Human resource development and its underlying theory

A comparative analysis of graduate HRD curricular content between the United States and Korea

“…Finally, a few distinctive content areas including human performance technology and educational policy studies are found to be either taught or perceived important by HRD professionals in the graduate HRD programmes in Korea. These areas have not been regarded as the foundational areas in the field in the United States (Swanson 2001;Swanson and Holton 2009) and, thus, reflect the idiosyncratic feature of HRD in Korea. From our study findings, the future roles of HRD practitioners tend to be diversified to skilfully perform and manage the fast-paced changing nature of HRD functions.…”

“…Also, it becomes a key issue how to identify their clients' needs in the workplace in order to reflect their views on the decision making of curricular content areas. More specifically, as many researchers of the HRD field have emphasized the multidisciplinary nature of the HRD profession (Kuchinke 2001;Swanson 2001), it is recommended for the Korean institutions to include more foundational content areas of HRD in their graduate curricula. For the US institutions, it is recommended to include more functional and practical competency areas for their graduate HRD students and practitioners.…”

“…Scholars have long been emphasizing the interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary nature of human resource development (HRD) (Swanson 2001;Swanson and Holton 2009). They have contended that multiple perspectives or pluralistic orientations are required to discern what constitutes the discipline of HRD.…”

Book Review

“…The ongoing debates in HRD -about the definition and scope of the field (Kuchinke 2007;Lee 2001;McLean and McLean 2001;Ruona and Gibson 2004;Swanson 2001;Wang and Swanson 2008), the gap between scholarship and practice (Short 2006) and critical perspectives (Bierema 2009), if pursued deeply enough eventually find their way to philosophy.…”

The case for complexity: A look at the relationship between individual and structure from the inside out

“…Within HRD, itself a field informed by a rich amalgam of the social sciences (Swanson, 2001;Kuchinke, 2001), one of the major debates reflects this same theoretical diversity: should learningforemost an individual-level enterprise -or organizational performance be the goal of HRD (Kuchinke 2000)? Additionally, these debates have often taken place in virtual isolation.…”