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Introduction
In the early 1980s U.S. Steel (now USX) underwent massive downsizing and invested more than $1 billion to upgrade and computerize its production processes. Worker skills needed to be upgraded, for the new technology to pay off. But as part of its restructuring, the company had eliminated an apprenticeship program that provided in-depth training in a number of crafts. Now the company needed a training program that would cut across craft lines. USX found that an investment in physical resources often requires an investment in human resources (Gomez-Mejia, Balkin and Cardy, 1995).
The extent to which organizations will support employee training and development certainly varies, and that variability leads to an interesting question--why do some organizations value training more than others? Of course, organizational constraints can limit the amount of training regardless of how much the company values it.
This article develops the Strategic Training of Employees Model (STEM). STEM advances the literature by giving human resource practitioners a comprehensive framework that balances the need for training against the organizational constraints. STEM assumes that an organization consists of three components people, a goal or goals, and structure (Robbin, 1998). Of the three, the people factor is the most important because without them the other two cannot exist. People form the structure of an organization and set the goals or standards. Any product value an organization brings to the marketplace is fundamentally dependent upon the abilities of the employees at all levels. As the USX example illustrated it is the decisions and capabilities of management and nonmanagerial personnel that ultimately determine organizational results.
Historical Perspective
When establishing a training program it is important to determine the content. However, because of organizational constraints, usable content tends to be less than the potential content. Constraints can include restrictions on time, personnel and spending; lack of training facilities, materials or equipment; and the attitude of senior management. The relationship between potential and usable training content can be expressed in the following equation (Finch, 1989, p. 161):
The Training Content Decision-Making Equation
UC=PC-C
Where: UC = usable content,
PC = potential content, C = constraints
Therefore, any training program must balance the need to provide the proper level of training against organizational constraints. A tilt one way or the...