The turbulent field of human resource development: tensions between policy, people, performance and place

Dr Tom Short University of South Australia Research Fellow CRC for Rail Innovation

School of Education, University of South Australia, Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work (CREEW), Mawson Lakes Boulevard, Mawson Lakes, South Australia, SA5095. Tel: +61 8 8302 5421 Email: tom.short@unisa.edu.au Conference stream: Critical HRD Perverse incentives and perverted governance the role of HRD in economic crisis

The turbulent field of human resource development: tensions between policy, people, performance and place
Tom Short Abstract
This paper examines in a critical way three aspects of human resource development (HRD) and is based on a study in the New Zealand manufacturing sector during a period we now refer to as preglobal financial crisis (GFC). Although the GFC and its dubious connections with HRD were an unknown phenomenon when this study was conducted between 2006-2008, we draw insight from the literature, case studies and in-depth discussions with HRD managers, to reveal that during this period leading up to the GFC a mood of confusion and tension prevailed among HRD practitioners about the changing nature of their professional role and contribution, not only to business success, but also towards helping individual employees and wider society. Much of this tension stemmed from a growing and uncomfortable realisation that HRD was becoming strategically detached from mainstream HRM and beginning to take-on an operational function quite different in principle to the more hegemonic notion of resources management. Secondly, the paper examines how learning and development projects in case study organisations were influenced, to a large extent, by senior executives who were eager to align HRD with performance outcomes and thereby satisfy offshore multi-national owners, of which the organisations were subsidiaries. In these settings, the term alignment was used by managers as a unifying notion of strategic intent and this paper expands on what alignment meant for HRD policy and practice. Finally, by evaluating the research findings against important developments in the area of critical HRD, the paper considers how HRD may, or may not, have contributed to the business environment leading up to the GFC. The paper concludes that HRD practitioners may not have played a leading role in creating the GFC, but instead assumed a position of being knowingly concerned about inequities that were emerging at the local level from corporate demands made offshore in the pursuit of shareholder value.

Introduction
The harmonious link between HRD policy and management practice, made popular in the 1990s, has become polarised in recent years, or at least strained as professionals involved in HRD, a traditional sub-field of human resource management (HRM), have reacted to being drawn further into a business mindset that suppresses human development and treats workplace training as a mere commodity to exploit organisational interests (Hart 1992; Cunningham 1993; Fenwick and Lange 1998; Hatcher 1999; Lee 2001; Spencer 2001; Swanson 2001; Short and Harris 2010). Paradoxically, after decades of intense activity in the area of workplace development under the duel influences of new vocationalism and neo-liberal macro economic policy (Bullock, Stallybrass and Trombley 1977), line managers are reporting increased levels of dissatisfaction with the contribution of HRD programs, while HRD professionals are becoming disillusioned with their lack of recognition, especially at a strategic level (Amble 2007). These untidy and often confusing relationships between HRM, HRD and line management (Trehan 2004) have been made more tenuous by the Global Financial Crisis of late 2008, where a resultant lack of trust and confidence in management has resurrected widespread concern over job security (HCA 2011). Furthermore, through historical connections with HRM, HRD professionals are increasingly caught-up in a tension field of conflicting beliefs as they broker a mixed agenda of educating individuals in the learning supply chain for the good of society as a whole (Short, Bing and Kehrhahn 2003) while deploying organisational development initiatives that aim to align learning projects and performance outcomes with business strategies. Arguably, these tensions are underpinned by four significant, but interconnected episodes in the relatively short life of HRD. Firstly, the steady growth in awareness of critical HRD studies and what it means for practice (Fenwick 2004; Sambrook 2009); secondly, confusion over which academic discipline HRD secures its body of knowledge (Torraco 2005; Chalofsky 2007); thirdly, the contradictions inherent in the attractiveness of HRD as a vertically integrated praxis of HRM strategy and finally, an emerging realisation that HRD has become situated in a mixed philosophical paradigm

somewhere between the sharpness of modernity and uncertainty of postmodernism (Wasti and Poell 2006; Anderson 2009). Using the GFC as an important signpost to evaluate the complexity of these issues contained within the discipline of HRD, this paper draws insight from a study conducted in New Zealand to contextualise the discussion about the role, place and influence of HRD in challenging economic times.

