HWAdult

8.1 Discuss how both disciplines of adult education and human resource development connect to adult learning.

8.2 From your experience, how does learning connect with performance? Speak to performance at various levels (individual, work process, and organization).

8.3 What is your general position related to the idea of adult learners controlling their own learning?

8.4 Discuss the relative ease and difficulty of adults controlling the various learning phases:

need,

create,

implement, and

evaluate.

Human Resource Development Goals
HRD professionals are in general agreement as to their goals. Most take the position that HRD should focus on increasing the performance requirements of its host organizations through the development of the organization’s workforce (ASTD-USDL, 1990; Bassi, 2014; Knowles, 1990; McLagan, 1989; Swanson, 2007; Swanson and Holton, 2009).

Others believe HRD should focus on individual development and personal fulfillment without using organizational performance as the measure of worth (Dirkx, 1996). Yet, it is the increase in performance resulting from HRD that justifies its existence. From either perspective, the question of contribution always comes into play. Holton (1998b) provides a very useful taxonomy of performance outcomes and performance drivers that accommodates the gap between those focused on the organization first and then the individual versus those focused on the individual first and then the organization. He informs HRD professionals to pay attention to both performance outcomes and performance drivers. Thus, organization performance, such as high-quality services delivered to external customers, can be logically connected to performance drivers, such as learning and process improvement (see Chapter 17 for a more complete explanation).

When practiced within productive organizations, HRD should strive to contribute directly to the host organization’s goals. The host organization is a purposeful system that must attain effective and efficient survival goals. Consequently, it is the responsibility of HRD to focus on those goals as well as individual employee goals.

HRD can be thought of as a subsystem that functions within the larger organizational system. An organization is defined as a productive enterprise having a mission and goals (Holton, 1998b). Additionally, an organization is a system, with definable inputs, processes, outputs, parts, and purposes (Rummler and Brache, 1995; Brache, 2002). Contemporary HRD literature talks consistently of linking HRD to the strategic goals of the organization (see, for example, Gill, 1995). If HRD is to be respected and useful in organizations, it must position itself as a strategic partner and achieve the same level of importance as traditional core organizational processes, such as finance, production, and marketing (Torraco and Swanson, 1995). To gain an understanding of the purpose of the HRD subsystem, the goals of the larger system in which it operates should be considered.

Of the scarce resources that organizations must procure and allocate, perhaps none is more important to the success of the firm than human resources (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997). A major expenditure for most organizations is tied directly to workers, including wages, benefits, and HRD (Becker, 1993; Noe, 2012). And although human resources are unique in that people have feelings, make plans, support families, and develop communities, they are in some ways similar to other resources, in that firms expect a return on the money invested in their employees (Cascio, 1987; Swanson, 2001). Unless workers contribute to the profitability and viability of an organization, it would make economic sense to invest the money elsewhere. Even in nonprofit organizations, employees must contribute meaningfully to organizational goals that are essential to survival, even though those goals are not stated in dollars of profit.

The purpose of reviewing this basic reality of organizational survival is not to paint an unfeeling picture of the workplace in which people are merely cogs in a mechanistic machine. There are numerous examples of companies that meet their organizational goals that are also among the most progressive in terms of employee treatment and relations (Levering and Moskowitz, 1994). Nowhere has it been shown that organizational success should be in direct conflict with employee happiness and well-being.

Performance is defined as the organizational system outputs that have value to the customer in the form of productivity attributable to the organization, work process, and/or individual contributor levels. Using this definition, performance is the means by which organizations measure their goals. Performance can be measured in many ways: rate of return, cycle time, and quality of output are three such possibilities. Additionally, it is important to make the distinction between levels of performance. Performance takes place and can be measured at the organizational, process, and individual levels.

If HRD is to be aligned with the goals and strategies of the organization, and performance is the primary means by which the goals and strategies of organizations are realized, then it follows that HRD should be first and foremost concerned with maintaining and/or improving performance at the organizational, process, and individual levels. If HRD is to be a value-added activity of the firm (instead of a line item of cost that is to be controlled and minimized), then HRD practitioners must be concerned about performance and how it enables organizations to achieve their goals.

