Beyond Good Practice in Human Resource Develoment

1
Beyond Good Practice in Human Resource
Develoment

• Jean Woodall
• Professor of Human Resource Development
• Associate Dean
• Editor in Chief
• Human Resource Development International

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Why this topic? My background.

• Original training as a political scientist
• Moved from teaching and researching policy
  analysis to policy implementation work for UK
  government in 1980s on vocational training policy
• Involved in early introduction of competence
  frameworks into UK Youth Training Scheme
• Return to higher education - involvement in
  management education and research Human
  Resource Development
• Interest in how and why questions and in the
  relationship between research and practice

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Key themes of my talk

• Practice is central to the scholarly field of
  HRD
• Practitioner concern to achieve best practice
  can have negative consequences
• Evidence-Based-Practice (EBP) is needed, but
  has limitations
• Researchers and practitioners need to go beyond
  EBP and address
• context
• integrity
• credibility

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Researching practice at the heart of HRD
scholarship

• Emergence of the field of HRD
• Career paths of HRD scholars
• BUT
• Researchers and practitioners inhabit different
  communities, and have different understandings
• Reflective Practice (Schon, 1983) is limited
• Legitimacy of HRD research is challenged by
  relation to practice
• Limited ability of traditional scientific
  research to create problem solutions to questions
  of meaning, purpose and values
• Thus theory/practice relationship is complex
  (Kuchinke, 2004)

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Practitioner concern to pursue best practice

• For 20 years the corporate and public policy
  agenda has been concerned to identify and
  implement best practice
• In the human resource field this can be seen in
  approaches to
• performance management
• competency development
• change management
• Can organisations and policy-makers use
  pre-defined tools and reap advantages by closely
  imitating others?
• Whose best practice?
• Easier where agreed regulatory standards
• More difficult where focus is behaviours in
  organisation context

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An illustration establishing best practice
through standards of competence

• Competence focuses upon the traits,
  characteristics and behaviours of effective
  performance
• Origins in USA secondary and management education
  in early 1980s
• reinterpreted in UK in mid 1980s starting with
  training for unemployed youth!
• Taken up in the UK as the basis for corporate
  management development programmes in early 1990s
• Adopted as the foundation for initial
  professional education and continuing
  professional development (CPD) by professional
  bodies in late 1990s

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An example of a competence-based standard of
best practice

• Ethics and Integrity
• Exhibits uncompromising integrity and commitment
  to organisation Xs corporate values, human
  resource principles and business conduct
  policies. Builds trust an instils self-confidence
  through mutually respectful ongoing communication
• Business Health and Results
• Identifies and successfully generates product,
  market and geographic growth opportunities, while
  consistently delivering short-term business
  results. Continually searches for ways to add
  value and position the organisation for future
  success

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But is competence a clear and secure foundation
for establishing best practice?

• Clarity and certainty is deceptive its a fuzzy
  concept and culturally relative (Delamere Le
  Deist and Winterton, 2004 Jeris 2005)
• Not value-neutral - distinct discourse that
  arose at a specific time (Kuchinke and Han, 2005)
  with a legacy of
• Behaviourism (emphasis upon operational
  definitions and measurement)
• Functionalist understanding of organisations
• Technical and instrumental communication
• Teaching and training to the test
• Cannot capture richness and complexity of
  practice
• Avoids providing an appropriate frame of
  reference for decision-making and practice

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The limits of competence-based standards of HRD

• Formalises the informal
• Focuses only upon the tangible
• Individualises the social

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Some illustrations of the problem (from Kuchinke
and Han, 2005)

• Limits of competence as a basis for graduate
  medical education
• limits the reflection, intuition, and
  experience necessary for expert, holistic or
  well-developed practice. (Talbot, 2004, cited in
  Kuchinke and Han, 2005)
• Limits of competence in management
• Managers increasingly act in response to novel
  situations, with ill-structured environments,
  under conditions of incomplete and uncertain
  information and intense time pressure (Mintzberg,
  2005)
• Limits of competence for all work in general
• Qualities such as reflection, maturity, insight
  and responsibility paramount (Reich, 1991)

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Some critical remarks on the pursuit of best
practice

• ..an idealized normative projection of the hopes
  invested in the practice, a statement of
  potential rather than a description of actual
  operational capacity. (Michael Power, 1997)

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The need for Evidence-Based-Practice

• Origins in the evidence-based-medicine movement
  in the UK
• Spread to other fields of health and social care
• Involves balancing risks and benefits of
  alternative sources of evidence
• research evidence
• clinical evidence
• beliefs and values of therapists and patients
• clinical assessment of beliefs of therapists
  and patients
• Call for evidence-based management in UK
  (Ham,1995 Axelsson, 1998 Stewart, 1998)

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Evidence-based practice in HRD

• Evidence-based HRD is the conscientious,
  explicit and judicious use of current best
  evidence in making decisions about the
  development of individuals, groups and
  organisations, integrating individual HRD
  practitioner expertise with the best external
  evidence derived from systematic research.
  (Hamlin, 2001)
• Based on evidence derived from
• good-quality research
• consensus of recognised professional experts
• operational QA or evaluation data
• systematic feedback from client managers

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BUT - problems about relating research to
practice

• Assumptions that researchers make about
  practitioners and policymakers
• researchers understand policy-making and
  practice sufficiently to influence the process
• People who need to use research will want to use
  it
• Policy makers and practitioners are receptive to
  using evidence
• Robust reliable evidence is available
• The highest quality research has the greatest
  influence
• Research is accessible to the people who need to
  use it

• The messier reality
• Practitioners and policy-makers often influenced
  by own personal experiences common sense
  prevails
• Policy and practice are multi-faceted economic,
  financial, political pressures
• Robust, reliable and valid research is in short
  supply and not always accessible
• Single studies or researchers can have too much
  influence
• Interpretations are flawed and vary in any case
  lack of transparency
• Policy is developed over short time scales

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The need to take account of context

• Increasing recognition of the significance of
  context in management and human sciences
• In HRD we are coming to recognise the importance
  of context for learning
• often occurs informally and incidentally
• often occurs through work problems and
  challenges
• often practice-based
• usually situated
• Cannot just pick up best practice evidence
• Need to use context dependent evidence in a
  realistic way - take account of time, political,
  and financial pressure

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The need to take account of integrity

• Integrity is an essential virtue for the research
  and practice of HRD
• AHRD Standards on Ethics and Integrity (1999)
• maintaining and documenting expertise
• working within boundaries of expertise
• respecting others and avoiding discriminatory
  and exploitative relationships
• managing multiple relationships with managers,
  clients, participants etc.
• legal compliance and social responsibility in
  data collection, interpretation, explanation,
  and evaluation.

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The need to take account of credibility

• HRD researchers are usually outsiders
• HRD practitioners are often at the middle of the
  organisational hierarchy or are also outsiders
• HRD practitioners not always familiar with wider
  business
• HRD practitioners are not always reflective
  practitioners
• Line managers often do not understand HRD or see
  it as a low priority
• Credibility of both HRD researchers and
  practitioners will be enhanced by
• Establishing dialogue
• Creating a negotiated understanding
• Promoting reflection
• Translating research findings

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Conclusion

• We need to go beyond just thinking about
  achieiving good practice in HRD because
• We need to relate theory to the real world
  practice of HRD
• We should discourage practitioners from pursuing
  best practice solutions
• We need to encourage a more evidence-based
  approach to practice
• BUT we also need this to take account of
• context
• integrity
• credibility