|
The Rise of Personal Development Training in Organizations: A Historical and Institutional Perspective on Workplace Training Programs in the U.S. Xiaowei
LUO Since the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after World War II, training programs have become widespread among organizations in the United States, involving more and more employees and also expanding in content. In the 1910s, only a few large companies such as Westinghouse, General Electric, and International Harvester had factory schools that focused on training technical skills for entry-level workers. By the 1990s, forty percent of the Fortune 500 firms have had a corporate university or learning center (Meister, 1997). According to the 1995 Survey of Employer-Provided Training, nearly ninety three percent of U.S. organizations with fifty or more employees provide formal training, and close to seventy percent of their employees, ranging from executives to front-line workers, are involved. In recent decades, as the U.S. companies are confronted with technological changes, domestic social problems and global economic competition, training programs in organizations have received even more attention, touted as almost a panacea for organizational problems (Carnevale, Gainer and Villet, 1990). The enormous expansion in the content of training programs over time has now largely been taken for granted. Now people would rarely question the necessity of training in conversational skills. However, back to the 1920s, the idea that organizations should devote resources to training employees in such skills would have been regarded as absurd. Such skills clearly were not part of the exact knowledge and methods that the employee will use on his particular job or the job just ahead of him. Nevertheless, seventy years later, eleven percent of U.S. organizations deem communications skills as the most important on their priority lists of training, and many more regard it as highly important. More than three hundred training organizations specialize in communications training (Training and Development Organizations Directory, 1994). Previous studies on training have largely focused on the incidence of formal training and the total amount of training offered (see Bishop, 1997 for an overview of studies in employee training). This study, however, draws attention to the enormous expansion in the content of training with an emphasis on the rise of personal development training (or popularly known as the "soft skills" training, such as leadership, teamwork, creativity, conversational skills and time management training). I define personal development training as training programs that aim at improving one's cognitive and behavioral skills in dealing with oneself and others. It is intended to develop one's personal potential and is not immediately related to the technical aspects of one's job tasks. Monahan, Meyer and Scott (1994) describe the spread of personal development training programs based on their survey of and interviews with more than one hundred organizations in Northern California. "Training programs became more elaborate; they incorporated, in addition to technical training for workers and human relations training for supervisors and managers, a widening array of developmental, personal growth, and self-management courses. Courses of this nature include office professionalism, time management, individual contributor programs, entrepreneuring, transacting with people, applying intelligence in the workplace, career management, and structured problem solving. Courses are also offered on health and personal well-being, including safe diets, exercise, mental health, injury prevention, holiday health, stress and nutrition." The main task of this study is to explain the rise of personal development in training programs in the United States. The dominant theoretical approaches in training studies are either ahistorical (for example, the human capital theory), or exclusively focused on the growing demands on training from changing technologies and work organization. They cannot very well explain why training in organizations has expanded in such a direction as to emphasize self-development rather than proficiency in specific technical tasks. The institutional perspective of organizations points out that organizations are constructed by the rationalization processes that are going on beyond specific organizations, and that the rationalization of organizing tends to lower the rationality of specific organizations (Meyer, 1992). This study builds on such an institutional framework, and argues that different types of training are the outgrowth of the dominant organizational models in different historical periods. The secular trend of individual and organizational rationalization has led to an evolution of the dominant organizational model from a bureaucracy model to a community model, and then to the participatory citizenship model. Correspondingly, training in organizations has expanded from specific and technical training to human relations training, and then to personal development training. A Brief Critique of Previous Approaches to Employee Training It is a classic question in the training field, first raised by human capital theorists, that why firms train their employees. Many attempts have been made to address this question, but the question of why firms provide general-skill training has not been fully understood. There have been two main theoretical approaches towards employee training, namely, the human capital approach and the technology-based approach. The human capital approach regards training as investment in human capital. Training is provided only when the benefit from productivity gains is greater than the cost of training. The technology-based approach regards training as a skill formation process. According to this approach, the expanded training in the contemporary period is driven by the rapidly changing technologies and work reorganization. These two approaches are popular in academic and policy discussions. What they have in common is that they assume an