The document discusses the evolution of human resource management (HRM), human resource development (HRD), and organization development (OD) as they converge into a unified approach for the twenty-first century. It highlights the increasing importance of people as the primary source of competitive advantage for organizations, prompting HR to innovate and integrate various functions. Additionally, the analysis outlines a historical context for these fields and examines their distinct yet interconnected trajectories over the last century.

1. Reflection Paper 1
Reflection Paper 2
Reflection Paper 3
THE MAKING OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY HR:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERGENCE OF
HRM, HRD. AND OD
Wendy E. A. Ruona and Sharon K. Gibson
Twenty-first-century HR is emerging to uniquely combine
activities and -processes of human re-
source management (HRM), human resource development
(HRD), and organization develop-
m.ent (OD)—three fields that "grew up" distinct from each
other. Contributing strategically to
organizations demands that HRM, HRD, and OD coordinate,
partner, and think innovatively
about how they relate and how what they do impacts people and
organizations. An analysis of
the evolutions of these fields helps to explain why the
distinctions between them continue to
blur and how the similarities among them provide the necessary
synergy for HR to be a truly val-

2. ued organizational partner. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Introduction
It has hecome a common refrain to hear
the many challenges Facing organizations
today. These include glohalization, the
pressure For speed and innovation, the
transition to a service economy with its ex-
traordinary emphasis on customers, the
pressure For Financial perFormance, the im-
pact oF technology and e-husiness, and
changing workForce demographics. While
this list is hy no means comprehensive, it
provides the context that is propelling pro-
Found change in modern organizations.
Perhaps the change that has most im-
pacted organizations in the past decade has
heen the growing realization that people
are an organization's primary source oF
competitive advantage. It is now widely ac-
cepted that an organization's "...success is
determined hy decisions employees make
and hehaviors in which they engage"
(Mello, 2002, p. 4). It has never heen more
important For organizations to Foster and tap
the strategic potential oF people. Managing
people as an organization's primary asset
has inspired HR to hecome increasingly
more eFFective at developing programs and
policies that leverage talent to align with or-
ganizational competencies and at executing
organizational strategy.

3. MacDonald (2003) states that "creating
the next generation work environment—
highly collahorative and capahle oF not just
Fostering, hut also encouraging, the instant,
seamless movement oF ideas and expertise—
Correspondence to: Wendy E. A. Ruona, Assistant Professor,
Department of Oceupational Studies, 213
Rivers Crossing, 850 College Station Road, Athens, CA 30602,
Tel: (706) 542-4474, Fax: (706) 542-
4054, E-mail: [email protected]; Sharon K. Cibson, Assistant
Professor, Organization Learning and De-
velopment, Mail #MOH 217, 1000 LaSalle Avenue,
Minneapolis, MN 55403, Tel: (651) 962-4387, fax:
(651) 962-4169, E-mail: [email protected]
Human Resource Management, Spring 2004, Vol. 43, No. 1, Pp.
49-66
© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, inc. Published online in Wiiey
InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).
DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20002
50 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
will present both intellectual and technical
challenges for us as professionals" (p. 262).
HR faces these challenges as it contemplates
organizational strategy and workforce impli-
cations. It also, however, must reflect on
these challenges as they relate to HR itself.
The HR function and its processes have
changed as a direct result of these organiza-
tional dynamics. The next-generation HR is
emerging as a field that uniquely combines
activities and processes that have traditionally

4. heen associated with human resource man-
agement (HRM), human resource develop-
ment (HRD), and organization development
(OD)—three fields that "grew up" distinct
from each other and, in many cases, separate
in their theories and practices (Grieves &
Redman, 1999; Sammut, 2001).
Today's requirement to contribute strate-
gically to organizations demands that HRM,
HRD, and OD coordinate, partner, and inno-
vatively think about how they relate and how
what they do impacts people in organizations.
An analysis of the evolutions of these three
fields helps to explain why the distinctions
among the three areas continue to blur and
how the similarities among them provide the
necessary synergy for HR to be a truly valued
organizational partner. The purpose of this
article is to contextualize the emergence of
twenty-first-century HR (as a meta-profes-
sion, if you will, that can accommodate mul-
tiple fields under its umbrella) in a historical
and comparative context. To do this, the evo-
lutions of HRM, HRD, and OD are traced
from their formal and distinctive beginnings
in the early-to-mid-1900s through the dawn
of the twenty-first century where we see great
convergence. Implications for HR and its pro-
fessionals are then explored.
Methodology and Conceptual Framework
Our approach for this historical analysis en-
tailed tracing patterns of events, forces, and
ways of thinking that impacted the develop-

5. ment of HRM, HRD, and OD, and conduct-
ing a critical analysis of their origins and con-
sequences (Marius, 1995). We then sought a
descriptive frame to assist us in organizing the
reporting of our findings, which was aligned
with prior literature on HR evolutions in the
field. In conducting a historical review of
HRM in American industry, Lawrence (1985)
found that there was no generally recognized
framework for describing the development of
HRM in the United States. After reviewing a
number of current HR texts and articles, we
selected Brockbank's (1999) model, entitled
Dimensions of Competitive Advantage for HR
Activities (see Figure 1), to organize our find-
ings, as this framework was designed specifi-
cally for HR, incorporated the concept of in-
creasing competitive advantage that is
predominant in the field today, and, most im-
portantly, enabled us to express these trends
on a historical continuum.
Brockbank's (1999) framework charac-
terizes professional HR practices along two
sets of dimensions: (a) operational or strate-
gic and (h) reactive or proactive. In addition,
Brockbank reconfigured the matrix pre-
sented in Figure 1 to create a timeline of in-
creasing competitive advantage along which
we can further understand and assess the
progress of HR (see Figure 2).
Although we found our historical analysis
to best align with the progression of Brock-
bank's framework, the distinction made be-

6. tween operational and strategic levels of HR
is also congruent with other models that are
extensively used in the HR field. In Ulrich's
(1997) four-factor HR roles model, which has
received considerable attention in the litera-
ture, the administrative expert and employee
champion roles have a day-to-day/operational
focus and are, therefore, aligned with Brock-
bank's operational (reactive and proactive)
quadrants. Similarly, the strategic partner and
Strategic
Operational
Support
strategy
Implement
the basics
Reactive
Create
future, strategic
alternatives
Improve
the basics
Proactive
• Slightfy adapted from llrockhan
Figure 1. Brockbank's (1999) Dimensions of Competitive

7. Advantage.*
The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR 51
Operationally Operationally Strategically Strategically
Reactive Proactive
Figure 2. Continuum of Competitive Advantage.*
change agent roles, as defined by Ulrich
(1997), have a future/strategic focus and most
closely align with the strategically reactive and
proactive quadrants. Brockbank further ar-
gues that combining the dimensions of strate-
gic/operational and reactive/proactive (e.g.,
being proactive may look different when it is
done in operational ways versus strategic
ways) can help the HR field organize its think-
ing about the past, present, and future. We
suggest that Brockbank's framework is also
useful in thinking about the related disci-
plines of HRD and OD and, overlaid against
an analysis of HRM, provides us with unique
insights into the forces and trends that are af-
fecting all three fields.
Brockbank (1999) describes the activities
that take place in the various quadrants as fol-
lows. Operational activities are generally rou-
tine and focus on things that must be done for
the organization to operate on a daily basis.
Strategic activities are those that are organiza-
tionally comprehensive, planned, integrate

8. multiple facets, and are considered high, long-
term "value-added" in terms of their contribu-
tion to business success. Reactive activities
are in response to a need of the organization,
while proactive activities involve the creation
of operational improvements or strategic al-
ternatives. Brockbank demonstrates that
HRM's focus has evolved over time—pro-
gressing along a continuum from opera-
tionally reactive to operationally proactive to
strategically reactive to strategically proactive.
In that progression, he argues, HRM has pro-
vided increasingly higher value to organiza-
tions and, thereby, has increased its contribu-
tion to organizations' competitive advantage.
This does not imply, however, that various
practices within all four quadrants are still not
necessary and, in many contexts, quite valued.
Evolutions of HRM, HRD, and OD
The following section traces the evolutions of
HRM, HRD, and OD as three distinctive
Reactive Proactive
• Slightly adapted from Brockhank (t</</9)
fields to unfold their unique, yet strikingly
similar, histories and to explore the trends
currently affecting each field. To do this, an
extensive literature review of over 50 articles
and chapters was done to briefly and suc-
cinctly chronicle each field by focusing on
dominant trends in each field during the
past 50-plus years. Brockbank's (1999) analy-
sis began to unfold the history/trends of HRM

9. (which he called HR). This analysis expands
upon that chronicle, and also adds analyses of
both HRD and OD for an even more holistic
view of what we observe to be the emergence
of a more integrated twenty-first-century HR.
Although there remains considerable dis-
pute as to whether OD is a distinctive profes-
sion in its own right (Church, 2001; Grieves
& Redman, 1999; Weidner & Kulick, 1999),
the evolution and practices of HRD and OD
as two distinctive emerging fields were inves-
tigated separately for this article. This was
done for a few reasons. First, each of these
fields has a distinctive history that must be
analyzed separately to fully understand its
unique lineages. Second, it is only relatively
recently (vvdthin the last 15-20 years) that
these two fields have often been operational-
ized together in practice. As this analysis will
show, there is ample evidence that OD did,
and continues to, emerge as a distinctive pro-
fession, has not yet been subsumed by its
close relatives (such as HRM or HRD), and,
in fact, has been a critical contributor to the
strategic advancement of the family of prac-
tices that comprise strategically proactive
philosophy and action in organizations today.
Since the evolutions of HRM, HRD, and
OD did not necessarily occur during the
same time spans, we focused on the opera-
tional definitions of each of Brockbank's
(1999) quadrants and provide our interpreta-
tion of the time span during which each field
was characterized by these dimensions. The

10. activities that characterize each field during
each phase are also summarized and pre-
sented in Figure 3.
52 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
X
Operationally Reactive
• Basic personnel functions L
of managing people 1
(staffing, compensation, 1
compliance, labor 1
relations) 1
•Administrative
• Regulatory
(EEO/Affirmative Action,
Safety/OSHA, etc.)
Operationally Proactive
J • Improve the efficiency of
HR practices and the
workforce (reengineering
and process
centralization)
• Manage latror costs
• HRM metrics
• Employee satisfaction.

11. involvement, and
organizational climate
Strategically Reactive
• Support strategy
execution through people
J and culture
1 • Emphasis on results
1 • HR technology systems to
1 automate "routine"
1 processes
• High-performance work
systems
• Change management and
OD
Strategically Proactive
1
1 • Contribute to
organization's core
competence
J • Design and manage HR
1 systems as strategic
1 assets
1 •Create strategic
1 alternatives
• Culture change to support
radical innovation

12. Operationally Reactive Operationally Proactive Strategically
Reactive Strategically Proactive
' Job and task analysis
• Instructional systems
design
'Job-focused training
• Instructor-driven delivery
• Needs assessment
• Individual performance
improvement with a focus
on factors outside of
training
•Alternative methods for
training deiivery (e.g.,
computer-based)
• Evaluation
• Systemic models and
methods for whole system |
performance
improvement and
performance consulting
• Multiskilllng
•Cross-training
•Constnjctivist learning
approaches
• Performance support
systems

13. • Ensuring knowledgeable,
agile, reflective workforce
and workplace
•Organizational learning
and leaming organization
• Self-directed learning and
development {coaching,
Informal learning, etc..)
• Knowledge management
Operationaiiy Reactive Operationaily Proactive Strategically
Reactive Strategically Proactive
' Personal development
• Interpersonal relations
'Group dynamics and team |
building
' Process consultation
• Sociotechnical
approaches
• Market-driven and
"packaged" solutions to
accelerate change
• Assessments to
demonstrate intervention
effectiveness
• Strategic, long-term, and

14. multiple-level change
•Alignment of strategy,
design, and management
• Flattened organizational
designs and collaborative
approaches
• Organizational
transformation
• Whole systems change
• "Inter" focus
•Visioning, scenario
planning. Future Search
• Transorganizational OD
21st-Centurv HR
• Centraiity of people
• Focus on whole
systems and
integrated solutions
• Strategic alignment
and impact
• Capacity for change
Figure 3. The Evolutions of HRM, HRD, and OD: Toward a
Twenty-First-Century HR.
Operationally Reactive

15. During the First World War and in the follow-
ing decade, the U.S. workforce experienced
major changes. The shift from craft to massed
lahor, concentrated immigration and, in large
part, the organizing efforts of the union move-
ment produced the need for a "personnel"
function to manage these lahor issues. Wage
controls and the lahor demands of World War
II created additional pressure on organizations
and, after the war, an entire union-manage-
ment system was estahlished in response to the
labor movement's continued strength (Freed-
man, 1990; Lawrence, 1985). By the 1960s,
organizations had also recognized the need to
establish specialized employee relations pro-
grams for their nonunion workforce. In addi-
tion, a significant increase in government reg-
ulations affecting the employment relationship
required organizations to develop policies and
procedures to ensure regulatory compliance
(Dyer & Holder, 1988; Freedman, 1990).
Meanwhile, the organization itself hecame in-
creasingly important in the day-to-day lives of
U.S. workers. These kinds of dynamics led to
the formal estahlishment and growth of what
we currently call HR.
The State of HRM (Reginnings-Mid-1980s).
Since its inception as a separate function es-
tahlished to manage labor issues, person-
nel's role has grown to include the hasic ad-
ministrative activities associated with people
management in organizations (Brockhank,
1999). The role of personnel during this pe-

16. riod focused on the transactional compo-
nents of the various functions—including
henefits, employment/recruitment, compen-
sation, EEO/affirmative action, safety and
OSHA compliance, lahor relations, and
training and development. The performance
The Making of Twenty-First-Cenlury HR • 53
of these functions was technical in nature.
Employment planning was concerned with
forecasting work. Lahor relations focused on
administering collective bargaining agree-
ments. Selection, training, performance ap-
praisal, and compensation emphasized indi-
vidual jobs and descriptions (Beaumont,
1992). These functions were viewed as "dis-
associated programs and practices" (Dyer &
Holder, 1988, p. 1-14) and were not seen as
part of a broader HR strategy.
The State of HRD (Beginnings-Late 1970s).
Training has literally existed throughout all
recorded history of the human race. It has pro-
gressed through key phases such as appren-
ticeship and craft guilds, the emergence of cor-
poration schools in the early 1900s, the focus
of (and government funding for) vocational ed-
ucation and military training in the United
States, through today's modern-day manage-
ment (Miller, 1996; Swanson & Torraco,
1994). It was during the industrial era that
training became a central feature in modern
organizations with organizations focusing on

17. the "basics" of creating and integrating com-
ponents of the instructional process and adult
learning into a coherent system (Clark, 1999).
The term human resource development (HRD)
was defined by Leonard Nadler (1970) as "a
series of organized activities conducted within
a specific time and designed to produce be-
havioral change" (p. 3). Throughout this pe-
riod the terms training, training and develop-
ment, and HRD were used almost
interchangeably and focused exclusively on or-
ganized learning experiences.
By the early 1980s, training departments
in organizations had become quite common,
as organizations wanted workers trained more
efficiently and cost-effectively. Training during
this era was predominantly based on perceived
and short-term organizational needs. Task
analysis was common, and training was closely
linked to a person's job. Training in organiza-
tions was instructor-driven and -led, and firmly
entrenched in behaviorism, which emphasized
behavioral changes resulting from learning.
Training was also beginning to be channeled
toward management and supervisors to sup-
port their central role in the environment out-
side of the classroom (Harris, 2000).
The State of OD (Beginnings—Mid- to Late
1970s). The field of OD was founded on the
strong humanistic values of its early founders,
who aimed to improve the conditions of peo-
ple's lives in organizations hy applying behav-
ioral science knowledge and interventions (see
Cummings & Worley, 2001; French & Bell,

18. 2000; Sanzgiri & Gottlieb, 1992, for reviews of
these early contributors and foundational
ideas). These early founders were steeped in
the T-group movement, which focused heavily
on group dynamics, and the survey research
and feedback movement. These movements
utilized methods that also ultimately fed the de-
velopment of action research, a methodology
that is now central to many processes in OD.
However, early OD interventions can be
categorized as primarily focusing on individ-
uals and interpersonal relations. OD was es-
tahlished as a social philosophy that empha-
sized a long-term orientation, the applied
behavioral sciences, external and process-
oriented consultation, change managed from
the top, a strong emphasis on action re-
search, and a focus on creating change in
collaboration with managers (Sanzgiri &
Gottlieb, 1992). Burke (1995) states that "in
the mid-1970s, OD was still associated with
T-groups, participative management and
consensus. Theory Y, and self-actualization
... the 'soft' human, touchy-feely kinds of ac-
tivities" (p. 8). OD during this time was prac-
ticed predominantly hy external consultants
who worked with top-level managers.
Operationally Reactive Period Analysis. During
this evolutionary phase, all three fields were
focused on those activities that needed to be
accomplished for the organization to effec-
tively operate on a daily basis and were in re-
sponse to needs identified by the organization.
Skills required of these professionals to per-

19. form these activities were both technical and
interpersonal. HRM's engagement in transac-
tional and administrative activities was di-
rectly in response to the organizing efforts of
the labor unions and the pressure of increased
government regulation. HRD professionals
were predominantly engaged in training activ-
ities based on short-term organizational needs
and designed to elicit behavioral change
linked to a person's job. Similarly, OD was fo-
During this
evolutionary
phase, all three
fields were
focused on those
activities that
needed to he
accomplished
for the
organization to
effectively
operate on a
daily hasis and
were in
respotise to
needs identified
hy the
organiza tion.
54 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
In the 1980s,
factors such as

20. deregulation
and imports
introduced new
competitive
pressures on
organizations,
triggering a
shift in
priorities
toward internal
business
issues...
cused on individuals and interpersonal rela-
tionships—the hasic activities associated with
human relations in organizations. These activ-
ities contrihuted to the organization's ahility to
respond to employee needs during this period.
Operationally Proactive
In the 1980s, factors such as deregulation
and imports introduced new competitive
pressures on organizations, triggering a shift
in priorities toward internal husiness issues
(Beaumont, 1992; Dyer & Holder, 1988).
Organizations during this era were greatly in-
fluenced hy glohal competition and total
quality management (TQM; Freedman,
1990). Workforce unionization levels, partic-
ularly in the private sector, hegan to decline
and the United States saw relative growth in
the service, white-collar employment sector.
The recession of 1991-1992, along with
recognition of the high costs of the hierar-
chical structure of many companies, resulted

21. in a reduction of staff functions and a strong
focus on hecoming more flexihle, responsive,
and productive (Brockhank, 1999).
The State of HRM (Late 1980s~Early 1990s).
This time period was characterized hy a shift
from the administrative and transactional
focus of the personnel department to a focus
on improving the efficiency of HR practices.
Activities included outsourcing, reengineer-
ing of HRM processes, transferring the re-
sponsihility for employee transactions to the
line managers as well as employees, and the
centralization of transaction processing
through the estahlishment of HR service
centers (Brockhank, 1999). Efficiency was
also stressed in terms of HRM's practices
with the workforce. The emphasis was on
providing flexihle and innovative alternatives
to manage lahor costs while increasing the
efficiency and productivity of employees.
These included practices such as purchasing
of services, restructuring, downsizing, uti-
lization of contingent lahor, and incentive-
hased compensation. HRM was increasingly
involved with personnel reductions and reor-
ganizations (Freedman, 1990). Metrics were
developed to measure the productivity of the
various HR functional areas (Brockhank,
1999), and HR professionals were expected
to assess the cost implications of their work.
There was also an increase in practices de-
signed to enhance the organization's knowl-
edge of internal employee satisfaction and
organizational climate (Beaumont, 1992;

22. Brockhank, 1999) as well as to strengthen
employees' involvement in the organization.
The State of HRD (Late 1970s-Late 1980s).
During this period, we saw an increasing con-
vergence hetween training and OD. Trainers
hecame interested in training methods emerg-
ing out of OD and they discovered that their
hehaviorist philosophy (with its focus on the
environment outside of training) was congru-
ent with OD professionals who were applying
interventions to increasingly complex levels of
organizational systems (Miller, 1996). New
methodologies for individual performance im-
provement hegan to emerge (Gilhert, 1978),
and there was increasing focus on how to en-
hance an individual's environment and foster
those factors that support a person applying
newly learned skills on the joh.
The pragmatism that was affecting HRM
and OD also spurred developments in train-
ing around needs assessment, task analysis,
evaluation, and return-on-investment. Com-
petency-hased learning came into vogue as a
way to focus on critical components of the
joh and reduce unnecessary training. Behav-
ioral modeling hecame even more popular in
the 1980s and continues to he a mainstay of
many training designs (Miller, 1996).
Trainees also hegan to receive training via
computers as instructional designers worked
to leverage technology to create designs that
were interactive and learner-centered as well
as more time- and cost-efflcient.