Literature
We can begin by exploring HRD in a pre-GFC work context which was, and may still be, characterised by increasing levels of globalisation, expanding workforce diversity, the business sustainability agenda, emerging technology, skills shortages and perpetual change (Damon 2009). Human resource practitioners are frequently centre-stage in helping organisations to deal with these challenges, but defining the place of HRD within the broader field of HRM has an unstable history and is burdened with political ideology. Critical HRD, as an emerging field of study, is only just beginning to scratch the glossy surface of modern-day HRM policy, as it challenges the neo-liberal and human capital perspectives of the last two decades that have put forward vocational-based training, competence-based qualifications, aligned learning, accreditation and performance improvement as the only things that matter in organisations (Jesson and Newman 2004). Among other things, critical HRD questions the inequities and dubious principles embedded within new management practices (NMPs), which have become not only widely acceptable, but also taken for granted in the area of organised workplace training. NMPs have their origins in the post-Taylorist principles of mass production and Japanese kaizen techniques including business process reengineering, lean production/high performance work organisation, team-based HRD systems, total quality management and the learning organisation (Smith, Oczkowski, Noble et al. 2004; Simmonds and Pedersen 2006). Since the early 1990s, NMPs have become woven into the strategic fabric of organisations, especially larger enterprises looking to achieve business excellence or world-class status. NMPs are typically undertaken under the general heading of HRD, or organisational development (OD), yet studies on the long-term sustainability of NMPs in turbulent times and the strategic contribution of HRD have shortcomings and generate much debate (Turner 2004; PricewaterhouseCoopers 2005). The role of HRD Human resource professionals have long yearned for recognition in the boardroom as a credible strategic partner (Michelson and Kramer 2003), but while HRM appears to be making some progress in this area by adopting a business mindset, the evidence suggests that HRD matters in larger organisations are considered only at the implementation phase of strategic decision-making and normally have a lack of direct involvement in the formulation of corporate strategy (Purcell 1989). Increasingly, the advice of HRD professionals is sought after all major organisational change decisions have been made (Smethurst 2006) and this means HRD professionals, as dedicated adult educators, struggle to have a strategic voice. The 2007 Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Annual Survey of 635 HRD managers (CIPD 2007) showed that 36 percent of the respondents senior managers only consulted them about learning and development activities once they had made the major decisions and nine percent did not involve them at all. Moreover, the HRD managers inability to influence strategy is reduced further when executives become overly concerned about the unquantifiable value of people development projects or poor evaluation of training outcomes (Bailey and Clarke 2008). At an ontological level, and no less important to the establishment of professional identity, there is much confusion about where HRD draws its body of knowledge as a discipline. According to (Chalofsky 2007), HRD has long been considered as a field with an interdisciplinary foundation (p. 431) and the process of defining HRD is frustrated by the apparent lack of boundaries and parameters (p. 433), borrowing heavily over the years from other disciplines in the fields of social and behavioural sciences, learning theory and business (Galagan 1986, p.4). HRD professionals have long searched for credibility (Iles, Preece and Chuai 2010, p.125) and in academia, HRD studies perch awkwardly between the more established disciplines of business, education and social policy. Moreover, the study informing this paper found important theoretical connections between HRD and

