Human resource development competencies as predictors of agricultural extension agents' performance in Yemen

Human resource development (HRD) issue is recognized as a significant factor for survival of organizations and professionals, including those in the sector of agricultural extension. Few empirical studies have examined the influence of HRD competency variables on agricultural extension agents' performance. The authors argue that HRD competency variables such as leadership development, communication, programme planning, programme implementation and programme evaluation could predict agricultural extension agents' performance. Questionnaire data were collected from a sample of 290 extension agents in Yemen to discover if HRD competencies affect the performance of extension agents. Regression analysis shows that three variables – competencies in programme implementation, programme evaluation and programme planning – contributed significantly to the performance of extension agents. These predictors explain 42.2% of the variance in the job performance model.     

The mediating role of leadership and people management practices on HRD and organizational performance

Drawing upon prior research, we identify strategic value and transaction effectiveness as two significant HRD contributions and examine their dyadic effect on leadership and people management practices, and influence on firm performance. Results of path analysis on 138 participants supported the dyadic effect hypothesis. More significantly, we found leadership and people management practices as a significant predictor on the relationship between strategic value and organizational performance, which suggests that organizational performance is affected by the combined effect of leadership and people management practices. A key implication of this research is that where organizations had effective leadership and people management practices, both types of HRD contributions – strategic value and transaction effectiveness – significantly enhanced firm performance.     

The Implications of Utilizing Market Information and Adopting Agricultural Advice for Farmers in Developing Economies

To alleviate poverty in developing countries, governments and non‐governmental organizations disseminate two types of information: (i) agricultural advice to enable farmers to improve their operations (cost reduction, quality improvement, and process yield increase); and (ii) market information about future price/demand to enable farmers to make better production planning decisions. This information is usually disseminated free of charge. While farmers can use the market information to improve their production plans without incurring any (significant) cost, adopting agricultural advice to improve operations requires upfront investment, for example, equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, and higher quality seeds. In this study, we examine whether farmers should use market information to improve their production plans (or adopt agricultural advice to improve their operations) when they engage in Cournot competition under both uncertain market demand and uncertain process yield. Our analysis indicates that both farmers will use the market information to improve their profits in equilibrium. Hence, relative to the base case in which market information is not available, the provision of market information can improve the farmers' total welfare (i.e., total profit for both farmers). Moreover, when the underlying process yield is highly uncertain or when the products are highly heterogeneous, the provision of market information is welfare‐maximizing in the sense that the maximum total welfare of farmers is attained when both farmers utilize market information in equilibrium. Furthermore, in equilibrium, whether a farmer adopts the agricultural advice depends on the size of the requisite upfront investment. More importantly, we show that agricultural advice is not always welfare improving unless the upfront investment is sufficiently low. This result implies that to improve farmers' welfare, governments should consider offering farmer subsidies.     

The same but different: HRD master’s programmes in the United States

In this study, we examined the curricular and institutional characteristics of HRD master’s programmes in the United States. Our sample included 108 programmes in 100 institutions that were self-identified as HRD programmes. Among our findings: (1) fewer programmes were located in schools of education (44%) and more were located in schools of business (28%) than indicated by previous research; (2) there was greater homogeneity in curriculum among programmes in the same institutional locations (e.g. schools of education or schools of business) and greater variation among programmes in different institutional locations; (3) the curriculum of programmes located in schools of education tended to focus on traditional educational topics such as adult learning and instructional design, while the curriculum of programmes located in school of business tended to focus on management topics such as organization development, staffing and employment law. Our findings suggest that the nature of HRD as an academic subject varies with institutional location, as do the skill sets of students who graduate from HRD programmes. Future research should take these differences into account.     

Better know an HRD scholar: a conversation with John Bing

This paper contains a conversation with John Bing, and is part of a series that focuses on different human resource development (HRD) scholars – the aim being to better understand the people behind the names we see in print and at HRD scholarly conferences. John is Chairman of the Board at ITAP International, is a well-known scholar-practitioner, was a recipient of the ASTD International Practitioner of the Year Award, and received the AHRD Service Award in 2010. The conversation explores John's background, how he got into HRD, his time in the Peace Corps, his work with Geert Hofstede, and his wide range of experience in cross-cultural HRD. The conversation also considers how world experiences improve research and practice, the benefits and challenges of applying research in practice, and the importance of practitioners having a sound education in research and statistics.     