23. The State of OD (Mid- to Late 1970s-Mid- to
Late 1980s). In the late 1970s, a new pragma-
tism emerged in OD (Sanzgiri & Gotdieh,
1992). First was the rise of sociotechnical and
technostructural approaches that had heen a
vital part of early OD. These approaches were
extended and operationalized to expand OD's
focus further heyond individual-level joh de-
sign (Tichy, 1983). This resulted in larger-
scale and longer-term projects and shifted at-
tention heyond the individual and workgroups
The Making of Twenty-First-Centur)' HR • 55
to the larger work context. By the mid-1980s,
an analysis showed that OD texthooks dedi-
cated almost two-thirds of their diagnostic
chapters to organizational-level issues rather
than those at the individual and group levels
(Brown & Covey, 1987).
It is also evident during this period that
there were "market pressures to make the
field more tools- and technology-driven and
more responsive to pragmatic needs of the
corporate world" (Sanzgiri & Gottlieh, 1992,
p. 61). Emphasis was placed on accelerating
phases of change and, as a result, there was a
marked increase in packaged and prescriptive
solutions, tools, and techniques. The OD
consultant began to change from a nondirec-
tive, process-oriented practitioner to an au-
thoritative specialist (Burke, 1995) as the
tension hetween the humanistic concerns

24. that founded OD and the "hottom line" grew.
There was also increased pressure for OD to
demonstrate its effectiveness and a surge in
publications, assessments, and tools to im-
prove the link between OD interventions and
organizational results.
Operationally Proactive Period Analysis. Con-
tinuous improvement, efficiency, and cost-ef-
fectiveness characterized the activities of all
three fields during this operationally proactive
stage. HRM's activities were focused on im-
proving the efficiency of HRM practices
through outsourcing, reengineering, transfer-
ring of transactional work to line managers,
and developing HR metrics to measure pro-
ductivity. HRD began to look at new method-
ologies for individual performance improve-
ment and focused on enhancing an
individual's environment in order to support
the application of newly learned behavior (i.e.,
improved on-the-job performance). OD
shifted their focus to the larger work context
and responded to increased pressure to facili-
tate faster change processes and link OD ini-
tiatives with business results. Each field,
while still operational in focus, was actively
engaged in enhancing and measuring its ac-
tivities and determining the most cost-effec-
tive methods of operation. While all three
fields continued to emphasize technical ex-
pertise (the "basics" of the respective work), it
was apparent that a broader business perspec-
tive was increasingly necessary and that HR
professionals needed to assess the cost and ef-

25. fectiveness of various HR decisions.
Strategically Reactive
During this period, many organizations rec-
ognized that human capital was central to
competitive advantage. Organizations faced
many challenges including increased global-
ization, the impact of technology, the need to
simultaneously manage costs and growth,
the rapid pace of change, and the need to re-
focus employee activities on the customer
(Ulrich, 1997). As a result, the strategic
management of people and how they work
emerged as essential to sustained competi-
tive advantage (Pfeffer, 1995). Although con-
tinuing to look for ways to provide the "ba-
sics" more efficiently, professionals during
this period emphasized "supporting the exe-
cution of tactics that drive long-term strate-
gies and developing the cultural and techni-
cal capabilities necessary for long-term
success" (Brockbank, 1999, p. 342).
The State of HRM (Early 1990s-Current).
HRM's primary role was to add value by
aligning its people strategies in support of
the organization's business strategies. This
included working to establish a desired cul-
ture that would support competitive advan-
tage and designing HR practices (such as
competency assessment, diversity initiatives,
work-life balance, and total reward systems)
that would foster this culture. HRM also
began a foray into change management and
organization development activities in sup-

26. port of the implementation of the strategic
direction (Brockbank, 1999).
The continued development of HR tech-
nology allowed line managers to actively han-
dle more of the tasks related to recruitment,
salary administration, and succession plan-
ning (Patel, 2002), thus freeing up HRM's
time to assume more strategic roles and to
work toward garnering a "seat at the table."
For instance, much research was conducted
on establishing the empirical link between
HR strategies, systems, practices, and busi-
ness financial performance (Becker & Cer-
hart, 1996; Becker & Huselid, 1998; De-
... many
organizations
recognized that
human capital
was central to
competitive
advantage.
56 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
The
developments
of the 1980s
led to what can
now he viewed
as a hit of an
identity

27. laney & Huselid, 1996; Huselid, 1995). This
further supported the importance of HRM's
business partner role and emphasized the po-
tential of high-performance work systems as
an inimitable strategic asset in organizations.
Competencies in business knowledge, deliv-
ery of HR, and management of change were
identified as key to HRM's success (Uirich,
Brockbank, Yeung, & Lake, 1995).
The State of HRD (Late 1980s-Current). The
developments of the 1980s led to what can
now he viewed as a hit of an identity crisis and,
perhaps, a splintering within training/HRD.
The term HRD had been throwrt about for
nearly 15 years, hut in the 1980s, over 11 al-
ternative definitions were forwarded in the lit-
erature (see Weinberger, 1998). The capstone
definition that has "stuck" through today re-
sulted from McLagan's (1989) landmark study
of HRD practice during the 1980s and defined
HRD as "the integrated use of training and de-
velopment, career development, and organiza-
tion development to improve individual and or-
ganizational effectiveness" (p. 7). Phillips
(1999) refers to this shift toward effectiveness
and performance improvement as an extremely
critical one—in paradigm, processes, prac-
tices, and procedures. During the early-to-
mid-1990s, the literature on performance con-
sulting (Robinson & Robinson, 1995) and
performance improvement burgeoned, while
the field of human performance technology
(Stolovich & Keeps, 1992) gained a growing
presence. Individual-level performance im-
provement models alone became insufficient

28. while new, more systemic models of perfor-
mance improvement emerged (Rummler &
Brache, 1995; Swanson, 1994).
Meanwhile, outsourcing of more tradi-
tional forms of training (i.e., the basics) be-
came increasingly prevalent while organiza-
tions asked internal HRD professionals to act
as brokers of learning services and focus on
strategic alignment and more systemic inter-
ventions. This enhanced strategic focus led to
innovations in multisldlling and cross-train-
ing, cross-cultural and global training, and an
increased emphasis on "soft" skills training
(group dynamics, interpersonal relations, and
systems thinking). There were also major in-
novations within training and instructional
design—including more constructivist ap-
proaches to designing learning environments,
hypertext and hypermedia, and uses of tech-
nologies for e-learning (McNeil, 2002).
Rapid prototyping response and delivery sys-
tems were developed to meet organizations'
demands for more efficiently designed and
just-in-time training. HRD and instructional
systems design (ISD) professionals involved
in this kind of work were increasingly becom-
ing involved in utilizing technology for job
supports, integrated performance support,
and expert systems (Sleight, 1993).
The State of OD (Mid-1980s-Current).
Beckhard's work during the 1960s on strate-
gic change and open systems planning pro-
duced the need for a strategic perspective

29. from OD (Gummings & Worley, 2001) and
ushered in an increasingly "holistic and open
systems view of organizations" (Swanson &
Holton, 2001). Gentral to these models is
the assumption that strategic and systemic
change involves alignment with strategy, de-
sign, and management at multiple levels of
the organization (including culture) and
comprehensive change processes (including
reward systems, management structures,
process interventions, and information sys-
tems). This approach emphasized improving
an organization's fit between its technical,
political, and cultural systems. During this
period, OD professionals were also helping
to facilitate the development and implemen-
tation of strategy wdth their clients. Weidner
& Kulick (1999) characterized the talk of
many OD professionals as "if it's not strate-
gic, if it's not long-term, if it's not working at
the levels of a system, then it's not organiza-
tion development" (p. 347). During the
1980s, OD professionals were pivotal in
heightening attention around organizational
culture. They identified culture as critically
important in dealing with increasingly large
and more complex change as well as a pri-
mary mechanism through which strategic de-
sign was carried out (Sashkin & Burke,
1990). OD professionals also became in-
volved in assisting organizations in coping
with the alignment of multiple cultures as a
consequence of mergers/acquisitions and/or
significant reorganizations.

30. The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR 57
More traditional interventions such as
conflict management and team huilding were
recast to he aligned with strategic imperatives
resulting from either planned or emergent
strategy or new organizational forms that
tended toward flattened hierarchies and col-
lahorative approaches. In addition, OD pro-
fessionals were instrumental in the TQM
movement that swept the United States dur-
ing the 1980s, especially in their contrihu-
tions around decentralized management of
change and self-regulating or self-managed
work teams and quality circles. OD profes-
sionals were encouraged to he more strategic
and to more effectively relate OD skills to the
changing competitive context of the organiza-
tion and its memhers (Jelinek & Litterer,
1988). As a result, OD professionals were in-
creasingly internal to the organization (Sam-
mut, 2001) and supplemented traditional
skills with more emphasis on husiness liter-
acy, competitive strategy, flnance, marketing,
information systems, and process design.
Strategically Reactive Period Analysis. During
this period, we see an increasing emphasis on
the strategic alignment and positioning of each
of the three emerging professions. This is not
surprising given the clear shift toward a re-
source-hased view of the organization (Barney,
2001; Wright, Dunford, & Snell, 2001) and
important innovations of the day such as Pra-
halad & Hamel's (1990) ideas on the roots of

31. the core competence of organizations. Each
field turned its attention to aligning its inter-
ventions to strategy. In most cases, this was re-
active in the sense that the strategy was often
delivered to HRM, HRD, and OD for these
professions to "react to." Business literacy,
change management, and strategic thinking
were identified as the competencies needed for
these professions to efî ectively align their in-
terventions with organizational requirements.
We also see during this period that each field
had to hecome more systematic in what they
do to accomplish their goals. This included a
clear emphasis on demonstrating the effective-
ness and impact of interventions. Most impor-
tantly, each field had to adopt a more systemic
view of the organization and incorporate this
view as a hasic assumption underlying their in-
terventions.
Strategically Proactive
The rate of change for organizations contin-
ues to rapidly accelerate. Societal and demo-
graphic changes are fostering glohalization,
greater diversity, and the increased impact of
science and technology on our work and per-
sonal lives. A major shift in geopolitics has
caused networks and alliances to hurgeon
and has also created uncertainty (Mello,
2002; Patel, 2002). These dynamics demand
that organizations continue to innovate, find
ways to reduce costs, and he more flexihle in
developing practices that create competitive
advantage (Brockhank, 1999).

32. The State of HRM (Late 1990s-Current). This
new role for HRM involves creating future
strategic alternatives for the organization.
HRM must develop distinctive people prac-
tices to create core competencies that translate
into husiness strategies and help to differenti-
ate an organization's products and services
(Cappelli &: Crocker-Hefter, 1996). The motto
for the new HRM role is "helping to set the
agenda" (Bates, 2002). Brockhank (1999) sug-
gests that HRM can evidence this strategically
proactive role hy (a) enhancing the innovation
capacity of the firm; (h) heing involved in each
phase of the merger and acquisition process;
and (c) linking internal human capahilities
with the requirements of the external market.
HRM must design and manage its systems as
strategic assets, focus on the development of
strategic competencies, and utilize a systems
perspective as it works to develop strategic al-
ternatives and new husiness opportunities
(Becker, Huselid, Pickus, & Spratt, 1997). In
order to he a driver of strategy, HRM must he
engaged in creating institutional change ca-
pacity, identifying social trends impacting fu-
ture husiness opportunities, and huilding orga-
nizational cultures that can accomplish radical
innovation (Brockhank, 1999).
The State of HRD (Mid-1990s-Current). The
strategically proactive HRD roles of the next
decade and heyond revolve around ensuring a
knowledgeahle, competent, agile, and reflec-
tive workforce that utilizes learning to capital-
ize on emerging opportunities (Torraco &
Swanson, 1995). In response, HRD has heen

33. During this
period, we see
an increasing
emphasis on
the strategic
alignment and
positioning of
each of the
three emerging
professions.
58 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
It is clear
that what is
beginning to
characterize
this period is
HRM, HRD,
and OD
needing to he
extremely
attuned and
responsive to
the external
climate and
markets of an
organization.
an important contributor in the development
of concepts around organizational learning
(Dixon, 1994), and various powerful models
for creating a learning organization have

34. emerged (Marquardt, 1995; Senge, 1990;
Watkins & Marsick, 1993). It is possible that
this focus on organizational learning has the
potential to be the hallmark of a strategically
proactive HRD that features generative learn-
ing as central in creating future strategic al-
ternatives. Other prominent trends in this
same vein include emerging foci on self-di-
rected learning, informal learning (Marsick &
Watkins, 1990), personalized individual learn-
ing and development plans, and coaching.
There has also been increased attention
on HRD implications for knowledge manage-
ment systems designed to capture, store, and
share learning as well as on an expanded no-
tion of the corporate university (CU; Phillips,
1999). The CU of the future, though, is con-
ceptualized as a process, not a place, where
all levels of employees, customers, and sup-
pliers participate in a variety of learning expe-
riences to improve performance and enhance
organizational impact (Phillips, 1999). Fi-
nally, Walton (1999) focuses on how HRD
can play a role in creating synergy among and
between subsystems of an organization as
well as between organizations in globalization
strategies (including global sourcing, train-
ing, team building, mentoring, career devel-
opment, learning systems, and culture-work).
The State of OD (Mid-1990s-Current). In
OD, we see an increased focus on organiza-
tional transformation or second-order change,
which Levy & Merry (1986) define as a
"multi-dimensional, multi-level, qualitative,

35. discontinuous, radical organizational change
involving a paradigmatic shift" (p. 5). This
focus on facilitating massive and sometimes
revolutionary change is a departure from OD's
traditional evolutionary and incremental ap-
proaches. The need for this kind of change
has also ignited the emergence of multiple
methodologies for (a) whole systems change
and interventions (Dannemiller Tyson Associ-
ates, 2000; Weisbord, 1992) as well as (b) vi-
sioning, future search (Weisbord, 1992), and
scenario planning (Van der Heijden, 1997),
which are designed to help organizations look
to the future in a more agile way and learn and
act differently as a result.
There are increased calls for OD to be in-
creasingly "inter"—that is, working in be-
tween persons, organizations, and cultures
(Burke, 1997)—and this "inter-focus" has
spurred a renewed emphasis on diversity, es-
pecially across cultural boundaries as well as
occupational communities (Schein, 1997).
Transorganizational development has also
begun to emerge as OD professionals develop
methodologies aimed at helping organizations
develop collective and collaborative strategies
with other organizations (Cummings & Wor-
ley, 2001). In addition, organizational learn-
ing is increasingly emphasized as OD focuses
on collective learning and organizational
growth. Schein (1997) speculates that we'll
see "even more blending of systems thinking,
cognitive psychology, and organization devel-
opment approaches under one label, probably

36. the 'learning' label" (p. 17) and predicts that
"OD as a distinctive field of interventions
based on behavioral science concepts with a
humanistic overtone will increasingly become
blended with the broader field of organiza-
tional learning and will develop broader con-
cepts and methods" (p. 18).
Strategically Proactive Period Analysis. The
shape of this period is emerging even while
this article is written. It is clear that what is be-
ginning to characterize this period is HRM,
HRD, and OD needing to be extremely at-
tuned and responsive to the external climate
and markets of an organization. Rather than
simply reacting to the external climate along
with organizational stakeholders, these emerg-
ing professions will need to be out scouting it
and anticipating future trends. In addition, the
emphasis for a strategically proactive role must
be on integrated, systemic interventions that
develop and leverage an adaptable, agile work-
force. The key to an agile workforce seems to
be a genuine focus on learning at the individ-
ual, group, and organizational levels and the
development of holistic organizational systems
that translate learning into unique and strate-
gic core organizational competencies.
All of these trends suggest the need for
HR professionals to have an expanded base
of knowledge in business and the ability to
The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR • 59

37. integrate HR knowledge to create business
alternatives. They must demonstrate mastery
not only of their specialized (HRM, HRD,
and OD) practices, but, most importantly,
how they fit together. They must also possess
broader business knowledge and skills in-
cluding a working knowledge of other busi-
ness units, a fundamental understanding of
an organization's core business, its environ-
ment and competition, value creation, and
strategy (Magretta, 2002).
An Analysis of These Evolutions:
Convergence toward Collective Futures
It is clear that HRM, HRD, and OD have
"grown up" as distinctive fields in their own
right, and yet it is vitally important to under-
stand this growth in context and not under-
estimate the similarities and interdependen-
cies that have emerged between the fields
during the past 40-plus years. A "snapshot"
look at these evolutions is provided in Figure
3 to summarize the historical review pre-
sented in this article and highlight the
changing nature of work in each field during
the past 50-plus years. The unfolding of key
trends in HRM, HRD, and OD provided in
this article draws out four major themes that
indicate a clear convergence and the birth of
a new twenty-first-century HR:
• Increased centrality of people to or-
ganizational success;

38. • Focus on whole systems and inte-
grated solutions;
• Strategic alignment and impact; and
• Capacity for change.
These areas of convergence are de-
scribed below.
Increased Centrality of People to
Organizational Success
Undoubtedly the most powerful force affect-
ing these three fields is the increased cen-
trality of people to organizational success
(Brockbank, 1999). The emergence of re-
source-based views of organizations (Barney,
2001; Wright et al., 2001) has placed in-
creasing importance on the intellectual and
social capital (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998)
underlying an organization's core competen-
cies. This has been a key force driving the de-
mand for and growth of HRM, HRD, and
OD. Organizational leaders are finally tuning
into the idea that people are vitally important
in the execution of their strategic intent.
Focus on Whole Systems and Integrated
Solution

39. s
It is clear that these three fields have become
increasingly systemic during their evolutions.
Each has recognized the need for a systems
perspective and responded with increasingly
comprehensive, integrated, coordinated, and
dynamic approaches. By definition, this has
almost required that HRM, HRD, and OD in-
tegrate their efforts. This enhanced systems
perspective is also the most viable explanation
as to why the distinctions between these fields
seem to be blurring and the "new" HR has
emerged. Given the pull toward a strategically
proactive role, the challenge for HRM, HRD,
and OD is to continue to develop innovative
systems that
create a synergistic effect rather than de-
velop a set of independent best practices ...
where independent sub-functions (of the or-
ganization) are viewed as interrelated com-
ponents of a highly interdependent system.
The interrelatedness of these systems com-
ponents makes the advantage difficult, if

40. not impossible, for competitors to identify
and copy. (Barney & Wright, 2001, p. 40)
Strategic Alignment and Impact
Organizational leaders began evaluating the
contributions of HRM, HRD, and OD during
the late 1970s, and continued that call
throughout the 1980s and early 1990s as they
emphasized strategic alignment. The focus is
now on producing real strategic impact—that
is, processes and interventions that are aligned
with both planned and emergent strategy and
that provide clear, concrete, and qualifiable
value. Indeed, in most cases, the results must
be quantifiable. Each field has had to tackle
the challenge of creating metrics that effec-
tively demonstrate their contributions. Most of
/t is clear that
HRM, HRD,
and OD have
"groxvn up" as
distinctive
fields in their

41. own right, and
yet it is vitally
important to
understand this
growth in
context and not
underestimate
the similarities
and interde-
pendencies that
have emerged
hetween ihe
fields during
the past 40-plus
years.
60 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
There is great
synergy hetween
these fields and
it must he
tapped even

42. more strongly
as we aim to
significantly
contribute to
organizational
strategy and
results.
the actual responsihility for those indicators
is shared hetween HRM, HRD, and OD in
many organizations today. Twenty-first cen-
tury HR has hecome more integrated hy its
measurement efforts, and it is expected that
the importance of these efforts will only in-
crease in the coming years. This is all heing
driven hy increased pressure to work on is-
sues that are most important to the husi-
ness and to provide organizational leaders
with understandahle information that helps
them to make hetter and more strategic de-
cisions ahout the workforce. Ultimately, we
must work together to enhance HR's capac-
ity to contrihute to organizational and fi-
nancial performance.

43. Ca-pacityfor Change
It is also clear from this analysis that there
has heen an increased focus on enhancing
an organization's capacity for change. Today's
organizations must thrive in complex and un-
predictahle environments and must he ex-
tremely agile. This demands the develop-
ment and implementation of structures and
processes that facilitate incremental, and, in
many cases, transformational change. It has
also meant an increasing focus on organiza-
tional culture as a central factor that facili-
tates or inhihits an organization's capacity for
change. Change and culture simply cannot
he effectively addressed hy solutions pro-
posed from HRM, HRD, and OD that are
not integrating their hest contrihutions in
new and innovative ways.
Implications for HR of the Twenty-First
Century
One of the important lessons gained from
this analysis of the evolutions of HRM,

44. HRD, and OD is that these fields must con-
sider how they are interrelated and how, to-
gether, they comprise the HR of the twenty-
first century. This section outlines key
implications for the fields, organizations,
and individual practitioners. It also surfaces
several themes that threaten the future via-
hility of twenty-first-century HR that
should he managed as we move forward as a
united force.
Implications for the Professions
It is simply no longer viahle to insist that
these three fields are as distinct as they once
were. Indeed, Brockhank & Ulrich (2003)
found in their study of HR competencies
that "HR professionals in high-performing
firms actively translate (husiness) knowledge
in contrihuting to strategic decision making,
developing competitive cultures, making
change happen, and creating market-driven
connectivity" (p. 6). Their findings affirm our
analysis of the historical evolutions of these
fields. There is great synergy hetween these

45. fields and it must he tapped even more
strongly as we aim to significantly contrihute
to organizational strategy and results.
For us, this leaves little question ahout
how the future will unfold and places a great
onus on each of the fields to unite under a
common umhrella. The term human re-
sources or HR has commonly heen associ-
ated with the field of HRM; however, it
could he redefined to serve as a unifier for
professionals in HRM, HRD, and OD while
also encouraging the growth and profession-
alization of each of the three fields. Or per-
haps this new hyhrid will need to he called
something else altogether? Many organiza-
tions are currently struggling with identify-
ing a new term for this function—one that
helps them to "rehrand" and more accu-
rately depict their role and responsihilities.
We're hearing terms such as talent, people,
and workforce instead of the term human.
However, none of those terms reflect the
kind of process and system work that many
in the fields of HRM, HRD, and OD do

46. (e.g., performance consultants, organization
development consultants, and strategists).
While much of that work certainly involves
people, the organizational systems are the
primary foci. And, perhaps we'd he hetter off
naming our contrihutions more explicitly hy
using the terms leadership, catalysts, or -part-
ners'? There's no easy answer to this; how-
ever, we predict that there will he a new
term that emerges during the next ten years
to hetter depict and unify these fields.
Creating the necessary synergy hetween
HRM, HRD, and OD vidll he challenging.
Especially in light of the current societal
The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR 61
context of increased professionalization and
specialization (Leicht & Fennell, 2001) that
is being driven by the sheer quantity and
quality of what must be known within each
of the three fields to even achieve "the ba-

47. sics" today. It is not wise for the fields to en-
tirely blur into each other. However, the sim-
ilarities and differences between them must
be consciously explored and made more
transparent. Each field must become more
conscious of its essential defining qualities,
get clearer about its unique contributions
around people in organizations, and identify
specific areas in which synergy between
HRM, HRD, and OD is necessary. We must
continue to define and distinguish the more-
specialized fields while also creating interde-
pendence, synergy, and pliable boundaries.
How do these fields make this shift? In
this endeavor, we must view these fields as
the communities that comprise them—and
then foster change within them. Professional
associations, for instance, can play an ex-
tremely powerful role. Our associations, both
practitioner and academic, must soften their
boundaries and rethink their purposes and
the structures/processes that support them.
We need more conversation across the fields.
We need more professional special interest

48. groups that attract each other to our profes-
sional associations. We need to stop dis-
counting the work that we each do or lightly
assuming that "those HRM (or HRD or OD)
people don't know what is needed." Our divi-
siveness is hurting all of us in the organiza-
tions in which we work—and could be our
downfall should we not bind together. We
need to lay out the welcome mat for each
other and create synergies in ways that are
yet to be explored.
In academe, we need programs that
more effectively integrate the fields—espe-
cially since HRD and OD are often housed
outside of more traditional business schools.
Each field can more clearly identify the spe-
cializations inherent in their disciplines,
while together working to define a generalist
role that encompasses the strategic, sys-
temic, change, culture, and business part-
nership attributes that are generalizable for
all three fields. We also need researchers
who inquire into the people and organiza-

49. tional challenges that organizations face
rather than "claiming them" as uniquely ad-
dressed by HRM, HRD, or OD. We need to
be publishing in each other's journals and
magazines, and tapping each other's insights
more. We need to loosen our tight rein on
"turf and proprietary areas of knowledge
and join together to create a knowledge base
that will best serve the needs of both the
people and the organizations that twenty-
first-century HR is committed to serving.
Implications for HR in Organizations
Organizations are facing unprecedented
challenges. They are increasingly forced to
limit their costs, maximize their returns, and
act strategically in an extremely complex,
global society. Organizations need integrated
and innovative solutions. The potential im-
pact of HR is maximized by a more formally
integrated HRM, HRD, and OD.
We need to tear down whatever walls
have been built between these three fields.

