Human Resource Development in Asia – Thriving on dynamism & change: Reflections from 2006 Asian HRD conference

Abstract

This article discusses the experiences of the conference management team and the host (Universiti Putra Malaysia-UPM) of the Fifth Asian Conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development, held in Putrajaya, Malaysia from 2 to 5 December 2006. In reviewing the conference, the following sub-topics are used for organizing the contents of the article: HRD in Malaysia; conference theme & overview; participations/country representations and paper streams; keynote addresses; conference assessment; and conclusions. At the end, brief perspectives of the next Asian HRD conference to be held in China are also provided.

Exploring the effects of workplace support on work-life experience: a study of Malaysia

“…Human resource development (HRD) in Malaysia has been heavily influenced by the country's national development policies. Since its independence from British rule, Malaysia's economic development has been driven by national developments plans, such as the New Economic Policy (NEP) (1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990) and the National Vision Policy (NVP) (Fleming and Søborg 2002;Ismail et al 2007). These subsequently evolved into the National Development Policy (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) and Vision 2020 (the vision to make Malaysia a developed nation by year 2020) national programme.…”

“…HRD policies rooted in the NEP, were part of a reactive development policy (Fleming and Søborg 2002) to allow the indigenous majority of Malay people (known as Bumiputra) opportunities to develop from their backward position vis-à-vis the minority races, such as Malaysian Indians and especially the Malaysian Chinese. Even though the NEP policy intent was businessdriven, in practice it provided Malays' preferential treatment in business, education, training and job positions (Ismail et al 2007). Subsequently, more proactive HRD policies originating from the NVP (Fleming and Søborg 2002) were promulgated to ‛foster the 2 W.C.…”