The strategic role of Human Resource Development in managing core competencies

The Resource-Based View (R-BV) of strategy emphasizes the importance of core competencies as the critical basis for sustainable competitive advantage. Yet, discussions of strategy typically ignore the role of the Human Resource Development (HRD) function in core competency development and management. The literature on strategic HRD is reviewed to locate the R-BV as a basis for redefining HRD's role in organizational strategy. Three strategic roles for the HRD function in core competency management are proposed and discussed: participating in strategic planning, developing core competencies, and protecting them. Specific tasks for each role are proposed. The final section identifies needs for further research as well as the practical implications from this discussion.     

Risk and Planning in Agriculture: How Planning on Dairy Farms in Ireland Is Affected by Farmers’ Regulatory Focus

This article examines how planning on dairy farms is affected by farmers' motivation. It argues that farmers' choice of expansion strategies can be specified in terms of risk decision making and understood as either prevention‐focused or promotion‐focused motivation. This relationship was empirically examined using mediated regression analyses where promotion/prevention focus was the independent variable and its effect on total milk production via planned expansion strategies was examined. The results indicate that promotion focus among farmers has an indirect effect on farm expansion via planning strategies that incur greater risk to the farm enterprise. Regulatory focus on the part of farmers has an influence on farmers' planning and risk management activities and must be accounted for in the design and implementation of policy and risk management tools in agriculture.     

How power relations structure the evaluation process for HRD Programmes

Centring on the impact of power and politics embedded in the evaluation of training programmes, this study aimed to understand how organizational power relations affect the evaluation process for a training programme. A qualitative case study for the managerial leadership development programme of a Korean insurance company was designed. The HRD practitioners held control throughout the evaluation, and their dominant power was maintained and reproduced by other stakeholders' recognition of their expertise in training and development area. However, due to the structural relationship between the HRD unit and the corporate management, the HRD practitioners perceived themselves as marginalized. Unequal power relations were sustained in the evaluation mostly by stakeholders' self-regulation of their conduct in terms of norms, standards and expectations about their roles. This study found that despite the immense criticism of reaction measures, their continuing use in evaluation could be traced to their meaning as a political bargaining tool.     

HRD university education: an international research agenda

Based on the observation that the systematic study of university-based HRD education - especially in an international comparative approach - is an important but under-explored area of scholarship, this article reports on the results of a need-sensing process among a panel of twenty-one senior HRD administrators and scholars in the United States and Great Britain. The resulting research agenda identified knowledge gaps and research needs in three broad areas: subject matter of HRD education; institutional characteristics, arrangements, and linkages; and outcomes and effectiveness of HRD education. Several categories were identified in each of the three areas and examples described. The implications of this study for research and theory building in international and comparative HRD are discussed.     

Human capital theory: implications for human resource development

This article reviews definitions of 'Human Capital Theory' by leading economists and HRD scholars. The origin of the term 'capital' is explained, and the link between Human Capital Theory and HRD is discussed. It is argued in the article that HRD scholars and practitioners should explore further the link between human capital, HRD and development at individual, organizational, community and international levels.     

A comparison of the practices used by human resource development professionals to evaluate web-based and classroom-based training programmes within seven Korean companies

The purpose of the study was to compare the practices used by human resource development (HRD) professionals to evaluate web-based and classroom-based training (CBT) programmes within seven Korean companies. This study used four components of evaluation and three factors of evaluation barriers to compare the differences between these two training approaches. This study also explored the key decision factors for determining how HRD professionals evaluated their web-based and CBT programmes. Two data sets were used for the study; one set of data was gathered from a survey questionnaire distributed to HRD professionals and the other was gathered from interviews with HR/HRD directors within the seven companies. The results showed that web-based and CBT programmes were not meaningfully different on the most components of evaluation and evaluation barriers. The results also found six key decision factors determining evaluation for web-based and CBT programmes.     

