Critically Challenging some Assumptions in HRD

O'Donnell, David; McGuire, David; Cross, Christine

Abstract

This paper sets out to critically challenge five inter-related assumptions prominent in the HRD literature. These relate to: the exploitation of labour in enhancing shareholder value; the view that employees are co-contributors to and co-recipients of HRD benefits; the distinction between HRD and HRM; the relationship between HRD and unitarism; and, the relationship between HRD and organisational and learning cultures. From a critical modernist perspective, it is argued that these can only be adequately addressed by taking a point of departure from the particular state of the capital-labour relation in time, place and space. HRD, of its nature, exists in a continuous state of dialectical tension between capital and labour - and there is much that critical scholarship has yet to do in informing practitioners about how they might manage and cope with such tension.

• Working Paper Type: Working Paper
• Publication Date: 2005
• Deposit Date: Aug 3, 2016
• Publisher: SSRN
• Keywords: capital-labour relation, critical modernism, critical theory, employment relation, HRD, human resource development
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/323786
• Publisher URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832564