Human Resource Development: Critical Perspectives and Practices

Human Resource Development: Critical Perspectives and Practices is a landmark textbook on HRD scholarship and practice and is a significant departure from the standard HRD texts available. Based on Bierema and Callahan’s framework for critical human resource development, this book develops an understanding of HRD that addresses both key and contested issues of practice associated with relating, learning, changing, and organizing for organizations.

This book covers the basic tenets of HRD, interrogates the dominant paradigms and practices of the field, teaches readers how to critically assess HRD practices and outcomes, and provides critical alternatives. The text also addresses HRD as a contested field and the importance for HRD professionals to reflect on their values, maintain their sanity, and retain their employment while attempting to do this difficult work that serves multiple stakeholders.

The text weaves in Points to Ponder, Case in Point, and Tips & Tools features and exercises, giving readers an insight into HRD issues across the globe. This critical text offers an exciting alternative to the instrumentalist, managerialist, and masculine perspective of other books.

Designed for students and practitioners, this textbook will be essential reading for upper-level courses on human resource development, human resource management, and adult education.

Laura L. Bierema is Professor, Program of Adult Learning, Leadership, and Organization Development in the Mary Frances Early College of Education at The University of Georgia. Author of over 100 publications, Dr. Bierema’s scholarly interests include adult and organizational learning, critical HRD, women’s learning and leadership, career development, and coaching.

Jamie L. Callahan, Ed.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Organization Studies and Ethics at Durham University in the UK. Jamie’s research addresses issues of power and privilege in organized contexts, leading her to explore marginalized groups’ experiences of leadership, learning, and organizational transformation. Her particular passion is championing gender equity.

Joshua C. Collins, Ed.D., is Associate Professor of HRD in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His research seeks to interrogate learning, development, and change in organizational settings, focusing on the experiences of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities.

Carole J. Elliott, Ph.D. is Professor of Organisation Studies, Sheffield University Management School, UK. Carole’s research interests are interdisciplinary and address issues of power asymmetries in a range of empirical contexts, including gender and leadership learning, media and popular culture representations of leadership, and critical HRD.

Tomika W. Greer, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Human Resource Development (HRD) in the Department of Human Development and Consumer Sciences at the University of Houston (UH). She conducts and publishes research related to career development, including post-secondary education and training, career transitions, and work-life integration for women and marginalized groups.