10th International Conference on Human Resource Development Research and Practice across Europe
Streams
The Practice of HRD - A Practitioner Paper Stream
Stream Leader:
Jeff Gold, Leeds Business School: Leeds Metropolitan University.
e-mail: j.gold@leedsmet.ac.uk
We are seeking contributions from any area of learning where HRD is practised and those who research practice in a collaborative way. It is often suggested that there is a gap between HRD research and those who practice HRD. Is this the case? Well, we are not convinced; we just know that there are many areas of practice in HRD which are informed by research but we also know that there are some fantastic examples of practice that inform or ought to inform research.
The future of HRD must be based on joint understanding of researchers and practitioners. We do know that such a divide for many is pretty meaningless, the best practice what they research and research what they practice. We want contributions to celebrate this union. So, tell us stories, demonstrate what you do, challenge us to do better. We also want papers that take the notion of 'practice' very seriously and have a clear collaborative stance to what is researched and the relationship with those involved in practice.
Learning and performance at work
Stream leader:
Dr Paul Smith, University of Teesside.
e-mail: p.j.smith@tees.ac.uk
Performance management is a strategic and integrated process that can deliver success in organisations by improving the performance of people who work in them as well as developing the competencies of teams. These developments need to be supported by learning in the workplace which is becoming recognised as being critical to improving organisational performance.
Organisations are increasingly looking for more effective types of learning and this stream is looking for contributions that address the growing importance of workplace learning to improve organisational performance and critically explore the role of the HRD practitioner in the process.
Topic areas include, but are not limited to:
- The role of learning in improving individual and organisational performance
- New and changing forms of learning in developing individuals/teams
- The design of working environments that promote the development of learning at individual, team and organisational levels
- The role of workplace learning in career development
- The changing role of HRD professionals
This stream would welcome empirical and theoretical papers but would particularly encourage case studies of good practice.
Leadership and Management Development
Stream leader:
Jonathan Winterton, Toulouse Business School
e-mail: j.winterton@esc-toulouse.fr
The competences of managers and leaders and the role that they play in developing subordinates are central to improving competitiveness in the face of global competition. Paradoxically, while these issues assume even greater significance during a period of serious and sustained economic crisis, this is precisely when cuts are most likely to be made in the training and development budget.
What can be done to maintain efforts to increase participation in learning, including the development of managers and leaders, given that the economic crisis will not change the perennial problem of an ageing workforce and serious gaps and shortages in managerial skills?
To what extent can new technologies and modes of accessing learning enable the challenges to be met effectively and, in resource terms, more efficiently?
In this stream, we welcome reflections on leadership and management development that will shed light on these and other questions, such as:
- What can HRD professionals do to ensure managers have the required competences for the future?
- What competences do managers need, and to what extent do they vary with sector and level of responsibility?
- What do employers expect in terms of competence from entry-level managers?
- How are companies identifying and developing future leaders?
- Can mentoring by senior managers accelerate learning of new entrants?
- What differences are still evident between the classic models of management development associated with America, Britain, Japan, France and Germany?
- How do the problems associated with engaging managers in learning differ from the problems encountered with other employees?
SMEs Entrepreneurship and HRD
Stream Leader:
Professor Thomas Garavan, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Ireland,
e-mail: Thomas.garavan@ul.ie
The SME and entrepreneurship context provides an important context and set of challenges for HRD. There is strong research base indicating that SMEs and entrepreneurial ventures invest significantly less in training and development and they have less sophisticated HRD systems and processes.
Entrepreneurs have unique development requirements and differing motivations to invest in HRD. This stream investigates a number of important questions including the following:
- What factors facilitate and inhibit HRD in SMEs and Entrepreneurial ventures?
- What factors are relevant in explaining the attitudes, motivations and values of entrepreneurs towards HRD?
- What competencies are required for the effective SME?
- What policy initiatives have worked in the context of encouraging SMEs to invest in training and development?
These and other questions provide significant opportunities for HRD researchers.
Business Strategy, Organisational Learning and Knowledge Management
Stream Leaders:
- Professor Paul Iles, Leeds Business School, Leeds Metropolitan University, e-mail: p.iles@leedsmet.ac.uk
- Dr Gina Grandy, Mount Allison University, Canada, e-mail: ggrandy@mta.ca
The Business Strategy, Organization Learning and Knowledge Management stream covers a broad area for submissions.
The knowledge economy and the increasing globalisation of business and communications are dominating forces in relation to national economic and social policies.
In a rapidly evolving environment where knowledge is the main organisational currency, firms must be able to learn fast, adapt regularly to new challenges, ensure that their employees can construct and share strategically valuable knowledge as well as acquire technical and interactive skills, and continuously improve and innovate.
