Human Resource Development and Challenges Essay (Article)

Introduction

The main problem that is being addressed by MacKenzie, Garavan, and Carbery in their article is that, because of the ongoing economic recession (triggered by the financial crisis of 2008), many of the conceptual provisions of HRD (concerned with training and development) can no longer be deemed thoroughly appropriate. The logic behind this suggestion, on the authors’ part, is as follows: Because of the mentioned recession, organizations become increasingly focused on achieving specifically the short-term wealth maximization objectives, as the mean of remaining competitive.

This, in turn, naturally causes HRD practitioners to refer to the employees’ professional development in the utilitarian (situationally useful) terms. As a result, the extent of one’s managerial successfulness in ensuring that employees never cease to work on increasing the measure of their professional competence is perceived solely reflective of whether the implementation of his or her initiatives, in this respect, helps the affiliated organization to maximize its profits or not.

According to the authors, “The pressures of ‘short-termism’ and ‘performance horizons’ in line with quarterly results conspire against HRD practitioners to balance the needs of their diverse stakeholder demands” (MacKenzie, Garavan, & Carbery, 2012, p. 356). It is understood, of course, that this results in the creation of the situation when the members of HRD staff grow ever more arrogant of the societal dimension of their professional responsibilities.

The ultimate consequence of such a development is that it establishes the objective preconditions for the very paradigm of HRD to be deprived of its theoretical validity. This simply could not be otherwise, because as the authors mentioned, “Aligning HRD strategy too closely with the organizational strategy in pursuit of sustained competitive advantage potentially results in… the creation of an environment that facilitates, if not encourages, unethical or even corrupt behavior” (MacKenzie et al., 2012, p. 356). The authors’ line of logic, in this regard, has led them to conclude that the theoretical premises behind the legitimization of HRD that took place during the 20^th century’s early nineties must be readjusted to correlate with the current socio-economic realities in the West.

The Need for the Study in the Article

The authors’ rationale for subjecting the mentioned issue to the analytical inquiry had to do with the following considerations, on their part:

1. There is a good reason to think that HRD professionals (in the banking sector) have contributed rather substantially towards bringing about the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2008, “HRD practitioners may not have been the architects of the global financial crisis; however, their interventions and legitimacy-seeking behavior potentially contributed to the building blocks that were central to the current crisis” (MacKenzie et al., 2012, p. 358). This raises some questions about the practice’s overall legitimacy.
2. As practice indicates, many of the currently deployed HRD strategies can be described as anything but thoroughly systemic. That is while striving to provide employees with the proper incentives to apply a continual effort into increasing the measure of their professional adequacy, most HRD specialists tend to assume that it is namely the prospect of being able to qualify for a salary-raise, which motivates workers more than anything, in this respect. In light of the recent breakthroughs in the field of sociology, however, this approach appears strongly misleading.
3. As of today, it becomes increasingly clear that the concept of HRD is quite inconsistent with the principles of the free-market economy’s ‘natural’ functioning, “The free-market capitalist hegemony is an antithesis to any conceptualization of HRD” (MacKenzie et al., 2012, p. 361). This calls into question the appropriateness of assessing the organizational significance of HRD from the solely Neoliberal perspective.

Methodology

The article’s methodology is concerned with a review of the discursively relevant academic publications, the authors of which aimed to identify the commonly overlooked aspects of how the HRD paradigm is being practically implemented. While on the task, MacKenzie et al. endeavored to discover the unconventionally sounding themes and motifs in the scholarly articles of interest, to identify the nature of the casuistic relationship between them, and to determine the emerging independent and dependent variables.

The sub-sequential phase of the deployed methodological approach to tackling the subject matter, on the authors’ part, was subjecting the obtained insights to the interpretative analysis. In the aftermath of having assessed the discussed issue’s qualitative characteristics, MacKenzie et al. came to conclude that there is a strong need for the very philosophy of HRD to become more humanist (person-centered) and socially sound.

Conclusion

The article’s main analytical finding can be summarized as follows: In its present form, HRD encourages employees to indulge in ego-centric/risk-taking behavior – something that stands in a striking contradiction to the assumption that HRD practitioners are there to ensure the unobstructed accumulation of ‘intellectual capital’ within the organization. This is the reason why it was specifically the American-based banking organizations that triggered the financial crisis of 2008 – despite the fact that these organizations were among the most enthusiastic corporate adopters of HRD.

Hence, the ultimate conclusion, “We must develop (HRD) theories that are humanist, ethically and morally robust and realistically applicable” (MacKenzie et al., 2012, p. 362). The authors believe that the time has come for the HRD-related strategies to be designed for the primary purpose of serving the public interest. This, in turn, should prevent HRD from being increasingly perceived as yet another sophistically sounding but essentially meaningless corporate buzz-term. Unfortunately, MacKenzie et al. did not specify as to how this could be done in practice. Still, given the article’s discursive context, one can speculate that the first step in this direction would be denying the Neoliberal conceptualization of economy its current status of the only legitimate one (Russ-Eft, 2014).

References

Fenwick, T. (2005). Conceptions of critical HRD: Dilemmas for theory and practice. Human Resource Development International, 8(2), 225–238.

Fenwick, T., & Bierema, L. (2008). Corporate social responsibility: issues for human resource development professionals. International Journal of Training & Development, 12(1), 24-35.

MacKenzie, C. A., Garavan, T. N., & Carbery, R. (2012). Through the looking glass: challenges for human resource development (HRD) post the global financial crisis – business as usual? Human Resource Development International, 15(3), 353-364.

Russ-Eft, D. (2014). Human resource development, evaluation, and sustainability: what are the relationships? Human Resource Development International, 17(5), 545-559.

Sambrook, S. (2004). A “critical” time for HRD? Journal of European Industrial Training, 28(8), 611-624.

Sheehan, M., Garavan, T. N., & Carbery, R. (2014). Innovation and human resource development (HRD). European Journal of Training and Development, 38(1), 2-14.