Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations

10.6. From an Implicit Career Covenant to an Explicit Job Contract

The play How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962), set at the apex of the old paradigm, was based on the premise that the hero would "play it the company way," and whatever the company told him, that was okay. That is really the way it was in the old days. The employee would behave in accordance with the culture, and the organization would offer him, or less often her, a permanent career. It was a long-term win-win relationship, and it enabled the employee to make long-term personal plans (financing a mortgage, serving in the local community, and keeping children in the same school system), while the organization could count on a stable, manageable, culturally ...