7) I think that career management and development is a concept that should be discussed in correlation with issues such as training the employees and commitment to improving their quality as employees. Career management and development can probably ensure a higher degree of employee retention within the organization, because the respective employee will most likely have a fixed career development plan in front of him, something he can relate to and something that can assure that he is likely to stay with the company for a longer period of time, because he knows he has discussed with upper management the way he will move ahead in the company.

The advantage for the company is two-fold in this case. First of all, it has made sure that one of its quality employees will stay with the company or, at least, that the chances of this being so have greatly increased. On the other hand, it has also made a first step towards creating the right premises that will ensure that the quality of that employee can now be increased with additional training and coaching sessions. I don't believe that the argument with the tight market stands: an employee will immediately leave for another company if this opportunity arises and, despite the "tight market," all companies will be out looking for new employees that can provide additional value to the company through their knowledge, skills and capacity.

So, I think that the career management and development concept will help increase customer retention and prepare the framework for a better prepared, better qualified team of employees, that can overall increase the value of the organization and its competitiveness.

There are two parts in the coaching phase and both need to be approached in the same amount. First of all, that respective employee will need to understand what he is doing wrong and, in doing that, an informal discussion is again in order, one in which both sides can express their points-of-view and where potential causes of his acts can be determined. If there are other causes than the employee's character, then those would need to be addressed as well, especially since his reaction may come as an answer to something he perceives as wrongdoing to his person in the organization (salary, management attitude, prospects for developing his career etc.) and these can be solved and help the overall situation.

The coaching itself should start with explaining to the employee the framework in which the company evolves and the organizational culture that determines its means of actions. This would probably include a positive environment in the workplace, an environment that fosters cooperation between employees and teamwork as the best means of pushing the company agenda forward an achieving the appropriate results that could benefit all of the employees.

Along the positive lines of this coaching process, we should also point out the exact measures that the employee needs to undertake in order to be able to fit the current organizational framework and culture. The coaching process can also involve some of the other employees, who can actually interact with him throughout the coaching session.

On the...

This will include no financial incentives, isolation among the employees and management and spreading the word in the industry about his acts.
Management education refers to the theoretical approaches to management, things that a potential future manager will learn from school in the form of how to exercise a managerial job. The important characteristic here is the fact that this is a theoretical approach. It may be the case that case studies or examples from practice might be used at certain points, but management education will be essentially theoretical.

On the other hand, management training is the practical education, the means by which the future manager is trained for a specific job he is going to take. This educational component has a much better identifiable practical side in that it will actually relate to the manager's job and will take the steps by which he will be able to perform well.

However, there are situations that simply occur in practice and that a manager will learn along the way. These are on-the-job managerial experiences that count because it will make the manager more able to respond operationally to challenges that may arise during his tenure and that he can relate to things he has previously experienced in the past.

I think this question is in fact all about empowerment and the empowering process. Empowering a team is not an easy thing, because the two main challenges the process faces are both inside and outside the team. Inside the team, the empowerment process faces the challenges of actually coaching the team to come up with ideas, to be creative and to find solutions to the problems that the organization may have. This goes everywhere from fixing objective to proposing action plans and activities for all involved in the company.

However, for a team used with the hierarchical model and with different level managers, empowering can be a difficult option, simply because the members of the team will not be used to this methodology of working together. The coaching process will need to be able to foster their activity together as a group.

On the other hand, the outside factors are also difficult to handle, because they are generally related with the other members of the organization, usually other managers or department mangers for example. They will perceive the self-managed teams as a mean to take away some of their own power and managerial capacities.

Communication is key to solving all the problems that have been mentioned here. This means getting the information around the entire organization in a way that can benefit both the self-managed teams and those managers that may feel part of their power is taken away from them. Everybody involved in the self-management process should be aware of the fact that empowerment is not a process by which some entities in the organization are being disempowered, but an way by which creativity can be fostered and efficiency increased in the organization.