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This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

This study aims to examine the impact of foundational competencies on work engagement in the context of the Malaysian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) service sector.

This is a cross-sectional study conducted in Malaysia, and data were gathered via a survey on 312 employees representing SMEs service sectors. Partial least squares techniques were used in testing the hypothesized linkages.

The findings indicated that foundational competencies have a significant positive effect on work engagement.

Considering the research approach, generalizing the findings of this study must be done with caution. Longitudinal data are recommended, as these could provide additional support to the results. Further studies can as well extend the framework by testing whether job resources play a positive role in enhancing the relationship between foundational competencies and work engagement in Malaysia.

The findings suggest that foundational competencies positively relate to work engagement. Therefore, training and coaching sessions could be organized by managers/policy makers to enhance these competencies, which will strengthen work engagement and career development of the employee; it may specifically be very helpful for fresh graduates whose careers would have just started.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to examine the effect of American Society of Training and Development foundational competencies on work engagement in SMEs in Malaysia.

This study focuses on leadership in organizations where big data analytics (BDA) is an essential component of corporate strategy. While leadership researchers have conducted promising studies in the field of digital transformation, the impact of BDA on leadership is still unexplored.

This study is based on semi-structured interviews with 33 organizational leaders and subject-matter experts from various industries. Using a grounded theory approach, a framework is provided for the emergent field of BDA in leadership research.

The authors present a conceptual model comprising foundational competencies and higher order roles that are data analytical skills, data self-efficacy, problem spotter, influencer, knowledge facilitator, visionary and team leader.

This study focuses on BDA competency research emerging as an intersection between leadership research and information systems research. The authors encourage a longitudinal study to validate the findings.

The authors provide a competency framework for organizational leaders. It serves as a guideline for leaders to best support the BDA initiatives of the organization. The competency framework can support recruiting, selection and leader promotion.

This study provides a novel BDA leadership competency framework with a unique combination of competencies and higher order roles.

This study aims to examine the self-perceived competencies of 231 Italian students enrolled in a psychological degree program and involved in a practicum. It analyzes the subjective perception of the competences that students expect to develop, acknowledge as developed and that might be inferred from tasks performed during the practicum; the level of expertise (novice, intermediate or advanced) of these competences; and the relation between the practicum facility and the competences.

This study administered an ad hoc survey comprising open-ended questions and used the Practicum Competencies Outline (Hatcher and Lassiter, 2007) as a framework for the content analysis.

The results revealed poor perception of some competency domains, such as Diversity: Individual and Cultural Differences; Development of Leadership; Application of Research and Ethics; and a frequent acknowledgment of Psychological Assessment and Professional Development. Before the practicum, the students expected to develop competence mainly at a novice level of expertise; after the practicum, the intermediate level of competences acknowledged as developed and inferred from performed tasks increased.

The findings have implications for research on competence-based training, such as the necessity of self-assessment training evaluation.

Undergraduate psychology students must reflect on the value of psychological competences during their formative training to re-orient their learning process and build a competent professional role. Moreover, psychological facilities and university must share common objectives in training undergraduate students.

This study is the first attempt to analyze Italian college students’ subjective perceptions of psychological competencies expected or developed during practicum .

This study seeks to identify how professional accountants in France are educated in sustainability; we examine the French accounting programs in regard to sustainability accounting education recommendations.

We analyze a variety of documents to ascertain what comprises the typical accounting education program in France. Additionally, we conduct five interviews of various stakeholders to understand the importance of sustainability accounting and education in the French context.

We note an interesting paradox in the French context: while the government requires the reporting and auditing of corporate sustainability information, we find that sustainability is not greatly present in the government-funded French accounting education program. We determine that the government’s power in setting the education agenda combined with its budget restrictions and ability to defer responsibility to other parties has resulted in this paradox in the French setting.

This research draws attention to the consequences of society ignoring sustainability education for professional accountants.

This paper contributes to the discussion on how to educate responsible professional accountants and the implications for the planet if accountants are not trained in sustainability.

This research contributes to the important domain of sustainability accounting education. We also explore additional implications for the accounting profession and the general public.

Librarians are increasingly involved in projects and teams that require them to exhibit a broad range of knowledge and competencies which extend beyond traditional librarianship to include aspects of records management, information management, and knowledge management. In effect, librarians need to be information specialists, but the task of broadening one’s knowledge and competencies may be daunting, and it is helpful to explore the competencies of these various information disciplines as a guideline for competency development. The purpose of this paper is to provide some insights into the shared competencies and knowledge of these disciplines.

