LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT: SYSTEMATIC APPROACH - Essay Example

The importance of these methods has been recognised by virtually all companies which follow western standards of business. Evidently, performance depends not only on hard and attenuating work of the personnel, but also on such essential characteristics as competence and ability to learn and develop. Despite the visible simplicity, the problem of effective training and development of employees is exceptionally complex, but in an company fails to properly, effectively and continuously train and educate the human resources in the right areas of the business, at the right time and at the right cost, serious inefficiencies are likely to arise creating considerable operational difficulties and sometimes may result in failure of the organisation (Buckle & Caple, 2004).

Information, knowledge, and skills have already become the key aspects of new economic environment (Guest, 1987). As a result, modern organizational studies place increasingly distinct emphasis on issues associated with knowledge acquisition and learning. An effective HRD programme should be built around three basic theoret. The latter concept has recently initiated a serious scholarly debate about most effective methods, techniques and models of learning and development. In the past, learning focused primarily on individuals: people worked in large bureaucracies or assembly lines and, consequently, the goal of learning under such circumstances was training of the skills required for their functioning.

However, since approximately three decades ago, the focus of learning in organisations began to shift individuals to groups, and, what was even more important, the meaning underlying the constructs 'learning', 'training' and 'development' transformed dramatically. Scholars started conceiving these constructs as continuous rather than occasional while the purpose and the process of learning were also reformulated and recognised as vital for effective organizational performance (Harrison, 2005).

The systematic approach has recently emerged as perhaps the most adequate alternative in organisational learning and development. The definitions of training found in the existing organisational literature are rather similar reflecting several primary characteristics and objectives formulated also in the mainstream approach to training. Thus, Armstrong (1996: 517) defines training as "the planned and systematic modification of behaviour through learning events, programmes and instruction which enable individuals to achieve the levels of knowledge, skill and competence needed to carry out their work effectively.

" However, at least two features of this definition could be outlined as the most distinctive and representative aspects of the modern training paradigm as opposed to the traditional methods: systematic approach and the