Thomas Garavan
L&D professionals in organisations: much ambition, unfilled promise
Garavan, Thomas; Heneghan, Sinead; O'Brien, Fergal; Gubbins, Claire; Lai, Yanqing; Carbery, Ronan; Duggan, James; Lannon, Ronnie; Sheehan, Maura; Grant, Kirsteen
Authors
Sinead Heneghan
Fergal O'Brien
Claire Gubbins
Yanqing Lai
Ronan Carbery
James Duggan
Ronnie Lannon
Prof Maura Sheehan M.Sheehan@napier.ac.uk
Professor
Prof Kirsteen Grant K.Grant@napier.ac.uk
Professor
Abstract
This monograph reports a study investigating the roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations. The study investigates the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise, and perceived effectiveness. We gathered data using multiple methods: survey (n=440), Delphi study (n=125) and semi-structured interviews (n=30). The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. Finally, we found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise. We discuss the implications for theory, research and practice.
Citation
Garavan, T., Heneghan, S., O'Brien, F., Gubbins, C., Lai, Y., Carbery, R., Duggan, J., Lannon, R., Sheehan, M., & Grant, K. (2020). L&D professionals in organisations: much ambition, unfilled promise. European Journal of Training and Development, 44(1), 1-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-09-2019-0166
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 1, 2019 |
Online Publication Date | Nov 23, 2019 |
Publication Date | 2020 |
Deposit Date | Nov 4, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Nov 27, 2019 |
Print ISSN | 2046-9012 |
Publisher | Emerald |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 44 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 1-86 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-09-2019-0166 |
Public URL | http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2286507 |
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