Through the looking glass: challenges for human resource development (HRD) post the global financial crisis – business as usual?

Abstract

An important question for human resource development (HRD) concerns how its practices may have contributed to the global financial crisis. Commentators have highlighted that HRD must take some of the blame. First, we consider whether HRD's traditional role of contributor through performance-based development interventions, may have facilitated questionable practices in organizations. Second, we reflect on whether HRD was an irrelevant spectator through being benign and impotent; rather than challenging the status quo in organizations. Third, we contemplate the protagonist role and argue that HRD practitioners pursued short-term performance-based wealth maximizing objectives with scant regard for the long-term organizational or societal impact. We conclude by considering how HRD scholars can engage tomorrow's business leaders in critical reflection and how HRD practitioners can pursue a strategic decoupling position which allows for challenging the status quo without alienating their professional status in the organization and ethical standing in practice.

Professional learning in human resource management: problematising the teaching of reflective practice

“…MacKenzie et al (2012) suggest that, although HR professionals are involved in managing the 'organisation's human intellectual capital' (p.354), they have been markedly missing from analysis into the origins of the global financial crisis. Similarly, criticism for the HR profession in the US raised concerns about the lack of accountability for recruiting and rewarding irresponsible chief executives and financial risk managers that directly contributed to the global recession (Morgenson and Rosner 2011).…”

Leadership Paradoxes

“…However, it is argued that a leader's work is more complex and changing than is implied by the 'simple representation' of competences (Bolden and Gosling, 2006, 160). Recently it has been suggested that an uncritical acceptance of senior leaders values which find expression in competences, was also a feature of the failure by HRM/HRD professionals to provide a counter to short-term and risky decisions that created the GFC (MacKenzie et al 2012). …”

HRD and Organizational Change: Evidence-Based Practice

“…Furthermore, Gold, Holden, Iles, Stewart and Beardwell (2009) argue that HRD in practice and theory has a major influence on the interplay of leadership, culture, and employee commitment through: (i) helping to develop current and future leaders; (ii) involvement in shaping the organizational culture; (iii) building commitment among organization members; and (iv) anticipating required managerial responses to changing conditions. Similarly, McKenzie, Garavan and Carbery (2012) observed that "the shift from operational and tactical HRD to strategic HRD has witnessed a metamorphosis for HRD practitioners increasingly becoming partners in the business tasked with aligning people, strategy, and performance rather than simply promoting learning and development " (p.354). This observation echoes Kohut and Roth's (2015) claim that "HRD practitioners and scholars need International Journal of HRD Practice, Policy and Research 2016, Vol 1 No 1: 7-20 doi: 10.22324/ijhrdppr.1.102 to enter the fray of the discussion on change management" (p.231).…”