The study reported here focusses on the question to what extent stakeholder involvement in HRD policymaking (here referred to as strategic HRD aligning) predicts effective HRD programmes. The study involved 44 large companies in the industrial, financial and commercial services sectors. The findings indicate that involvement of stakeholders in the strategic HRD aligning process, and their opinions on the quality of this aligning process in particular, have a positive effect on perceived HRD effectiveness. The perceived effectiveness is even more positive when the mean company score on the quality of strategic aligning is higher.
Theoretical frameworkIn literature it is estimated that only between 10 and 20 per cent of capital invested in HRD and learning interventions will lead to enduring performance improvement (Baldwin and Ford, 1988;Latham and Crandall, 1991;Broad and Newstrom, 1992;Kessels, 1996). It is questionable if this result can be improved upon if all relevant HRD stakeholders give proper consideration before reaching the intended HRD goals and objectives. These goals and objectives will be developed during an HRD policymaking process. It is a dynamic and interactive process in which, as part of an ongoing and future company policy, HRD goals and objectives are formulated. This relates to the learning and development of individual and groups of employees for the benefit of the company as well as themselves (eg. Garavan, Costine and Heraty, 1995). Thinking of policies in terms of goals and strategies, which according to Hoogerwerf (1993) forms the basic structure of any policy is often termed 'final thinking'. According to the ideal, purely rational model, policymaking processes are typically sequential, linear and mainly top-down. Other policy models have been developed that deviate from this and which take the practical situation more into account, like
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