to organizational and professional identity, career identity is not tied to a particular role or place but derives its meanings from the sequences of work-related experiences. In this sense, it can offer a more flexible basis for identity construction and help define how management of an organization should act in the changing career context. The employment relationship is undergoing fundamental changes that have implications for the attraction, motivation, and retention of talented employees. Mentoring relationships can be distinguished from less powerful relationships, such as sponsors, guides, and peers and from typical supervisory relationships. If management aims at adopting a talent management strategy it needs to support a vocational or career development function to promote professional growth of its employees by providing needed information, challenging assignments, visibility, exposure, protection, and by exercising organizational leverage. Second, the management needs to understand a psychosocial function to promote career growth of employees through emotional support, counseling, and providing acceptance and guidance. These strategies enable organizations to focus on role-modeling approach towards employee skills development. Role-modeling functions involve behaviors in which management need to identify and emulate mentors who are trusted and respected, possess expert and referent power, and hold ethical standards. Mentors who serve as role models encourage employees to become involved in learning. Researchers have found that these developmental relationships enhance the learning opportunities of employees. Subsequently, employees feel committed towards the job and their satisfaction level increase. Management need to identify the developmental behaviors, functions, and outcomes between mentoring and leadership styles effective for enhancing motivation level and job satisfaction of employees.

Management and leadership development is central to an organization's human resource management and a litmus test of the value it places upon its staff. The strategic training and development of managers and leaders is widely regarded as one of the progressive HR policies. Main concern in this perspective revolves around the organization's business and HR strategy. To effectively deal with the talent management issues and employee's career development, organizations are required to redesign the traditional job structure, style, and priority afforded to training and development activities. The second is that these activities, providing they are well delivered and contextualized, will enhance the skills and competencies of managers and employees. The third proposed link is that these newly acquired skills and competencies by the employees will translate into collective capability that lead to enhancing organization performance in a superior way to its competitors. This chain of events, however, is usually more assumed than articulated, more hoped-for than empirically demonstrated.

Most organizations have got to the point of recognizing that MLD is more than a tactical response to a skills and career development ...