This paper describes an analysis of the competency profiles of librarians, records managers, information managers, archivists, and knowledge managers and provides a competency profile for information specialists that incorporates the knowledge and competencies from all of these areas. The sources used for this analysis were existing competency profiles developed by professional associations and employers of information workers such as government agencies.

The analysis resulted in the development of a competencies list which includes five competencies groups. These competency groups are: collaboration, client service, and communication; organizational understanding and strategic alignment; programme and service delivery and management; records, information, and knowledge management technical competencies; and personal qualities.

This analysis may be useful for librarians or library students who are determining which professional development opportunities to undertake as well as for managers who are seeking to define job profiles for their library staff in today’s complex information environment.

This paper bridges the disciplines of librarianship, information management, records management, archives, and knowledge management by comparing their relative competency profiles in order to create a set of competencies that are common to all disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to present a competency-based curriculum design model based on a set of ten foundational professional competencies (PCs) that prepare college graduates to meet the needs of global businesses now and in the future.

This phenomenological single-case study reviews literature on the foundational principles of competency-based education (CBE) and comparatively analyzes the results of qualitative interviews to create a set of ten PCs linking employee and business success.

This study presents a theoretical competency-based curriculum model (competency-based learning, performance and behavior (CBLPB)) designed for online education programs to enable a twenty-first century workforce to succeed. The curriculum design model is tested as applied by the researchers in various courses taught at an online university.

This is a conceptual model for testing in academic research settings in colleges and universities.

The study suggests that higher education business curriculum should be designed using a CBE model to develop graduates with the foundational PCs that employers need and desire in educated working professionals.

From the faculty perspective, the CBLPB curriculum design model can enhance the design and implementation of CBE in business programs.

This research presents a profile of the current skills and competencies that underpin construction management programmes' (CMP) curricula within United Kingdom (UK) higher education institutes (HEIs). In doing so, the work: synthesises disparate taught provisions across a range of HEIs; conducts a cross-comparative analysis between these provisions and engenders wider discourse and new insight into the consistency of current higher education practice.

Both interpretivism and pragmatism are adopted to analyse secondary data sourced from construction management undergraduate programmes in the UK inductive reasoning and inferential analysis (i.e. quantitative rank correlation, text/data mining and qualitative inquiry) are utilised to help underscore the current technical and interpersonal skills and competencies noted within the programmes and develop new theories on curriculum shortfalls and inadequacies.

Research findings demonstrate that the specific content of CMP are bespoke and tailored by the programme teaching team at each individual HEI; albeit, all programmes reviewed are in congruence regards the importance of broad technical and interpersonal themes. However, the degree to which these themes are publicly presented differ from the curricular and institutional documentation; specifically, a more “technical-based skill” image is being portrayed publicly whilst “interpersonal skills” are doing the heavy curriculum lifting. Hence, the foundational curriculum skills and competencies are firmly rooted in a sense of employability and career preparedness; a balance of technical and interpersonal skills. Identification of these skills and competencies provides a springboard for supplementary research to augment curriculum development.

This research constitutes the first attempt to conduct a cross-comparative analysis of descriptive metadata contained with curriculum development documents sourced from various UK HEIs. Emergent findings unearth the key skills and competencies that serve as the curriculum's foundation but also question whether a more consistent approach to construction management education should be sought.

Higher education has begun to attend to the importance of collaboration and self-awareness for educating sustainability leaders. However, there has been limited discussion on how to design a pedagogy that supports the development of these competencies, particularly the development of self-awareness. In this chapter, we introduce an experiential pedagogy in which students and faculty work together to develop self-awareness as the basis for sustainability leadership. We present three pedagogical principles that support the emotional learning that is foundational for sustainability leadership: student self-discovery, faculty as co-learners, and a developmentally focused learning environment. We demonstrate how these three principles work together to enable students and faculty to grow their self-awareness, providing the foundation for sustainable leadership. We conclude with a discussion on how management educators can learn from this case to develop sustainability leaders who have the self-awareness and relational competency to lead positive, inclusive organizations that are committed to sustainable business practices.

In the United States, a significant number of primary grade students struggle to achieve fluency in reading. Research indicates that achieving proficiency in the foundational reading competencies is a common difficulty manifested in a majority of these students. We will explore approaches for helping younger students develop proficiency in word recognition, reading fluency, and ultimately comprehension. A number of the research-based strategies can be used with the whole class which creates a context for inclusive literacy education.