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

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., …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