Employee development programs are not a new idea in the United States. General Motors established one of the first corporate universities in 1927 with the General Motors Institute (Gerbman, 2000). The concept was slow to catch on, but in the 1950s several organizations followed the same path. During the 1950s General Electric founded the Crotonville Management Development Institute and Walt Disney founded Disney University (Gerbman, 2000). McDonald's followed this trend by founding the University of Hamburg to train its managers in the early 1960s (Garger, 1999). Despite these progressive organizations, employee development and career planning still had some growing pains. In the 1970s, career planning and development efforts focused on young employees who appeared to have high potential. It was a way for companies to plan for the future and cultivate young workers for high-level management positions (Moses, 1999). This career path model fits well with the traditional commitment that employees would offer to companies. Chris Argyris referred to this commitment as a “psychological contract” in which employers were almost guaranteed long-term loyalty and commitment to the organization in exchange for job security, promotion opportunities, and employee training (Feldman, 2000). The ability to quickly rise to the top of a company declined in the 1980s, as companies were moving toward a flattened hierarchy with less room for promotions. People quickly realized that they were reaching a stalemate in their careers and that there were no opportunities for advancement (Moses, 1999). The concept5 of career planning became less realistic for both individuals and organizations because neither could rely on long-term commitment (Feldman, 2000). The stock market crash of 1987 was a major turning point in employee development. Daniel Feldman perceptively states that “where large corporations were once seen as bastions of job security, they are now seen as minefields of job insecurity” (2000). Not only were companies flatlining, they were also downsizing and restructuring to make up for the loss of revenue. These drastic changes in the job market have also led to changes in employee development programs. Barbara Moses states that “job security is dead today and with it loyalty to the organization in the traditional sense is dead” (1999). With this in mind, companies need to change the way they view employee development. Where training and development was once seen as mechanisms for employees to move up the corporate ladder, promotion is no longer an incentive for employees because it is not a defined option.