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My first written work on Self Development was published in 1971, and I have written about various aspects of its meaning, objectives, and processes since then. I recently had the opportunity to review what I perceive as relatively unattended issues of strategy and principle. In this article I look at these and show where at least some of the answers may be found to be available.

The number of part‐time trainers is unknown but within some training specialisms they can form a substantial cohort. Often, however, their development is not supported adequately, if at all, within their working environments. Considers self‐development from the individual perspective of six English as a Second Language (ESL) peripheral trainers. Explores how a profession’s attitude towards its members and self‐actualization can influence the development of its practitioners. Also considers the significance of the internal impact of the organization on restricting the possibilities of self‐development. The implication is that professions need to be more supportive of peripheral trainers; that organizations need to be more imaginative and responsive towards engendering self‐responsibility for personal learning; and that individual trainers need to be more strategic and proactive in facilitating their own self‐development.

In a report on two conferences concerned with “Applying Self‐development in Organisations”, the current position of the self‐development idea in management education and training is summarised. It is concluded that many management development practitioners have accepted the practical value of self‐development and are now concerned with attempting to apply the concept within organisations.

The present study aimed at developing and validating a self-development training package and determining self-development's effectiveness on job variables and human capital agility among secondary school principals in Isfahan.

In the first phase, the researcher conceived a full version of the self-development training package by studying the theoretical evidence of research and interviewing experts as well as using content analysis. The questionnaire was presented to several experts (n = 8) in that field of study for evaluation after compiling the initial version of the self-development training package, with the aim of determining the face and content validity. In the second phase of the study, the effectiveness of the self-development training package was experimented on secondary school principals using a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design and follow-up with a control group.

The evaluation results were suitable for the training package based on the proposed Lawshe method. The results also indicated that the implementation of a self-development training package in the experimental group had a significant effect on job performance and its dimensions, as well as human capital agility. The effect of the training package on increasing job performance in the post-test stage was 55.3% and was 50.2% in the follow-up stage. Also, the effect of this package on increasing the agility of human capital in the post-test phase was equal to 34.8% and was equal to 28.9% in the follow-up stage.

Question 1: What are the components of a self-development training package? Question 2: What is the credibility of the developed training package from the experts' point of view? Question 3: Does the self-development training package have an effect on job performance and its dimensions? Question 4: Does the self-development training package have an effect on human capital agility?.

All people working in organisations learn and develop to some extent over time. The outcome of this development varies as widely between individuals as people themselves vary from one another. Some people achieve top managerial positions in industry and commerce in their late twenties or early thirties while others have to wait to the final stages of their working careers to achieve such positions. Some struggle at stages throughout their careers and achieve only moderate success; others do not seem to try at all. Management training and development activities are aimed at providing better opportunities and facilities for such development to meet the need of organisations to improve management performance. In practice these activities are designed to meet overall organisational needs and to conform with general behavioural and learning theories. The crucial significance of individual differences in motivation and ability to learn and develop is seldom, if ever, consciously exploited as a route towards securing real improvements in management performance. It is the contention of this paper that self‐development is such an approach.

Considering innovation and its improvement as an essential strategy to enable organizations to continue their lives in the new competitive environment leads to a focus on employees' self-development as a factor that affects human resource agility (HRA) and the tendency toward organizational innovation. Consequently, the purpose of the study was to explain the impact of self-development on the tendency toward organizational innovation with the role of the mediator, HRA in higher education institutions as one of the most important and vital organizations in any society.

The study was an applicable one with the quantitative approach using the descriptive–correlative method. The population consisted of 477 nonacademic employees of Kharazmi University among whom 214 ones were selected as the sample group, using a simple random sampling technique. Data were collected through the self-development, HRA and the tendency toward organizational innovation questionnaires and then analyzed using the structural equation modeling approach.

The study findings revealed a positive impact of self-development on the HRA (γ = 0/79) and HRA on the tendency toward organizational innovation (β = 0/6). Also, self-development with mediating HRA impacts the tendency toward organizational innovation (β = 0/58). Finally, self-development had no direct impact on the tendency toward organizational innovation.

Taking the circumstances of doing this research into consideration, if there were the opportunity to do the research on the staffs of more than one university simultaneously and categorize the university staff into executives, managers and experts, more favorable results could be achieved. Also, considering group and organizational factors with the attention to the self-development approach and its factors would provide more awareness-training information on the higher education system in Iran. For future researches, both the individual and group factors are suggested to be surveyed and compared, to assess the weight and impact of these factors all together and to provide an adequate clarification of the role of the group and the organization. Finally, in future studies, it is also recommended that a qualitative approach be used to reach deeper clarifications on the aspects of these variables in the context of higher education.