50. In many organizations today, these three
fields are separated by function, structure,
and, often, reporting relationships. This
does little to foster integrated solutions and,
in our observation, confuses people who
work in the organization. Who are they to
call for what? When HRM, HRD, and OD
are each playing a strategically reactive or
proactive role, it will likely look quite similar
to the layperson who is, in the end, our mu-
tual client. It also fosters duplication of ef-
forts and, most importantly, it inhibits the
development of genuinely integrated peo-
ple/system solutions that are desperately
needed in organizations.
This transition will require an enlight-
ened organizational leadership that is capa-
ble of bringing together these three fields.
These leaders must embody and exhibit
strategically proactive HR. They must be flu-
ent in the core contributions of each field.
They must foster cross-fertilization of con-
cepts and competencies, while also nourish-
ing the uniqueness of each. While the struc-

51. ture and process of twenty-first-century HR
will be customized to the unique context of
the organization, the message that "HR's all
on the same team" must be resounding!
Organizations
need integrated
and innovative
solutions. The
potential
impact of HR is
maximized hy a
more formally
integrated
HRM, HRD,
and OD.
62 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
Our review of
the evolutions
of these three
fields indicates

52. that achieve-
ment of the
true strategic
partner role to
which HR
aspires requires
the integration
of the expertise
of all three
professions and
that, without
this partner-
ship, this role
will continue to
remain elusive.
Implications for Practitioners
The competencies listed by each field for its
modern professionals are strikingly similar.
An effective professional in HRM, HRD, and
OD is now asked to master the basics as effi-
ciently as possible while also becoming busi-
ness-sawy, strategic, systemic, and adept at
designing systems for change and more agile

53. cultures. Each of the most recent compe-
tency studies in the three fields emphasizes
these areas quite prominently (see Brock-
bank & Uirich, 2003, for HRM; Rothwell,
1999, for HRD; and Sullivan, Rothwell, &
Worley, 2001, for OD). It is important to
note that the primary competencies for OD
and HRD are (and have always heen) funda-
mentally related to facilitating and managing
culture and change, which is one of the most
emphasized competencies in the recent
study of HR competencies (Brockbank & Ui-
rich, 2003). One could argue (and more than
a few have!) that HRM has needed to in-
creasingly tap the foundational theories and
practices that OD has spawned in order to
fulfill its strategic mandate.
We predict that those professionals in-
volved in the necessary basics of each field
(those activities that fall into the operationally
reactive and proactive quadrants in Figure 1)
will continue to be quite specialized, while
those professionals striving towards strategi-
cally reactive and proactive roles will continue

54. to converge in their competencies and contri-
butions. If this is true, then the challenge re-
mains for those working in the strategically re-
active and proactive roles who will continue to
face a paradox of specialization paired with
synergy and interdependence.
These trends suggest the need for HR
professionals to have a strong, working
knowledge of the organization—a fundamen-
tal understanding of an organization's core
husiness, environment and competition,
value propositions, strategy, and various
business units (Magretta, 2002). They must
have the ahility to integrate HR knowledge to
shape and create business alternatives. They
must demonstrate the necessary systemic
view through their mastery of not only their
specialized (HRM, HRD, and OD) practices
but, most importantly, how they all fit to-
gether. We're going to have to let go of our
traditional notion and reverence for the idea
of "expert" and instead understand that to
"...manage the HR function effectively and

55. also be a trusted advisor to top management,
however, you need depth and breadth—you
need to become a deep generalist" (Gandossy
& Sobel, 2003, p. 288). This will require that
HR professionals have some knowledge in
each of the areas within HR that are not
their specialties. They must integrate the
best that we each know on culture and
change management. Our review of the evo-
lutions of these three fields indicates that
achievement of the true strategic partner
role to which HR aspires requires the inte-
gration of the expertise of all three profes-
sions and that, without this partnership, this
role will continue to remain elusive.
Potential Divergence?
We see at least three areas that threaten to pull
these fields further apart in the future. These
must each be managed to ensure the future vi-
ahility of HR. First, the emphasis of HRM in
terms of being strategically proactive may be
more external than that of HRD and OD in
terms of impacting future business opportuni-

56. ties. According to the most recent Human Re-
source Competency Study, HR professionals
from high-performing companies were inte-
grally involved in "strategically connecting the
firm to its external environment" and in creat-
ing "structures and processes to enable the or-
ganizational parts to complement each other
in quickly and collaboratively responding to
key opportunities and threats in the market en-
vironment" (Brockbank & Uirich, 2003, p. 4).
While all three fields seem to be attuned to the
criticality of people in organizations, HRM has
begun to talk in their literature ahout HRM as
a strategic core competency of the organiza-
tion with a distinctively external (versus inter-
nal) focus that includes proactively monitoring
and shaping the organization's responses to the
external environment. We see much less ex-
ploration and developed notions of this in
HRD and OD.
Second, there is a significant amount of
HRM literature that explores what types of
configurations work best as related to environ-

57. The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR 63
ment, market strategy, culture, structure, and
HR practices in terms of organizational effec-
tiveness measures (see, for example, Delery &
Doty, 1996; Ketchen, Thomas, & Snow, 1993;
Meyer, Tsui, & Hinings, 1993; Miller, 1987;
Miller & Mintzberg, 1984). OD and HRD
have much to contrihute here, yet neither has
produced a significant major focus in this area.
Third, it is important to note that there is
some upheaval in OD about the loss of the
humanistic value base that has rooted it for so
many years (Church, Burke, & Eynde, 1994).
Although there are many professionals in OD
who categorize themselves as strong pragma-
tists and are deeply concerned with strategic
alignment and interventions, a review of the
competency list endorsed by the Organization
Development Network (Sullivan et al., 2001)
reveals very little emphasis on strategic align-
ment or concerns of the business. There

58. seems to be a palatable resistance by some
leaders in the field to accept the kinds of
strategic roles and responsibilities that HRM
and HRD are increasingly embracing. Should
the field of OD retrench too strongly into the
humanism that roots it, this may be a unique
characteristic that differentiates OD profes-
sionals from those who identify vWth HRM
and HRD. This may result in a distinct splin-
tering of the OD field, with those profession-
als who adopt a strategically proactive role
finding a home in a new twenty-Brst-century
HR that welcomes diversity and invites syn-
ergy among all those who foster the strategic
contribution of people in organizations.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article was to situate the
evolutions of HRM, HRD, and OD in a his-
torical and comparative context. To do this,
the evolutions were traced from their begin-
nings in the early to mid-1900s through the
dawn of the twenty-first century.

59. We analyze the past to learn from it. Our
histories provide us with great clues of what
is to come. Our histories have led us to this
moment that demands a more strategic HR.
We believe that it is only through synergistic
and unified partnerships that the develop-
ment of twenty-first-century HR will be fos-
tered and that all three fields will continue to
grow and achieve their full potential. In the
words of Ulrich (1998), if this partnership is
achieved, there will be no further need to
ask, "Should we do away with HR?" (p. 124),
as the strategic impact of HR will be assured.
We assert that the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts—and that our "parts" must
continue to be nurtured to maximize the
whole. HRM, HRD, and OD should be en-
couraged to thrive in their individuality, but
not at the great cost of diminishing the
whole of HR's value to organizations.
WENDY E. A. RUONA is an assistant professor of human
resource development (HRD)
at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include

60. performance systems,
foundations of HR, and strategic HR. She was recently awarded
the Outstanding As-
sistant Professor Award by the University Council for
Workforce and Human Resource
Education and has also been awarded the Richard A. Swanson
Research Excellence
Award. She is the associate editor-in-chief of Advances in
Developing Human Resources
and serves on the board of directors for the Academy of Human
Resource Develop-
ment. She completed her PhD in HRD at the University of
Minnesota in 1999.
SHARON K. GIBSON is an assistant professor of organization
learning and development
at the University of St. Thomas. She is also an instructor for the
division of executive
and professional development in the College of Business. She
received her PhD in
adult education from the University of Minnesota, and holds an
MSW and graduate
certificate in labor and industrial relations from the University
of Michigan. Her re-
search interests focus on mentoring, strategic HR,

61. phenomenological methodology,
and adult learning. She has over 20 years of business, nonprofit,
and consulting expe-
rience, and has held various management positions in the human
resources field.
64 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
REFERENCES
Barney, J. B. (2001). Resource-based 'theories' of
competitive advantage: A ten-year retrospective
on the resource-based view. Journal of Manage-
ment, 27, 643-650.
Barney, J. B., & Wright, P. M. (2001). On becoming
a strategic partner: The role of buman re-
sources in gaining competitive advantage.
Human Resource Management, 37, 31-46.
Bates, S. (2002, July). Facing tbe future. HR Maga-
zine, pp. 26—32.

62. Beaumont, P. B. (1992). Tbe US buman resource
management literature: A review. In G. Sala-
man, S. Cameron, H. Hamblin, P. lies, C.
Mabey, & K. Tbompson (Eds.), Human re-
source strategies (pp. 20-37). Newbury Park,
CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Becker, B. E., & Cerbart, B. (1996). Tbe impact of
buman resource management on organizational
performance: Progress and prospects. Academy
of Management Journal, 19, 779-801.
Becker, B. E., & Huselid, M. A. (1998). Higb per-
formance work systems and firm performance:
A syntbesis of researcb and managerial implica-
tions. Researcb in Personnel and Human Re-
source Management, 16, 53-101.
Becker, B. E., Huselid, M. A., Pickus, P. S., &
Spratt, M. F. (1997). HR as a source of sbare-
bolder value: Researcb and recommendations.
Human Resource Management, 36, 39—47.
Brockbank, W. (1999). If HR were really strategi-
cally proactive: Present and future directions in

63. HR's contribution to competitive advantage.
Human Resource Management, 38, 337-352.
Brockbank, W., & Ulricb, D. (2003). Tbe new HR
agenda: 2002 buman resource competency
study (Executive Summary). Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Business Scbool.
Retrieved November 22, 2003, from bttp://
w e b u s e r . b u s . u m i c b . e d u / P r o g r a m s / b r c s /
HRCS2002ExecutiveSummary.pdf
Brown, L. D., & Covey, J. C. (1987). Development
organizations and organization development: An
annual series featuring advances in tbeory,
metbodology and researcb. In R. W. Woodman
& W. A. Pasmore (Eds.), Researcb in organiza-
tional cbange and development (Vol. 1, pp.
59-87). New York: JAI Press.
Burke, W. W. (1995). Organization development:
Tben, now and tomorrow. Organization Devel-
opment Journal, 13(4), 7-17.
Burke, W. W (1997). Tbe new agenda for organiza-
tion development. Organization Dynamics,

64. 26(1), 6-20.
Cappelb, P., & Crocker-Hefter, A. (1996). Distinc-
tive buman resources are firms' core competen-
cies. Organizational Dynamics, 24(3), 7-22.
Cburcb, A. (2001). Tbe professionalization of or-
ganization development: Tbe next step in an
evolving field. In R. W. Woodman & W. A. Pas-
more (Eds.), Researcb in organizational cbange
and development (Vol. 13, pp. 1-42). Amster-
dam: JAI Press.
Cburcb, A. H., Burke, W. W, & Eynde, D. F. V.
(1994). Values, motives, and interventions of
organization development practitioners. Group
and Organization Management, 19(1), 5-50.
Clark, D. (1999). A time capsule of training and
learning. Retrieved January 20, 2004, from
bttp://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/brd/bistory/
bistory.btml
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2001). Organiza-
tion development and cbange (7tb ed.). Cincin-

65. nati, OH: Soutb-Westem College Publisbing.
Dannemiller Tyson Associates. (2000). Wbole-scale
cbange: Unleasbing tbe magic in organizations.
San Francisco: Berrett-Koebler.
Delaney, J. T, & Huselid, M. A. (1996). Tbe impact
of buman resource management practices on
perceptions of organizational performance.
Academy of Management Journal, 39,
949-969.
Delery, J. E., & Doty, D. H. (1996). Modes of theo-
rizing in strategic buman resource manage-
ment: Tests of universalistic, contingency, and
configurational performance predictions. Acad-
emy of Management Journal, 39, 802-835.
Dixon, N. M. (1994). Tbe organizational learning
cycle: How we can learn collectively. San Diego:
University Associates.
Dyer, L., & Holder, G. W. (1988). A strategic per-
spective of buman resource management. In L.
Dyer & G. W. Holder (Eds.), Human resource

66. management: Evolving roles and responsibili-
ties (pp. 1-1-1-46). Wasbington, DC: Tbe Bu-
reau of National Affairs Inc.
Freedman, A. (1990). Tbe cbanging buman re-
sources function (Report No. 950). New York:
Tbe Conference Board Inc.
Frencb, W. L., & Bell, J. C. H. (2000). A bistory of
organization development. In W. L. Frencb, J.
C. H. Bell, & R. A. Zawacki (Eds.), Organiza-
tion development and transformation: Manag-
The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR 65
ing effective change (5th ed,, pp. 20—42).
Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Gandossy, R., & Sobel, A. (2003). The HR head as
trusted CEO advisor: Six strategies for becom-
ing a valued partner to senior management. In
M. Effron, R. Gandossy, & M. Goldsmith
(Eds.), Human resources in the 21st century

67. (pp. 287-294). New York: Wiley.
Gilbert, T. F. (1978). Human competence: Engi-
neering worthy performance. New York: Mc-
Graw-Hill.
Grieves, J., & Redman, T. (1999). Living in the
shadow of OD: HRD and the search for iden-
tity. Human Resource Development Interna-
tional, 2(2), 81-103.
Harris, H. (2000). Defining the future of reliving the
past? Unions, employers, and the challenges of
workplace learning (Information Series #380
and ERIG #: ED440292). Golumbus, OH:
ERIG Glearinghouse on Adult, Gareer, and Vo-
cational Education.
Huselid, M. A. (1995). The impact of human re-
source management practices on turnover, pro-
ductivity, and corporate financial performance.
Academy of Management Journal, 38, 635—672.
Jelinek, M., & Litterer, J. A. (1988). Why OD must
become more strategic. In W. A. Pasmore & R.

68. W. Woodman (Eds.), Research in organization
change and development (Vol. 2, pp. 136—162).
Greenwich, GT: JAI Press.
Ketchen, D. J., Thomas, J. B., & Snow, G. S. (1993).
Organizational configurations and perfor-
mance: A comparison of theoretical ap-
proaches. Academy of Management Journal,
36, 1278-1313.
Lawrence, P. R. (1985). The history of human re-
source management in American industry. In R.
E. Walton & P. R. Lawrence (Eds.), HRM
trends and challenges (pp. 15—34). Boston:
Harvard Business School Press.
Leicht, K. T, & Fennell, M. L. (2001). Professional
work: A sociological approach. Maiden, MA:
Blackwell.
Levy, A., & Merry, U. (1986). Organizational trans-
formation. New York: Praeger.
MacDonald, J. R. (2003). Profession at a crossroads.
In M. Effron, R. Gandossy, & M. Goldsmith

69. (Eds.), Human resources in the 21st century
(pp. 259-264). New York: Wiley.
Magretta, J. (2002). What management is: How it
works and why it's everyone's business. New
York: The Free Press.
Marius, R. (1995). A short guide to writing about
history (2nd. ed.). New York: Harper GoUins
Gollege Publishers.
Marquardt, M. J. (1995). Building the learning or-
ganization: A systems approach to quantum im-
provement and global success. New York: Mc-
Graw-Hill.
Marsick, V. A., & Watkins, K. E. (1990). Informal
and incidental learning in the workplace. Lon-
don: Routledge.
McLagan, P. (1989). Models for HRD practice.
Training and Development, 43(9), 49-59.
McNeil, S. (2002). A hypertext history of instruc-
tional design. Retrieved January 20, 2004,

70. from http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/
idhistory/
Mello, J. A. (2002). Strategic human resource man-
agement. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Gol-
lege Publishing.
Meyer, A. D., Tsui, A. S., & Hinings, G. R. (1993).
Gonfigurational approaches to organizational
analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 36,
1175-1195.
Miller, D. (1987). The genesis of configurations.
Academy of Management Review, 12, 686—701.
Miller, D., & Mintzberg, H. (1984). The case for
configuration. In D. Miller & P. H. Friesen
(Eds.), Organizations: A quantum view (pp.
10-30). Englewood Gliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Miller, V. A. (1996). The history of training. In R.
L. Graig (Ed.), The ASTD training & develop-
ment handbook: A guide to human resource
development (4th ed., pp. 3-18). New York:
McGraw-Hill.

71. Nadler, L. (1970). Developing human resources.
Houston: Gulf.
Nahapiet, J., & Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social capital,
intellectual capital, and the organizational ad-
vantage. Academy of Management Review,
23(2), 242-266.
Patel, D. (2002). SHRM workplace forecast: A
strategic outlook 2002-2003. Alexandria, VA:
Society for Human Resource Management.
Pfeffer, J. (1995). Producing sustainable competitive
advantage through the effective management of
people. Academy of Management Executive,
9(1), 55-72.
Phillips, J. J. (1999). HRD trends worldwide. Hous-
ton, TX: Gulf.
Prahalad, G. K., & Hamel, G. (1990). The core com-
petence of the corporation. Harvard Business
Review, 68(3), 79-92.

72. 66 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 2004
Robinson, D. G., & Robinson, J.C. (1995). Perfor-
mance consulting: Moving beyond training. San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Rothwell, W. J. (1999). ASTD models for human per-
formance improvement: Roles, competencies,
and outputs (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASTD.
Rummler, G. A., & Brache, A. P. (1995). Improving
performance: How to manage the white space
in organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Sammut, A.C. (2001). HR & OD : Highlighting the
need to establish a clear definition of OD. Or-
ganization Development Journal, 19(2), 9-18.
Sanzgiri, J., & Gottlieb, J. Z. (1992). Philosophies
and pragmatic influences on the practice of or-
ganization development 1950-2000. Organiza-
tion Dynamics, 21(2), 57-69.

73. Sashkin, M., & Burke, W. W. (1990). Organization
development in the 198O's. In F. Massarik
(Ed.), Advances in organization development
(Vol. 1, pp. 315-349). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Schein, E.H. (1997). Organization development and
the organization of the future. Organization De-
velopment Journal, 15(2), 11-19.
Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and
practice of the learning organization. New York:
Doubleday/Gurrency.
Sleight, D.A. (1993). A developmental history of train-
ing in the United States and Europe. Retrieved
January 20, 2004, from http://www.msu.edu/
-sleightd/trainhst.html
Stolovich, H. D., & Keeps, E. J. (1992). What is
human performance technology. In H. D.
Stolovich & E. J. Keeps (Eds.), Handbook of
human performance technology (pp. 3-13).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Sullivan, R., Rothwell, W. J., & Worley, C. G.

74. (2001). Twentieth edition of the organization
change and development competency effort.
Retrieved November 22, 2003, from http://
www.odnetwork.org/odcompetencies/index.html?
PHPSESSID=63bcfe7fd93548ee41a55bdlb317
6063
Swanson, R. A. (1994). Analysis for improving per-
formance: Tools for diagnosing organizations
and documenting workplace expertise. San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Swanson, R. A., & Holton, E. F. (2001). Foundations
of human resource development. San Fran-
cisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Swanson, R. A. & Torraco, R. J. (1994). History of
technical training. In L. A. Kelly (Ed.), ASTD
technical and skills training handbook (pp.
1-47). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Tichy, N. (1983). Managing strategic change. New
York: Wiley.
Torraco, R. A., & Swanson, R. A. (1995). The strate-

75. gic roles of human resource development.
Human Resource Planning, 18(4), 10-21.
Ulrich, D. (1997). Human resource champions.
Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Ulrich, D. (1998). A new mandate for human re-
sources. Harvard Business Review, 76(1),
125-134.
Ulrich, D., Brockbank, W, Yeung, A. K., & Lake,
D. G. (1995). Human resource competencies:
An empirical assessment. Human Resource
Management, 34, 473-495.
Van der Heijden, K. (1997). Scenarios: The art of
strategic conversation. New York: Wiley.
Walton, J. (1999). Strategic human resource de-
velopment. Essex, UK: Prentice Hall.
Watkins, K. E., & Marsick, V. J. (1993). Sculpting
the learning organization: Lessons in the art
and science of systematic change. San Fran-
cisco: Jossey-Bass.

76. Weidner, C. K., & Kulick, O. A. (1999). The pro-
fessionalization of organization development:
A status report and look to the future. In R.
W. Woodman & W A. Pasmore (Eds.), Re-
search in organizational change and develop-
ment (Vol. 12, pp. 319-371). Amsterdam: JAI
Press.
Weinberger, L. (1998). Gommonly held theories of
human resource development. Human Re-
source Development International, 1(1),
75-93.
Weisbord, M. R. (1992). Discovering common
ground. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Wright, P. M., Dunford, B. B., & Snell, S. A.
(2001). Human resources and the resource
based view of the firm. Journal of Manage-
ment, 27, 701-721.

77. Talent Management:
Trends that Will Shape the Future
Fredric D.Frank,Craig R.Taylor,TalentKeepers
|alent management prac-
tices have developed and
adapted throughout the
years in response to
many changes in the workplace,
from the industrial revolution and
ihe rise of labor unions, to affir-
mative action, globalization, and
outsourcing, to name just a few.

