This descriptive exploratory study sought to assess the values priorities of individuals and groups across various HRD occupational specialties. Findings showed that, in general, respondents felt the most important guides to the practice of HRD should be those emphasizing performance-related outcomes. However, results also showed meaningful variation in top-priority values across individuals and significant differences in the comparative importance of six values across education level, degree of involvement in organizational practice, nationality, and occupational and stakeholder groups. Findings suggested that HRD professionals operate from a structured set of values and that the relative importance of those values may vary according to the settings and challenges faced in practice.
Human resource development (HRD) is a field of theory and practice focused on the development of human resource and organizational systems, their rational and optimal use, and the establishment of an enabling environment in which these systems are maximally effective in their results. As such, it includes a complex range of activities and interventions (training, education, coaching, counseling, career development, job and work system design, process improvement, organizational development, strategic planning, and so on) that are used in numerous ways to achieve a variety of outcomes. Consequently, HRD draws on several scientific disciplines, among them economics, psychology, sociology, adult learning, anthropology, ethics, systems, management and leadership, human resource management, and industrial engineering, as well as organizational behavior, development, and change. The field of HRD also encompasses a range of philosophical orientations, all of which have profound implications for how HRD is carried out. This repertoire of philosophy, theory, and practice is necessarily dynamic because, as Watkins (1998) has pointed out, the ongoing changes in economic and social needs, and work system processes, culture,