the science of humanistic geography, (Short 2008, p. 245). HRD studies struggle for their own space and freedom [within the so-called discipline], distinguishing themselves from HRM or vocational education (Sambrook 2004, p. 617). There are two opposing viewpoints; first, by becoming wedged between the mainstream academic disciplines HRD could be perceived as fertile ground and an attractive place for applied study. On the other hand, this unclear positioning is open to critical interpretation as being situated in the disciplinary wilderness, resulting in a lack of interest from purists on all sides and diluting the importance of HRD (Short and Harris 2010). Of greater concern, Steumer and Kommer (2002) argued that since we did not have an agreed definition of HRD, it was questionable whether HRD as a discipline existed. Alignment In recent years, strategic alignment has become one of those fashionable phrases used by executives and HRM professionals to imply an overall condition where stakeholders involved in an enterprise contribute in a unified way towards its success (Streumer and Kommers 2002; Bailey and Clarke 2008; Short 2008b; Anderson 2009). Until recently, very little was written to define precisely what was meant by alignment, in the context of workplace learning, but texts acknowledge that its presence can contribute significantly to an organisations achievements (Seaman 1998). In an aligned organisation, HRD (sometimes called learning or training and development) is neatly directed towards team goals, which in turn are aligned to complement strategy. It is a process that enables an organisation to close the gap between its intended and actual performance. However, critics of alignment argue that developing people merely to fulfil an organisations strategic goals is fraught with management hegemony and highly problematic in terms of achievability and equity (Brookfield 1995), which is also a key are of concern from a critical HRD standpoint. Moreover, attempts to understand the notion of alignment quickly become entangled in the multifarious nature of business strategy, because what works for one organisation today may be totally inappropriate for another organisation tomorrow (Thompson 1995). Some have argued that alignment is just another term used by managers to drive performance improvement and disregards the psychological and social impact on individuals when they experience misaligned or feel out of place with their work environment (Short 2009). Furthermore, in considering alignment as a hegemonic series of actions, Brookfield (1995) offers a notion he calls hegemonic assumptions and these relate to those [activities or events] we think are in our own best interests, but that have actually been designed by more powerful others to work against us in the long term (1995, pp.14-15). In this argument, the simple assumption posits that alignment is a utilitarian benefit for all employees and people who work towards alignment are good for the enterprise. At first, this idea appears to be a win-win scenario, but later it becomes apparent that the concerted efforts of employees frequently deliver more benefits to shareholders than they do to individual stakeholders. In principle, the notion of alignment is essentially a management term used to describe an overarching condition of organisational utopia, when everyone in the enterprise contributes and performs in-line with the business objectives (Senge 1990; Short 2008a). Senge (1990) talks of misalignment as a corrosive force that creates disunity; pulling the organisation away from its goals and contributing to a concept called strategic drift (Thompson 1995). The following discussion suggests that alignment has been pursued by organisations, through a series of HRM/HRD interventions, to create a holistic fusion of knowledge, attitude, behaviour, structure, financial performance and overall wellbeing. Politically confusing, alignment appears on face value to be socially constructed, yet underneath it conceals dubious notions of anti-libertarianism and power. The ultimate goal over time is that the majority of people in the organisation see these alignment activities as wholly natural, preordained and working for the common good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interests (Gramsci 1978). The subtle tenacity of hegemony lies in the fact that over time it becomes deeply embedded and part of the culture (Brookfield 1995, p.15). Alignment can easily fall into this paradigm. For employees, being aligned is meant to be gratifying, collegial, engaging and contribute greatly to job satisfaction. For managers, having employees who are aligned is thought to ensure harmonious working relationships, less conflict, higher team morale, and ironically, propel and fulfill the individuals self-esteem as a self-perceived leader. Therefore, by looking at the hegemonic assumption, it is perhaps easy to hold an opinion that a state of alignment is constructed by, and serves best, the powerful minority within the workplace - the

executives and shareholders. At a psychological level, people are subjected to mass meetings and briefings; when theyre exposed to a range of corporate indoctrinations expounding the organisations vision, values and goals. Typically, firms launch these initiatives with elaborate presentations and marketing gimmicks to win-over their employees. In these situations, the marketing becomes much more than a practical solution to the organisations desire for alignment. Indeed, it involves the conveyance of a highly specific and culturally laden praxis for selling that smuggles-in with itself an unaccounted for viewpoint on human needs and the best means to their satisfaction (Mazzarella 2004, p.850). This is most apparent when executives feel their organisation is misaligned and the management effort becomes directed towards tilling the soil and loosening the weeds among sources of resistance (Wenger and Snyder 2000, p. 143). Alignment becomes the mantra for success and in this paper, one case study example from a chief executives assessment of misalignment led to the implementation of a company-wide initiative called project squeeze (Short 2008a, p.131). However well-intended and innocent; the employees soon perceived this action as nothing more than a managerial clamp-down.