Human Resource Development and Performance Improvement
How can HRD improve performance? There are many possibilities at the individual, process, and organizational levels. Figure 8.1 is a matrix of performance levels and variables that can aid in the diagnosis of performance problems (Swanson, 2007, p. 52). Within each cell are enabling questions that permit diagnosis of performance, but each cell can also serve as a conceptual framework for classifying performance interventions.

As an example, the mission/goal variable at the organizational level asks whether the organization’s mission and goals fit various internal and external realities. If they do not, then most likely performance is being impeded. Assume that an organization’s mission and goals do not fit the reality of its culture and this is resulting in suboptimized performance. HRD could attempt to solve this performance problem through structured intervention in a couple of ways, depending on the outcomes of detailed analysis. A process could be put in place to formulate mission and goals that accommodate the organizational culture. On the other hand, a cultural change process could be implemented to modify the culture so that it is better aligned with the mission and goals of the organization. This example and the performance diagnosis matrix show that numerous impediments to performance, and consequently numerous challenges and opportunities for HRD to improve performance, exist. When business and industry leaders talk about the high values of core competence to the life of their companies, they are talking primarily about knowledge and expertise that fits within and between the 15 cells in the performance diagnosis matrix. This learning can also be categorized as public knowledge, industry-specific knowledge, or firm-specific knowledge that is critical to sustaining organizational performance (Leonard-Barton, 1995, p. 21).

Figure 8.1 Performance diagnosis matrix of enabling questions

Notice that adult learning plays an important role in most, if not all, of the matrix cells. Just getting to the point of doing the work in each diagnostic cell of the organizational system requires much to be learned in order to understand and operate within and between these cells. For example, if HRD is to change culture, then certainly the principles and practices of adult learning will play an important role as employees develop and learn new norms. Most process improvement strategies embrace some form of self-directed teams that examine their work processes and learn better ways to perform them. Building leadership capacity is a learning process. In organizations where innovation is a key performance driver, learning becomes central to survival (Senge, 1990; Watkins and Marsick, 1993). It is not difficult to see that there are potential needs for adult learning within every cell of the performance diagnosis matrix.

One important strategic role for HRD is to build the organization’s strategic capability—the knowledge and expertise required to figure out the present and to develop rational scenarios of the future and ways to connect them (Torraco and Swanson, 1995). Adult learning, from this perspective, is critical in order to maintain the performance of an existing system and to improve on that system. Increasingly, it is an organization’s intellectual capital that leads to sustained competitive advantage (Edvinsson and Malone, 1997; Stewart, 1997). Adult learning becomes a powerful organizational improvement strategy when it is embedded in a holistic performance improvement system framework.

Human Resource Development and Adult Learning
The issue of control—organizational versus individual—is useful in exploring the role of adult learning in HRD. Cervero and Wilson help in their book, Planning Responsibly for Adult Education: A Guide to Negotiating Power and Interests (1994), by noting that the adult education literature has been “focused on technical, ‘how to’ skills, while presupposing some ideally neutral staging area in which these skills will be exercised, and have remained surprisingly silent on the troublesome issues of ‘what for’ and ‘for whom.’” They go on to speak more forcefully: “Which people get to decide the purpose, content, and format of the program? Is it always the people with the most power? Is it the adults who will participate in the program, the leadership of the institution sponsoring the program, or the planners themselves?” (Cervero and Wilson, 1994, p. xii).

So what is the relationship between HRD and adult learning? Swanson (1996) defines HRD as a process of developing and unleashing human expertise through organizational development and personnel training and development for the purpose of improving performance at the organization, work process, and individual levels. McLagan (1989) offers an earlier definition of HRD along similar lines: the integrated use of training and development, organizational development and career development to improve individual, group, and organizational effectiveness. In both definitions, it is apparent that the outcome of HRD is performance improvement. It should be equally apparent that learning—knowledge and expertise—is a core component of HRD but not the whole of HRD.

