ABSTRACT
The economic and social context in which organizations develop and retain human resources has changed intensely from the years when scholars initially studied and defined career management. During the 1980s and 1990s, companies were competing in steadily expanding markets, which allowed for long-term planning, so the purpose of career management practices like succession planning, job posting and skill inventory was to prepare talented individuals to achieve top management positions in the organization (Gutteridge, 1993). Today, however, uncertainty in the labour and product market requires organizations to be adaptable to volatile business conditions (Doyle, 2000). As several authors observe (Cappelli and Keller, 2014; Bidwell and Keller, 2014), in this uncertain context, organizations manage their workforces with increasing dismissals and external hiring at all organizational levels, especially for generic competencies, a phenomenon which is slowly eroding the monolithic institution of internal labor market (Doeringer and Piore, 1971).