Research method
Drawing on data from a larger study on how organisations aligned HRD and learning with business strategy, this paper analyses the occupational tensions for HRD practitioners by examining the perceptions and professional contributions of HRD managers, how they established an identity and how they actually influenced what line managers and employees considered as important for organisations to succeed. The study, which includes feedback from an independent focus group (IFG) and three case study organisations, was conducted in the New Zealand manufacturing sector during 2006-2007, a socio-economic period directly preceding the GFC in late 2008. An interpretive approach was used in the research, since the study was primarily concerned with perceptions and experiences. An interpretive approach is based on the view that people socially and symbolically construct their own organisational realities (Berger and Luckman 1967). It construes knowledge as being gained through social constructions such as language, shared meanings and documents. Thus the individual is cast as a central actor in a drama of personal meaning making (Fenwick 2001, p. 9). In this way, individuals are understood to construct their own knowledge through interaction with environments (constructivism). The data in this paper reflects and element of interdisciplinarity in the form an academic-practitioner collaboration to share knowledge borne of different sources from eight case study interviews and a specially convened IFG of five human resource practitioners in New Zealand during 2007 (Gibbons 2001). The IFG was recruited from a selection of diverse organisations to provide commentary on a range of HRD issues and practices. None of the participants knew each other before the meeting, but the researcher knew all of the individuals through previous connections. The IFG members, comprising two early-career male HRD managers and three senior female practitioners, had each experienced HRD in an international setting. They were drawn from five industry sectors, including manufacturing (MF), automotive retail (AR), local government (LG), commercial banking (CB) and tertiary education (TE). These industry sectors were selected with the intent of obtaining as diverse a spread of views as possible. Additionally, supporting information was obtained from CEOs and senior HRD managers in three case study organisations identified as ZB, EC and AA. Of these three managers, two were female and two were non-HRD trained practitioners who had made a lateral career transition into HR. Each of the three case study organisations were subsidiaries of larger multinational corporations, where major strategy decisions on HR was determined or at least overseen by executives in Europe or North America. The findings that follow are structured around four themes developed from an extensive review of literature, notes taken at the IFG meeting and the case study interview transcripts. This strategy was chosen to capture the essence of how a small selection of HRD practitioners responded not only to their professional contribution to their organisations success, but at the same time, reconciled their own professional responsibilities as adult educators in the wider context of lifelong learning. (The codes used after quotations indicate the organisation and/or industry sector). While these findings cannot be taken as generic outcomes for all sectors, they offer insight into the work of HRD professionals and the challenges they faced.