These findings have major practical implications concerning the higher educational settings. The findings of this study must give significant and practical insights for policymakers of universities and other higher education stakeholders, as well as recommendations to the academic community for further research in this area. First, they should recognize that nonacademic staff members are professional employees who contribute to improving organizational innovation. Higher education must focus on designing and implementing successful mechanisms and a well-planned self-development program that can help and promote the self-development approach among all staff. If the above-mentioned programs are designed based on the employees' needs analysis, they will get trained in a way to enhance mental and behavioral flexibility. The programs with such an approach can result in the proactive, adaptive, resilient behavior and agility of HR.

The model for this study has integrated and prioritized the key innovation drivers that would help universities design, adopt and implement policies and practices that facilitate and encourage improvements and adaptation to a fast-paced environment. Furthermore, the convincing reason for the significance of the current research is that although several types of research have been carried out on each of these three variables in different contexts separately, very few studies, like this, have directly examined the correlation between these three variables among the non-academic staff in higher education institutes. So, given the importance of the issue and rare availability of evidence in this regard, the authors were intrigued to discover whether the self-development through the mediation of HRA could reinforce and strengthen the tendency toward organizational innovation and whether HRA could be an appropriate mediator of the relationship between self-development and the tendency toward organizational innovation among the nonacademic staff of Kharazmi University as one of the most prestigious and celebrated universities in Iran.

Personal development involves individuals acting and reflecting on the world and themselves, and learning from this. The practical issues faced by facilitators in setting up and running self‐development groups are discussed. The structure of the process is focused on and a number of guidelines presented.

The employee development initiatives in three retail banks are the focus of this paper. The discussion draws on recent empirical findings to examine the motives and expectations that underpin employee development initiatives, and the underlying assumptions which shape how such initiatives are implemented in practice. The perspective of the organisation in relation to employee development is further enhanced with findings from the perspective of the individual employee. These findings show the impact of employee development initiatives on individuals’ willingness to learn and take personal responsibility for their development. The analysis highlights the nature of the interaction between individual and organisational priorities within development and draws attention to some of the challenges that underpin employee development initiatives. The implications of these challenges for the way organisations design employee development initiatives in the future, and the way we think and research employee development are discussed at the end of the paper.

Organizations are facing pressure to reduce costs of training and enhancing the role of self-development that is self-driven and contextual in nature as a means to supplement employee development. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of individual and situational factors on self-development as well as the moderating role of situational factors. Individual factors are referred to personal characteristics, i.e. learning goal orientation and proactive personality, while situational factors are environmental conditions, including job autonomy and empowering environment.

Data were gathered from 280 middle managers of the banking sector. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was conducted to validate the model.

The study findings revealed a significant direct relationship of individual (learning goal orientation and proactive personality) and situational (empowering environment and job autonomy) factors with self-development. The study also found only a significant moderating effect of empowering environment in relation to learning goal orientation and self-development, correspondingly job autonomy moderates the relationship of proactive personality and self-development.

The study concludes with offering some implication for organization to focus on self-development activities by providing an empowering environment and job autonomy to its employees, which will result to minimize the overall cost of training. Organizations should also identify the individual factors that lead to self-development like proactive personality and learning goal orientation.

This study gives new insight on the predictors of self-development and their interaction. This study may be a pioneer to empirically validate a theoretical model about the interaction of situational factors between individual factors and self-development. Furthermore, it contributes and advances our knowledge by demonstrating how individual and situational factors are influencing middle mangers’ self-development in workplace.

In a rapidly shifting market, organizations seek more diverse and innovative employee development interventions. Yet, these initiatives may have limited impact without employees’ engagement. This conceptual paper aims to propose self-leadership as a value-added strategy for promoting both individual and organizational development.

The authors conducted a conceptual analysis with three case examples. The cases were purposefully selected, aiming to comprehend how the concept of self-leadership has been applied within organizations and to identify real-life examples where self-leadership has been adopted as an organizational strategy.

This study demonstrates that self-leadership plays a significant role in facilitating human resource development (HRD) initiatives. Specifically, the authors illustrate how self-leadership interventions in companies empower individuals to take charge of their development, aligning personal and organizational goals. When effectively applied, self-leadership strategies positively impact HRD practices in the areas of training and development, organization development and career development, yielding benefits for both employees and employers.

This study addresses knowledge gaps in the emerging field of self-leadership in HRD by providing three companies’ examples of how self-leadership can add value to HRD. The findings offer unique insights into the synergy between self-leadership and HRD, benefiting academics interested in this line of inquiry and HRD practitioners seeking innovative approaches to employee and organizational development.