“Real” high‐potential careers. An empirical study into the perspectives of organisations and high potentials
| Published date | 21 December 2007 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480810839987 |
| Date | 21 December 2007 |
| Pages | 85-108 |
| Author | Nicky Dries,Roland Pepermans |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
“Real” high-potential careers
An empirical study into the perspectives of
organisations and high potentials
Nicky Dries and Roland Pepermans
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this empirical study is to make a contribution to career theory in general,
and to the literature on high-potential careers in particular, by examining the careers of real high
potentials, taking place in the twenty-first century world of work, from the perspectives of the high
potentials themselves as well as those of their organizations.
Design/methodology/approach – A total of 34 interviews were conducted within three study
samples: high potentials (n¼14), organisational representatives employed by the same organisations
that provided the high-potential participants (n¼8), and organisational representatives employed by
organisations that did not allow for interviewing of their high potentials (n¼12).
Findings – The current study suggests that high potentials still have organisational-traditional
careers. High upward mobility, low inter-organisational mobility and career self-management emerged
as key features of real high-potential careers.
Practical implications – Implications are spelled out with respect to the “streaming” of different
types of employees in the workforce and the importance of expectations management.
Originality/value – Not only are the viewpoints of individuals largely absent in the literature on
high-potential careers, the majority of publications on the subject-matter are also non-empirical and
take a rather normative stance. The interview study presented in this paper looks into the assumptions
of real high-potential careers from the perspectives of the high potentials themselves as well as those of
their organizations, providing empirical data that are interpretive and descriptive rather than
normative.
Keywords Careers, Careermanagement, High flyers
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Some 20 years ago, Fred Luthans accused management literature of being largely
“based on a priori assumptions about what managers actually do and what they
should do to be successful” (Luthans et al., 1985, p. 255). Today, the same seems to be
true of the literature on high potentials, i.e. those individuals within the organisation
who are “recognised, at that point in time, as the organisation’s likely future leaders”
(Cope, 1998, p. 15). Although effectively managing high potentials and their careers is,
almost unanimously, considered as one of the major challenges facing the twenty-first
century human resources function (Buckingham and Vosburgh, 2001; Tulgan, 2001),
empirical publications on the topic are exceptionally rare. While the subject matter has
been tackled by several authors in recent years (e.g. Baruch and Peiperl, 1997; Spreitzer
et al., 1997; McCall, 1998; Segalla et al., 2001; Fields, 2002), remarkably few studies have
built on data coming from the actual high-potential population itself.
In the majority of previous studies, high potentials’ direct supervisors were targeted
as respondents or a normative stance was taken. Normative publications – i.e.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
“Real” high-
potential careers
85
Received 29 June 2006
Revised 2 April 2007
Accepted 16 April 2007
Personnel Review
Vol. 37 No. 1, 2008
pp. 85-108
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483480810839987
publications that are prescribing and appraising, rather than describing and
interpretive – typically present “bes t practices” based on anecdotal findings (e.g. Ford,
2005; Miller, 2006). As a result, discourse on the subject of high potentials and their
careers tend to be conjectural rather than based on real empirical evidence (Pepermans
et al., 2003).
In other studies it is not always clear whether the research sample was made up of
high potentials or of other (related) types of employees. Cox and Cooper (1988) for
instance, interviewed managing directors whom they labelled as “high flyers”. This
term, however, is generally used to designate successful managers – i.e. those that
have already “arrived”. Conversely, the term “high potential” denotes possibilities,
promise and latent action (Altman, 1997). It may be considered highly inexpe dient to
regard high flyers and high potentials as interchangeable research populations; such
practices contribute to the belief that anyone who is to be labelled as a high potential
must be able to display executive-level skills, knowledge and competencies at the time
of identification, thus completely ignoring the importance of learning from experience
(Briscoe and Hall, 1999; Spreitzer et al., 1997). Another population that is often confused
with the population of “real” high potentials is that of employees on the “fast track”
(e.g. Kovach, 1986; Feild and Harris, 1991). Fast-track development programmes serve
to accelerate the development of potential managers by using frequent job rotations
and other special opportunities not commonly available to other employees, all within a
condensed timeframe (Larsen, 1997). However, many organisations implement such
development programmes as initial selection filters, and decide only later on which of
the fast-track programme participants qualify to receive the high-potential label
(Fields, 2002). Finally, some researchers use samples made up of MBA students to
make inferences about high potentials (e.g. Sabbe and Timmerman, 2007), grounde d in
the assertion that employees whose management education is sponsored by their
organisation are probably high potentials – an argumentation of questionable validity.
It seems, then, that there is a significant need and opportunity for researchers to
scrutinize real high potentials and their careers – the term “real” carrying the same
meaning as in Luthans et al. (1985) i.e. representative of the members of the true
population under study. But why have such studies been exceptionally rare? A possible
explanation lies in the delicate nature of the topic of high potentials and their careers,
which causes severe barriers for researchers. Many organisations are unwilling to
expose their highpotentials to researchers – even though the majorityamongst them are
very much interested in research on the matter (and often, are prepared to pay
consultancy firmslarge sums of money to dissect their high-potential policies). Thereare
still many organisations that deem it undesirable to be fully transparent about their
high-potential policies. A typical belief is that high potentials would become arrogant
and complacentif they were to be informed of their status within the organisation, which
is often referred to as “the crown prince syndrome” (Go
¨bel-Kobialka, 1998). Moreover,
organisations fear that employees who are not labelled as high potentials will become
unmotivated or leave the organisation when information about the organisation’s
high-potential policies is made available to them (Snipes, 2005).
The twenty-first century world of work
Before going into further detail on the focus and approach of our study, we wish to
briefly outline the twenty-first century context affecting real high potentials and their
PR
37,1
86
To continue reading
Request your trial