Discussion
Reflections from HRD practitioners in New Zealand New Zealand (NZ) is a small nation of four million people [recorded in the 2006 census] and is endowed with an abundant supply of natural resources, innovative people and a post-colonial pioneering spirit that values pragmatism, diversity and hard work. As a sovereign nation, with historical connections under the British commonwealth and democratic systems, NZ is a relatively small economy by world standards, but in recent years has attracted much interest from overseas investors who were eager to take advantage of the low cost/high value labour market. NZ society is culturally diverse and draws migrants from all over the world to settle alongside indigenous Maori and Polynesian citizens. The success of this rich cultural mix is grounded in a number of socio-political characteristics attributed to developing nations such as individualism, libertarianism and strong egalitarian values - often used as a benchmark in other parts of the world. The manufacturing and commercial base of NZ originated from its British influences, when offshore firms were granted partial ownership and substantial autonomy to run their own affairs. However, in the last two decades, increasing numbers of NZ organisations and especially those with globally attractive products have been acquired and subsumed into multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and thereby lost part of their identity and authority to make strategic decisions in exchange for business certainty and growth. In this study, five of the seven responding organisations were formally UK/NZ owned prior to becoming part of a foreign MNE - an environmental situation that has defined the context of this report. Globalisation and culture The impact of globalisation on HRD professionals in this study was marked by three key developments; the growing influence of power from overseas parents, the tension between utilitarian versus nationally distinctive learning contexts and the growing needs of a transient workforce in an era of global mobility. Respondents noted that being part of a MNE was both enabling and constraining at the same time. For example, there was a degree of comfort (EC) from being supported financially by a European or North American MNE, who generally took a longer-term perspective on investment returns, but this short-term security was offset by a clear requirements to comply with corporate policy, use elaborate business systems and meet high performance expectations. In each of the three case studies, the parent organisation was using globally-established business software application systems that required extensive employee training and these included Systems, Applications and Products (SAP), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other human resource management information systems (HRMIS). Collectively, the learning challenge of implementing these complex applications drew attention away from the local employee-facing role of HRD (Michelson and Kramer 2003; Francis and Keegan 2005) and fastexhausted training budgets - leaving very little time or energy for other forms of professional development. The effect was a narrowing of HRD activities towards objectivist and product-based learning at the expense of other forms of personal or career development. As a consequence, in nonessential areas, informal coaching and mentoring by ill-prepared line managers had replaced traditional forms of workplace training, but were often undertaken with mixed success and much to the dismay of HRD professionals (ZB). Secondly, as the case study subsidiary organisations became consumed in the MNE mindset they risked losing their distinct characters, often drawn from a local context. In the past fifteen years, increasing attention has been given in the literature towards the role of organisational context in the development of people (Black and Earnest 2009) and respondents in this study said individuals were much more sensitive to the contextual characteristics of the internal environments than they first appeared. These contexts included the unique organisational culture built over many years and a strong identification with national pride. HRD managers were seen to play an important role in engaging employees within the unique contextual characteristics of their enterprises a finding confirmed by Hay Group research that had shown up to 30 percent of variance in business results could be explained by differences in the internal work climate created by managers and without a proper context, people simply failed to perform (Ambler 2007). For example, in adult education, the conduciveness of the learning environment itself can be an all-important part of developing a desire to

learn (Knowles, Holton and Swanson 2005, p. 81) and in the case study organisations, a large proportion of the learners were made up from indigenous Maori and Pacific Island workers. In culturally diverse settings, such as these, long-standing traditions and local protocols were seen as an all-important part of the learning mindset and often had spiritual or metaphysical connections with the environment itself. Maori people have deeply held societal values about the connections between past/present, work/home, and education within the meeting place, sometimes called a Marae. For these employees the detached and businesslike mindset of an offshore parent MNE was somehow farremoved from what really mattered in their minds eye. In each of the three organisations, decades of local knowledge and tacit experience had accumulated in the place context and played a key part in developing a number of unique products of global interest. Employees were intensely proud to be part of these innovations and found it difficult to trade-off ownership of their products to an offshore entity for the sake of unguaranteed security. In these emotionally charged settings, HRD professionals were often seen as people who bridged cultural gaps between the management ethos and individual workers values - a role reported to be slipping away from an increasingly detached corporate HRM function (AR). Thirdly, in the last decade of the 20th century, an increase in global mobility of people and impending retirement of older workers had presented HRM and HRD professionals with a major challenge in the form of a skills shortage. In New Zealand, this period also presented record levels of workforce participation and low unemployment. One respondent said;
The greatest problem we have in New Zealand is recognising the ageing workforce and realising that those people over the age of 50 constitute almost the majority of people in the workforce. Seeing the needs of an older worker, and what drives them, is very different from what you see in a 25 year old, and we havent come to grips with this (TE).

