The future of HRD

Abstract

What organizational, technological and training developments will become crucial in the coming years, and what consequences will they have for human resource development? These questions have led to a study carried out by the faculty of Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands. The ultimate aim of the study was to create an inventory of trends and developments which professionals deem to be in¯uential with regard to the future HRD ® eld. One direct catalyst for the study was the report of a similar study in the United States, involving HRD executives, carried out by the American Society for Training & Development. Following a brief explanation of the research plan and methods, this article describes the ® ndings of the Dutch study an compares these with the results of the American research. It concludes with comments regarding the implications of the information obtained through this investigation.

Organisational change and the management of training in Australian enterprises

“…The argument here is that in order to increase the relevance of training to the needs of operations of an enterprise and in order to cut the high fixed costs associated with maintaining a training department with specialist training staff, enterprises have disbanded training departments and moved responsibility for training and development to managers. However, it appears that the movement may not always be in the direction of decentralisation but that enterprises experiment with decentralisation and recentralisation of training depending on the needs of the business and that many training practitioners expect that this oscillation and experimentation are likely to continue (Streumer et al, 1999).…”

Critical Uncertainties Confronting Human Resource Development

“…"E-everything" continues to change the way work is done and who's doing it to such a degree that we may not recognize what we now call the workplace in 15 years (Wright et al, 1999). Much of the literature points to the use of information technology (IT) to automate mundane/task functions, increasing use of computers, increasing reliance on computers, and more user-friendly and compact technology (Streumer et al, 1999;Wilkerson, 1997).…”

“…This implies that many jobs could be at risk, or perhaps new forms of work will emerge. Also quite frequent is mention of the increasing use of technology to automate functions that don't require the capacities of humans (McKenna, 1999;Schelberg, Weinstein, & Bitman, 1999;Streumer et al, 1999;Wilkerson, 1997). Lacking was evidence to support the incorporation of robotics and the melding of humans and computers, although there are specific industries that warn of this coming age.…”

“…The discipline of human resource development (HRD) is growing. Whereas some have speculated about the growth of HRD and the implications that accompany the speculation (Brockbank, 1999;Streumer, Van der Klink, & Van de Brink, 1999), eventually, responsible members of a discipline must consider the trends with the potential to alter the nature of that discipline in profound ways. A useful means for considering such trends includes a focus on factors that are truly uncertain.…”

Current HRD trends in the Netherlands: conceptualisation and practices

“…The discrepancy between HRD theory and practice urges us to confront theorising in the field with empirical outcomes. It is important to find out to what extent attention is paid to organising, shaping and managing the processes of learning and development within working organisations [5]. In order to chart this attention, we will go into HRD developments both from some theoretical perspectives as well as grounded with data gathered during working conferences and interviews with practitioners in the field.…”