Samenvatting

Employability is often framed as a win-win situation for both organizations and employees. It is therefore no surprise that governments’ management development policies usually heavily invest in the employability of public managers. Whether this approach has potential downsides for both parties has been overlooked so far. The aim of this article is to present a critical view on employability of public managers. We illustrate the added value as well as risks of employability investments by using recent Dutch data on senior civil servants. Our findings indicate that employability has benefits but that it can become ‘too much of a good thing’ leading to risks as organizational amnesia and loss of managerial credibility.