Skills shortages in the manufacturing sector were being resolved with increased participation from hitherto minority groups such as women, returning retirees, migrant workers and occasionally young apprentices. However, the infusion of fresh people had produced not only an increasingly diverse workplace culture, but also an environment predicated by relatively lower levels of literacy and numeracy and an endless need to train people in basic skills before the could progress to the more advanced/vocational areas. Transient and older workers were reported to have different learning needs than other distinctive groups (such as Generation X or Y employees) and HRD professionals were struggling to find one common approach that best fulfilled the diverse needs of these groups. Migrant workers were increasingly taking-on roles well below their qualifications and experience in an effort to find a place on the job ladder (AA), but this professional inequity was seen as major blow to the self-esteem of job seekers as well as a potential loss to the overall economy (AA). Moreover, Westernbased quality management frameworks with a key HRD component, such as the UKs Investors in People and Business Excellence models were proving to be unpopular and inappropriate in dealing with these culturally diverse environments, where English was often the second or third language. Role of HRD practitioners We know that HRD professionals are regularly torn between their responsibilities to both stakeholders and shareholders (Short, Bing and Kehrhahn 2003) and earlier in this paper we reviewed the professional challenges and contradictions facing HRD practitioners, not least questions about their professional identity. Three findings in this study appeared to be significant; the variability in strategic influence afforded to HRD professionals; the value of their contribution to the enterprise; and the impact of these developments on their level of personal motivation. The uneasy relationship between HRD and strategy was thought to stem from a historic inability to express the benefit of training in a way that senior managers could value. Poor evaluation of training projects over the decades had fuelled scepticism among senior managers who needed hard evidence of payback (Horwitz 1999; Sloman 2004). Yet ironically, these concerns about the benefits of training ran parallel with ever-increasing budgets as huge amounts were spent on HRD projects each year at the national level. For example, the estimated forecast for the UK in 2008 was GBP24 billion, and later revised to GBP36 billion - a figure close to 60 percent of New Zealands Gross Domestic Product for 2008. This keenness to offer unproven training at almost any cost, on such a large scale, and

potentially to accommodate complex management/business systems was perceived as irresponsible and raised questions about the rashness of spending that did not exist in other forms of capital investment. In some ways, it explained why HRD projects were dispensable and all too frequently became the first casualty of rationalisation. In this study, three problems were reported to frustrate the credibility of training: Evaluations of major HRD projects that directly affected business performance were considered a much higher priority than smaller developmental activities, but these projects were reported as the most difficult to evaluate and were rarely scrutinised. HRD or OD programs often ran in parallel with other projects, or overlapped, making it difficult to isolate the benefits of any one training intervention. HRD programs were frequently initiated without any analysis of what learning was to be achieved and how the tacit skills existent within the workforce might negate the need for more development. Accordingly, much time and effort was wasted training people who did not need it.

One respondent commented; I have been [working] here for three years and attended three different training courses on coaching skills, organised by our L&D manager. Why cant we select just one approach and stick to it what a waste of money (ZB). As a result, the culmination of these developments had made it difficult for HRD professionals explain their true contribution to the organisation. In this study, the focus group of HRD managers, said it was becoming clear that many organisations were starting to split the HR roles into two distinct segments and located each in a different part of the structure. For example, three organisations were increasingly using HRD in an operational capacity to work closely with line managers on team or individual projects, while OD was adopting a more strategic position by working alongside HRM executives on change management projects. However, this arrangement was already proving to be a challenge. Commenting about the growing remoteness of HRM, one respondent who was a learning and development manager said:
Quite often, theyre [HR staff] off running courses for Africa [everywhere], but what does it have to do with anything else? You can actually find they are running programs with the best intention that actually does not align at all. I think the only way you can specifically align is to carry on with a partnership at a high level and always go back to what the business strategy is for the future. If they [the courses] do not contribute, then do not do them. (LG)

