Abstract
M.Comm.
Changes in society, the nature of work, workplaces and employer-employee relationships have
made traditional approaches to career development in organizations inadequate with powerful
impacts on the employees. New concepts of career and life planning will be needed if such
changes continue to take place. This study aims to obtain an overview of how career
development is related to traditional human resource systems in organizations, discuss the
protean career as a contemporary approach to careers and to explore the implications of the
prQtean approach to career development for organizations. The study comprises an analysis of
the literature relevant to the protean career concept, career development practice and human
resource systems.
In order to understand the implications of the protean career, an overview of how career
development relates to traditional human resource systems is first undertaken. The
fundamental interdependence between an individual's career plans and an organization's human
resource plans is illustrated by considering the essential career-oriented human resource
systems characteristics, namely organizational-level activities, the individual-level activities
and the matching process.
The study focuses in particular on the features of the protean career concept as a
contemporary approach to career development in organizations. The protean person's own
personal career choices and self-fulfilment are the unifying and integrative elements in the
person's life. This implies a relational approach to the career development practice in human
resources systems. Pursuing a protean career means, therefore, the development of a new
psychological contract. Whereas in the past, the contract was with the organization, in the
protean career, the contract is with the self. The protean career is therefore a process that
the person and not the organization is managing with the criterion for success being internal
(psychological) and not external.