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To investigate different aspects of the development policies of high potentials and their relationships with organizational characteristics in a set of Belgian companies.

A set of research questions has been used to conceive a structured questionnaire to empirically investigate the different aspects of high‐potential development policies using a survey among 86 Belgian companies.

The results indicate that very often the development policies are of an ad hoc nature, but that individuals may get some say in the process. Job rotation and mentoring/coaching are quite popular activities and formal external training has the most diversified application. As expected, high‐potential development takes up more time and offers a wider scope of activities than is the case for other managerial development initiatives. Especially, organization size may bring some variation in these patterns.

The target group in this research is limited to the HR managers from the profit sector in Belgium. This is a “restricted diverse organization survey” and makes use of a non‐representative sample.

The link has been made with the “new psychological contract”. Implications for changing career planning are presented (from traditionalistic to a more “self‐directed” tendency). Also, the larger scope of development activities in an international environment and the role of management development as a “glue technology” has been elaborated on.

Most of the studies on high potentials are normative and prescriptive; very few articles have presented empirical findings on high potentials and placed them in an organizational context. Also, the specific role of development techniques in a planned international high‐potential environment has been highlighted.