78. The !990s ended with a call-to-
arms to fight "the war for talent."
While the war for talent clearly
iias cooled in the early stages of
ihe 21st century, dampened by
economic doldrums and concerns
with global security, the real battle
to attract, develop, motivate, and
retain talent is going to heat up
considerably. A looming demo-
grapbic time bomb will make talent
management a top priority for
organizations. Tbis article covers

79. a number of the trends that have
shaped our current practices as
well as those that will contribute
to future strategies.
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 33
Forma! talent management practices have a
relatively short history but rapid rise as a profe.s-
sion. The Human Resource Planning Society
(HRPS). now in its third decade of service to the
human resource and broader business executive
community, has been committed to improving
organizational performance through the applica-
tion of strategic human resource management
practices, including talent management. HRPS
was preceded by the American Society for
Personnel Administration, founded in 1948. by 28
individuals to provide professional development

80. for an emerging profession in transition. Today,
renamed the Society for Human Resource
Management (SHRM). that organization has
over 175.000 members (SHRM. 2003).
Talent as a driving foree behind HR"s contri-
butions to organizational success is underscored
by a recent Human Resource Planning article
entitled "The 21st Century Human Resources
Function." Its bold subtitle. "Its the ^ ^ ^ ^ _
Talent, Stupid!.'" further reinforces
the central role of talent in the evolu-
tion of HR"s impact with organizations
they support (Buckingham &
Vosburgh. 2001).
Regardless of an employer's size
or industry, during the last 50 years
waves of change have swept over
organizations. Some of these
changes, such as affirmative action
and related legislation in the United
States or privatization practices in
China, have had a broad and sweep-
ing impaet. forever affecting values,

81. beliefs, and practices. Others, such as
the movement from traditional train-
ing models to web-based e-learning,
are still in a formative phase and the
full impact on talent management has
yet to be seen.
In a slow or down economy, an intense talent
shortage may be difficult to visualize, yet what
we know about economic cycles and demograph-
ic trends forces us to confront a not-too-distant
future that includes a labor/talent deficit in sup-
ply/demand.
One thing is for sure: Evolutionary, and in
some cases revolutionary, changes are already
underway that will affect permanently how we
approach talent management. Workplaces every-
where are facing an increasingly complex and
ever-changing landscape in their efforts to
acquire, retain, motivate, and develop the talent
The future empha-
sis is likely to shift

82. from purely individ-
ually oriented
learning, toward
making teams
(often virtual and
sometimes global)
more effective in
working with each
other to meet
common goals.
needed to keep their organizations operating
efficiently and competitively. Talent management
strategists must prepare for what is likely to be a
roller coaster ride.

83. Recruiting for Talent
Recruiting has undergone major changes.
Historically, recruiting was driven by various
communication channels, including classified ads.
college placement offices, and internal job-post-
ing systems. But the biggest limitation of these
traditional tactics is that, by definition, they are
bound to that channel's geographic distribution.
market, and circulation. Another limitation has
been time—the time to write the ad. place it in
selected media, wait for inquiries, schedule inter-
views or other screening practices, and so on. As
pressure mounts to reduce job vacancy periods
and shorten time-to-productivity measures, time
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ has become the enemy. Technology
has eome to the rescue. The internet
has offered a way to attack time, cost,
and reach simultaneously.
Web recruiting is exploding. In an
effort to find any possible advantage,
both employers and job seekers are

84. logging on in record numbers.
Monster.com, with 36 percent ofthe
worldwide web career market, is the
largest by far of the plethora of
online career websites. In the third
quarter of 2003. Monster had 16.7
million unique visitors who stayed
an average of 15.6 minutes. By
September 2003, there were 30.7
million active resumes in the Monster
system, up from 19.6 million just a
year earlier (Monster. 2003).
No one would argue that Monster,
Hot Jobs, Career Builder, and the
others are adding value on both sides of the
employment equation by broadening the reach
and accelerating the speed of linking jobs and
applicants. And when you add to the mix other
online screening and analysis tools, including
resume analysis programs, and sophisticated
online pre-employment assessments, the world
of recruiting has changed dramatically.

85. As all of these tools become more sophisticated.
recruiting in the future may become more deper-
sonalized on the one hand, with large volumes of
applicants being screened by algorithms rather
than judgment, and more personal on the other.
3 4 HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING
through the wide use of web phones for immedi-
ate interviews and the greater use of synchronous
video conferencing.
Training and Developing Talent
Learning and performance improvement have
always heen an integral part of talent manage-
ment. Employee training has a long history of
ensuring an organization has a skilled, motivated,
and competent workforce. From orientation pro-
grams and technical training classes experienced
early in one's career, to leadership development
and executive coaching, training and development
is deeply woven into the fabric of talent manage-

86. ment practices.
During the last 20 years, workplace learning
strategies continued to rely heavily on traditional,
instructor-led, small-group programs in classroom
settings. Even today, while estimates vary, class-
room training still accounts for as much as 72
percent of all workplace learning in the United
States. 77 percent in Europe, 80 percent in Asia,
and 92 percent in Latin America (Sugrue, 2003).
But this period also saw the emergenee of tech-
nology-assisted learning, beginning with basic
computer-based training initiatives to more
advanced interactive video discs and CD-ROMS,
to today's widely used web-based c-learning tools
delivered on everything from notebook computers
to wireless PDAs.
Workplace learning and performance received
a boost in 1990 with the publication of Peter
Senge's The Fifth Discipline. Learning was being
recast and positioned as a key strategic element in
an organization's success, and mueh more than a
tactic aimed at improving job performance. Senge
described a learning organization as one "where

87. people continually expand their capacity to create
the results they truly desire, where new and
expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured,
where collective aspiration is set free, and where
people are continually learning to see the whole
together" (Senge, 1990).
Achieving this vision proved difficult. With
traditional models of structured, classroom learn-
ing still the norm, learning remained as much
dependent on the skills ofthe facilitator as it did
on the power and value of the content.
Instructional designers and courseware develop-
ers worked hard to create new, interesting, and
engaging methods to motivate and teach, but
achieving the vision of a learning organization
may depend more on the organization itself than
on learning strategies. "'If we are to be effective,
our views and theories of organization must
change," said Pat MeLagan, CEO of McLagan
International. The metamorphosis is from closed
rational systems focused on structure to dynamic
models inspired by new views ofthe universe
that emphasize process and participation

88. (Galagan. 2003). The future emphasis is likely to
shift from purely individually oriented learning,
toward making teams (often virtual and sometimes
global) more effective in working with each other
to meet common goals. As learning technology
and learning infrastructure continue to grow more
sophisticated, the learning organization may finally
be in reach.
While some barriers to the aggressive growth
of e-leaming remain (bandwidth issues, tor exam-
ple), technology's impact on training will continue
to deepen. ASTD's annual State ofthe Industry
Report shows significant growth in the applica-
tion of learning technologies around the globe, ln
2003. 15 percent of U.S. organizations employed
technology-assisted learning, but that falls short
ofthe global leader, Japan, which reported 20
percent (Sugrue, 2003). IDC. a global IT market
and intelligence firm that tracks e-learning. fore-
casts the worldwide e-learning market will have
grown from $6.6 billion in 2002 to S23.7 billion
in 2006. The report's authors believe web-based
learning will "become the game-changer" in the
future of learning (IDC, 2003).

89. As we move into the 21st century, traditional
models of workplace learning will change as dra-
matically as any part of the talent management
equation. The dialogue in e-learning circles today
is less about which dimension of the movement,
such as the deveiopment of technical standards or
the quality of content, will most fuel rapid adop-
tion, but more about the synergy of these forces
and how they will build greater momentum
(Taylor, 2002). In a world where job performance
is systematically monitored by a sophisticated
learning management system, short, targeted per-
formance-based lessons can be delivered in real
time and exactly when needed in order to address
specific tasks and skill weaknesses. Unlike in the
past when learning largely took place in settings
away from the actual job. workplace learning will
become more and more integrated into the daily
work flow. Learning technology will facilitate the
combination of improved workplace performance
metrics with compelling, interactive content ulti-
mately to make working and learning a seamless
experience.

90. m
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 35
Treating Talent Fairly
Treating talent fairly in all respects is critical
for motivating and retaining employees. Over the
last 30 years in the United States, perhaps no other
area in talent management has received as much
attention and scrutiny as affirmative action.
Looking back 50 years ago, such protections were
rarely afforded employees. For example, there was
no Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the
term "glass ceiling" had not yet been coined.
Affirmative action can be traced far back to
the early days of U.S. history, specifically, to the
14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution,
the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871. and the
Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 (Jenkins.
1999). A major milestone in the history of affir-
mative action was the passing of the Civil Rights

91. Act of 1964. It made discrimination illegal in
employment, public accommodations, and pro-
grams financed by the federal government. Added
to this, in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson
issued Executive Order 11246. which authorized
the U.S. Department of Labor to take
"affirmative" action to make sure that
ethnic minorities were treated equally
in terms of employment. The latter
order stimulated programs intended to
resolve bias against ethnic minorities
and women in such areas as hiring,
job promotion, and education (Pollard
&O"Hare, 1999).
Employment litigation is tending
to increase worldwide, such as in Japan (Human
Resources International Report, 2001). Workers'
rights have been enhanced in Europe with the
strengthening of already powerful labor unions
as a result of within-country negotiations as well
as European Union representation.
Race-based discrimination seems to be a
worldwide phenomenon (International Labour

92. Organization Global Report, 2003). Of course,
issues revolving around fair treatment of employ-
ees are not restricted to racial considerations. Sex
discrimination and sexual harassment in the
workplace have become more widely discussed
concerns around the world during the 1990s, part-
ly because the globalization of business and the
push of regional economic alliances, such as the
European Union, have driven the need for com-
mon standards {HRI. 2003). In the late 1980s the
term "'glass ceiling" was coined in the United
States to describe the invisible artificial barriers
As the economy
improves, there are
indications that
employees will be
leaving in droves.
created by attitudinal and organizational preju-
dices barring women from top executive jobs

93. (International Labour Organization, 1998). Glass
ceilings certainly are not limited to the United
States. In Europe (Catalyst. 2002) and in Japan
(PBI Asian HR eNewsletter. 2003), the glass ceil-
ing may be a bigger problem than in the United
States. Organizations like the International
Labour Organization are pushing international
standards to prevent sex discrimination and
harassment (HRI, 2003). And in the aftermath of
September 11, discrimination complaints escalated
around religious and national original discrimina-
tion, particular against Muslims and people of
Arab descent.
Legislation has been enacted with regard to
the disabled and on the basis of age as well. For
example, the ADA, enacted in 1992. was a major
milestone in the protection of workers' rights. But
legislation in the United States has not been the
complete answer. To a large extent, employees
have been disappointed by the rulings of the U.S.
Supreme Court when it comes to the ADA. In
fact, claims filed with the Equal
Employment Opportunity

94. Commission (EEOC) under the ADA
have dropped significantly between
the 1995 high and 2003 (EEOC,
2003). Disability discrimination has
triggered protection in other parts of
the world which in tum has led to
positive steps by employers. For
example, Japan's mandated require-
ment for quotas on the employment of the disabled
has led most companies represented in Japan to
create programs specifically for the recruitment
and training of the disabled. From a worldwide
perspective, progress in employing the disabled
has, however, been disappointing (HRI. 2002).
Protection based upon age appears to be a global
trend (Employment Discrimination Report, 2000;
Cheung. 2000); as is the case with the disabled.
considerable discrimination continues to exist on
a global scale.
Some conflicting factors will make the future
somewhat difficult to predict in terms of protec-
tion of employees. While courts will need to
reconcile national statutes, and many countries

95. will move in the direction of western-style
employment protections, some countries, feeling
the pressure to attract more multinationals and
foreign investment, will likely ease up on their
employment laws.
36 HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING
Other trends may be part of the future:
1. Laws relating to sex discrimination, and partic-
ularly sexual orientation, will be widespread.
2. Worldwide, laws will be enacted to provide
equal treatment regardless of weight and
height.
3. At least in the United States, virtually the only
group not protected will be white male
Caucasians under 40 years of age.
4. Given widespread labor shortages, solid man-
agerial talent will be scarce, and will result in

96. breaking through the glass ceiling.
Additionally (because of labor shortages), race
gender, and age-based discrimination in the
workplace will occur much less often.
For practical reasons alone, we can be opti-
mistic that organizations will continue to strive to
treat talent fairly in the years to come. Regardless
of whether this results from simple enlightened
self-interest or some level of social conscience, as
an end result organizations will want to be known
as a place where talent is valued and grown.
Retaining Talent
Perhaps no talent management issue will have
greater importance in the years to come than
employee retention. Historically, employee reten-
tion has not been the issue it is today. In fact.
U.S. median job tenure did not change much
from the 1950s to the end ofthe 1990s
(Yakoboski. 1999).
While the last few years of a down economy
might suggest that turnover has not been a prob-

97. lem, this has not been the case. From September
2002 through August 2003. a period best charac-
terized as a downswing in the economy, annual
turnover for the United States as a whole, across
all jobs, was 19.2 percent (U. S. Department of
Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2003). This is
true globally as well: for example, Latin
American employers had a difficult time retaining
workers during the slow economy of 2002
(Watson Wyatt. 2002).
Today, a confluence of forces makes the reten-
tion problem critically important. The two major
forces are the down economy of the last few
years and labor and talent shortages. A trouble-
some outct)me ofthe downswing in the economy
and the associated layoffs is that employee com-
mitment and loyalty have been weakened. "It
appears every man. woman and child is ready to
quit their current job at the first opportunity"
(Sullivan, 2003). In terms of labor shortages.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a labor
shortage of 10 million workers in 2008 (U.S.
Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

98. 20()3). The National Association of Manufacturers.
The Manut^acturing Institute, and Deloitte &
Touche. in their white paper, "Keeping America
Competitive" (2003). project serious shortages in
the manufacturing sector. As The New York Times
reports in its October 12. 2003. issue, "conditions
in the late 90"s may have been a reflection of job
markets to come. And they are coming very
quickly" (Brock. 2003).
A major reason is that the big baby-boom
generation is starting to retire. According to
childstats.gov. in 1964 the percentage of children
in the population under the age of 18 was 36 per-
cent. By 1999. that number dropped to 26 percent
ofthe population and will continue to fall until at
least 2020. At the other end ofthe population
curve, as boomers age. the share of the population
aged 65 or older is projected to increase from 12
percent in 2000 to about 20 percent in 2030 (U.S.
Census). "There simply aren't enough workers
behind the boomers in the labor supply pipeline
to fill their jobs" (Brock. 2003). And it will be
here soon, if not already. By 2005. the impact of
the shortage will be in full swing (Kaihia, 2003).

99. The impact will be felt globally as well. Labor
shortages in every industrial country will hamper
economic growth (Hewitt. 2{X)2). On a global
scale, "the major social crises ofthe twenty-first
century will be the byproduct of labor shortages"
(Hewitt, 2(X}1). Germany, in particular, will feel
the impact of labor shortages. "Unless Germany
negotiates a new social contract, it will face an
era of fiscal crisis amid widespread labor short-
ages and slower economic growth"(Jackson,
2003). The shortage of skilled workers will be
even more pronounced. And globalization ofthe
workforce is leading to a greater need to compete
effectively against competitors in the battle for
talent (Grantham. 2()()3: Patel. 2002).
As the economy improves, there are indications
that employees will be leaving in droves. A 2003
Society for Human Resource Management and
Wall Street Journal Job Recovery Study indicates
83 percent of employees surveyed said it was
likely they would actively seek new employment
once the job market and economy improved. This
is buttressed by the Conference Board survey

100. (2003). which found that employee discontent is
the highest since the survey began in 1995. Said
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 37
differently. "The minute the labor market
rebounds, they re gone -just at the time
we're entering this period of labor shortage"
(Kaihia. 2003).
In summary, the demographic time bomb
fueled by aging baby boomers is not a guess—it
is an actuarial fact. Any kind of demographic pro-
jections with respect to people who have already
been bom is notoriously accurate (Kaihia. 2(X)3).
Not tbat the economy and labor and talent
shortages are the only factors producing a crisis.
Technology has been contributing as well. The
internet has enabled employees to become far
more knowledgeable and sophisticated about
employment and job searches (Hansen. 2001).
thus making organizations more vulnerable to

101. turnover. As internet usage increases, this will be
exacerbated. Technology advances also contribute
to the "off-shoring" of not only man-
ufacturing. but of professional and
technical knowledge workers (e.g.,
financial transactions, software devel-
opment, call center support), a trend
that will continue.
What makes the issue of turnover
so serious is that the costs of turnover
are significant and far-reaching. Much
more than in the past, these costs are
being quantified. For example:
Employees will stay
if they have a good
relationship
and open commu-
nication with their

102. immediate boss.
1. Turnover is estimated to cost the
U.S. economy S5 trillion annually {Journal of
Business Strategy, 2003).
2. Turnover results in reduced earnings and stock
prices, a documented decrease of an average
38 percent (Sibson, 2000).
3. Not only does retention reduce turnover costs
and increase productivity, it is also correlated
with high customer loyalty and greater prof-
itability (Dresang. 2002).
4. More statistics are available pertaining to
specific industries. For example, the annual
cost of turnover in tbe supermarket industry
exceeds the entire industry's annual profit
by more than 40 percent (Frank. 2000). With
respect to productivity, manufacturing plants
with annual turnover rates of less than 3
percent achieved a median productivity per
employee of $2(X).OOO: for plants with turnover
rates of more than 20 percent, median produc-

103. tivity dropped to $120,000 (Jusko. 2000).
What should we do to control turnover?
Clearly one thing we can do is have front-line
leaders who are retention experts. The role of the
front-line leader as the driver of retention has
been recognized. Pay. benefits, and other employ-
ee rewards entice employees to enter a company,
but poor managers cause them to leave. The role
of the front-line leader in retention has emerged
(SHRM Retention Survey, 2(X)0: Buckingham &
Coffman. 1999). This is underscored in the
WorkTrends 2004 annual survey of over 10.000
employees. Results show eroding trends in job
security and intent to remain. This implies that
as the job market improves and there are more
employment alternatives, leaders will need to
put more effort into retaining talent (Gantz. Wiley
Research. 2004).
Such retention leadership talents as building
trust with one's team members are critical to
achieving high retention (Frank. 2003). Employees
will stay if they have a good relationship and open

104. communication with their immediate
boss (HRI Institute. 2001). Forexam-
ple, in a well-reported study. Sprint
PCS improved retention by working
with front-line leaders in customer
contact centers. Leaders were
assessed on 10 retention leader talents
and then experienced e-learning to
enhance talent gaps. Attrition fell con-
sistently below that at control centers
(Taylor. 2002).
What does the future hold for
turnover and employee retention?
1. Employee retention will be the number one
priority of HR executives.
2. Retention rates will assume a prominent posi-
tion in company annual reports.
3. Leaders and top executives will be held
accountable for the retention of employees.
All managers will be rewarded for their

105. retention rate accomplishments.
4. A substantial part of training budgets will be
devoted to equipping leaders with the talent
to be effective retention leaders.
5. Leaders will be selected based upon retention
leader talents.
6. It will be widely recognized that all employees
are retention agents; that team members can
assist in the efforts to improve employee reten-
tion by helping each other with work-related
problems to stem the tide of turnover.
7. Years with an organization will be rewarded
as a separate business criterion (i.e.. longevity
will be explicitly rewarded), in balance with
performance contributions (i.e., it is not
enough just to "show up").
38 HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING

106. 8. Human metrics will be increasingly used to
document the impact of turnover and retention
imperatives.
In summary, turnover will assume crisis propor-
tions as human capital becomes a scarce natural
resource. Organizations ihat face this problem head
on will be able to reduce its impact but it will
remain the number one human resources issue.
The Future for Talent
Management
PeopleSoft was founded in 1987 and one year
later launched the PeopleSoft Human Resources
Management System, its first product. Ninety
eight people attended their first client conference
in 1990. By 1996 the number of attendees had
swelled to 7.288. That was two years after
Fortune magazine named PeopleSoft the "fastest
growing software company in America." In 2002
PeopleSoft released 3,̂ new products (PeopleSoft,
2rX13). As just one indicator, it is safe to say tech-
nology is now a ubiquitous part of talent manage-
ment practices for both employers and employees.

