Despite its existence for over six decades, the practice of human performance technology (HPT) has not been widely accepted within organizations. Varying levels of confusion surround the understanding of HPT, which has been influenced by myriad fields and disciplines. Although HPT is focused on improving performance at the organizational, team,…

This study examines major theory developments in human resource (HR) fields and discusses implications for human performance technology (HPT). Differentiated HR fields are converging to improve organizational performance through knowledge-based innovations. Ruona and Gibson (2004) made a similar observation and analyzed the historical evolution…

Preparing employees for the immediate work in front of them is a challenge. While most companies are still mastering effectively training their own workforce, some, such as "Training" magazine Top 10 Hall of Famer The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, have set up for-profit academies open to the public. When Ritz-Carlton won the national Malcolm…

Conventional human performance technology has had a good run. It allowed scientific and data-based research to be applied to improve performance, usually just individual performance. The field must be expanded without losing this individual performance focus to include a scope that measurably improves performance for individuals and organizations…

"Preparing for Work," developed by Equipped for the Future at the Center for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee, is a skills-based course designed for implementation in organizations and agencies involved in preparing their clients and students for entry level work. Each of the instructional modules that comprise the…

For flooring manufacturer Mohawk Industries, it is not enough to teach employees how to be great. The long-time Training Top 125 contender focused last year on helping employees to blaze their own learning paths while meeting organization imperatives. That meant improving the technology that supports employee performance, as well as creating new…

The early childhood education and care industry in Australia is undergoing a shift in philosophy. Changes in policy are driving the industry towards a combined early childhood education and care focus, away from one on child care only. This move has implications for the skilling of the child care workforce. This research overview describes the…

In early nineteenth-century England, workers now known as Luddites roamed the countryside destroying machinery that they saw as creating unemployment and upsetting their traditional way of life. They believed that the growing mechanization of production, what people would now call technological change, and the expanding volume of trade ushered in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the influence of the human resource (HR) manager on the quality of service in an academic college, and the human resource management (HRM) outcomes of the process. Design/methodology/approach: The paper relates to a customer satisfaction survey. More than 120 questionnaires were completed by the…

Traditionally, expertise theories have focused on skills acquisition with little regard for the domain or contextual factors affecting expertise development and retention. Because the development, retention, and recruiting of individuals with expertise is critical to organizational success, it is essential that HRD professionals understand the…

Relocation, an intraorganizational geographical transfer, can be used for human resource development (HRD) because of the positive developmental effects it can induce. It is, thus, important for HRD professionals to understand the implications of relocation to ensure it is used appropriately and effectively as an HRD technique. Research on…

The People Capability Maturity Model[R] (People CMM[R]) advocates a staged approach to organizational change. Developed by the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, this model seeks to bring discipline to the people side of management by promoting a structured, repeatable, and predictable approach for improving an…

Needs assessment plays an important role in training and human performance improvement efforts, but the literature contains little research on this topic. This study extended previous research on the Performance Analysis for Training (PAT) model of needs assessment by examining its implementation to determine environmental and occupational health…

These four papers are from a symposium that was facilitated by Richard J. Torraco at the 1995 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD). "Performance Technology--Isn't It Time We Found Some New Models?" (William J. Rothwell) reviews briefly two classic models, describes criteria for the high performance workplace…

These four papers are from a symposium that was facilitated by C. J. Wallington at the 1995 conference of the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD). "The Effectiveness of an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) on Learning and Performance" (Theo J. Bastiaens, Wim J. Nijhof, Harmen J. Abma) reports on a study of Dutch…