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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of human resource development (HRD) education in Middle Eastern countries. In particular, the authors discuss the current state of HRD education, country readiness and challenges that hinder HRD progress in Middle Eastern countries. They argue that HRD programs need to prepare young employees for leadership roles through adapting constructivist pedagogy, including problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity.

The design of this paper followed a qualitative approach. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with five HRD experts in Middle Eastern countries and conducted integrative literature review and secondary data analysis.

Data analysis provided an overview of HRD education, looked at options individuals interested in HRD education might have, provided views on constructivism vs instructivism as education pedagogies and discussed cultural factors that impede critical reflection in the workplace.

To understand how to introduce constructivist elements to instructivist learning cultures, and to sustain it, HRD scholars in the Middle Eastern countries need to diminish the misalignment between instructional philosophies of trainers, trainees and national or institutional systems.

Understanding how policy, resources, infrastructure and culture influence learning expectations is vital to introducing innovative training activities or scaling them up to other workshops and systems.

This research sheds light on HRD education in the Middle Eastern countries; provides an overview of employment challenges and opportunities to improve workplace learning; and provides scholars, practitioners and other stakeholders interested in HRD with suggestions to develop successful workforce education.

This paper aims to analyze the role of human capital (HC), human resource development (HRD) and vocational educational and training (VET) in the emerging Indian economy. How may we define the HC, HRD and VET in India? To what extent and how as HRD investments in India contributed to India’s recent economic development? What were the investments and what were the returns? Who invested and who obtained the returns? Is India really different from other countries?

To achieve that goal, the authors use a model of the HC, HRD and VET national market. Specifically, they divide the analysis in four broad stages: stocks, investments and outcomes; supply, demand, price and quantity; needs; and private and public forces.

The authors conclude that the India’s HC, HRD and VET have been growing and will have to grow even more, for India to become developed. Currently, the urgency is even greater in the HRD and VET side than in the education side. The government goals for 2022 are immense, and the raise in the HRD and VET in India that is aimed will effectively change India’s economy and society.

The authors only use secondary data. They believe that a deeper and very detailed study on all the States of India could be made, following this paper. Also, the analysis could be replicated for the other BRICS.

India HRD and VET market is described as being one of the major India’s problems of today and promises of tomorrow.

Today, only around ten million of India’s citizens receive HRD and VET annually. This number is to be multiplied between 20 and 50 times. This change will change India’s economy and society.

Also, the authors believe that the paper is original because it analyzes India’s HC, HRD and VET with a new conceptual model.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed literature on university-based human resource development (HRD) courses and programs.

The methods used in this paper are integrative literature review and content analysis.

Only 71 peer-reviewed articles that address university-based HRD courses and programs in any way were found. Forty-six were empirical studies and 25 were either conceptual or editorial in nature. The majority of articles focused on HRD courses and programs in the USA and the UK. Perspectives from other countries were nearly absent. Many of the claims about the content and quality of HRD courses and programs were not supported by empirical evidence.

HRD courses and programs are offered in universities around the world. Almost nothing is known of their content, quality or methods. Future research on these courses and programs should focus on the relevance of curriculum to the needs of organizations.

While HRD research and practice are concerned with learning and development, topics related to the learning and development of future HRD scholars and practitioners are rarely addressed in the HRD literature. This is the only comprehensive review of the small-body peer-reviewed literature on university-based HRD courses and programs. It provides a summary of the findings of empirical research on HRD courses and programs, and an analysis of the warrant for the claims about these courses and programs.

Saudi Arabia (SA) is amongst the few countries with a significant foreign workforce who are employed in the higher education sector. More specifically, 39% of SA's academic staff members are foreign nationals and 63% of that proportion occupy professorial positions. Drawing from a workforce localisation perspective, the study was framed as an exploration of equity and social justice amongst Saudi nationals and foreign nationals in a university work setting. The authors employ the lens of how human resource development (HRD) opportunities are administered.

Following the choice of an exploratory qualitative study, the authors employed a multi-case study approach where each of the six universities represented a unit of analysis.