This stream explores how HRD can develop as a key process for organisations operating in a global knowledge economy, contributing to strategy building, organisational learning and knowledge management.
In this conference stream there is a special interest in the ways in which learning is organized explicitly to inform strategic development and renewal; and the extent to which everyday organizational knowledge is transferred into strategic thinking, incremental improvement and radical innovation of work processes, products and services.
Prospective authors might also consider the links between strategy, learning and knowledge
and the overall conference theme of 'Developing Leaders and Managers'.
Authors should be explicit about the contribution the paper intends to make to research and/ or practice, and offer abstracts that have a clear aim and coherent method.
Gendered Issues in HRD
Stream Leaders:
The addition of a stream of Gendered Issues in HRD to the HRD International Conference can only be a positive step in progressing 'gender on the agenda' in HRD.
Our aim for this stream is to advance contemporary thinking and practice in HRD by providing an opportunity and 'voice' to discuss gendered issues in HRD. We expect the nature of papers to be diverse, acknowledging that the gendered nature of HRD is evident and investigated from a range of perspectives.
The stream builds upon the Critical Issues in HRD stream in that we aim, by bringing together theory and practice, academics and practitioners, to challenge contemporary approaches, practices, surface assumptions, reveal illusions and question accepted gender blind, gender neutral or gender defensive approaches to HRD. The result of our debates during the conference should be heightened awareness and commitment to change in relation to how we investigate, theorise and practice HRD.
We seek to attract a diverse range of empirical, conceptual and practice based papers in order to develop knowledge, understanding and develop the practice of HRD.
We are interested in papers on gendered issues in HRD from all areas of the world and encourage contributions from HRD academics and practitioners on this highly important area of HRD research and practice. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to;
Gendered issues of HRD strategic implementation; management development, leadership development, new and changing forms of learning, workplace learning, union approaches to learning and development, organisational development, business and management education and challenges for HRD practitioners; gendered issues of international HRD; researching and publishing in HRD; HRD research theory and learning theories; growing debates concerning masculinities and femininities in organisation.
Constructing and Deconstructing: Insights on Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics within HRD
Responsibility & Ethics - What is the extent of our responsibility?
Stream Leaders:
The framing of the ongoing debate around CSR conventionally begins with Friedman's denial of the 'social responsibility of business'. Among the arguments he deployed however were those not so much about social as individual imperfection - that managers could not work out the extent of their own responsibilities. This presents a complex and ongoing challenge to HRD professionals.
In the context of CSR and ethics, what then should corporations be responsible for and in developing employees and managers, what responsibilities should HRD practitioners be trying to develop?
We invite contributions that discuss these issues. Topic areas include, but are not limited to:
- How is the meaning of 'responsibility' constructed?
- What do managers consider themselves to be responsible for?
- How can ethics and CSR be embedded into organizations?
- To whom should corporations be responsible and for what?
- What is the role of HRD practitioners in developing individual and corporate social responsibility?
- Does the understanding of 'responsibility' differ between genders, sectors, nations, economic models or stages of development?
- What is the relationship between responsibility and accountability?
Papers can be empirical, theoretical, or a mix of both.
We especially welcome case studies that show different approaches to HRD, have the potential to spark discussion and challenge conventional thinking.
Critical Perspectives on Human Resource Development
Stream Leaders:
This stream seeks to attract a diverse range of empirical, conceptual, and theoretical papers focused on critical human resource development (HRD). The aim of this stream is to promote knowledge, understanding and practice of critical HRD, and to consider advances in research, practice and teaching relevant to the development of a critical orientation.
HRD professionals face a reality of serving two masters, both dominant social structures (usually organizations with a performative orientation) and those who work within those structures. A critical orientation goes beyond a common understanding of critical (meaning important or carefully evaluated); a critical HRD professional seeks to challenge contemporary practices, expose assumptions, reveal illusions and question tradition.
Topics might include, but are not limited to:
- Theoretical foundations of critical HRD
- Post-modernism and critical HRD
- Values, praxis and critical HRD
- Alternative research methods in critical HRD
- Feminist and critical race orientations
- Discourses of critical HRD
- Critical HRD in practice
- Identifying and evaluating attempts to implement critical HRD in practice
- Critical HRD within the complexities of multi-cultural, global organizations
- The practical implications of critical HRD
- Ethical and political dimensions of teaching, researching and practicing critical HRD
- The challenges for critical HRD professionals
- Problematizing complexity and imperfection in practice
Working papers as well as refereed papers are welcome. Proposals should comply with the conference requirements and should focus on demonstrating relevance and value to the stream as well as on the usual focus of demonstrating a sound conceptual or evidence base.