107. In much the same way that small proprietor-
ships gave way to the rise of major corporations
following the industrial revolution, technology
and the internet will usher in a new model for
talent management. As General Motors, Dupont.
Standard Oil. and others were becoming huge
national enterprises, a new organizational
approach to managing talent was required. Today,
signs point to the influence of technology in
much the same way. As organizations fully
embrace technology and the web. models that
define the relationship between employers and
employees will evolve, and new ones will emerge
(Davis & Meyer. 1998).
Many models will reshape employment rela-
tionships with workers. While telecommuting
experienced a setback following the dot.com
collapse in 2000. it is on the rebound. An estimat-
ed 24 million Americans regularly or occasionally
telecommute, and 45 percent of the U.S. work-
force already uses mobile devices ranging from
portable PCs and PDAs to wireless internet tools
(Gartner. 2003). A 2002 benefits survey by

108. SHRM found that 37 percent of employers
offered telecommuting on a part-time basis, with
23 percent offering it as a full-lime option
(SHRM, 2002).
Teamwork and team building, a cornerstone of
talent management, was long considered to be a
function of people working together in small
groups. Australian-born George Elton Mayo's
now-famous Hawthorne Studies in the late 1920s
gave rise to the idea that teams, and the social
interactions among team members, play an
important role in the workplace (Burke, 2002).
Today, with advanced communication tools,
virtual work teams enable organizations to blend
capabilities, shorten product cycles, boost produc-
tivity, and speed products to market.
Software development teams, for example,
often "chase the sun." where digitally-connected
programming teams pass work from center to
center around the globe to achieve 24/7 develop-
ment cycles (Joinson, 2002). Walt Disney
Company's animation team used this technique

109. in creating the animated feature. Hunchback of
Noire Dame. Drawings would stait in Paris, with
artists at Notre Dame and Disneyland Paris, and
then move to Florida then on to California to con-
tinue the creative process.
As technology infiltrates nearly every facet of
the workplace, implications for talent management
may be protbund. According to the U.S.
Department of Labor's Employment and Training
Administration, 80 percent of the new jobs created
since 1992 require some degree of post-secondary
training or education, driven largely by technolo-
gy and the tremendous growth in knowledge
workers who now account for a third of the U.S.
wt)rkforce (DeRocco. 2(X)3). Workers in traditional
blue-colku" industries now more than ever need
specialized training to operate advanced robotics
and computerized preiduction lines. Rental car
clerks and delivery drivers all carry highly
advanced hand-held wireless devices. It's a new
world of work.
Is there a dark side to the future? GPS {global
positioning system) technoiogy, for example, is

110. finding its way into new applications at an aston-
ishing rate. Using GPS technology, company vehi-
cles or rental cars, cell phones, PDAs, notebooks
computers, can all be continuously tracked. An
HR Forensics expert examining emails and web
behavior can leam a lot about someone. For the
most part, in this era of hyper security, that's a
good thing. But some employees may feel as
though "Big Brother" is looming ever larger with
the continued erosion of privacy in the workplace.
HR and talent management leaders and strate-
gists have no choice but to keep pace. "The twen-
ty-first century will be about velocity: the speed
of business and the speed of change. To keep up
with and anticipate change, businesses need
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 39
radically better information flow." To get a better
flow of information to develop the right processes
and strategies, they need what Bill Gates calls a
"digital nervous system" (Gates, 1999). For

111. example, one challenge for the HR function is to
get better at matching individual employee skills
and competencies (skill inventories) with project
assignment requirements (work) and tracking
outcomes and effectiveness. Ideally, all human
resource information systems would be part of
the enterprise-wide digital nervous system,
enabling the seamless tlow of information to the
right person at the right time.
To achieve this widely held vision, technologi-
cal and human barriers need to be overcome. As
technology continues to transform talent manage-
ment practices, the approach human resource
organizations adopt to create a connected infra-
structure may be largely dependent on how well
they guide their overall organization in its reaction
to technological change. Great companies
respond to technological change with thoughtful-
ness and creativity, driven by a compulsion to
tum unrealized potential into results; mediocre
companies react and lurch about, motivated by a
fear of being left behind (Collins. 2001).
In 1999, what began as a dialogue among web

112. strategists ultimately surfaced as "The Cluetrain
Manifesto, " a book described as a populist view
of the power of connectedness (Locke, et al.,
1999). In some ways, it was a wake-up call for
organizations:
Without anyone asking for it, the Web has
given the people inside an organization easy
access to one another in a rich variety of ways.
Tbey can send e-mail to one person, to a steady
group, to a dynamic team, to the entire sales
force, or "just" to the board of directors. They
can post creative, informative pages that
express their interests, correct the mistakes in
the official technical documentation, or point
to the industry analyst's report the company
doesn't want anyone to read.
Now. in 2004. we better understand the impli-
cations of this. The future of talent management
may well be about embracing and leveraging
connectedness.
Peering over the horizon, the demographic ally
driven labor shortage looms as a dark cloud. In

113. the next battle for talent there will be winners and
there will be losers. Attracting, motivating, and
retaining talent will take all of the energy and cre-
ativity we can muster.
Biographical Sketches
Fredric I). Frank. PhD. is chief executive officer
of Talent Keepers, the award-winning employee
retention firm. Fred has had over 30 years of
experience in the human resources indu.stry
consultin}' with a large number of private and
public sector organizations In the area of talent
management. Fred is on the Human Resource
Flannint^ Society's (HRFS) editorial review board
for its Human Resource P]mmmg journal, and the
associate articles editor responsible for the talent
management knowledge area. In addition to
TalentKeepers. he has founded two other compa-
nies in the human resources area, both of which
were acquired. Subsequent to the acquisition of
his second company by the Thomson Company.
Fred was head of acquisitions for a division of
Thomson. Fred has a BA from Michigan State
University, and MS and PhD degrees in industrial
organizational psychology from Wayne State

114. University. He formerly was a professor at
Bowling Green State University and The
University of Central Florida. He is on the board
of directors for Michigan State University's
College of Arts and Letters.
Craig R. Taylor is senior vice president of mar-
keting for TalentKeepers employee retention firm,
where he supports TalentKeepers'growth strate-
gies and global employee retention research.
Prior to joining TalentKeepers he was chief mar-
keting officer for AchieveClobal and vice president
of marketing for Click2Learn. Craig spent many
years at Walt Disnex Company leading the
Disney University/Disnex Institute's rapid growth
in offering business .seminars to companies from
around the world. He previously worked at
Wil.son Learning Corporation as vice president of
assessment services and vice president of consult-
ing .services and at American Fxpress Company
in management development. Craig chairs the
editorial advisory board and the F-Learning
Brain Trust for T-t-D. ASTD's monthly magazine,
and is a contributing editor and regular colum-
nist for the publication. He received a BA in psy-

115. chology, and MEd and EdS degrees in counselor
education, all from the University of Florida.
References
ASH) 12003). E-Lifi!imii^ Brain Ihisl Fiuiiiii. Washington D.C.
August.
Brock. F. (2003). "Seniority; W h o ' l l Sit at ihe B o o m e r s '
DesksT"
/VpM' York Times. October 12.
Buckingham, M. & ColTman. C. 11999). Firsi Bn-cik. All the
Hiiles.
Simon & Schuster.
4 0 HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING
Buckingham. V. & Voshiirgh. R. (2(M)I (, "The 21sl Century
Human
ResDurctN Funclion: il's ihe TalenI, Slupid!" Human Resource
Planning, 24(4|: 17-23.
Burke. W.W. (20021. Organization Change: Theory and

116. Practices.
Thousiind Oaks: S;igc Publications.
Catalyst (2002). "Women in leadership: A European BusinL'ss
Imperaiive." 3.
Census 2000. United Slales Census Bureau. U.S. Depiirlmcnl of
Commerce, Washington. D.C.
Cheung, C. |2{KX)), "41) Percent at Older Workers Faee Job
Bias,"
South China Morning Fosl. July 25: 2,
Collins, J. (2{)01l. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make
the
t^ap...and Others Don't, New York: HarperCollins,
Conference Board {2mj), •'U.S. Joh Sill is fat. tion Hits Record
Low."
September IS.
Davis, S.M. & Meyer, C. (1998), Blur: The Speed of Change in
ihe
Connected Economy. Reading, MA: Addisiin-Wesley.

117. DeRoceo. E.S. (2003). Creating a "Demattd Driven ' Workforce
tnvesiment Sysii-m to Meet the Workforce Needs of ihe 21'''
Century.
LI.S. Hepartmenl »f Labor, Employment and Training
Administration.
Dresaiig, J. |2<H)2), Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. May 27.
Eisenherg, D. {2IX)2). •The Coming Job Boom/' Ihiw
Magazine. May 6.
hnploymetii Discriminuiion Report (2000), October 25: 557.
Frank. B. |2OIXI|. "Ne"/ Ideas for Retaining Siore-Lxvcl
Employees,"
.Study Conducted for the Coca-Cola Retailing Re.seanh
Council.
F-rank. F. (2(X).1). TalentKeepers. internal white paper.
Gantz Wiley Research (2(K)4). ••WorkTrenUs 2(X)4."
Gates, B. |2{KK)), Bimne.w (^ the .Speed of Thought: Using a
Digital
Nervous System. New York: Wumcr Books.

118. Grantham, C. (2(M>3). "The Top Human Resource Trends
Impacting
the Distributed Workforce," The Fttlure of Work Now, April.
Hansen, F. (2(K)1). "Currents in Compensation and Benefits."
Compensation & Benefits Review. November-December: 6-9.
HewitI, P. (2001). "Global Aging Strains Fiscal Poliey. Slows
Growth," CSIS. August 29.
Hewitt, P. (2OO2>, "Retiremeni Trends Fosier Global
Slagnaiion,"
CSIS. April 5.
HRO Today (2003). May, Banham.
Human Resotirce Institute (2(X)2l. The Americans wilh
Disabilities
Acl, Executive Summary.
Human Resourie InsliliiU- (2001). "Loyalty and Commitment: A
Survey on Attracting and Retaining Workers."
Human Res<mrce Institute (2(K)3). "Sex Discrimination and the

119. Workplace, Global Perspective."
Hiinum Resources International Report {IW)]). Inicrnet, April
13,
IDC (2(H)3). Begin Acl II: Worldwide and IJ,.S. Corporate
eleaniing
Foreca.ti 2002 - 2006 (Report #28679). January,
International Uihour Organization (2003). Global Repoa, "Time
for
Equality at Work,"
International Utbimr Organizulion (1998). "Will the Glass
Ceiling
Ever be Broken.' Women in Management: It's Sidl Lonely at the
Top," February.
Jackson. R. |2()()3), "Germany and the Challenge ol Global
Aging,"
CSIS. March 5,
Jenkins, W, [ 1999). "Why We Must Retain Affimiiitive
Action," USA
Today. September: 60-62.

120. Job Recovery Study (2003l. SiK:ii-ty ol' Human Resources
Management
Joinson. C. (2002). "Managing Vinual Teams." HR Magazine,
June,
Journal of Bu.tine,s Strategy i 2(X)3). January/February, .3.
Juskci. J. (2000). "Data Show the Damaging Effects of Ubor
Turnover." Industry Week, January 24.
Kaihia, P. (2003). "The Coming Job Boom." Business 2,0
(Fortune
Magazine), September.
Locke, C , Levine, R,, Searls, D., & Weinberger, D. U999J. The
Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. Boulder;
Perseus.
Meisinger, S. (2(X>3), "Acquiring Technology Savvy Pays Off
Tor
HR." HR Magazine. December.

121. Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H.,&AxciTOd, B. (2f)01). The
War for
Talent. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Monster Worldwide 12003). Quarterly Metrics Report. Third
Quarler
ended September 30,
National Association of Manufiiclurers, The Manufacturing
Institute
and Deloitte & Touche (2tX)3). "Keeping America Cumpetitivc.
How a
Talent Shonage Threatens U.S. Manufacturing."
Palel, D, (2002). "Managing Talent," HR Magazine. March.
PBI Asian HR cNewiJeiter {200'}). "Japan's Labor
Inefficiencies: Fear
of Unemployment and Discrimination Against Women,"
Internet,
February 3,
Pollard, K,M. & O'Hare, W,P, (I999i. America's Racial and
Ethnic
Minorities. Washington. D.C. Population Reference Bureau.

122. Population Bulletin 54, No. 3.
Senge, P, (1990). The Fifth iriscipline: The Art & Practice of
ihe
U'arning Organization, Garden City: Doubleduy & Company.
Sibson & Company (2000). "Employee Turnover Depresses
F^imings,
Stock Prices by 38%."
Society of Human Resource Managenieril and Wall Street
Journal
(2003). "Job Recovery Study," July.
Society for Human Resounes Management (2(HKI|. "Retention
Survey."
Society for Human Resource Management (20031. "2003 Media
Kit."
Alexandria: SHRM Press.
Sugrue. B. (2(K)3|. .State ofthe Indtistry: ASTD's Annual
Review of
U.S, and International Trends in Workplace Learning and
Ferfbnnance. Washington D.C: ASTD Press,

123. Sullivan, J. (2(X)3). "Holy Toledo, tbe Pre-Boom Has Begun!
Arc You
Ready for a Hell of a Ride," Indtjstry Trends, erdaily,
November 17.
Taylor, C. (2(X>2), "Foeus on Talent," T&D Magazine.
December,
Taylor, C. (2002). "The Second Wave." T+D Magazine,
October.
U.S. Department of Uihor (2{)O3). Bureau of Labor Statistics.
U.S. Ei/ual F.mployment Opportunity Commission |2()03l.
"Charge
Statistics FY 1992 Through FY 2{>02," FebrXJa:y (.,
Watson Wyatt |2(X)2), Newsline. Internet, July 2,
Yakaboski, P. (1999). Ofi/W^H'RWrai.-, Notes, February 18,
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 41

124. Women’s Networks: A Career
Development Intervention or
Impediment?
LAURA L. BIEREMA
School of Leadership and Lifelong Learning, University of
Georgia, USA
ABSTRACT This case study investigated an in-company
women’s network with the mission of
improving recruitment, retention, and advancement of women.
The Network was unsuccessful in
improving women’s standing in the organization due to the
nature of the women’s participation
and the resilience of the patriarchal culture. The Network was
impaired by its members’ attitudes,
awareness of gendered power relations, and participation. The
Network was also thwarted by the
resiliency of the patriarchal organization culture. Study
conclusions include that networks may

125. serve to reproduce patriarchy, not erode it; the level of gender
consciousness impacts on network
participation and commitment; and network success is impacted
upon by organization culture.
Networks’ viability as an HRD intervention is assessed.
KEY WORDS: Women, in-company networks, diversity
Today women and men populate the workforce in equal
numbers. Yet, finding
women among the top ranks of organizations is rare. Today only
seven women are
CEOs in the Fortune 500 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000),
slightly more than 1 per
cent. Of the top earners in the Fortune 500, 5.2 per cent are
women, and only 12.4 per
cent of Fortune 500 Boards of Directors are women (Catalyst,
2002b). Further,
women fare more poorly than men in pay, promotion, benefits,
and other economic
rewards (Bowler, 1999; Elder and Johnson, 1999; Kim, 2000;
Knoke and Ishio,
1998). Success comes with a high price, often requiring women
executives to emulate
men and reinforce patriarchal systems that discriminate against

126. women and people
of color (Bierema, 2003) and to work long hours, sacrificing
health, family, and
leisure. It is also well documented that women must work
harder than men to
advance (Ragins et al., 1998).
The workplace reflects a white-male controlled entity
(Ruderman et al., 1995;
Sharpe, 1994) where advancement often involves adopting
masculine behaviors such
as competitiveness and aggressiveness (Diekman and Eagly,
2000; Fagenson, 1990;
Correspondence Address: Laura L. Bierema, Associate
Professor, 850 College Station Road, 405 River’s
Crossing, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30605, USA. Tel:
+ 706 542 6174. Fax: + 706 542 4024.
Email: [email protected]
Human Resource Development International,
Vol. 8, No. 2, 207 – 224, June 2005
ISSN 1367-8868 Print/1469-8374 Online/05/020207-18 ª 2005

127. Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/13678860500100517
Kolb, 1999; Maniero, 1994). Barriers to advancement include
being a woman and
encountering sexism (Korn/Ferry and UCLA, 1993), gender-
based stereotypes,
exclusion from formal networks, lack of role models, and an
inhospitable corporate
culture (Catalyst, 2004a).
One way women learn corporate culture is through relationships
(Bierema, 1994,
1996, 1999) and they form a variety of social networks as a
means of building a
community of support. Networks serve psychosocial and
instrumental functions
(Ibarra, 1995), yet, it is well established that women are
excluded from men’s
networks. Additionally, women must work harder than men to
advance, and enjoy
less power, prestige, and pay. The alienating nature of a
masculine culture has led

128. to the establishment of women’s networks as a countermeasure.
Women need
networks because they are not well integrated into men’s
networks (Brass, 1985;
Catalyst, 2004; Scott, 1998, Travers et al., 1997), lack access to
top level
management (Belle, 2002; Catalyst, 1999, Morrison and
Glinow, 1990; Crampton
and Mishra, 1999), and may be isolated from career paths that
lead to power
(Belle, 2002; Catalyst, 1999).
The focus of this study was on women’s in-company networks,
or formally
sponsored and structured groups concerned with women’s
advancement. Women’s in-
company networks typically help women build skills and create
knowledge to succeed
in organization culture. They are sponsored by the employer
organization and function
to advise senior management, hold networking events, andcreate
mentoring programs.
The purpose of this research was to conduct a case study of an
in-company

129. women’s executive network to examine its impact on the
women’s careers and
organization context. The following research questions were
addressed:
1. What were the Network members’ experiences with the
network?
2. How did the Network impact on members’ careers and the
organization?
Literature Review
This section reviews literature on networks, including
definitions, men’s and
women’s networks, benefits, effectiveness, and social network
theory.
Networks Defined
Networking is ‘the process of contacting and being contacted by
people in our social
network and maintaining these linkages and relationships. . .a
set of relations, linkages,
or ties among people’ (Burke, 1993, in Travers et al., 1997, p.
62) or ‘the banding

130. together of like-minded people for the purposes of contact and
friendship, and support’
(Vinnicombe and Colwill, 1996, in Travers et al., 1997, p. 62).
An informal network is
‘the set of job-related contacts that a manager relies on for
access to task-related,
career, and social support’ (Ibarra, 1995, p. 674). There are
three different types of
networks, including professional and occupational networks,
training networks and
in-company networks (Travers et al., 1997). Keele (1986)
defines networks as being
composed of weak social ties and used to exchange information
and provide support.
Networks can be either informal (i.e. professional associations,
personal contacts) or
formal and structured entities sponsored by an organization.
208 L. L. Bierema
Men’s and Women’s Networks
Both women and men establish networks in support of career

131. advancement. Gender
differences in networks are a result of opportunities and
constraints arising out of
women’s and men’s different locations in the social structure
(Moore, 1990). Hanson
(2000) notes that men usually belong to larger, more
economically focused networks,
while women belong to smaller, more localized and community-
minded networks.
Women tend to have more kin in their social networks than men
(Renzulli et al.,
2000), even when compared with men in similar social
structural positions (Moore,
1990). Networks have been found to be more utilitarian for men
and more social for
women (Vinnicombe and Colwill, 1996). Ibarra (1993) suggests
that women straddle
male-dominated networks for access to work issues and
women’s networks to find
social support. The relational aspect of women’s networks may
be attributed to their
tendency for relational and connected knowing (Belenky et al.,
1986; Caffarella and
Olson, 1993).

132. In a study of women and men’s networks, Ibarra (1997)
interviewed sixty-three
women and men managers in four Fortune 500 service firms.
She found that women’s
networks were less homophilous (homophily is the extent to
which network members
are similar) than men’s but that women with advancement
potential relied more on
close ties and relationships than did men or women with less
advancement potential.
She concluded that different types of networks may provide
alternative routes to
similar career resources for men and women.
As in other realms of organization life, women are at a
disadvantage when
forming networks in comparison to men. Inhibited structural
access is supported by
Scott’s (1996) study of women’s personal networks in corporate
government affairs.
Even when women have the same title, experience, work history
and age, men had
more contact with top government officials. Scott also found
that women are more
likely to interact and form networks with other women at

133. similar levels in the
organization, but form fewer relationships with women at the
top. In spite of this,
Brass (1985) found that women are more adept at networking
than men.
Benefits of Women’s Networks
Networks may help mollify women’s assimilation into a male-
dominated culture
while simultaneously giving them collective power and
confidence to advocate and
act for organization change. Joining a formal women’s network
has been stressed as
vital in helping women navigate traditionally patriarchal
environments (Catalyst,
1999). Hanson (2000) advocates networking: for assistance in
landing a job,
connecting with diverse colleagues over shared interests,
cultivating a support
system, and integrating oneself into a career.
Mitchell (1999) surveyed thirty-one members of a women’s
networking organiza-
tion. The women participated for help with business problems,

134. to solicit advice and to
change career direction. Members valued exposure to varied
opinions, advice, input,
views and support. Members discontinued participation due to
time constraints and
diminishing group size. Higgins (2000) surveyed the early
careers of 138 lawyers and
found that the more developmental relationships and assistance
received by
individuals, the higher their career satisfaction. She also found
that receiving high
Women’s Networks 209
psychological support from people of low status also resulted in
high levels of work
satisfaction, pointing to the importance of developmental
relationships in the
workplace. She also found that women and racial minorities
were less satisfied with
their work, making developmental relationships even more
important for these groups.

135. Effectiveness of Networks
Networks serve psychosocial and instrumental benefits for
women. Several studies
have been conducted on informal social networks (Higgins,
2000; Ibarra, 1992, 1995,
1997; Moore, 1990), but the effectiveness of in-company
networks for women is less
understood. Little empirical evidence exists demonstrating the
effectiveness of in-
company networks (Burke et al., 1995; Travers et al., 1997) or
group mentoring
(Mitchell, 1999). Instead, the literature addresses receptivity to
and composition of
networks. For instance, 87 per cent of surveyed members of the
National
Association of Female Executives felt the need to network with
both sexes in order
to advance in their careers (Smith, 1995).
Network Membership and Identity Development
Successful career women sometimes find themselves assuming
masculine attributes,
stereotyping gender roles, and following a set of ‘rules’ to get

136. ahead (Diekman and
Eagly, 2000; Fagenson, 1990; Maniero, 1994). The literature
lauds formal women’s
networks as tools to advance women’s careers. What is less
clear is whether women’s
networks encourage female acculturation to the patriarchal
culture or if they are
instrumental in fostering real change and opportunity for
women.
Networks can function to assimilate members, as well as help
them secure a
positive sense of identity. Ibarra (1995) outlined the ‘deficit
hypothesis’ and a
pluralist perspective for exploring network membership of
minorities. The deficit
hypothesis views minorities as having less instrumentally useful
networks due to less
political savvy in a white-dominated society. This orientation
demands assimilation
in order to be successful in an organization. The deficit model
can be applied to
women who are subordinate to white men in organizations and
who must assimilate
if they seek advancement. An alternative view advocated by

137. Ibarra is grounded in
understandings of pluralism, identity development, and group
dynamics. This view
suggests that the critical developmental task is developing a
positive sense of identity
while simultaneously assimilating to the dominant culture when
necessary. This view
also values both engagement with the disenfranchised group (in
the case of this
study, women), as well as with the dominant majority for career
success. It should be
noted that Ibarra (1995) found that establishing a strong sense
of identity was more
important than assimilation in her research on the networks of
white and minority
managers.
Social Network Theory
The networking literature is based on social network theory that
examines how
networks are used to attain organization power (Brass, 1992;
Quinlan, 1999). Social
network theory views any set of social relationships as
embedded within the larger

138. 210 L. L. Bierema
social context that provides access to various social contacts
(Alderfer, 1986; Blau,
1977; Ibarra, 1995). Although any social network imposes
constraints based on
power, resources, and demographics, people take active roles in
structuring their
social networks in pursuit of their goals and membership in
networks.
Ibarra (1997) uses three sets of network-analytic concepts to
describe gender
differences in managerial networks: homophily, tie strength,
and range. Homophily
is the tendency of individuals to interact with people who are
similar (i.e. race,
gender). Tie strength indicates the emotional intensity of the
relationship, and range
refers to the diversity of groups within an individual’s various
networks. These three
factors work together to provide access to diverse resources.

