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Human resource development (HRD) research and practice mostly have focused on performance improvement although HRD fundamentally pursues human development as a whole. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize meaningful work in the context of HRD and provide implications for HRD research and practice.

This study reviewed the literature on topics such as meaningful work, the meaning of work, workplace spirituality, the value of work and work as a calling, to understand the concept of meaningful work. In addition, this study reviewed existing studies on meaningful work in HRD journals to investigate the current status of meaningful work research within the field of HRD. This study reviewed the related literature such as meaningful work, the meaning of work, workplace spirituality, the value of work and work as a calling, to understand the concept of meaningful work. In addition, this study reviewed the existing studies on meaningful work in HRD journals to investigate the current status of meaningful work research in HRD.

The findings of this study identified three main themes in conceptualizing meaningful work, namely, positivity; significance and purpose; and human fulfillment. The authors also suggest that the meaningful work discourse in HRD expands a research boundary of HRD and enables a holistic approach to HRD research and practice.

For future research, the authors recommend that HRD research deepens its understanding of meaningful work and its related concepts. They also recommend studies pursuing empirical evidence to reveal the significance of meaningful work.

Given the limited studies on meaningful work in HRD and a lack of understanding of meaningful work, this study proposes a comprehensive understanding of meaningful work, especially within the HRD context. This study also suggests a holistic approach to HRD by stressing a humanistic perspective beyond the performance-oriented HRD.

This study examines how employers’ various hiring behaviors affect the formal training in Korean establishments for newly employed college graduates. I use data from the 2000 “Employer Survey on College to Work,” collected by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET). The results suggest some important implications about employers’ decisions to “buy and/or make.” On the one hand, the relationships between hiring and training are far from simple. There is a substitution of skills in hiring for training after hiring, but worker training tends to be provided more by those employers who concentrate highly on employee searches. In particular, the content of additional training programs reinforces the screening criteria. On the other hand, the results suggest the persistence of conventional organizational practices in hiring and training. Training provided by employers may be somewhere in the middle of economic rationality and simple conventionality, i.e. less-than-rational behaviors.

Contemporary labor economics has a ready explanation for the role of job training in the labor market. The human capital framework pioneered by Becker (1962, 1993) and Mincer (1962) and now extended by many, many others sees training as an investment in productive capacity that benefits both workers and employers. Employers enhance the productivity of their firms by investing in the skills of their workers, and these productivity gains are passed on to workers in the form of higher wages. Key to all of this is the distinction between general and specific skill. According to the theory, employers will not pay for or provide general skills (i.e. those that are transferable and hence valuable to other employers), because they are averse to being “poached” by more high-wage employers. They will, however, invest in workplace-specific skills, which assure them a return on their training investments.