Innovative Approaches to Supporting Learning and Teaching in HRD
Stream Leader:
Jim Stewart, Professor of HRD, Leeds Metropolitan University, e-mail: j.d.stewart@leedsmet.ac.uk
The teaching and learning of HRD remains under researched and therefore little is known about approaches that are adopted; which work well and which not; what evidence base informs such judgements and what might therefore constitute good practice in teaching HRD.
A recent joint initiative by the UFHRD and the BMAF sponsored HRD SIG to fund research into teaching and learning of HRD has addressed this situation to some extent. This stream is concerned with learning and teaching of HRD in educational programmes and proposls from some of the UFHRD/BMAF projects among others will therefore be welcome.
The term educational programme can be interpreted broadly and so the programme concerned does not have to have HRD in its title and nor does it necessarily have to be a qualification or HE award. The term HRD can also be interpreted broadly and so subjects and topics can be very specific.
Some examples are given below. What submissions must do is demonstrate how they are relevant to the stream. They should also focus on approaches which are aimed at developing knowledge, skills or values that support the professional practice of HRD.
Taking our broad interpretation, then possible programmes will include the following:
- HE awards at undergraduate or postgraduate level in HRD
- HE awards at undergraduate and postgraduate level in HRM or general management that contain a HRD component
- CIPD certificate level awards
- Short courses/programmes aimed at continuing professional development.
Examples of subjects or topics of programmes can include the following:
- HRD
- Facilitation skills
- Coaching
- Use of blended learning in HRD
- International HRD
- Management and/or leadership development
- Mentoring
Some examples might fit best with the overall conference theme and others to alternative streams. If though the focus of the paper is on learning and teaching then this stream is relevant.
Other subjects and topics in addition to those mentioned will also be relevant. We are particularly interested in the final concept in the theme title. This is 'innovation'. It is often debated whether HE is part of HRD practice. If it is then we might expect HE teaching and learning of HRD to lead the way in devising new and innovative approaches to HRD practice.
We hope this stream will provide some evidence on whether or not that is the case. Again, we will adopt an open mind on what might constitute an innovation in learning and teaching as we wish to encourage submissions from contributors who believe what they are doing is novel and different and so want to share that practice with others. Working papers as well as refereed papers are therefore welcome.
Proposals should comply with the conference requirements and should focus on demonstrating relevance and value to the stream as well as on the usual focus of demonstrating a sound conceptual or evidence base.
Theoretical and Methodological Issues in HRD
Stream Leader:
Dr Hedley Malloch, IÉSEG School of Management, Catholic University of Lille,
e-mail: h.malloch@ieseg.fr
The stream seeks to extend and deepen the debates on theory and method in HRD research, in particular on the relationship between theory, method and practice. We welcome submissions in the following areas:
- The underpinning philosophies of HRD research
- The theoretical underpinnings of HRD
- Alternative research methods in HRD
- Researcher values and research methods
- The evaluation of HRD policies and programmes
Papers dealing with the ontology, epistemology and axiology of HRD theories are also warmly invited.
The Doctoral Workshop
Coordinated by:
Professor Mark Saunders, University of Surrey, email: mark.saunders@surrey.ac.uk and Professor Beverly Metcalfe, Liverpool Hope University, e-mail: metalb@hope.ac.uk
Submissions are encouraged from current doctoral students who have completed at least six months of their doctoral studies.
The track is designed to enable doctoral students to discuss their doctoral work whilst it is at a developmental stage. This will allow comments and feedback obtained during their presentations and subsequent discussions to be incorporated into the subsequent stages of their research and in the writing of their theses.
Papers will be presented in an informal "round table" setting in which both presenters and other delegates will be expected to participate actively. Presenters will be asked to bring full copies of their papers and any additional handouts such as PowerPoint slides to give to the audience. The timetable will be devised to allow sufficient time for constructive feedback to each presenter.
The workshop will conclude with a timetabled open forum question and answer workshop session. During this workshop session, participants will be invited to ask a panel of experienced doctoral supervisors to respond to issues and questions relating to any aspect of the doctoral process with which they have concerns.
All conference delegates are invited to attend all or part of this track, listen and offer constructive feedback.
Submissions for inclusion in the Workshop should include the following information about your thesis:
- The title of the research
- The research problem, including theoretical issues, why the research is interesting and important
- Research Methodology - research strategy, design, method
- Key findings to date - these can be empirical and/or what's in the literature
- Problem areas (if any)
- What I intend to do next
In Association with:
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