139. Weak ties are believed
to link more dissimilar individuals than strong ties and serve as
bridges to
disconnected parts and new information within the social
system. People in networks
with strong ties will experience redundancy in information and
resources due to the
tightly knit nature of the network. Thus weak ties and broader
range are viewed as
advantageous in providing instrumental worth such as access to
career opportunities
and other resources. Ibarra suggests that women tend to belong
to less homophilous
networks that have strong ties.
Ibarra (1992) argues that two network mechanisms function to
reinforce gendered
inequalities in the workplace. These mechanisms include
homophily or the tendency
to form same-sex network relationships and the ability to
convert individual
attributes and positional resources into network advantages. She
surveyed seventy-
three members of a social network in an advertising firm and
found that men tended

140. to form homophilous ties across multiple networks and to have
stronger homophilous
ties. Women obtained social support and friendship from women
and instrumental
access through network ties to men. Men benefited more from
their networks.
Methodology
The purpose of this research was to conduct a case study of an
in-company women’s
executive network to examine its impact on the women’s careers
and organization
context. The following research questions were addressed:
1. What were the Network members’ experiences with the
network?
2. How did the Network impact on members’ careers and the
organization?
Theoretical Framework
The study was based on an interest in women’s career
development and learning and
grounded in social network theory and feminism. Historically,

141. career development
theory and literature has explained the careers of middle-class
white men. Alternative
models are emerging accounting for the experiences of persons
from poor families,
persons of color, and women (Burke and Nelson, 2002; Farmer
and Associates,
1997). Learning theory also informed this study based on the
assumption that
networks potentially promote learning. The process of women’s
learning is also
receiving more attention in adult education (Hayes and
Flannery, 2001) and human
resource development. The dominant discourse on women’s
networks is that they
work, all women should get involved, and organizations should
support them
Women’s Networks 211
(Catalyst, 1999). Yet, there has been little empirical evidence
supporting in-company
networks’ effectiveness. Most of the literature on networks is

142. anecdotal and tactical
(e.g. Catalyst, 1999). This research was also grounded in social
network theory
(Brass, 1992) in an effort to understand how access to power
and resource affects
career success, and data were analyzed through a feminist lens.
A Qualitative Approach
A qualitative methodology was adopted since it is ‘the preferred
strategy when
‘‘how’’ or ‘‘why’’ questions are posed, when the investigator
has little control over
the events, and when the focus is on a contemporary
phenomenon within some real-
life context’ (Yin, 1994, p. 1). My interest was in how the
Network impacted on the
women and the organization.
Participants
The participants were members of an in-company women’s
network that was made
up of approximately ten of the top executive women in a
Fortune 500 corporation

143. headquartered in the US. The company manufactures hardware,
office supplies,
sporting goods, and wines and spirits, employs approximately
30,000 worldwide and
has over $5 billion in sales. Based on a long-term relationship
with the human
resources vice president, I was invited to provide facilitation
and consultation as an
external consultant. Although the organization covered my
expenses, I received no
payment for consulting services.
The Network was created by the organization’s senior human
resource executive
vice president and the CEO, both of whom were highly
committed to advancing
women in the organization. The organization experienced major
changes during the
course of the research, including the CEO’s retirement, the
relocation of the
corporate headquarters, declining financial performance, and
downsizing. These
changes had deleterious affects on both the Network and data
collection efforts.

144. The Network was formed when all members were invited to
attend an event
focused on women in business. During the course of the
meeting, a focus group was
held and the Network established. The Network developed a
mission to ‘[p]rovide a
focus for ongoing leadership, advocacy, and support for the
development of women
and minorities and to ensure workplace equality remains a vital
part of the [company]
corporate strategic plan’ (meeting notes 17 June 1998). The
Network existed over
approximately a four-year period and held a meeting
approximately twice annually.
Data Collection and Analysis
Data were initially gathered via focus groups, the results of
which are published
elsewhere (Bierema, in press). After the Network had been
operational for over one
year, interviews were held with nine members. Interviews were
tape-recorded and
transcribed verbatim when permitted. However, the subject of
the Network caused a

145. great deal of trepidation and reluctance to speak about it on
tape. Three executives
declined to be taped for some or all of their interviews. Field
notes were made when
taping was not possible. Participant observation was also used
at all meetings of the
212 L. L. Bierema
Network. All correspondence was used to further document the
study and
memoranda were composed after the various telephone calls and
planning sessions
that were held between formal meetings of the Network.
Data were analyzed according to the constant comparative
method and evaluated
for common themes, stories, and clusters of information
(Bogdan and Biklen, 1998).
Through constant comparison of themes, categories were
derived inductively
(Bogdan and Biklen, 1998). Themes were organized according
to the concerns

146. based adoption model (Hall and Hord, 1984) and a gender
consciousness continuum
(Brody et al., 2000), since both of these models were similar to
the themes that
emerged from the data analysis. A matrix describing women’s
gender awareness and
action was derived from the analysis and is described in the
discussion (Bierema,
2002). The findings in this paper will be discussed in terms of
the efficacy of women’s
in-company networks for women and organizations.
Limitations
The limitations of this study include that it represents a single
corporation and its
women executives, and the results may not be generalizable to
corporate America or
women. I had privileged access to the group through my
relationship with their top
executive, the HR Vice President, but had no previous
relationship with this
corporation. My relationship with the executive helped bolster
my credibility with
the group, and I formed personal relationships with most

147. members. My close
relationship with the HR executive proved to be an asset, since I
was privy to more
information about the group and its functioning and
correspondence than if there
had been no past history between us. A limitation and strength
is my perspective as a
former executive in a Fortune 500 company. I understand the
culture and challenges
for women in organizations, but am also critical of them based
on my experiences in
a corporation and voluntary decision to leave.
Findings
Ultimately, this in-company women’s network failed and was
disbanded. The
Network dynamics were impacted upon by the women’s
attitudes, awareness, and
participation, and the resiliency of patriarchal culture within the
organization. The
women experienced the Network with apprehension and the
organization proved
more an obstacle than a support. An unexpected finding was
that the Network’s

148. results contradicted the original intentions of helping women.
Women’s Attitudes, Awareness, and Participation
Participation was affected by attitudes toward the Network,
awareness of gendered
power relations, and willingness to take action.
Attitude toward the Network. Network members fretted about
the consequences of
their participation and the impact on their image. Many viewed
participating as
potentially career damaging. One member captured this
trepidation: ‘I don’t know if
I want to stand up and be counted on women’s issues when my
organization is
Women’s Networks 213
primarily run by and features men or products most likely used
by men.’ Another
mused, ‘No one wants to be thought of as someone who needs
extra help.’ The

149. Network was also regarded with wariness in the company, as a
participant
complained: ‘When you hear by way of the grapevine, that there
are suspicions held
by certain men as to ‘‘well what are these women doing?’’. . .it
was difficult to
establish an agenda for change that one could have a
commitment to.’ Some men
jokingly suggested the members were engaged in male bashing
and recipe exchanging
during their meetings. This resulted in the Network positioning
its activities as
benefiting both men and women, and allowing concerns over
perceptions to
outweigh those over benefits.
Awareness of gendered power relations. The women in the
Network expressed varying
levels of awareness of gendered power relations in the
organization. Also known as
‘gender consciousness’, awareness is a measure of the degree to
which individuals
and organizations recognize how gender differences create
privilege for men and
oppress women.

150. The Network purpose was clear about helping women advance
in the organization
and keeping that goal in the strategic plan, yet some comments
during meetings and
interviews contradicted stated objectives and appeared ‘gender
unconscious’. For
instance, some of the members did not view gender as impacting
on their careers,
exclaiming, ‘Oh we don’t have a problem at all around gender
issues or any diversity
issues’ or ‘I really don’t think [being a woman] has [helped me]
at all. I never have.
And I’m very used to being the only woman in the room.
Definitely doesn’t hurt me.
And I don’t really think it’s helped me either.’ In spite of such
declarations in the
context of full group meetings, several of the Network members
confided in the
privacy of interviews that gender was indeed an issue.
Although all the women described themselves as women’s
advocates and pioneers,
only one identified herself as a feminist. Some of the members
recognized inequities

151. based on gender and were strong advocates of equal treatment –
but not special –
treatment for women. One participant noted that, although the
Network seemed the
‘right thing to do’, and that she would ‘like to see women
advance’, she would ‘also
like to see qualified men be advanced’. The women also
uncritically modified their
behavior and tolerated inequitable treatment, as noted by this
executive reflecting on
her felt need to tone down her enthusiasm as it might be
perceived as ‘flighty’ around
men: ‘I’m not really happy about that kind of thing, but that
seems to be what’s
needed. You do it.’
Some of the Network members questioned gendered inequities,
but most of these
conversations happened in the privacy of a one-on-one
interview. One participant
explained during an interview, ‘Well to be perfectly frank. .
.[gender discrimination]
is certainly an issue here. Women are not viewed in the same
way. . ..You’re very
conscious of it.’ Although aware of gendered power relations,

152. the women also noted
that being ‘other’ also presented advantages: ‘Being the first
woman actually, I think,
gave me some opportunities that other people didn’t have.’
Willingness to take action. The Network generated little action
around women’s
issues beyond meetings and planning. The participants who
acknowledged gender
inequities but did not take any action to address them blamed a
lack of energy for
214 L. L. Bierema
Network idleness. Many were simply too tired to take on one
more challenge given
the pressures they felt in their jobs, particularly when the
personal career costs
seemed high. One executive noted, ‘The people themselves, the
women themselves,
don’t feel like they have time, don’t feel like they have the
background, don’t feel
like. . .pick something, therefore they couldn’t possibly stand

153. up and be counted on
this.’
The members who expressed an awareness of gendered power
relations and
regularly challenged the culture were few. They were outwardly
focused, concerned
with helping others negotiate the organizational culture. Their
actions involved
advocacy of other women and engagement in public discussions
about improving the
culture for women in the organization. The woman executive
who created the
Network explained her rationale: ‘I started [the Network] for a
couple different
reasons, so I guess I’ve been the leader.’ She further noted,
‘The workplace is
providing people an opportunity to take leadership roles, and I
was kind of hoping
that somebody would step in the forefront, but no one has.’
Resiliency of Patriarchal Culture
Every participant in this study cited the culture as a key barrier
to the Network

154. having impact. The culture was very male oriented,
discriminatory, and unsuppor-
tive of the effort. The maleness of the products and culture
caused some women to
conclude that there was little awareness of diversity as
explained by this executive:
‘Management for so long has been white male, and there is not
as much awareness of
other entities.’
Some of the women acknowledged gender discrimination in the
organization and
their lack of access to the male network. ‘I’m not going out to
play golf with them,
you know in groups or anything. . .I don’t have access to that.
And I won’t. It’s just
not the kind of company that’s even comfortable with that kind
of coed experience.’
Another member shared how she garnered a great deal of
respect for her ability early
in her career although it took her longer to achieve the same
level as men regardless
of the responsibility. She noted, however, that she never
complained about this
situation, ‘because it is generally, well totally, a male-

155. dominated place, there wasn’t
very many places you could go to take that issue. ‘Cause that
would be a woman just
complaining.’ There was also a sense that the some of the
women had so fully
acclimated themselves to the male culture that they did not see
the value of a
women’s network. The women also questioned the sincerity of
the company’s
support, even though the Network was endorsed by the CEO. ‘I
don’t really know
where the support is or what it’s perceived to be doing any
more.’ Another noted, ‘I
don’t want to be the only one beating the drum [for women’s
issues]’. During the
course of the study, the CEO retired and a new one took the
helm. The Network was
unsure if this new CEO would still value the network and this
dynamic contributed
to the inaction of it.
Contradictions
The creation and continuation of the in-company network bred
contradictions. The

156. network provided some benefits to members, but it also caused
trepidation about
Women’s Networks 215
organizational perceptions of the network. Finally, it failed in
its quest to address
women’s issues.
Networks offer a structure for sharing and solidarity among
members by
minimizing isolation and providing information that could be
helpful to members in
their careers. The members were disposed to take collective
action devoted to
women’s advancement, for instance, ‘I’m a firm believer of the
power behind the
voice, that we’ve gotta sing off the same page.’ Beyond working
together to support
women’s advancement, it was strongly held that there were
sound business reasons
for pursuing this initiative and that the company would suffer if
no action resulted.

157. The women also felt that they could convince the male
executives that this was
worthwhile by tapping into their competitive spirit: ‘So we’ve
got that political
mindset, and this is about power, [and] when it comes down to
it, men see things
competitively.’ Another observed, ‘It’s all around power, and
power’s a relational
concept, and I love it, I want it, and it makes good things.’
There was general
agreement that this process could only be powerful, however, if
the women worked
in concert.
The network members showed a ground-breaking spirit as role
models for the
future. They regularly referred to themselves as ‘pioneers’ when
they were speaking
about their roles as executive women in the company. One
woman reflected, ‘If
women were to come [here], I think that they would have to like
to be the pioneer,
and if they didn’t like that, then it’s really not the place for
them. Being a pioneer is
not easy.’

158. Although the Network provided support and inspiration, it also
created waves of
concern. In theory, these women valued the Network. In
practice, however, they
expressed fear about their participation in the Network and
publicly working to
advance women in the company. They were anxious about being
perceived as ‘recipe
swapping male-bashers’ or appearing to ‘need help’. This
thought captures the
sentiment: ‘I had a. . .concern that. . .we’ve all participated in
these kinds of things
before, and [someone’s] specific experience had been that
they’re either recipe swaps
or male bashing.’ This woman further noted how pleased she
was with the process
and that ‘what we had here is clearly showing our level in
business thinking, our
sophistication as business people, and our understanding what
the real issue is.’
Another woman shared:
[My boss is] gonna ask me. . . ‘what did they say, what did they
do?. . .tell me

159. everything.’ Not because he’s suspicious, but he just has to
have his hands in
everything. I really was sort of expecting this to be, not
necessarily a male
bashing thing, but when I left the other day and [my boss] said,
‘have fun, what
do you think they’re gonna do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, we’ll sit
around and say
‘‘chicks rule’’,’ but I really thought it was gonna be. . .less of a
constructive
thing, and I’m so impressed. . .you know some of you I work
with, but others I
have never met before, and you all are just so articulate, and so
you know, just
so incredibly impressive, so I’m so glad to be included in your
little group.
The dominant Network discourse was skewed toward company
performance, not
the individual women’s benefit. One participant noted at the end
of the focus group,
‘I think it’s another example that shows how when women are
given an opportunity,
216 L. L. Bierema

160. they are going to think holistically and be business minded, and
the myth is that
we’re just going to take care of our nest.’ The group
complimented itself on how
‘business minded and strategic they were during the focus
group; as one woman
noted, ‘Not one time during our interaction did we not focus on
the success of the
company as a whole, and how each one of our individual
companies could
contribute, and I would like that message to be clearly heard by
senior management.’
The group also realized that the company would benefit by
better integrating
women, as captured in this comment: ‘By bringing forward what
we have here, that’s
something that’s not been done before that will increase market
share. . ..We are an
untapped resource.’ The women were proud of putting the
company first in their
conversation; however, this behavior was contradictory, since it
distracted attention

161. away from the women themselves. In a sense, the focus group
functioned to detract
from the real issues the women were facing in their patriarchal
work environment,
the opposite of the intended result.
Discussion
Women’s in-company networks are being enthusiastically
formed (Catalyst, 1999),
but there has been little systematic study of them. This study
offers a glimpse into the
workings of an in-company women’s network. This case study
showed that the
network dynamics were impacted upon by the women’s attitudes
and participation,
and the resiliency of patriarchal culture within the organization.
An unanticipated
finding of the focus group was the inherent contradictions of
attempting to sponsor a
women’s network in male-dominated organization culture.
Complex dynamics
caused this network to have the opposite result of its intentions.
This study has not
sought to be critical of the women’s thinking and behaviors

162. related to the Network,
but rather to understand their conceptions of gendered power
relations and
experiences of working for change in an inhospitable
environment using a formal in-
company network as its vehicle.
This study offers three conclusions. (1) networks may serve to
reproduce
patriarchy, not erode it; (2) the level of gender consciousness
impacts on network
participation and commitment; and (3) network success is
impacted upon by
organization culture.
Conclusion 1: Networks May Serve to Reproduce Patriarchy,
Not Erode It
Powell and Smith-Doer (1994) have described the paradox of
networks in that they
create bonds of affiliation that both lubricate getting things
done while
simultaneously providing a glue that brings order and meaning
to social life. They
note that the structure of networks gives them the ability

163. simultaneously to empower
and to constrain, to bind and to blind. The women in this study
had power in their
positions and were able to bond together in other areas of their
work to launch new
products and manage key parts of the business. The organization
culture and the
Network members’ own resistance, however, seemed to bind the
group into a state of
inaction. It is possible that the Network failed because their
power was diminished
by association with a ‘women’s group’. They may have met
their goals for advancing
themselves better in other networks within the company that
were more powerful.
Women’s Networks 217
The women were highly assimilated into the corporate culture
which may have made
challenging a culture that had been very good to them difficult.
To be effective at eroding structural inequality and creating

164. atmospheres that are
conducive to women requires that both networks and their
organizations work to
change the structure of power relations within the organization.
Too often networks
are left to their own devices to fix cultural and structural
problems in organizations.
Instead of creating real change, these networks simply
reproduce patriarchal power
structures without adequate resources or strategy for promoting
change. Networks,
no matter how useful they may be, are not a dominant source of
power for women
(Scott, 1998). The network in this case worked in the opposite
way to that intended.
It caused members to avoid issues affecting women and
therefore allowed them to
worsen. In some ways women’s networks are a reaction to the
‘men’s network’.
Attempting to duplicate male power structures is not the perfect
answer to
improving women’s presence and power in the workplace.
Women might be better
off creating alternative structures to promote learning, share
power, and challenge

165. the prevailing patriarchal power.
Considering the three characteristics of networks (homophily,
tie strength, and
range) offers clues as to why the Network may have backfired.
The strongest
networks are less homophilous, have weak ties, and a wide
range (Brass, 1992;
Ibarra, 1997). Homophily is the tendency for individuals to
interact with those who
are similar. By virtue of this being an in-company women’s
network, members
shared gender and an organization culture. All but one were
white and ages ranged
from late thirties to late fifties. These women had fairly strong
ties due to their
common gender, organization, and industry. This may have
served to weaken the
Network since strong ties are known to increase redundancy of
information and
resources. All in-company networks will suffer from this
problem to a certain extent.
Finally, the range of the network refers to the diversity in
contacts that each member
brings. This was working in the Network’s favor in that the

166. members were dispersed
throughout the company, but it still provided less range than an
informal network.
Almost by design, in-company networks default to a weaker
network structure by
virtue of these factors. Ultimately, this network had little power
to influence the
organization and resulted in members silencing their voices
rather than speaking up
for themselves or other women.
Conclusion 2: The Level of Gender Consciousness Impacts on
Participation and
Receptivity
Gender consciousness is different degrees of thinking about
gender: ‘Gender
consciousness refers to a person’s readiness to recognize how
sex differences and
privilege are deeply embedded in the assumptions, expectations,
practices, and
manifestations of the society’ (Brody et al., 2000, p. 26). A
framework to describe the
Network member’s awareness of gendered power relations was
derived in this study.

167. The framework (Bierema, 2002), depicted in Figure 1, is a
matrix model that
categorizes women’s gender consciousness according to their
level of awareness (low-
to-high) of gendered power relations and actions (low-to-high).
The women’s
sentiments on the Network ranged from low awareness/low
action – ‘Oh we don’t
have a problem at all around gender issues or any diversity
issues’ – to high
218 L. L. Bierema
awareness/high action – ‘I’m a leader in the organization. I am
a professional. I am
also – whether I like it or not – I am still a role model for
women.’
The matrix was developed through data analysis and building on
the continuum of
gender consciousness and privilege developed by Brody et al.
(2000). As Brody et al.
observe, ‘Society has a collective gender consciousness [or

168. unconsciousness] and
unidentified and unspoken assumptions about male privilege’
(2000, p. 1). Their
study examined how collective consciousness permeates the
experiences of both
educators and students in both single sex and coed institutions.
The matrix devised
to analyze the findings of this study examines levels of gender
consciousness relevant
to organizational settings and in particular to the case of the
women’s network.
While some of the executives exhibited low levels of awareness
and therefore
action (quadrant 1), the majority fell into a category of
‘conscious unconsciousness’
(quadrant 3), that is, they were highly aware of gendered power
relations, but unable
or unwilling to take any action to change them. They
deliberately took a stance of
inaction on women’s issues. These Network members critiqued
power relations and
expressed understanding about how they were affected by these
dynamics in the
privacy of a one-on-one interview, sometimes without the tape-

169. recorder running, but
Figure 1. Levels of gender consciousness and action
Women’s Networks 219
the issue became a non-discussable in the meetings of the
Network. The Network
members’ public silence regarding their disagreement with
policies and issues related
to women was rooted in the high costs of speaking up on behalf
of women. One
participant explained this dynamic: ‘Sometimes I’ve had to
accept less than what I
thought may have been right. . ..Sometimes you just have to bite
your tongue and not
say anything.’ She indicated that speaking up would have
rendered her ‘too strong
for a woman’. The women in this study publicly identified with
the male culture, but
their understanding of gendered power relations was not talked
about in the public
meetings of the group, it was broached only from the safety

170. behind closed doors.
The Network members’ silent protest against the culture
rendered the Network
ineffective and inactive. The irony of this stance is that taking
action is what the
Network needed to do to foster change. Further, these women
had the stature and
power to push the Network if they had so chosen. The only
quadrant of the
awareness/action matrix that provides leverage toward
meaningful change for
women is quadrant four. With the exception of two executives,
there was little
evidence that the Network members were willing to challenge
the organization
culture or take action when they witnessed gender inequities in
the organization. One
noted, ‘I’m a leader in the organization. I am a professional. I
am also – whether I
like it or not – I am still a role model for women’. Women
members of networks and
their organizations need to identify strategies and policies that
help move toward
quadrant four, a high awareness and action state.

171. Conclusion 3: Network Success Is Impacted upon by
Organization Culture
Women feel solely responsible for their difficulty in corporate
culture and
organizational culture perpetuates the exclusion of women
(Belle, 2002). Yet culture
is a product of the entire organization, not just the women. This
research tracked the
creation and collapse of an executive women’s network in
corporate America. The
breakdown of the Network should not rest primarily on the
shoulders of the women
participants, but rather on the ineffective organizational
structure and inhospitable
patriarchal culture that stifled action on knowledge about
gendered power relations.
In fact, the conclusion that this Network initiative did not
succeed is in itself a
remarkable finding, considering the stature and success all of
these women had
achieved. The women in this study are extraordinary. They are
successful in a
competitive environment and have proven their leadership and

172. management abilities
during their careers. They are looked up to as role models and
as employees with
potential to continue advancing in the organization. Some even
achieved promotions
and special recognition during the life of the Network. Taken in
isolation, the
Network should have succeeded by the sheer virtue of its
members. What cannot be
overlooked, however, is the social context surrounding the
network and how that
impacted on its functioning, particularly since social networks
function within a
larger context.
Implications for Practice
Networks are being uncritically adopted in many organization
settings to address
issues of diversity and supposedly increase opportunities for
women and other
220 L. L. Bierema

173. diverse groups. Yet, accomplishing improved organization
equity through the use of
networks is more complicated than simply creating a network.
The dominant discourse on networks is that they work, all
women should get
involved, and organizations should support them (Catalyst,
1999). Unfortunately, it
is not that simple. To be effective at eroding structural
inequality and creating
atmospheres conducive to women requires that both networks
and their organiza-
tions function with high awareness and action around issues of
gendered power
relations. This study shows the participants in the Network were
generally aware of
the obstacles their gender presented to advancement, yet they
were ineffectual at
raising their voices or taking action addressing such problems
due to individual fear,
denial, frustration, and exhaustion, and organizational sexism
and resistance to the
Network. The organization functioned at a low level of gender
consciousness and

174. action with dynamics falling primarily into quadrants one and
two of Figure 1.
Based on the findings, the following practice recommendations
may be useful for
both women and organizations considering in-company
women’s networks: create
alternative network structures; invest in development programs
that enhance
women’s self-efficacy and sense of identity; assess the
organization level of gender
consciousness; assess the network level of gender
consciousness; secure commitment
from both management and the network members; vary the level
of network
members; assess network activities and results; track the
lifecycle of the network;
reward action aimed at accomplishing the network’s goals; and
do not assume that
all networks are created equally.
Implications for Research
Research on both effective and ineffective in-company networks
is needed to examine

175. their impact on individual career performance and
organizational culture and policy.
We need to understand what women need and want from
networks, and how
women, men, and organizations can minimize the perpetuation
of patriarchal culture
that excludes women and promotes negative attitudes toward
them. There is also a
need for research on alternatives to formal networks since
networks may have the
opposite of their intended result, as in this case.
This article reported a case study of a failed in-company
women’s network with
the goal of examining the impact on the members and
organization. The Network
was impaired by its members’ attitudes, awareness and
participation, and the
resiliency of the organization culture to a women’s network.
Study conclusions
include that networks may serve to reproduce patriarchy, not
erode it; the level of
gender consciousness impacts on network participation and
commitment; and
network success is impacted upon by organization culture.