HRD is broader than training or adult learning. There are HRD interventions that involve much more than training or learning activities, and some can have no planned educational component. This aspect of HRD falls in the unleashing element of the definition. For example, HRD might be involved in improving a business process intended to result in a newly engineered business process and minor work method modifications that are transparent to the worker. They could require no formal learning effort to implement. If training were required, it would be a relatively small part of the entire intervention. One could attempt to argue that the HRD work to improve the process involves acts of learning and is therefore adult learning. The rebuttal is that the desired outcome is to improve the process rather than the learning in individuals working in the business process.

These remarks should not be construed as an argument that the discipline of AE is a subset of HRD. It is not. Although adult learning takes place in both HRD and AE and both are deeply committed to adult learning, HRD and AE are discrete disciplines. Their area of intersection occurs within adult learning. When adult learning outcomes and learning process decisions about individuals are bounded by rules and requirements of the organization, adult learning is HRD. When the adult learning outcomes and learning process rules and requirements are located in the individual, it is AE. The core difference is in the idea of control. If the organization retains the authority to approve or disapprove learning interventions, the control is with the organization, and therefore it is HRD. To the point that control is overtly and formally shared, the learning process is both AE and HRD (Swanson and Arnold, 1996). For example, Robinson and Stern (1997) offer vivid illustrations of two essential elements that foster corporate creativity and encourage employees to control their learning journey. They speak of self-initiated activity, which is an activity performed by an individual who is not asked to do it; and unofficial activity, which is an activity performed by an individual over a period of time in which he or she continues to work on his learning journey without direct official recognition and/or support, and the benefits organizations gain by allowing both of these activities to take place among workers.

Thus, some HRD processes and interventions do not focus on adult learning. By the same token, AE does not always take place in the context of organizations for the purpose of performance improvement. The outcome of AE can be personal growth, general knowledge, or even amusement.

For HRD, adult learning focuses on development interventions that have two attributes: first, the context is organizational; and second, the desired outcome is learning—knowledge and expertise—that will impact the performance goals of the host organization.

Facilitating adult learning in performance-oriented organizations often creates a tension between the assumptions underlying andragogical practice and the organization’s performance requirements. For many, best AE practices allow maximum individual control and appeal directly to the needs most meaningful to the individual (Hiemstra and Sisco, 1990). When the individual’s needs are consistent with the organization’s needs, there is no tension. When the individual’s needs and goals are not congruent with the organization’s performance requirements, and the organization is providing the required learning experience, a tension exists and inevitably results in some degree of organizational control.

For this reason, learning professionals in HRD must balance practices that lead to the most effective adult learning with those that will lead to performance outcomes. When learning is required, performance will be compromised if effective adult learning principles are not incorporated. However, learning will also be compromised without an emphasis on performance principles because the learning opportunities will likely be discontinued if performance outcomes are not achieved.

Effective HRD professionals have the ability to find the optimum balance in each situation. Fortunately, the majority of learning situations present no problem. In many cases, the best interests of the employee and the organization can be met at the same time. This is especially true in organizations that link employee career advancement to performance so that employees’ lives are enhanced as the organization’s performance improves.

However, there are other instances where adult learning principles cannot be wholly implemented. Consider organizational change, for example. Can a large organization in a survival mode allow individuals the freedom to choose whether they want to learn a new way to run the organization? Hardly. Can an organization continue to invest in learning programs for its employees that do not lead to performance improvement over the long run? No.

In summary, HRD has a great concern to create more humane organizations. However, by definition, HRD must ensure that the organization’s performance improvement needs are met. At certain points, this is likely to lead to some adaptation and compromise of the core andragogical principles. Effective application of adult learning principles in HRD requires practitioners to become comfortable with, and even embrace, the tension between adult learning and performance principles.

The Premise of Adults Controlling their own Learning
One of the most popular ideas in AE is that individuals want to have control over their learning based on their personal goals and that learning will increase as a result. The idea is that better outcomes result when the learner retains control throughout the learning phases. There is controversy related to this idea of how much control individual learners want and can handle.

During the 1980s there was considerable discussion about embracing self-directed learning as a unifying theory and goal for the discipline of AE. Even one of the leading proponents, Stephen Brookfield (1988), acknowledged that self-directed learning is far more complex than first proposed; and that the push in AE to embrace self-directed learning was motivated in part by the discipline’s search for an identity and unifying theory.

