Over recent years, approaches to education and training have become more informal, situated, outcome focused and experiential. Within this context, formal learning now plays a greatly diminished role, being supplanted by activity-based and technologically-based learning. This article, structured in the form of a polemic challenges readers to…

The recent vehement and highly visible critique of the North American business school curriculum illuminates core tensions in the field of human resource development (HRD) related to the role and responsibility of the profession in for-profit organizations and the educative process by which future practitioners are prepared. If the business school…

In reference to Peter Kuchinke's manuscript, the author points out that current MBA programs suffer from a myriad of ills that are somehow detrimental to organizations and that there is a similar problem with human resource development (HRD) programs (hence the reference in the title to "birds of a feather"). In this article, he shares his…

Peter Kuchinke has written a powerful and relevant article that should generate much discussion in the human resource development (HRD) community. The focus of Kuchinke's paper is the question of whether HRD academic programs should emulate the value preference of business schools or march to a different drum. In this response, the author argues…

This article fills a theoretical gap by identifying an understudied subject area for human resource development (HRD) theory building, learning participation of HRD interventions in organizations. The topic has critical significance in current HRD practices, such as concerns on e-learning dropout rates and HRD measurement and evaluation. First, a…