instrumental logic and technical rationality behind training decisions. Training is provided because it satisfies the functional needs of an organization. Studies with these approaches have largely overlooked the content of employee training, as if all kinds of training programs equally contribute to human capital accumulation or skill formation. Moreover, personal development training becomes a puzzle if viewed from these approaches, because it does not seem to follow from an instrumental logic or technical rationality. The Puzzle about Personal Development Training The puzzle about personal development training comes in the following four ways. First, it is not innately or immediately related to the technical aspects of specific job tasks. Second, prior need analysis is rarely conducted for such training, despite suggestions to do so in many training handbooks. Third, organizations and trainers seldom conduct evaluations of behavior or outcome changes brought out by such training. Evaluation, when there is one, is often about how one feels about the training or what one has learned. The evaluation questionnaire is often called a "smile sheet," as trainees often respond happily to the questions. But the impact of the training remains uncertain. Fourth, the rapid expansion of personal development training has taken place in the absence of scientific evidence of any link between such training and improvement in organizational bottom lines. Core Argument So, why have organizations increasingly engaged in personal development training? I propose that the rise of the participatory citizenship model of organization over time has driven the expansion of personal development training in organizations. This argument is based on an institutional perspective towards organizations. It is distinct from previous approaches to training in two ways. First, it recognizes that training is not only provided to satisfy functional needs of firms, but is also shaped by the shared understanding about individuals and organizations, which is called "organizational model" in this study and is independent of the functional needs. Second, training decisions are not only affected by the internal conditions of an organization, but are also affected by the dominant ideologies and practices in the organizational field. Organizational Models Based on previous research on historical changes in organizations, I propose a typology of organizational models. I define organizational model as the shared understanding about an organization's fundamental goals and means of organizing. The goals are exhibited in the organizational reach in terms of an organization's responsibilities in society. The means are revealed in the role of individuals in an organization. The organizational model is embodied in the formal and informal rules and structures of an organization, and can become taken-for-granted over time. It sends out signals of expectations, shapes what is considered as appropriate behavior and effective solutions, and thus powerfully affects organizational decisions in many areas, including employee training. I construct four ideal types of organizational model based on two dimensions: the organizational role of individuals and the societal role of the organization. These four ideal types are: bureaucracy, community, professional and participatory citizenship models. What the bureaucracy and community models have in common is that individual employees are expected simply to conform to the pre-established organizational rules, and to minimize their own discretion. But the bureaucracy and community models differ in their organizational reach: while the bureaucracy organization is single-mindedly concerned with its core production or services, the community organization is broadly concerned about the well-being of the employees and the community. The professional and participatory models have in common that individuals are expected to be empowered actors who bring their full capacity, initiative and creativity into the organization. The two models differ also in their organizational reach. Here are some examples. Many firms in the scientific management era were characterized by the bureaucracy model, while many firms during the human relations era assumed the community model. The start-up firms in the Silicon Valley nowadays fit the professional model; many leading firms of our time, which pride themselves in being corporate citizens, such as Hewlett & Packard and Motorola, adopt the participatory model. Based on previous organization theories, I abstract two core historical changes in organizations. One is that individuals play an increasingly enlarged role in organizations. The other is that organizations take on broader social roles over time as a result of pressure from state and civil society. Thus, the historical successions of dominant organizational models are as follows: the bureaucracy model was dominant between the early twentieth century and the 1930s; the human relations model dominated between the 1930s and the 1960s; and the professional and participatory models prevailed after the 1960s. The contribution of my research is to show that such a succession has driven the changed focus in training. Mechanism: How does the Participatory Model Shape Personal Development Training? I propose that different types of training are the outgrowth of different dominant organizational models. Here, I will focus on the mechanisms by which enlarged roles for individuals and organizations lead to more personal development training. First, the participatory model leads to a different set of desired individual competencies because it has an empowered and enlarged picture of individuals and their organizational roles. This in turn leads to different goals for training and different skills being trained. To illustrate this point, let me contrast the images of employees under two organizational models. Under the bureaucracy model in the beginning of the twentieth century, the average worker was depicted as "coarse, unclean, unreliable and prone to drunkenness." The desired competency for