Better know an HRD scholar: a conversation with Monica Lee

This article contains a conversation with Monica Lee, and is part of a series that focuses on different HRD scholars – the aim being to better understand the people behind the names we see in print. Monica is a Life Member of Lancaster University, was a founding member of the University Forum of HRD, and was the founding editor of Human Resource Development International. The conversation explores Monica's background, how she got into HRD, how she overcame dyslexia and recovered from her cerebral hemorrhage, how the University Forum was created, and how HRDI came about. The conversation also considers the consequences of placing boundaries around HRD, about how we are guided by our subconscious, and about the impact on HRD of future changes to organizations and structures.     

In support of evidence-based management and research-informed HRD through HRD professional partnerships: an empirical and comparative study

This article describes a programme of practice-grounded empirical management research set within an NHS Trust Hospital in the UK that was conducted as part of an HRD Professional Partnership of the kind advocated by Jacobs (1997). The research was concerned with identifying the criteria of managerial effectiveness at the middle and front-line levels of management using critical incident technique and factor analytic methods. The results are compared against those from an equivalent partnership research study carried out previously by the author within one part of the British Civil Service, namely the Anglia Collection of HM Customs & Excise. The findings lend support to the notion of the 'universally effective manager', and provide empirical support for the potential development of evidence-based and research-informed approaches to management and human resource development within the case-study NHS Trust Hospital, and possibly beyond.     

Human Resource Development in SMEs: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Human Resource Development (HRD) in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is a significant area of scholarship. However, the cumulativeness of research on HRD in SMEs remains relatively low when compared to HRD generally. This paper reports a systematic literature review (SLR) to synthesise research in this area. A disciplined screening process resulted in a final sample of 117 papers published in 31 journals from 1995 to 2014. The synthesis of these empirical and theoretical studies revealed that: (a) the literature utilises a narrow range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives; (b) HRD is being investigated across a variety of SME contexts, themes and units of analysis; (c) researchers define HRD in multiple ways and use a diverse set of measures of HRD activity; (d) there is significant potential for future research across the SME and HRD disciplines, SME settings and beyond existing theoretical perspectives. We offer suggestions for further advancing the development of this area of research in terms of theory, content and methodology.     

Landscape of human resource development research in Korea: results from author co-citation network analysis

The present study examined major trends and issues of Human Resource Development (HRD) research in Korean context applying the author co-citation analysis (ACA) to three primary HRD-related journals in South Korea. Following the analyses of author co-citation frequency, correlation matrix, dendrogram, and the multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) map, the results were found as follows: (1) co-citation network identified seven topical clusters (i.e., human competency improvement for young men and e-learning designers, system approach for training effectiveness, competency for executives and HRD-ers, HRD evaluations, HRD solutions, mentoring in career development, leadership, and the role of professionals), (2) competency appeared as a keyword in multiple clusters, (3) unlike HRD in North America or Europe, learning (informal, organizational, self-directed, and lifelong learning) with a variety of HRD solutions comprised the dominant research stream, and (4) research activities for critical issues, such as diversity, development of workforce minority, and international HRD were largely missing.     

The Economic Value of Market Information for Farmers in Developing Economies

In developing countries, farmers lack information for making informed production, manufacturing/selling decisions to improve their earnings. To alleviate poverty, various non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and for‐profit companies have developed different ways to distribute information about market price, crop advisory and farming technique to farmers. We investigate a fundamental question: will information create economic value for farmers? We construct a stylized model in which farmers face an uncertain market price (demand) and must make production decisions before the market price is realized. Each farmer has an imprecise private signal and an imprecise public signal to estimate the actual market price. By examining the equilibrium outcomes associated with a Cournot competition game, we show that private signals do create value by improving farmers' welfare. However, this value deteriorates as the public signal becomes available (or more precise). In contrast, in the presence of private signals, the public signal does not always create value for the farmers. Nevertheless, both private and public signals will reduce price variation. We also consider two separate extensions that involve non‐identical private signal precisions and farmers' risk‐aversion, and we find that the same results continue to hold. More importantly, we find that the public signal can reduce welfare inequality when farmers have non‐identical private signal precisions. Also, risk‐aversion can dampen the value created by private or public information.