176. Gloria Steinem (1982) once noted, ‘Some of us are becoming
the men we wanted
to marry’ (in Maggio, 1992, p. 348). By virtue of assimilation
or aspiration, the
Network members perpetuated patriarchy due to their inability
or unwillingness to
act on gendered power relations. By the same token, the
organization’s inhospitable
culture also rendered the Network ineffectual. In-company
networks are a complex
combination of social network factors that interact with the
organization context.
Both must be considered and understood if in-company
networks are to flourish and
women are to move beyond pure assimilation of patriarchal
corporate culture to
Women’s Networks 221
securing a strong sense of identity that helps create lasting
change for themselves and
the women who come behind them.

177. References
Alderferer, C. P. (1986) An intergroup perspective on group
dynamics, in: J. Lorsch (Ed.) Handbook of
Organizational Behavior, pp. 190 – 222 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall).
Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R. and Tarule,
J. M. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing:
The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic
Books).
Belle, F. (2002) Women, managers and organizational power,
Women in Management Review, 17(3/4),
pp. 151 – 6.
Bierema, L. L. (1994) Executive businesswomen’s development
in male-dominated organizational culture,
unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of Georgia,
Athens, Georgia.

178. Bierema, L. L. (1996) How executive women learn corporate
culture, Human Resource Development
Quarterly, 7(2), pp. 145 – 63.
Bierema, L. L. (1999) A model of executive women’s learning
and development, Adult Education
Quarterly, 49(2), pp. 107 – 21.
Bierema, L. L. (2003) The role of gender consciousness in
challenging patriarchy, International Journal of
Lifelong Education, 22(1), pp. 3 – 12.
Bierema, L. L. (in press) Women executive’s concerns related to
implementing and sustaining a women’s
network in a corporate context, The Organization Development
Journal.
Blau, P. M. (1977) Inequality and Heterogeneity: A Primitive
Theory of Social Structure (New York: The

179. Free Press).
Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1998) Qualitative Research for
Education: An Introduction to Theory and
Methods, 3rd edn (Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon).
Bowler, M. (1999) Women’s earnings: an overview’, Monthly
Labor Review, December, pp. 13 – 21.
Brass, D. J. (1985) Men’s and women’s networks: a study of
interaction patterns and influence in an
organization, Academy of Management Journal, 28 (2), pp. 327
– 43.
Brass, D. J. (1992) Power in organizations: a social network
perspective, Research in Politics and Society,
4, pp. 295 – 323.
Brody, C. M., Fuller, K. A., Gosetti, P. P., Moscato, S. R.,
Nagel, N. G., Pace, G. and Schmuck, P. (2000)
Gender Consciousness and Privilege (London: Palmer Press).

180. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2002) Employment and Earnings
Report, January.
Burke, R. J. and Nelson, D. L. (2002) Advancing Women’s
Careers (Malden, MA: Blackwell).
Burke, R. J., Rothstein, M. G. and Bristor, J. M. (1995)
Interpersonal networks of managerial and
professional women, Women in Management, 10(1), pp. 21 – 8.
Burke, W. (1993) Networking, in: N. Nicholson (Ed.)
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Organizational Behavior
(Oxford: Blackwell).
Caffarella, R. S. and Olson, S.K. (1993) Psychosocial
development of women: a critical review of the
literature, Adult Education Quarterly, 43(3), pp. 125 – 51.
Catalyst (1999) Creating Women’s Networks (San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass).

181. Catalyst (2002a) Census of Women Board Directors,
http://www.catalystwomen.org/knowledge/files/
censustoolkitflyer.pdf. Accessed 22 October 2004.
Catalyst (2002b) Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top
Earners, http://www.catalystwomen.org/
knowledge/files/censustoolkitflyer.pdf. Accessed 22 October
2004.
Catalyst (2004a) News release: new catalyst study finds female
executives are just as likely as male
colleagues to aspire to CEO job.
http://www.catalystwomen.org/pressroom/press_releases/
2004wmicl.pdf. Accessed 22 October 2004
Catalyst (2004b) News release: new Catalyst study reveals
financial performance is higher for companies
with more women at the top.
http://www.catalystwomen.org/pressroom/press_releases/

182. 2004Fin_Per.pdf. Accessed 22 October 2004.
Crampton, S. M. and Mishra, J. M. (1999) Women in
management, Public Personnel Management, 28(1),
pp. 87 – 107.
Diekman, A. B. and Eagly, A. H. (2000) Stereotypes as dynamic
constructs: women and men of the past,
present and future, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
26(10), pp. 1171 – 88.
222 L. L. Bierema
Elder, S. and Johnson, L. J. (1999) Sex-specific labour market
indicators: what they show, International
Labour Review, 138(4), pp. 447 – 64.
Fagenson, E. A. (1990) Perceived masculine and feminine
attributes examined as a function of individuals’

183. sex and level in the organizational power hierarchy: a test of
four theoretical perspectives, Journal of
Applied Psychology, 75, pp. 204 – 11.
Farmer, H. S. and Associates (1997) Diversity and Women’s
Career Development: From Adolescence to
Adulthood (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).
Hall, G. and Hord, S. (1984) Change in Schools: Facilitating the
Process (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press).
Hanson, S. (2000) Networking, Professional Geographer, 52(4),
pp. 751 – 58.
Hayes, E. and Flannery, D. D. (2000) Women as Learners: The
Significance of Gender in Learning (San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).
Higgins, M. C. (2000) The more, the merrier? Multiple
developmental relationships and work satisfaction,

184. Journal of Management Development, 19(4), pp. 277 – 96.
Ibarra, H. (1992) Homophily and differential returns: sex
differences in network structure and access in an
advertising firm, Administrative Science Quarterly, 37(3), pp.
422 – 47.
Ibarra, H. (1993) Personal networks of women and minorities in
management: a conceptual framework,
Academy of Management Review, 18: 56 – 87.
Ibarra, H. (1995) Race, opportunity, and diversity of social
circles in managerial networks, Academy of
Management Journal, 38(3), pp. 673 – 703.
Ibarra, H. (1997) Paving an alternative route: gender differences
in managerial networks, Social
Psychology Quarterly, 60(1), pp. 91 – 102.
Keele, R. (1986) Mentoring or networking? Strong and weak

185. ties in career development, in: L. L. Moore
(Ed.) Not as Far as You Think (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books).
Kim, M. (2000) Women paid low wages: who they are and
where they work, Monthly Labor Review,
September, pp. 26 – 30.
Knoke, D. and Ishio, Y. (1998) The gender gap in company
training, Work and Occupations, 25(2),
pp. 141 – 67.
Kolb, J. (1999) The effect of gender role, attitude toward
leadership, and self-confidence on leader
emergence: implications for leadership development, Human
Resource Development Quarterly, 10(4),
pp. 305 – 20.
Korn/Ferry International and UCLA Anderson Graduate School
of Management (1993) Decade of the

186. Executive Woman (Los Angeles: Korn/Ferry International).
Maggio, R. (1992) The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women
(Boston, MA: Beacon Press).
Mainiero, L. A. (1994) Getting anointed for advancement: the
case of executive women, Academy of
Management Executive, 8(2), pp. 53 – 67.
Mitchell, H. J. (1999) Group mentoring: does it work?,
Mentoring and Tutoring, 7(2), pp. 113 – 20.
Moore, G. (1990) Structural determinants of men’s and
women’s personal networks, American
Sociological Review, 55(5), pp. 726 – 35.
Morrison, A. M. and Glinow, M. A. V. (1990) Women and
minorities in management, American
Psychologist, 45(2), pp. 200 – 8.
Powell, W. W. and Smith-Doerr, L. (1994) Networks and

187. economic life, in: N. Smelser and R. Souedberg
(Eds) The Handbook of Economic Sociology (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press).
Quinlan, K. (1999) Enhancing mentoring and networking of
junior academic women: what, why and
how?, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management,
21(1), pp. 31 – 42.
Ragins, B. R., Townsend, B. and Mattis, M. (1998) Gender gap
in the executive suite: CEOs and
female executives report on breaking the glass ceiling, Academy
of Management Executive, 12(1),
pp. 28 – 42.
Renzulli, L. A., Aldrich, H. and Moody, J. (2000) Family
matters: gender, networks, and entrepreneurial
outcomes, Social Forces, 79(2), pp. 523 – 47.
Ruderman, M. M., Ohlott, P. J. and Kram, K. E. (1995)

188. Promotional decisions as a diversity practice, in:
K. S. McDonald and L. M. Hite (Eds) Journal of Management
Development, (14)2, pp. 6 – 23.
Scott, D. B. (1996) Shattering the instrumental-expressive
myth: the power of women’s networks in
corporate-government affairs, Gender and Society, 10(3), pp.
232 – 47.
Scott, D. B. (1998) Women at the intersection of business and
government: are they in places of power?,
Sociological Spectrum, 18(3), pp. 333 – 64.
Women’s Networks 223
Sharpe, R. (1994) Women make strides, but men stay firmly in
company jobs, The Wall Street Journal, 29
March, pp. A1, A8.

189. Smith, L. (1995) Connecting with other women, Executive
Female, 18(4), pp. 57.
Travers, C., Stevens, S. and Pemberton, C. (1997) Women’s
networking across boundaries: recognizing
different cultural agendas, Women in Management Review,
12(2), pp. 61 – 70.
Vinnicombe, S. and Colwill, N. L. (1996) The Essence of
Women in Management (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall).
Yin, R. K. (1994) Case Study Research: Design and Methods,
2nd edn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).
224 L. L. Bierema
1010 Cappelli.indd 741010 Cappelli.indd 74 1/30/08
12:14:12 PM1/30/08 12:14:12 PM

190. 1010 Cappelli.indd 751010 Cappelli.indd 75 1/30/08
12:14:21 PM1/30/08 12:14:21 PM
76 Harvard Business Review | March 2008 | hbr.org
Talent Management for the Twenty-First Century
distinct – and equally ineffective – camps. The fi rst, and by
far the most common, is to do nothing: anticipate no needs
at all; make no plans for addressing them (rendering the
term “talent management” meaningless). This reactive ap-
proach relies overwhelmingly on outside hiring and has fal-
tered now that the surplus of management talent has eroded.
The second, common only among large, older companies,

191. relies on complex and bureaucratic models from the 1950s
for forecasting and succession planning – legacy systems that
grew up in an era when business was highly predictable and
that fail now because they are inaccurate and costly in a
more volatile environment.
It’s time for a fundamentally new approach to talent man-
agement that takes into account the great uncertainty busi-
nesses face today. Fortunately, companies already have such
a model, one that has been well honed over decades to antici-
pate and meet demand in uncertain environments – supply
chain management. By borrowing lessons from operations
and supply chain research, fi rms can forge a new model of

192. talent management better suited to today’s realities. Before
getting into the details, let’s look at the context in which tal-
ent management has evolved over the past few decades and
its current state.
How We Got Here
Internal development was the norm back in the 1950s, and
every management development practice that seems novel
today was commonplace in those years – from executive
coaching to 360-degree feedback to job rotation to high-
potential programs.
Except at a few very large fi rms, internal talent develop-
ment collapsed in the 1970s because it could not address the
increasing uncertainties of the marketplace. Business fore-

193. casting had failed to predict the economic downturn in that
decade, and talent pipelines continued to churn under out-
dated assumptions of growth. The excess supply of managers,
combined with no-layoff policies for white-collar workers,
fed corporate bloat. The steep recession of the early 1980s
then led to white-collar layoffs and the demise of lifetime
employment, as restructuring cut layers of hierarchy and
eliminated many practices and staffs that developed talent.
After all, if the priority was to cut positions, particularly in
middle management, why maintain the programs designed
to fi ll the ranks?
The older companies like PepsiCo and GE that still in-
vested in development became known as “academy com-

194. panies”: breeding grounds for talent simply by maintaining
some of the practices that nearly all corporations had fol-
lowed in the past. A number of such companies managed to
ride out the restructurings of the 1980s with their programs
intact only to succumb to cost-cutting pressures later on.
The problems faced by Unilever’s Indian operations after
2000 are a case in point. Known as a model employer and
talent developer since the 1950s, the organization suddenly
found itself top-heavy and stuck when business declined
after the 2001 recession. Its well-oiled pipeline saddled the
company with 1,400 well-trained managers in 2004, up 27%
from 2000, despite the fact that the demand for managers

195. had fallen. Unilever’s implicit promise to avoid layoffs meant
the company had to fi nd places for them in its other interna-
tional operations or buy them out.
The alternative to traditional development, outside hiring,
worked like a charm through the early 1990s, in large
measure because organizations were drawing on the big
pool of laid-off talent. As the economy continued to grow,
however, companies increasingly recruited talent away
from their competitors, creating retention problems. Watch-
ing the fruits of their labors walk out the door, employers
backed even further away from investments in develop-
ment. I remember a conversation with a CEO in the medical
device industry about a management development pro-

196. gram proposed by his head of human resources. The CEO
dismissed the proposal by saying, “Why should we develop
people when our competitors are willing to do it for us?”
By the mid-1990s, virtually every major corporation asserted
the goal of getting better at recruiting talent away from com-
petitors while also getting better at retaining its own talent –
a hopeful dream at the individual level, an impossibility in
the aggregate.
Outside hiring hit its inevitable limit by the end of the
1990s, after the longest economic expansion in U.S. history
absorbed the supply of available talent. Companies found
they were attracting experienced candidates and losing expe-

197. rienced employees to competitors at the same rate. Outside
searches became increasingly expensive, particularly when
they involved headhunters, and the newcomers blocked
prospects for internal promotions, aggravating retention
problems. The challenge of attracting and retaining the right
people went to the very top of the list of executives’ business
concerns, where it remains today.
The good news is that most companies are facing the chal-
lenge with a pretty clean slate: Little in the way of talent
management is actually going on in them. One recent study,
for example, reports that two-thirds of U.S. employers are
doing no workforce planning of any kind. The bad news
is that the advice companies are getting is to return to the

198. practices of the 1950s and create long-term succession plans
that attempt to map out careers years into the future – even
Peter Cappelli ([email protected]) is the George W. Taylor
Professor of Management and the director of the Center for
Human
Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
in Philadelphia. He is the author of several HBR articles and the
book Talent
on Demand, forthcoming from Harvard Business School Press,
which further develops the ideas presented in this article.
1010 Cappelli.indd 761010 Cappelli.indd 76 1/30/08
12:14:23 PM1/30/08 12:14:23 PM
hbr.org | March 2008 | Harvard Business Review 77
though the stable business environment and talent pipelines

199. in which such practices were born no longer exist.
That simply won’t work. Traditional approaches to succes-
sion planning assume a multiyear development process, yet
during that period, strategies, org charts, and management
teams will certainly change, and the groomed successors may
well leave anyway. When an important vacancy occurs, it’s
not unusual for companies to conclude that the candidates
identifi ed by the succession plan no longer meet the needs
of the job, and they look outside. Such an outcome is worse
in several ways than having no plan. First, the candidates
feel betrayed – succession plans create an implicit promise.
Second, investments in developing these candidates are
essentially wasted. Third, most companies now have to

200. update their succession plans every year as jobs change and
individuals leave, wasting tremendous amounts of time
and energy. As a practical matter, how useful is a “plan” if it
has to be changed every year?
Talent management is not an end in itself. It is not about
developing employees or creating succession plans, nor is it
about achieving specifi c turnover rates or any other tacti-
cal outcome. It exists to support the organization’s overall
objectives, which in business essentially amount to mak-
ing money. Making money requires an understanding of
the costs as well as the benefi ts associated with talent man-
agement choices. The costs inherent to the organization-

201. man development model were largely irrelevant in the
1950s because, in an era of lifetime employment and
a culture in which job-hopping was considered a sign of
failure, com panies that did not develop talent in-house
would not have any at all. Development practices, such as
rotational job assignments, were so deeply embedded that
their costs were rarely questioned (though internal account-
ing systems were so poor that it would have been diffi cult
to assess the costs in any case).
That’s no longer true. Today’s rapid-fi re changes in cus-
tomers’ demands and competitors’ offerings, executive turn-
over that can easily run to 10%, and increased pressure to
show a fi nancial return for every set of business practices

202. make the develop-from-within approach too slow and risky.
And yet the hire-from-without models are too expensive and
disruptive to the organization.
A New Way to Think About Talent Management
Unlike talent development, models of supply chain manage-
ment have improved radically since the 1950s. No longer
do companies own huge warehouses where they stockpile
the components needed to assemble years’ worth of prod-
ucts they can sell with confi dence because competition
is muted and demand eminently predictable. Since the
1980s, companies have instituted,
and continually refined, just-in-
time manufacturing processes and

203. other supply chain innovations that
allow them to anticipate shifts in
demand and adapt products ever
more accurately and quickly. What
I am proposing is something akin
to just-in-time manufacturing for
the development realm: a talent-on-
demand framework. If you consider
for a moment, you will see how suited this model might be
to talent development.
Forecasting product demand is comparable to forecasting
talent needs; estimating the cheapest and fastest ways to

204. manufacture products is the equivalent of cost-effectively
developing talent; outsourcing certain aspects of manufac-
turing processes is like hiring outside; ensuring timely de-
livery relates to planning for succession events. The issues
and challenges in managing an internal talent pipeline –
how employees advance through development jobs and
experiences – are remarkably similar to how products move
through a supply chain: reducing bottlenecks that block
advancement, speeding up processing time, improving fore-
casts to avoid mismatches.
The most innovative approaches to managing talent use
four particular principles drawn from operations and supply
chain management. Two of them address uncertainty on the

205. demand side: how to balance make-versus-buy decisions and
how to reduce the risks in forecasting the demand for talent.
The other two address uncertainty on the supply side: how
to improve the return on investment in development efforts
and how to protect that investment by generating internal
opportunities that encourage newly trained managers to
stick with the fi rm.
PRINCIPL E 1 Make and Buy to Manage Risk
Just as a lack of parts was the major concern of midcentury
manufacturers, a shortfall of talent was the greatest con-
cern of traditional management development systems of the
1950s and 1960s, when all leaders had to be homegrown. If
a company did not produce enough skilled project managers,

206. it had to push inexperienced people into new roles or give
up on projects and forgo their revenue. Though forecasting
What I am proposing is something akin to
just-in-time manufacturing for the development
realm: a talent-on-demand framework.
1010 Cappelli.indd 771010 Cappelli.indd 77 1/30/08
12:14:23 PM1/30/08 12:14:23 PM
78 Harvard Business Review | March 2008 | hbr.org
Talent Management for the Twenty-First Century
was easier than it is today, it wasn’t perfect, so the only way
to avoid a shortfall was to deliberately overshoot talent de-
mand projections. If the process produced an excess of talent,

207. it was relatively easy to park people on a bench, just as one
might put spare parts in a warehouse, until opportunities
became available. It may sound absurd to suggest that an
organization would maintain the equivalent of a human-
capital supply closet, but that was extremely common in the
organization-man period.
Today, a deep bench of talent has become expensive inven-
tory. What’s more, it’s inventory that can
walk out the door. Ambitious executives
don’t want to, and don’t have to, sit on
the bench. Worse, studies by the consult-
ing fi rm Watson Wyatt show that people
who have recently received training are

208. the most likely to decamp, as they leave
for opportunities to make better use of
those new skills.
It still makes sense to develop talent
internally where we can because it is
cheaper and less disruptive. But outside
hiring can be faster and more respon-
sive. So an optimal approach would be
to use a combination of the two. The
challenge is to fi gure out how much of
each to use.
To begin, we should give up on the

209. idea that we can predict talent demand
with certainty and instead own up to
the fact that our forecasts, especially the
long-range ones, will almost never be
perfect. With the error rate on a one-year
forecast of demand for an indi vidual
product hovering around 33%, and
with nonstop organizational restructur-
ings and changes in corporate strategy,
the idea that we can accurately predict
talent demand for an entire company
several years out is a myth. Leading
corporations like Capital One and Dow

210. Chemical have abandoned long-term tal-
ent forecasts and moved toward short-
term simulations: Operating executives
give talent planners their best guess as
to what business demands will be over
the next few years; the planners use
sophisticated simulation software to tell
them what that will require in terms of
new talent. Then they repeat the process
with different assumptions to get a sense
of how robust the talent predictions are.
The executives often decide to adjust

211. their business plans if the associated tal-
ent requirements are too great.
Operations managers know that an
integral part of managing demand un-
certainty is understanding the costs
PRINCIPLE 1
Make and Buy to Manage Risk
A deep bench of talent is ex-
pensive, so companies should
undershoot their estimates of
what will be needed and plan
to hire from outside to make up
for any shortfall. Some positions
may be easier to fi ll from outside
than others, so fi rms should be
thoughtful about where they put
precious resources in develop-
ment: Talent management is an
investment, not an entitlement.