The authors found that nationality differences influenced access to HRD opportunities. These differences are reinforced by practices associated with procedural processes, managerial discretion and selective restrictions in accessing HRD opportunities.

The findings have both practical and social implications, specifically for the SA government's strategic vision of developing local human capabilities.

The workforce localisation agenda within the higher education sector has both a compounding effect on local human capital and supports SA's 2030 Vision and human capital target. Nonetheless, perceived inequity and injustice in accessing HRD opportunities by foreign nationals potentially undermine morale, academic quality standards and research performance, which impacts the development of future human capital and the ‘Saudization’ goals.

This paper seeks to analyse and explore the results of a research project, which aimed to identify recent and current research on TLA within HRD programmes. From that base the project also intended to identify areas for future research and a basis for establishing a Special Interest Group.

A comprehensive review of the literature was undertaken and an electronic questionnaire survey was conducted of academic members of the UFHRD, EHRHD and AHRD databases. This provided coverage of widespread international population.

Findings suggest that while research into HRD as a subject and academic discipline is very healthy, there is a dearth of research into the TLA of HRD educational programmes or at least research that is published. They also suggest that academics involved in delivering HRD programmes would welcome support in TLA through additional and new resources as well as ideas on innovative approaches and methods of TLA. TLA in HRD, though, is subject to some constraints, including the role of the professional body in the UK and parts of Europe, the status of HRD in relation to wider business management as a subject and HRM in particular and the size and diversity of student groups. Respondents to the survey, however, were confident that these problems can be addressed.

A key conclusion drawn is that innovative practice in the TLA of HRD is probably more widespread than is evident from the literature. In addition, the notion of “innovative” does not have a fixed meaning and is context specific. This means that TLA practice, which is considered normal or usual in one context could and probably would constitute an innovation in different contexts.

Provides the first overview of research into the TLA of HRD educational programmes.

An increasing number of human resource development (HRD) theorists and researchers are calling for a broader philosophical framework for HRD within management practice. The concept of workplace spirituality has received significant attention in this context. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of religion of Islam in filling this need for a spiritual philosophical framework and to highlight the lessons that can be learned from Islamic traditions. Finally, the authors call for revisiting some of the major motivation theories of HRD.

After discussing relevant philosophical, spiritual and HRD literature, this paper proposes modification in expectancy theory of motivation.

This paper emphasizes holistic education and human development in HRD. It proposes an enhanced role for objectives’ valence and value in organizational motivation. It also shows how earlier Islamic traditions had already practised the modern HRD principles.

Being conceptual and theoretical in nature, the suggested motivation model needs rigor, further testing and empirical analysis.

The paper suggests that HRD ought to incorporate holistic education and human development as its main drivers. Furthermore, organizations need to put more emphasis on the value of ethical and normative objectives that may involve delayed or reduced gratification.

The paper implies that by giving more emphasis to the value of ethical and moral goals, organizations and human resources would be more responsible to social responsibilities.

The paper proposes a new dimension in the expectancy theory of motivation and also provides justification for the role of spirituality as a philosophical framework in HRD.

Human resource development (HRD) occupies some interesting educational territory. Given the rapid pace of development and innovation in education and in the practice of HRD, coupled with alternative approaches to learning, a re‐evaluation of HRD might be expected to be a prominent feature within discussions of the future practice of HRD. However, while there has been a growing demand in the academic literature of the last few years for management educators to engage more critically with their subject than has been the tradition in business schools. The case has been argued for strengthening the critical perspectives in contributory disciplines within management and for a revision of management more generally. Yet, while examples of critical pedagogies are accumulating, they seldom exhibit corresponding changes in HRD practices. Where HRD does depart from mainstream practices, alternatives are typically based on humanistic student‐centred aspirations for social equality, rather than on an analysis of HRD in terms of power, politics and social dynamics. The intention of this paper is to highlight what is not being talked about in HRD in order to illuminate the importance of power to the study of HRD. The paper will explore the significance of power in HRD, drawing on ideas from critical and post modern perspectives. By illuminating social and power relations embedded within HRD practices, the aim is to present a more contextualised and processual account than the proceduralist recipes that currently dominate the study of this vital aspect of educational and organisational practice.

