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Changing employees’ attitudes and beliefs is considered key to changing employee behavior. This article examines the impact on learners’ management philosophies of their participation in a critical management studies (CMS) course. The study utilized a qualitative case study of CMS courses at two sites, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States. Semi-structured interviews with eleven learners and class observations were the primary methods. The findings indicate that learners come into CMS classrooms with different philosophies, including critical orientations. CMS courses impact on the learners’ management philosophy in multiple ways within the same course. The course simultaneously reinforces different, even opposing orientations at the same time. This study has important implications for training designed to influence the attitudes and beliefs of employees.

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While the importance of skill formation has been widely acknowledged in recent years, the issue of skill retention has been relatively neglected. Employers see little point in raising skills in sectors where a high proportion of individuals will leave, yet failure to invest in training and development may contribute to higher labour turnover. Drawing upon an extensive literature review, this paper develops a conceptual model of labour turnover and retention that distinguishes four stages in the processes affecting an individual’s intention to quit, and actual separation from the job. Potential solutions that might reduce the quit rate and retain skilled labour are proposed in relation to these four stages.

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This study examined the underlying process through which transformational leaders provide an influence on employees' knowledge sharing intention by concentrating on mediating roles of psychological empowerment and employees' commitment to organizations. The direct and indirect impacts of transformational leadership on knowledge sharing were explored. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, structural equation modelling analysis was conducted with a sample of 426 full-time employees in South Korea. The results of this study showed a significant direct effect of transformational leadership on psychological empowerment and organizational commitment, which in turn had a significant influence on employees' knowledge sharing intention. Transformational leadership had only an indirect effect on knowledge sharing intention among employees. These results bring out the importance of mediating roles of employee's attitudes, especially organizational commitment, for promoting knowledge sharing intention among employees.

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Occupational choice frameworks suggest that personality factors influence person-job fit. This paper focuses on personality factors and career satisfactions of human resources (HR) managers. ‘Big Five’ and narrow personality traits as well as managerial style variables were drawn from an archive of 1846 HR managers and 1375 non-managers. Results indicated that HR managers differed from 51,297 individuals in other occupations and from non-managerial HR specialists on many of the study variables, most of which were also related to career satisfaction. Implications for differentiation selection and development of HR managers were discussed.

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The purpose of the study was to compare the practices used by human resource development (HRD) professionals to evaluate web-based and classroom-based training (CBT) programmes within seven Korean companies. This study used four components of evaluation and three factors of evaluation barriers to compare the differences between these two training approaches. This study also explored the key decision factors for determining how HRD professionals evaluated their web-based and CBT programmes. Two data sets were used for the study; one set of data was gathered from a survey questionnaire distributed to HRD professionals and the other was gathered from interviews with [human resources] HR/HRD directors within the seven companies. The results showed that web-based and CBT programmes were not meaningfully different on the most components of evaluation and evaluation barriers. The results also found six key decision factors determining evaluation for web-based and CBT programmes.

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There is a need to study and better understand the organizational impact of Generation Y and how they perceive their experiences of work. This article presents findings from a hermeneutic phenomenological study that was conducted to understand the meaning of work for five Generation Y individuals and provide a deeper, richer understanding of their lived experiences. Ten essential themes were constructed, including the meaning of work is: influenced by education, influenced by the economy, the opportunity to do work that is meaningful, balance, a reflection of who we are, working for an organization that functions well, influenced by our social networks, considering and exploring all opportunities, the importance of social relationships, and completing tasks and being compensated to meet our basic needs. Based on these findings, theoretical contributions are provided as well as recommendations for future [human resource development] HRD practice and research.

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Countries look to borrow those educational systems that have been successful at meeting particular needs in other parts of the world. However, whether looking to Europe, Asia or the United States, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programmes are not easily replicated in a new context. Even with well-intentioned government policy and support, they become more or less successful when aligned with the needs of industry, how TVET is viewed and utilized, and cultural and societal impacts of how youth transition to work and career. This paper presents an aspect that is often missing from the literature on this subject: an examination of the factors influencing how the TVET implementation plays out within a particular industry and country. This paper considers a case involving the process of borrowing a manufacturing skill development programme from the United States for implementation in South Africa.

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This article provides a historical overview of the evolution of systems for workforce education and human resource development (HRD) in Poland. This article discusses theoretical underpinnings of the development of the concept of HRD and then moves on to a detailed analysis of stages of development of HRD in Poland, both as an academic discipline and the area of practice. Both national level policies and strategies and HRD on the level of individual organizations are discussed.

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The study focuses on the question of how [human resource development] HRD personnel employed in a large multinational company perceive learning at work. We are interested in how HR development staff describe learning at the individual, collective and organizational levels. The participants were Finnish and Chinese human resource professionals who used an asynchronous web-based tool to study adult education. The empirical data consist of all the texts sent to a web-based discussion forum. The findings showed that the HRD practitioners’ views of learning covered quite evenly all three levels of organizational learning. The practitioners paid special attention to practical learning taking place in connection with everyday work activities, to communication and collaborative learning and to the development of a learning organization. This reflects the multifaceted nature of learning at work and the necessity of using HRD to integrate individual- and organizational-level needs in order to enhance organizational learning. The participants frequently reported that they found this a demanding task that required a clear ‘understanding of humans, people in the organizations and their learning’. If organizational learning is to meet its current challenges it should take note of messages like these from HRD practitioners, which emphasise the diversity of learning experiences. Promoting a shared understanding and especially awareness and recognition of the fundamental issues associated with learning at work is a possible first step.

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Training, learning and development tend to be regarded as central to the success of every organisation and the nation. However, not all organisations are able or willing to invest resources in such processes. The paper presents a view that training, learning and development occur as a consequence of successful persuasive actions in a chain of talk, which draw on the discursive and rhetorical resources of an emerging learning movement. Utilising the findings from an examination of data from the UK Department of Education and Skills-sponsored National Training Award winners, the paper provides an employment of actor-network theory and the sociology of translation to show how some organisations make the case for training, learning and development as a virtuous endeavour. It concludes by suggesting that what is needed is a more detailed understanding of how the case for the adoption of training, learning and development, or not, within organisations is made meaningful.

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