212. PRINCIPLE 2
Adapt to the Uncertainty
in Talent Demand
Uncertainty in demand is a given,
and smart companies fi nd ways
to adapt to it. One approach is to
break up development programs
into shorter units: Rather than
put management trainees
through a three-year functional
program, for instance, bring
employees from all the functions
together in an 18-month course
that teaches general manage-
ment skills, and then send them
back to their functions to special-
ize. Another option is to create an
organization-wide talent pool that
can be allocated among business
units as the need arises.
PRINCIPLE 3
Improve the Return on

213. Investment in Developing
Employees
One way to improve the payoff
is to get employees to share
in the costs of development.
That might mean asking them
to take on additional stretch
assignments on a volunteer
basis. Another approach is to
maintain relationships with
former employees in the hope
that they may return someday,
bringing back your investment
in their skills.
PRINCIPLE 4
Preserve the Investment
by Balancing Employee-
Employer Interests

214. Arguably, the main reason good
employees leave an organization
is that they fi nd better oppor-
tunities elsewhere. This makes
talent development a perishable
commodity. The key to preserv-
ing your investment in develop-
ment efforts as long as possible
is to balance the interests of
employees and employer by hav-
ing them share in advancement
decisions.
A supply chain perspective on talent management relies on four
principles, two that address the risks in estimating demand and
two that address the uncertainty of supply.
Operations Principles Applied to
Talent Management
1010 Cappelli.indd 781010 Cappelli.indd 78 1/30/08
12:14:24 PM1/30/08 12:14:24 PM

215. hbr.org | March 2008 | Harvard Business Review 79
in volved in over- or underestimation. But what are the
costs of developing too much talent versus too little?
Traditionally, workforce planners have implicitly assumed
that both the costs and the risks even out: that is, if we fore-
cast we’ll need 100 computer programmers in our division
next year and we end up with 10 too many or 10 too few,
the downsides are the same either way.
In practice, however, that’s rarely the case. And, contrary
to the situation in the 1950s, the risks of overshooting are
greater than those of undershooting, now that workers can
leave so easily. If we undershoot, we can always hire on the
outside market to make up the difference. The cost per hire

216. will be greater, and so will the uncertainty about employees’
abilities, but those costs pale in comparison to retention
costs. So, given that the big costs are from overshooting, we
will want to develop fewer than 100 programmers and ex-
pect to fall somewhat short, hiring on the outside market
to make up the difference. If we think our estimate of 100 is
reasonably accurate, then perhaps we will want to develop
only 90 internally, just to make sure we don’t overshoot ac-
tual demand, and then plan to hire about 10. If we think our
estimate is closer to a guess, we will want to develop fewer,
say 60 or so, and plan on hiring the rest outside.
Assessing the trade-offs between making and buying

217. include an educated estimation of the following:
How long will you need the talent? The longer the talent
is needed, the easier it is to make investments in internal
development pay off.
How accurate is your forecast of the length of time you
will need the talent? The less certainty about the forecast,
the greater the risk and cost of internal development –
and the greater the appeal of outside hires.
Is there a hierarchy of skills and jobs that can make it pos-
sible for candidates who do not have the requisite compe-
tencies to learn them on the job, without resorting to spe-
cialized development roles or other costly investments?
This is particularly likely in functional areas. The more it

218. is so, the easier it will be to develop talent internally.
How important is it to maintain the organization’s current
culture? Especially at the senior level, outside hires intro-
duce different norms and values, changing the culture. If
it is important to change the culture, then outside hiring
will do that, though sometimes in unpredictable ways.
The answers to these questions may very well be differ-
ent for different functional areas and jobs within the same
company. For instance, lower-level jobs may be easily and
cheaply fi lled by outsiders because the required competen-
cies are readily available, making the costs of undershooting
demand relatively modest. For more highly skilled jobs, the

219. costs of undershooting are much higher – requiring the fi rm
to pay for an outside search, a market premium, and per-
haps also the costs related to integrating the new hires and
absorbing associated risks, such as misfi ts.
•
•
•
•
PRINCIPL E 2 Adapt to the Uncertainty in Talent Demand
If you buy all of your components in bulk and store them
away in the warehouse, you are probably buying enough
material to produce years of product and therefore have to
forecast demand years in advance. But if you bring in small

220. batches of components more often, you don’t have to pre-
dict demand so far out. The same principle can be applied
to shortening the time horizon for talent forecasts in some
interesting, and surprisingly simple, ways.
Consider the problem of bringing a new class of candi-
dates into an organization. At companies that hire directly
out of college, the entire pool of candidates comes in all at
once, typically in June. Let’s assume they go through an ori-
entation, spend some time in training classes, and then move
into developmental roles. If the new cohort has 100 people,
then the organization has to fi nd 100 developmental roles
all at once, which can be a challenge for a company under
pressure, say, to cut costs or restructure.

221. But in fact many college graduates don’t want to go
directly to work after graduation. It’s not that diffi cult to
split the new group in half, taking 50 in June and the other
50 in September. Now the program only needs to fi nd 50
roles in June and rotate the new hires through them in
three months. The June cohort steps out of those roles when
the September cohort steps into them. Then the organiza-
tion need fi nd only 50 permanent assignments in September
for the June hires. More important, having smaller groups
of candidates coming through more frequently means that
forecasts of demand for these individuals can be made
over shorter periods throughout their careers. Not only will

222. those estimates be more accurate but it will be possible to
better coordinate the fi rst developmental assignments with
subsequent assignments – for instance, from test engineer
to engineer to senior engineer to lead engineer.
A different way to take advantage of shorter, more respon-
sive forecasts would be to break up a long training program
into discrete parts, each with its own forecast. A good place
to start would be with the functionally based internal de-
velopment programs that some companies still offer. These
programs often address common subjects, such as general
management or interpersonal skills, along with function-
specifi c material. There is no reason that employees in all
the functions couldn’t go through the general training to-

223. gether and then specialize. What used to be a three-year
functional program could become two 18-month courses.
After everyone completed the fi rst course, the organiza-
tion could reforecast the demand for each functional area
and allocate the candidates accordingly. Because the func-
tional programs would be half as long, each forecast would
only have to go out half as far and would be correspond-
ingly more accurate. An added advantage is that teaching
1010 Cappelli.indd 791010 Cappelli.indd 79 1/30/08
12:14:24 PM1/30/08 12:14:24 PM
80 Harvard Business Review | March 2008 | hbr.org
Talent Management for the Twenty-First Century

224. everyone the general skills together reduces redundancy in
training investments.
Another risk reduction strategy that talent managers can
borrow from supply chain managers is an application of the
principle of portfolios. In fi nance, the problem with holding
only one asset is that its value can fl uctuate a great deal, and
one’s wealth varies a lot as a result, so investment advisers
remind us to hold several stocks in the same portfolio. Simi-
larly, in supply chain management it can be risky to rely on
just one supplier.
For a talent-management application, consider the situ-
ation in many large and especially decentralized organiza-

225. tions where each division is accountable for its own profi t
and loss, and each maintains its own development programs.
The odds that any one division will prepare the right number
of managers to meet actual demand are very poor. Some
will end up with a surplus, others a shortfall. If, however, all
of these separate programs were consolidated into a single
program, the unanticipated demand in one part of the com-
pany and an unanticipated shortfall in another would simply
cancel out, just as a stock portfolio reduces the volatility of
holding individual stocks. Given this, as well as the dupli-
cation of tasks and infrastructure required in decentralized
programs, it is a mystery why large organizations continue
to operate decentralized development programs. Some com-

226. panies are in fact creating talent pools that span divisions,
developing employees with broad and general competencies
that could be applied to a range of jobs. The fi t may be less
than perfect, but these fi rms are fi nding that a little just-in-
time training and coaching can help close any gaps.
PRINCIPL E 3 Improve the Return on Investment in Developing
Employees
When internal development was the only way to produce
management talent, companies might have been forgiven
for paying less attention than they should have to its costs.
They may even have been right to consider their expensive
development programs as an unavoidable cost of doing busi-
ness. But the same dynamics that are making today’s talent

227. pool less loyal are presenting opportunities for companies to
lower the costs of training employees and thereby improve
the return on their investment of development dollars, as
they might from any R&D effort.
Perhaps the most novel approach to this challenge is to
get employees to share in the costs. Since they can cash in
on their experience on the open market, employees are the
main benefi ciaries of their development, so it’s reasonable
to ask them to contribute. In the United States, legislation
prevents hourly workers from having to share in the costs
of any training required for their current job. There are no
restrictions, however, even for hourly workers, on contrib-
uting to the costs of developmental experiences that help

228. prepare employees for future roles.
People might share the costs by taking on learning proj-
ects voluntarily, which means doing them in addition to
their normal work. Assuming that the candidates are more
or less contributing their usual amount to their regular job
and their pay hasn’t increased, they are essentially doing
these development projects for free, no small investment on
their part. Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services is one of
several companies that now offer promising employees the
opportunity to volunteer for projects done with the leader-
ship team, sometimes restricting them to ones outside their
current functional area. They get access to company leaders,

229. a broadening experience, and good professional contacts,
all of which will surely help them later. But they pay for it,
with their valuable time.
Employers have been more inclined to experiment with
ways to improve the payoff from their development invest-
ments by retaining employees longer, or at least for some
predictable period. About 20% of U.S. employers ask employ-
ees who are about to receive training or development expe-
riences to sign a contract specifying that if they leave the
business before a certain time, they will have to pay back
the cost. As in the market for carbon credits, this has the
1010 Cappelli.indd 801010 Cappelli.indd 80 1/30/08
12:14:24 PM1/30/08 12:14:24 PM

230. hbr.org | March 2008 | Harvard Business Review 81
effect of putting a monetary value on a previously unac-
counted for cost. This practice is especially common in coun-
tries like Singapore and Malaysia: Employees often leave
anyway, but typically the new employer pays off the old one.
A more interesting practice is to attempt to hang on to
employees even after they leave, making relatively small
investments in maintaining ties. Deloitte, for example,
informs qualifi ed former employees of important develop-
ments in the fi rm and pays the cost of keeping their
accounting credentials up-to-date. Should these individuals
want to switch jobs again, they may well look to the place

231. where they still have ties: Deloitte. And because their skills
and company knowledge are current, they will be ready to
contribute right away.
PRINCIPL E 4
Preserve the Investment by
Balancing Employee-Employer
Interests
The downside of talent portability, of course, is that it makes
the fruits of management development perishable in a way
they never were in the heyday of the internal development
model. It used to be that managers and executives made
career decisions for employees, mating individuals and jobs.
In the organization-man period, the company would decide
which candidates were ready for which experience, in order

232. to meet the longer-term talent needs of the organization.
Employees had little or no choice: Refusing to take a new
position was a career-ending move.
Today, of course, employees can pick up and leave if they
don’t get the jobs they want inside – and the most talented
among them have the most freedom to do so. In an effort
to improve retention, most companies – 80% in a recent
survey by applicant-tracking company Taleo – have moved
away from the chess-master model to internal job boards
that make it easy for employees to apply for openings and
so change jobs within the organization. Dow Chemical, for
example, cut its turnover rate in half when it moved its

233. vacancies to such internal boards.
These arrangements have effectively turned the prob-
lem of career management over to employees. As a result,
employers have much less control over
their internal talent. Employees’ choices
may not align with the interests of the
employer, and internal conf licts are
increasing because half of the employ-
ers in the U.S. no longer require that
employees seek permission from their
super visors to move to new positions.
So it has become imperative for com-
panies to fi nd more effective ways to pre-

234. serve their management develop ment
investment. The key is to negotiate solu-
tions that balance the interests of all parties. McKinsey’s
arrangement for associates relies not only on how they rank
their preferences for projects posted online but also on how
the principals running the projects rank the associates. The
fi nal decision allocating resources is made by a senior part-
ner who tries to honor the preferences of both sides while
choosing the assignment that will best develop the skill set
of each associate. Bear, Stearns established an offi ce of medi-
ation, which negotiates internal disputes between managers
when an employee wants to move from one job to another

235. in the fi rm.
• • •
The talent problems of employers, employees, and the
broader society are intertwined. Employers want the skills
they need when they need them, delivered in a manner they
can afford. Employees want prospects for advancement and
control over their careers. The societies in which they op-
erate and the economy as a whole need higher levels of
skills – particularly deeper competencies in management –
which are best developed inside companies.
Those often-confl icting desires aren’t addressed by
existing development practices. The language and the
frame works of the organization-man model persist de-

236. spite the fact that few companies actually employ it; there
simply aren’t any alternatives. The language comes from
engineering and is rooted in the idea that we can achieve
certainty through planning – an outdated notion. But be-
fore an old paradigm can be overthrown there must be an
alternative, one that describes new challenges better than
the old one can. If the language of the old paradigm was
dominated by engineering and planning, the language
of the new, talent-on-demand framework is driven by mar-
kets and operations-based tools better suited to the chal-
lenges of uncertainty. Talent on demand gives employers
a way to manage their talent needs and recoup invest-

237. ments in development, a way to balance the interests of
employees and employers, and a way to increase the level
of skills in society.
Reprint R0803E
To order, see page 135.
The language of the talent-on-demand framework
is driven by operations-based tools better suited to
the challenges of uncertainty.
1010 Cappelli.indd 811010 Cappelli.indd 81 1/30/08
12:14:27 PM1/30/08 12:14:27 PM
Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009
Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing
Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for

238. the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is
not intended for use as assigned course material
in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training
materials in businesses. Academic licensees may
not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course
packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any
other means of incorporating the content into course resources.
Business licensees may not host this content on
learning management systems or use persistent linking or other
means to incorporate the content into learning
management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be
pleased to grant permission to make this content
available through such means. For rates and permission, contact
[email protected]

239. By Pat Galagan
Illustration by Steve Fife40 | T+D | may 2008
TalenT
ManageMenT
WhaT is iT,
Who oWns iT, and
Why should you care?
may 2008 | T+D | 41
listen to this feature
at www.astd.org/TD/TDpodcasts.htm
Talent management has been practiced by organizations for
decades but is gaining new urgency as companies find they
cannot quickly
muster the talent they need to achieve their most critical

240. goals. The fact that success comes down to people and what
they know how to do is no surprise to learning professionals,
but most have been notably absent from key roles in talent
management. These roles are often filled instead by HR
executives who bring people-processing skills, such as
recruiting or succession planning, to a task that is really
about building and leveraging corporate know-how.
But that picture may be changing.
TalenT
ManageMenT
Is talent management a
movement or just a messy
collectIon of practIces waItIng
for someone to take charge?
42 | T+D | may 2008
Talent management as a corporate area of focus has been
building steadily. Like a fast-approaching car, the closer it
gets, the more of it we are able to see clearly, despite the fact
that there is no real roadmap and no single individual or

241. group behind the wheel.
Recent research by the Institute for Corporate Productiv-
ity (i4cp) shows that more than 75 percent of the companies
they surveyed don’t have an agreed-upon definition of talent
management. But most companies concentrate on at least
two areas in common, points out Kevin Oakes, founder and
CEO of i4cp.
“Talent management concerns competencies—what em-
ployees should know and be able to do—and performance
processes—how to leverage those competencies by putting
them in the right parts of the organization, and then mea-
suring their impact on real goals.”
Around those two threads, you will find companies wrap-
ping every manner of business practice that touches em-
ployees, from recruiting them, to influencing the culture to
keep them engaged. The i4cp research shows nine practices
held in common by the companies surveyed:
• leadership development
• succession planning
• career planning
• performance management
• high-potential employee development
• learning and training
• competency management

242. • retention
• professional development.
A survey by the New Talent Management Network of
people with talent management responsibilities in 80 small
and large U.S. companies also showed a mixed picture of
what it comprises. A majority of respondents (94 percent)
had responsibility for succession planning; 88 percent were
responsible for development and career planning; and 82
percent were responsible for assessment and feedback.
Respondents claimed those areas of responsibility whether
they worked in a stand-alone talent management function
or were part of another unit such as HR.
A mATTer of prioriTies
Susan Burnett, national managing director of talent and
development at Deloitte Services, points out that every
company organizes talent management in ways that best
achieve their talent priorities.
“More and more, I see end-to-end organizational struc-
tures emerging, where a single leader owns talent acquisi-
tion, talent development, performance management, and
succession.” Such firms identify their talent requirements
and either buy those capabilities in the marketplace or build
them through learning, development, performance feed-

243. back and coaching, and succession processes. “Just like a
business brings a product to market with a strong supply
chain, these functions represent the talent management
supply chain,” says Burnett.
She maintains that it is critical that as executive leaders
discuss how a firm will look in three to five years, they also
consider what kind of people and capabilities the business-
es will need to execute the strategies successfully.
“This essential input to the talent management process
forms the basis of effective workforce plans, strategic de-
velopment priorities, and succession strategies that build
the leadership pipelines required to successfully run the
business. Without this perspective, talent management will
not be connected to and enabling of business growth and
success,” Burnett adds.
How the learning function fits into the picture is an open
question. If talent management centers around competency
development, it is logical that the learning and development
functions would play a leading role. But do they?
Ed Lawler, professor of business at the University of
Southern California Marshall School of Business, says,
“Learning should be guiding senior executives about talent
management, but too often they are excluded. Hence we
have the problem of talent management decisions be-

244. ing made by people at the top with no depth of knowledge
about competencies or about what talent is available in the
environment.”
Oakes concurs. “In most companies I talk to, learning is just
one component low down on the food chain, and the learning
leaders aren’t driving the talent management strategy at all.”
Burnett has a different view. “I’ve always seen
the learning organization play a major role in talent
management, because learning owns the development
engine. Most learning and development organizations
are seeing development broadly, and are working beyond
the classroom and into the workplace with just-in-
time and on-the-job learning, coaching, mentoring,
assignment management, performance development,
learning communities, and all forms of e-enabled access
to knowledge. As a result, they have the expertise and
experience with the many levers of talent management.”
“Talent management is a concept that different compa-
nies embrace in different ways,” says Deborah Wheelock,
head of global talent management for Mercer. “Internally we
say it’s about getting the right people in the right place at the
right time for the right cost.” For some of Mercer’s clients,
it’s specifically about attraction, development, engagement,
and turnover. Other clients also include strategic goals,
aligning workforce design with business design, and work-

245. force planning. “Depending on the maturity of the company
and its situation, talent management can range from iso-
lated practices to a holistic approach,” says Wheelock.
only for leADers?
At Mercer, the learning function has evolved in the direction
of talent management with a focus on developing leaders.
Illustration by Steve Fife
“We now connect learning and performance with
succession planning,” says Wheelock. The succession
planning process includes a talent review from the top
down. “Mercer makes a big investment in leadership
development,” says Wheelock, “because leaders make the
business strategy happen and they help further
employee engagement.”
Yum! Brands, whose 35,000 restaurants worldwide in-
clude such names as KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, needs to
develop a large number of managers as quickly as possible.
“The overall strategic goal of our talent management efforts
is to support and sustain growth on a global scale,” says Rob

246. Lauber, vice president of Yum! University and global learn-
ing services. In China, for example, the company opens two
KFC restaurants a day and plans to increase that volume
as quickly as it can. A key part of their talent strategy is to
prepare enough restaurant managers to support that level of
growth in China and elsewhere across the globe.
At Yum!, a vice president of talent management is re-
sponsible for staffing the executive ranks. “We build leaders
by transitioning them into roles that prepare them for their
next steps,” says Lauber. In a company such as Yum! with
fast-growing worldwide operations, this means a rising star
can quickly gain real-time experience in key operational and
business skills such as food innovation, marketing, and gen-
eral management. “Bench planning is the cornerstone,” says
Lauber. “We ask, ‘What are the critical roles? Who’s ready?
And what kind of development experiences are needed to
set our future leaders up for continued success?’”
A broAD reAch
In firms where talent management has a broad sweep, learn-
ing and development functions are beginning to play a leading
role, in contrast to HR. Take Steelcase, where the ownership of
talent management is shifting toward Steelcase University.
For several years, competency management,
assessments, employee development, and the grooming of

247. high-potential employees have been the responsibility of
Steelcase University. Other aspects of talent management,
such as recruitment, staffing, performance management,
succession planning, and rewards and compensation were
managed by HR. Efforts to integrate these university and
HR processes fell short
of positively affecting
results through human
capital business needs.
Steelcase still wanted
these processes to be
smoothly integrated and
accessible to all employees. After
an audit conducted by The Hackett
Group, Steelcase recently began a three-year transformation
project, in part, to make more talent management processes
in HR and at Steelcase University more global, more
centralized, and more seamless to users.
George Wolfe, vice president of global learning and de-
velopment, who leads the Steelcase University efforts, now
manages a newly configured and expanded set of integrated
talent management processes under the label of global
workforce strategy, with the ultimate goal of making them
much more user-transparent to Steelcase employees.

248. “As we go global, we determined which talent management
processes fit best into a center of excellence within Steelcase,
which could be configured into a shared service (inside or
outside of Steelcase), and can be offered to managers and
employees on a self-service basis,” Wolfe explains. With con-
tinuous support and effort by global teams represented by
HR, information technology, and Steelcase University, the
global workforce strategy represents one of a series of future
centers of excellence within the realm of HR.
“Two driving forces for these process integrations are
the need to be transparent to the user and to have a global
human capital data bank that can gather and share informa-
tion from a single database system,” says Wolfe. “One of our
aspirations is to leverage our talent globally and identify,
if talent management centers
around competency development,
it is logical that the learning and
development functions would
play a leading role. But do they?
may 2008 | T+D | 43

249. select, and develop the right people for the right positions
around the world.”
Darden Restaurants also takes a broad approach to talent
management, focusing on building capacity and capability
and increasing employee engagement. Capacity at Darden
means having the right number of people in the right
places, and capability means having the right sets of skills to
assure growth for the company’s chains of restaurants. Ac-
cording to Daisy Ng, Darden’s senior vice president of talent
management, the effort has two objectives—winning finan-
cially and developing Darden into a special place to work.
“At Darden, we see talent management as the responsi-
bility of all business leaders. We in the talent management
organization enable them with systems, tools, and process-
es,” says Ng. Officers at the vice president level and above
are accountable for leading people, and that’s where talent
management success is measured, she explains.
To share talent across a company that includes five dis-
tinct operating companies calls for a systemic approach
to assessment. “We look at development across the enter-
prise,” says Ng, “and take a systems approach.” That starts
with acquiring talent. “We have to understand the skill set
we require,” she says. “Then we assess our internal and

250. external capability and close gaps by developing people as
needed. We also work to retain and engage employees, and
everything is surrounded by the right compensation.”
WhAT nexT?
Writing about talent management for the forthcoming ASTD
Handbook of Workplace Learning and Performance, Oakes
Illustration by Steve Fife44 | T+D | may 2008
Talent management as a
corporate area of focus has
been building steadily. like a
fast-approaching car, the closer
it gets, the more of it we are able
to see clearly, despite the fact
that there is no real roadmap and
no single individual or group
behind the wheel.
What Do You think?
T+D welcomes your comments. If you would
like to respond to this article, or any article
that appears in T+D, please send your feedback
to [email protected] Responses sent to the

251. mailbox are considered available for publication
and may be edited for length and clarity.
confirms that companies have been concerned about better
talent management for many years, but says, “The grand
vision of a fully integrated set of human resource functions
has yet to completely materialize.”
Meanwhile, a mixed group of consultants, software
vendors, and content producers are trying to shape tal-
ent management to suit their needs, with definitions and
models that often stem from the need to create a market for
their services or capitalize on a new buzzword. Note how
publisher Media Tec changed the name of its Workforce Per-
formance