The point of this discussion is not to enter the AE debate about self-directed learning. It must be recognized that the core assumptions of andragogy do not raise learner self-directedness to the same high level as has been proposed by many AE theorists and practitioners. Andragogy suggests that adults have a self-concept of being responsible for their own lives and expect others to treat them as being capable of self-direction (see Chapter 3). AE suggests that the purpose of learning should be to develop self-directed learning capacity in adults (Brookfield, 1986). The self-concept principle in adult learning theory has consistently been confused with the democratic humanism goals of AE that all adults become self-directing. The first is a characteristic of adults, the latter a purpose for learning. This should not be interpreted to say that the AE goals are wrong, but rather that the core learning principle of independent self-concept must be considered separately from the goals and purposes of AE. It is the latter that has falsely made HRD look inconsistent with adult learning principles. HRD practice is generally in harmony with the andragogical notion of independent self-concept, but clearly does not share the goals and purposes of AE.

Because HRD focuses on performance outcomes, the significance of learner control is viewed as secondary by most professionals in HRD. The AE reaction to the performance focus rests with the concern that the feelings and worth of human beings as individuals are ignored by too much emphasis on bottom-line results. There is evidence that learning, or enhancing the capacity to learn, is a valuable outcome in and of itself and that sponsoring organizations logically benefit (Robinson and Stern, 1997). Thus, the line is sometimes falsely drawn between those who view HRD as tied to business goals and focused on the bottom line and those who would like to take a more humanistic stance in the matter. In fact, HRD shares concerns for a humanistic workplace, has adult learning as one of its core components, but also embraces organizational performance theory. The gap is not as wide as some would portray it to be.

The Phases of the Adult Learning Planning Process
Adult learning is defined as the process of adults gaining knowledge and expertise. Additionally, the ideas that (1) learners universally want to have control over their learning process, and (2) learning increases as a result comes from AE. Adult learning theory takes a more situational stance on shared control.

Just what are the issues surrounding this core idea of learners controlling their own learning process? A contradiction exists between the AE ideal of individuals taking control of their learning and the reality of adult limitations in taking control of their own decision making. The following sections discuss the practical issues facing HRD as it relates to adults directing their own learning at the needs, creation, implementation, and evaluation planning phases.

Figure 8.2 provides the framework for this discussion. It shows the four phases of the adult learning planning process and an outer ring of theory. The four phases are:

Need. Determine what learning is needed so as to achieve goals.

Create. Create a strategy and resources to achieve the learning goal(s).

Implement. Implement the learning strategy and use the learning resources.

Evaluate. Assess the attainment of the learning goal and the process of reaching it.

These four phases serve as the categories or lenses used to search for what is known about learners controlling their own learning process.

Figure 8.2 Adult learners controlling their own learning process

Source: © Richard A. Swanson, St. Paul, MN 1996

Adults Determine their own Learning Needs

Even though there are limitations to learner control, Penland (1979) found that the top four reasons why adults chose to learn on their own were all related to wanting to retain control of the learning process. In this vein, the determination of learning needs, the up-front commitment to learning, is the phase with the greatest amount of attention in the literature.

The fundamental flaw with this approach is that there is no substantial attention given to individuals, work process, or the organization. It does nothing well. This popular vote strategy requires almost no professional expertise on the part of those running the process, and allows them to hide behind the cloak of democracy. On the positive side, the fundamental strength of this approach is that it provides the opportunity to participate, even if at a minimum level. Given such opportunity, objections are minimized and motivation is increased even when unpopular alternatives are put forward.

The relevant AE literature focused on learner control of the creation and implementation planning phase is scant. Most inferences must be made from related studies and from the mediated learning—the shared control between the learner and an external authority (usually the instructor).

The adult learner, wanting to retain control over the evaluation process while gaining valid data, will, in most instances, have to reach outside his or her internal reference to gain rational evaluation data. Obtaining direct measures of learning—knowledge and expertise—from formal tests or expert judges would be the most likely alternative. In many avocational realms of personal development, interest groups provide external measures of skill through competitive judging (for example, car shows, stamp shows, dance competitions, etc.). At a less threatening level, experts serving as mentors can provide similar evaluation.

Summary