The purpose of this study is to get the perspectives of human resource development (HRD) scholars about connections among HRD, corporate social responsibility and ethics. The authors also sought to discover if HRD academic programs need to have ethics-related courses for their graduate students.

In this paper, the authors reviewed the literature and interviewed ten HRD scholars who substantially contributed to the field of HRD and have influential publications related to ethics or corporate social responsibility to find out the relationship between HRD, ethics and corporate social responsibility. A semi-structured interview method was adopted to collect data and purposeful sampling technique was used for analyzing data into identified themes.

The results from the interviews were categorized into seven different themes. While some scholars argued that ethics-related discussion needs to be integrated within every course, most scholars stated that ethics can be a required standalone course for HRD graduate programs.

Despite ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of HRD, little research has been conducted on how ethics and corporate social responsibility are represented in the field of study and practice. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical paper in HRD that collected and analyzed experts’ perspectives in this topic.

This paper aims to discuss a shift from the mentality of limitless growth and expansion to the new sustainability paradigm in HRD practice, and identifies what corresponding changes are needed in human resource development (HRD) university programs.

The paper is based on a review of the literature in HRD and related fields, and of curricula of a sample of HRD programs in the USA.

Five themes were found in the academic literature: critique of HRD's fixation with performance outcomes and lack of emphasis on developing sustainable and responsible members of society; role of HRD in embedding sustainability in organizational cultures; training and development methods, aimed at increasing sustainability awareness and at developing related skills; sustainable leadership and leadership development; and interconnectedness of HRD, sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and business ethics. Review of the contents of a sample of HRD graduate programs suggested that these programs rarely incorporate sustainability‐focused courses or course segments.

Future research needs to conduct an in‐depth review and analysis of the existing HRD graduate coursework in a larger sample of HRD programs to determine the extent of coverage of sustainability‐related topics. In addition, a review of the literature from related fields (e.g. business and management, HRM, and engineering), is needed to identify successful examples of sustainability‐related curricular innovations. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to conduct action research‐based studies of experimental development and implementation of courses and/or teaching modules, focused on sustainability issues.

There are three main areas where changes in HRD curricula are needed: economic foundations of HRD (to demonstrate the economic necessity of the paradigm change); systems theory (to provide a solid understanding of the systemic nature of inter‐relationships between the economy, environment, and society); and self‐leadership and individual moral development as related to individual employees' role in promoting sustainable organizations.

While there is some research on the role of HRD in organizational sustainability, this article is the first to address issues of corresponding changes in HRD academic curricula.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach for the teaching and delivery of HRD practices, professional skills and theory that challenges the modernist orthodoxy of contemporary organisational life and the requirements of professional bodies.

First, the territory of a critical HRD pedagogy is defined within practices that respect human freedom and individual dignity as opposed to instrumentalism and target setting. Second, it will advocate an approach for a HRD pedagogy that has its roots within the lost paradigm of sentimentalism that emphasises the belief in the goodness of humanity informing the romantic notions of human imagination, creativity and respect for the individual that is realised through the dialogical process.

The findings, evinced by vignettes, advocate a critical HRD pedagogy and the development of professional skills that base their values and ethics within emancipatory practices if organisations are to create and support sustainable learning environments rather than those located within the conventional wisdom of modernist orthodoxy.

This paper calls for a critical HRD pedagogy and learning environments where individuals are engaged in the transformation of their socio‐historical‐political worlds and advocates dialogue is central to classroom practice if it is to realise the potential and creative impulses of individuals.

This paper contributes to the critical HRD discourse in the development of knowledge, skills, values and professional practice by addressing the constraints of classroom practice in its response to the demands and tensions of professional bodies. It explicitly develops a critical HRD pedagogy that has implications for the assessment of HRD programmes and of their resourcing.