Alignment Earlier, the subject of alignment was reviewed as an emerging notion (amongst other things) that directed the learning content of HRD programs towards business goals. Misalignment was reported to be an undesirable and inefficient condition that was strategically risky. Moreover, it was thought that when an organisation moved out-of-line from its intended pathway, the business experienced a phenomenon called strategic drift and ran the risk of failure (Thompson 1996; Short 2008b). So what was meant by the term alignment, how did alignment impact on HRD and what were the implications from a critical standpoint that seeks to understand how HRD contributed to an economic downturn such as the GFC? Findings show that alignment was largely a management mindset (Short 2008b; Anderson 2009) and was by nature a subjective matter. In this study, alignment was to some extent sentimental, insofar as executives used the term alignment with hope, but could not easily define what they meant and reverted to recalling past events and experiences something later called retrospective appreciation (Short 2008a, p. 254). Strategically, alignment was meant to ensure that components of the internal organisation responded to the external environment and thereby gave the organisation a degree of competitive advantage over its rivals. For all of these reasons, NMPs and HRD practices were considered as vital to achieving a state of alignment ... though no unified measure of achievement was forthcoming. In this study, six themes of alignment were identified and these are detailed in Table 1 with a brief caption of their purposes and emerging tensions from the critical HRD perspective. The six examples in Table 1 suggest that alignment did not always serve the best interests of all employees equally. From a critical standpoint, the power contained within alignment rested with

senior managers and when employees were not perceived to be aligned, they seldom lasted very long. Furthermore, those managers located at the top of an organisation had much more influence over deciding how alignment was defined and appraised. In this study, the inherent inequities within dysfunctional HRM alignment tools, such as performance management systems, were acknowledged by the HRD focus group. Performance management systems were used to monitor the alignment process, but these activities were not taking place at all levels or being administered consistently and in some cases were undertaken in an unprofessional manner by line managers who were largely untrained or unwilling to contribute.
Table 1 Six themes of alignment (Short 2008a) Theme Cognitive Identified purpose
Securing the employees capacity to intellectualise their work environment and use knowledge effectively Collective programming of the mind to form identity and engagement with the company vision, values and beliefs Empowering people to lead change, take action to solve problems, train others and secure performance improvement Meeting the financial expectations of senior managers and stakeholders, responding to market needs Enabling people to follow process-based systems to enhance communication, performance and auditable compliance Presenting a positive face to the external world, upholding environmental awareness and responding to social concerns

Critical HRD Tension

The potential risk of inequity in becoming cognitively aligned - as some employee groups are given more opportunity for training and development than others Inconsistent an immoral during periods of major change when what is currently valued and recognised suddenly becomes inappropriate for the future The behaviours mandated may not take account of the cultural context and people become out of place with their work settings Overt management hegemony and greed, where short term gain and profit is seen as more important than longer-term sustainable development outcomes Modernist, positivist and anti-libertarian. Reduces everything to a systematic process and overlooks or downplays the human elements of work Lacking in authenticity and potentially disingenuous if not undertaken for the legitimate reasons. Using political trends to elicit a positive external image

Affective

Behavioural

Commercial

Structural

Societal

Alignment strategies are therefore open to interpretation and a critical HRD analyst might seek to uncover the discriminating factors present within an aligned workplace or review whose interests were being served. Findings in this study revealed that employees further down the organisational structure had much less freedom to choose their training activities, which were largely prescribed by the immediate needs of the job and/or learning new organisational systems. Employees with development needs in literacy, language and/or numeracy were frequently discounted from attending mainstream HRD programs until their skills had improved, but this action marginalised some work groups such as migrants, temporary staff and indigenous workers. It was found that when these employees were deprived of learning opportunities they quickly became detached and felt out of place at a deep psychological level (Short 2008a, p.238). Ironically, line managers were quick to notice the reduced levels of engagement in their work teams and became critical of HRD, who tried to diffuse the tension by maintaining a professional outlook and took solace in the fact they were helping colleagues at a basic human level to develop new skills and prevent personal embarrassment. In the midst of this complex environment, HRD managers talked frequently about their increasing involvement with operational training and lack of influence in shaping the strategic priorities. HRD wanted to be involved in strategy, but in a self-fulfilling way it was much easier to prove their value at the operation level because the challenge of aligning and evaluating training activities with corporate goals was becoming too problematic. Short-term/operational training events were much easier to evaluate than larger OD programs. However, in spite of their desire to become more strategic, HRD managers were sceptical about how alignment of OD could be measured in a reliable way because many projects and priorities changed before they were completed or when a new CEO was appointed.

