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1 – 10 of over 3000Jenni Jones, Henriette Lundgren and Rob Poell
The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple perspectives on managerial coaching: why and how managers engage, employees and human resource development (HRD) professionals’…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple perspectives on managerial coaching: why and how managers engage, employees and human resource development (HRD) professionals’ perspectives on the use and how HRD and managers can better support each other with it.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used secondary analysis of empirical data already collected through a transnational study from 20 different medium-size to large organisations in the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. For this study, 58 interviews referring to coaching were analysed from 18 of these organisations, from these 3 different countries and from 3 stakeholder groups: managers, employees and HRD professionals.
Findings
Findings show that managers perform a variety of “on the job” informal coaching roles and that HRD professionals lead the more formal aspects. Managers felt that HRD support was limited and hoped for more. A limited number of employees mentioned coaching, but those that did highlighted the different types of coaching they received in the workplace, referring to managers but with little recognition of HRD’s role. HRD professionals shared how they support managers through both informal and formal coaching approaches, but this was not fully acknowledged by neither managers nor employees.
Practical implications
The findings of this study contribute to the literature on devolved HRD practices, highlighting that managers are engaging more in managerial coaching with their teams, that potentially employees are not that aware of this and that managers and employees are not fully aware of HRD’s contribution to supporting coaching and feel they could do more. As a result, this study suggests that HRD professionals have a clear role to play in creating and leading the supportive organisational culture for coaching to thrive, not only in setting the “coaching scene” for managers to work within but also through offering support for long-term capacity building for all employees.
Originality/value
Through the diffusion of key HRD activities into managerial roles, and while internal coaching is gaining more momentum, managers now step up when coaching their teams. This study extends the limited prior research on managers’ and others’ (employees and HRD) beliefs about the coaching role in the workplace. This study highlights the changing role of the manager, the need for HRD to offer more support for the joint role that managers are taking (manager and coach) and the partnership potential for HRD professionals to include all stakeholders including employees.
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Malar Hirudayaraj and Rose Baker
The purpose of this paper is to inform the preparation of HRD professionals by providing an empirical analysis of the knowledge, skills, and responsibilities employers expect in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to inform the preparation of HRD professionals by providing an empirical analysis of the knowledge, skills, and responsibilities employers expect in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
This study reports a qualitative content analysis of online HRD job postings.
Findings
Results of this content analysis indicated that the most recent employer expectations for HRD practitioners as reflected in HRD-related job postings for knowledge and responsibilities were instructional design, training delivery, learning management systems, and learning technologies. The outcomes reinforced that employers specifically expect education technology-based knowledge and skills.
Research limitations/implications
The job postings included in the study were all collected from one source, the Association for Talent Development job site.
Practical implications
Educational programs can use these findings to inform curricular decisions related to knowledge and skills to be taught and practiced during the preparation of L&D practitioners and HRD professionals.
Originality/value
This paper analyzes online HRD job postings to understand what knowledge and skills employers expected from L&D practitioners and HRD professionals.
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Dirk Buyens, Karen Wouters and Koen Dewettinck
Within the scope of the Targeted Socio‐Economic Research (TSER) project (1998‐2000), that aimed to examine new human resource development (HRD) initiatives in learning‐oriented…
Abstract
Within the scope of the Targeted Socio‐Economic Research (TSER) project (1998‐2000), that aimed to examine new human resource development (HRD) initiatives in learning‐oriented organisations throughout Europe, this paper confronts the Belgian findings with the European outlook. The study examines how HRD departments in learning‐oriented organisations envision their new role in stimulating and supporting employees to learn continuously, what strategies HRD departments adopt to realise their envisioned role and what inhibiting factors they encounter when tying to realise their new role. The results of a survey of 165 companies, of which 39 are located in Belgium, showed a paucity of innovative HRD practices. However, professionals indicate that strategies to support the business and to stimulate learning and knowledge sharing will become increasingly important strategies in the future. The factors that appear to significantly hinder the change process are also discussed.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine human resource development (HRD) in the UK National Health Service (NHS), and particularly in two Welsh NHS Trusts, to help illuminate the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine human resource development (HRD) in the UK National Health Service (NHS), and particularly in two Welsh NHS Trusts, to help illuminate the various ways in which learning, training and development are talked about. The NHS is a complex organisation, not least with its recent devolution and separation into the four distinct countries of the UK. Within this, there are multiple and often conflicting approaches to human resource development associated with the various forms of employee, professional (nursing, medical etc.), managerial and organisational development. How people are developed is crucial to developing a modern health service, and yet, with the diverse range of health workers, HRD is a complex process, and one which receives little attention. Managers have a key role and their perceptions of HRD can be analysed through the discursive resources they employ.
