Purpose: The concept of managers assuming developmental roles such as coaches and learning facilitators has received considerable attention in recent years. Yet, despite the growing body of expert opinion that suggests that coaching is an essential core activity of everyday management and leadership, the literature base remains largely…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among strategic HRD (SHRD) practices and organizational learning; and the relationships among organizational learning and HRD outcomes through a literature review. Design/methodology/approach: Keywords were identified to use in the literature search: HRD, SHRD practices, and…

Purpose: Utilising data from 18 in-depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call…

Reports on a survey of trainers working in agribusiness. Results indicate that most trainers performed training tasks less than 50 percent of their total work time. The average trainer conducted 9-10 programs per year. (CH)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between organisational support for career development (OSCD) and employees' career satisfaction. Based on an extended model of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) and an integrative model of proactive behaviours, the study proposed that career management behaviours would mediate…

Examined relations among retail sales training, organizational support, and store performance and examined whether training interacts with organizational support to predict store performance. Results indicated that training and organizational support were significantly correlated with both measures of store performance, although the relationship…

This study sought to determine the extent to which technical training utilizes accepted evaluation techniques. Results showed that technical training evaluation practices were essentially the same as those reported for training in general and suggests the need for a new research agenda on organizational training decisions-making processes.…

Discussion of training effectiveness measurement highlights a study that investigated the extent to which trainees' perceptions of the applicability of what they learned, gathered immediately after training, can predict perceptions of actual application of the training six months after they return to the job. Considers whether support affected the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evidence the emergence of new forms of work organisation which if observed could be seen as consistent with the concept of the "learning factory". This is attempted through reporting the views of those workers engaged in team based operations and reflects upon the emerging role of first-line and…

Firms with the ability to provide superior customer service can accrue significant competitive advantage and research suggests that frontline service employees' (FLSEs) actions have a considerable influence on the success of service operations. Yet, the high level of customer defections consistently attributed to poor and indifferent service…

Describes verbal interactions in 13 selected corporate training sessions using the INTERSECT (Interactions for Sex Equity in Classroom Teaching) Observation System. Highlights include the gender of the trainer, types of feedback and interaction, classroom interactions by gender, and implications for further study. (Author/LRW)

Describes a study that was the first stage of a project to evaluate a management training course designed especially for a group of research scientists and senior technical staff employed by several government and quasi-government organizations engaged in scientific and industrial research. (NRJ)

Discussion of assessing training effects on corporate outcomes focuses on a study that examined the effects of trainee characteristics on training effectiveness in terms of job performance improvement. Investigates reasons for leaving and high turnover of company personnel. (Author/LRW)

The author reports on a survey of 64 human resources managers. Forty-eight percent of the respondents indicated that their organizations had some type of retraining program. Topics covered include (1) retraining topics, (2) employee types, (3) program content, (4) trainee scheduling, (5) completion rates, (6) payment, and (7) program success. (CH)

A series of surveys in the last 30 years shows little application of Kirkpatrick's 4-level model for training evaluation (reaction, learning, application, benefit) beyond level 1, a finding confirmed in recent responses from 72 of 620 companies surveyed. A mirror of the model, working from level four to one and back, might be more widely adopted.…