In a fast changing global environment, achieving a state of alignment was considered more of a management dream than a HRD reality. In previous economic downturns (such as the GFC) it remained a point of conjecture whether an aligned organisation had responded better or worse to events.

Conclusions
This paper has reviewed a number of macro-economic and managerial characteristics associated with the pre-GFC business environment and considered the role of HRD practitioners. For over two decades prior to the GFC, macro-economic ideologies had shaped the policy on workplace learning activities, with a resultant and progressive shift towards the HRM contingency mindset. This change was driven largely by Western neo-liberal politics, market globalisation, growing competition from developing nations and a steady increase in merger and acquisition activities by multi-national enterprises (MNEs). Throughout this period human capital theory had prevailed, vocational training had become commoditised and HRD, as an untested and uncertain discipline, had experienced a huge growth in popularity and become embedded with an array of new management practices. Many of these new management practices had arisen from a need for quality improvement and strategic harmonisation within MNEs. To cope with demand, the outsourcing of HRD to an ever-increasing industry of training consultants had become the norm - because organisations had cut back on their internal training expertise in earlier recessions. As a result of these developments, important decisions on major HRD/OD projects had become expensive and elevated to the boardroom. Organisations were expending huge amounts of time and money on training-related projects in an effort to win competitive advantage yet the full value of these training projects was largely unknown as reliable information was difficult to find of any strategic evaluation. At the same time, and in a perverse way, HRD practitioners had seen their role shift back and forth between positions of strategic significance to purveyors of operational training. Moreover, by drawing knowledge and theory from diverse disciplines, the academic viewpoint argued that HRD practitioners were forever caught-up in the wilderness of interdisciplinarity, though purists saw valid connections with business, education theory and the social sciences. As organisations sought to align HRD with business goals, HRD practitioners were becoming uneasy at the perceived narrowness of their influence and the increasingly hegemonic standpoint taken by corporate HRM in the pursuit of profit. In this study, HRD practitioners operated within MNE environments and balanced their work between professional duties to the foreign shareholders with moral responsibilities to their local stakeholders. In a similar show of concern, mainstream employees within the case study organisations believed it was important to retain a sense of equity, identity and recognise the value of local culture in addition to fulfilling the ever-increasing corporate expectations. HRD practitioners were frequently drawn to this nationalistic fervour, as brokers of good practice, to smooth tensions and retain engagement at the local stakeholder level, but this was proving to be a strain. Finally, in relation to the GFC, it is perhaps unreasonable to neatly label HRD practitioners as protagonists, opponents or mere spectators of business practices that led to the credit crisis, because HRD managers may have been caught-up in each of these positions at different times, in different contexts and for different reasons. It was evident that a lack of role clarity within HRD, the desire for strategic credibility and passion for workplace learning to be taken more seriously at the corporate level was generating tension, occupational confusion and causing concern among HRD professionals. Nevertheless, it was possible to say with some degree of certainty that HRD managers in this study had adopted a mindset of knowing concern and that sooner or later the insatiable appetite within corporate entities for performance and profit at almost any cost would not only be unfulfilled, but would also be unsustainable. In legal terms, to be knowingly concerned is a phrase used to describe accessorial and vicarious liability. To what extent HRD professionals fully understood any falsity concealed within their training and development activities might determine the extent to which they intentionally participated in any infringement of morality leading to the economic crisis. What we have come to know in hindsight is that since the GFC in late 2008, employee confidence in management and those activities associated with management, such as HRM/D, has declined markedly and the reconstruction of credibility has once again become a major priority for HR professionals.

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