Document Type	Master's Dissertation
Author	Naidu, Garsen
URN	etd-05062010-154804
Document Title	Building career capital in high technology research and development organisations
Degree	MBA
Department	Gordon Institute of Business Science
Supervisor	Advisor Name Title Prof M Sutherland Supervisor
Keywords	career development
Date	2010-04-11
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract Knowledge workers build their career capital through learning experiences throughout their careers. How this occurs for the R&D knowledge worker has not been previously documented. The loss of key R&D personnel in the hightechnology (high-tech) industry contributes to a loss of tacit knowledge and increased costs. A greater understanding of why and how career capital is accumulated by R&D knowledge workers will facilitate the design of career management practices that could reduce voluntary employee turnover. A qualitative investigation into the applicability of eight widely recognised career capital components revealed a new component that is relevant to the high-tech R&D environment. These applicable career capital components and associated accumulation methods were used to build a quantitative questionnaire that measured the perceptions of 59 knowledge workers in the R&D environment. This research has, for the first time, explicitly defined tangible career capital constructs that are relevant to knowledge workers in the high-tech R&D environment. The findings have been used to develop a model to help organisations understand the career needs of the R&D knowledge worker within the context of the business environment. Recommendations are presented to allow organisations and R&D knowledge workers to leverage off this research. © 2009 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Naidu, G 2009, Building career capital in high technology research and development organisations, MBA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-05062010-154804/ > G10/350/ag
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