workers was to minimize their own discretion and to conform to the preset rules. According to the first training handbook published in 1937, the goal of training was to "mold the human material." The focus of training was "specific and technical skill deficiencies" of workers (Greene, 1937). Under the participatory model, the success of the organization does not depend on rules, but on the expertise and commitment of individuals. The enlarged role of individuals is reflected in the increasingly popular belief that people are the ultimate competitive advantage of an organization (Pfeffer, 1994). The desired competencies are that they are self-managers, team-leaders and active participants. For example, the company of my field work identifies these "patterns of behavior" as "essential to [its] business success:" "risk taking and courage, leadership, results orientation, communication, speed, innovation and creativity, customer focus, team orientation, strategic business management, continuous learning, problem-solving and decisiveness, and functional proficiency skills." The increasing importance of individuals for the organization as a source of rationality justifies increased investment in the individual through training, and therefore, we observe expanded training in general. More importantly, the focus of training has thus shifted from indoctrination of specific and technical skills to development of personal potential in actorhood. The second mechanism through which the participatory model leads to a focus on personal development training is that the participatory model shapes the perception of an organizational need for personal development skills as a solution to organizational problems. This is a picture in which "everything looks like a nail to a hammer," and "everything looks like a screw to a screwdriver." Organizations of different models perceive solutions to the same problems differently. For example, when confronted with technological changes, organizations of the bureaucracy model are more likely to design better forecasting systems or build better organizational buffers (such as better-calculated inventory), and to train individuals to conform to these structural or technical features (i.e., specific and technical training). Those of the community model are likely to instruct the management to make sure that workers share the new goals laid out by executives, and that workers be comforted during changes. Those of the participatory model make each individual fit into a self-managed organization and regard this arrangement as the best preparation for uncertainty and changes in both technological and social arenas. Individuals are trained in personal development programs such as "How to Manage Change," stress management and career self-reliance. In the company of my field study, confronted with mergers and associated technological changes, the company has significantly increased the number and variety of personal development training programs. The third mechanism is that under the participatory model, the enlarged societal role of organizations brings about more entitlements for organizational members. Because organizations are now constructed to be more susceptible to equity-oriented demands from state and civil society, individuals can more easily claim organizational resources for training and development of themselves, and organizations are more likely to perceive such training as fulfilling their citizenship roles. Conclusion This study has important theoretical as well as empirical implications. Theoretically, it helps to answer the classic question of "why do firms train," especially why firms provide general-skill training, from a sociological perspective. Personal development training is one type of general-skill training. My research reveals the institutional forces that shape organizations' decisions in training, independent of efficiency or functional considerations. Empirically, by understanding the driving forces and mechanisms that shape a firm's strategy in personal development training, my study cautions managers against two tendencies. First, it cautions managers against perceiving everything as a nail simply because they are using a hammer. In other words, because managers are working in a participatory firm, they may need to address problems through soft skill training. Second, my study also cautions managers against providing personal development training simply because the success model does so. Some organizational problems cannot be solved by personal development training, or not by it alone. The solutions may involve re-designing jobs or making other structural changes. While personal development training programs are touted as strategic interventions, my study provides a healthy dose of skepticism towards such training. (The author just received her Ph.D. degree in the Department of Sociology, Stanford University. This article is a much-shortened version of her Ph.D. thesis proposal.) References: 1. Carnevale, Anthony, Leila Gainer and Janice Ville. Training in America: the Organization and Strategic Role of Training. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1990. 2. Greene, James. Organized Training in Business. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937. 3. Meister, Jeanne. Corporate Universities: Lessons in Building a World-Class Work Force. McGrow-Hill, Inc., 1997. 4. Meyer, John. "Conclusion: Institutionalization and the Rationality of Forma Organizational Structure", in Organizational Environments: Ritual and Rationality, edited by John Meyer and Richard Scott. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. 5. Monahan, Susanne, John Meyer and Richard Scott. " Employee Training: the Expansion of Organizational Citizenship", in Institutional Environments and Organizations: Structural Complexity and Individualism, edited by Richard Scott and John Meyer. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1994. 6. Pfeffer, Jeffery. Competitive Advantage Through People: Unleashing the Power of the Work Force. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 1994. |