Design/methodology/approach
From an interpretivist stance, the paper employs semi‐structured interviews with seven Directorate‐General Managers, and adopts discourse analysis to explore how HRD is talked about in two Welsh NHS Trusts.
Findings
The paper finds some of the different discourses used by different managers, including those with a nursing background and those without. It examines how they talk about HRD, and also explores their own (management) development and the impact this has had on their sense of identity.
Originality/value
The paper highlights some of the tensions associated with HRD in the NHS, including ambiguities between professional and managerial development, the functional and physical fragmentation of HRD, conflict between a focus on performance/service delivery and the need to learn, discursive dissonance between the use of the terms training and learning, a delicate balance between “going on courses” and informal, work‐related learning, inequities regarding “protected time” and discourses shifting between competition and cooperation. These tensions are exposed to help develop a shared understanding of the complexities of HRD within the NHS. The paper concludes with a summary of the different discursive resources employed by senior managers to articulate and accomplish HRD. These are “surfaced” to enable managers and HRD practitioners, amongst others, to construct common repertoires and shared meaning.
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Claretha Hughes, Lionel Robert, Kristin Frady and Adam Arroyos
Many factors may influence the training and development of middle-skill, low-skill, and disadvantaged workers. Within the United States and worldwide there are many…
Abstract
Many factors may influence the training and development of middle-skill, low-skill, and disadvantaged workers. Within the United States and worldwide there are many middle-skilled, low-skilled, and disadvantaged workers whom training and development professionals must consider as organizations seek to expand their workforce and increase productivity using technology. Temporary agencies employ many middle-skilled, low-skilled, and disadvantaged workers; however, there is very little information regarding how effective these agencies are in developing these workers beyond the skill level with which they enter the agency.
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Practical applications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Amandine Weil and Jean Woodall
To explore and describe the roles, activities and strategies of French human resource development professionals.
Abstract
Purpose
To explore and describe the roles, activities and strategies of French human resource development professionals.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based primarily on exploratory and descriptive research. A range of secondary sources on European and French human resource development is critically reviewed to generate a number of research questions designed to identify the corporate perspective on human resource development by means of cases drawn from six organizations located in Eastern France.
Findings
These confirm the lack of a clear understanding of human resource development on the part of French companies; the wide range of activities that is considered to fall within human resource development; an emerging interest in management development, career development and skills forecasting, but a neglect of training evaluation; the similarity of human resource development practitioner roles to those elsewhere in Europe; growing evidence of the involvement of line managers in human resource development activity, and a strong commitment to the strategic significance of human resource development.
Research limitations/implications
The study was based on an opportunity sample of just six companies in Eastern France, and may therefore not be representative, but it does provide findings that expand upon and also qualify earlier research.
Practical implications
This study provides new knowledge and understanding of the context and practice of human resource development in France and makes a number of suggestions for further research.
Originality/value
This paper provides original research based on recent cases of corporate human resource development practice, and should be of interest to scholars of international human resource development.
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Martin McCracken and Mary Wallace
Revisits the literature on strategic human resource development (SHRD) in the context of Garavan’s work on the characteristics of SHRD. A conceptual framework is constructed that…
Abstract
Revisits the literature on strategic human resource development (SHRD) in the context of Garavan’s work on the characteristics of SHRD. A conceptual framework is constructed that redefines SHRD stressing a shaping rather than supporting role for HRD in relation to corporate strategy. The concept of strategic maturity in HRD is examined linking the work of Garavan; Lee and McCracken; and Wallace. The resulting model of strategic maturity is then analysed empirically using data from a major questionnaire and interview survey. A new model of strategic partnerships in HRD is then proposed.
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An attempt is made to illustrate the multi‐faceted and multifarious nature of human resource development worldwide, following a definition of it and a description of how it…
Abstract
An attempt is made to illustrate the multi‐faceted and multifarious nature of human resource development worldwide, following a definition of it and a description of how it operates in a number of countries throughout the world, including the US, the EEC countries, India, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The roles and functions of HRD practitioners are examined, and the competences required listed. A short history of the International Federation of Training and Development Organisations is offered and a list of conferences described.
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