Theorizing Human Resource Development Practices in Extended Contexts: Invited Reaction 2

Wang and Doty’s article in this issue presents their bold theorizing of human resource development (HRD) practices on the basis of Wang et al.’s (2017) groundwork that defined HRD with the following three components: (a) host institutional system (HIS), (b) shaping, and (c) skilling. The first author integrated his observations on closed contexts such as China and North Korea from a national HRD (NHRD) perspective into their theorizing that addresses both NHRD and organizational HRD (OHRD). The authors developed Wang et al.’s (2017) definition work into theorizing by articulating key components and their relationships represented by axioms and theorems along with graphical depictions. Based on their theorizing efforts, in this reaction paper, I highlight the strengths and challenges of Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing of HRD practices.

Before beginning, I hereby disclose my background that may be associated with my own perspective and biases. Since I decided HRD as my lifetime pursuit in 1999, I internalized McLagan’s (1989) definition of HRD with the three pillars—Organization Development (OD), Career Development (CD), and Training and Development (T&D) for the first 10 years. I practiced HRD in organizational settings in South Korea by developing, implementing, and evaluating T&D, OD, and CD efforts in an integrative manner as proposed by McLagan (1989). I also practiced HRD in the Republic of Korea Army as a Troop Information and Education (TI&E) officer in a highly authoritative, top-down culture (a closed-HIS). I was responsible for shaping—to use Wang and Doty’s (2022) language—the soldiers’ minds in terms of their character, morale, and ideology. Over the last 15 years, I worked in the United States (an open HIS) and Morocco (a relatively closed HIS) as an HRD scholar-practitioner as well as an HRD educator and administrator at universities. As a researcher, I created new measures to test causal relationships associated with the constructs (e.g., the Hope-Action Inventory, Assessment of Human Agency, and Hopeful Career State) that I theorized (Niles et al., 2019; Yoon, 2019, 2020) based on my background in measurement and evaluation. As an associate editor of Human Resource Development Review, I have led all revision processes for Wang and Doty (2022); therefore, I am aware of concerns and criticisms about their theorizing of HRD practices that reviewers have expressed in the process.

The first strength of Wang and Doty (2022) is the coverage of their theorizing using the three components (i.e., HIS, shaping, and skilling) that can be applied to both micro and macro HRD practices. What the authors claim is that regardless of the contexts (e.g., NHRD vs. OHRD, open-vs. closed- HIS), HRD scholars and practitioners must consider the three components, though how they are operationalized in practice could be vastly different. For example, HRD practitioners should critically examine their HIS before developing HRD interventions, explore learning and development-related issues or interventions, and pay attention to shaping issues (e.g., organizational culture, morale, strategic directions). This requires HRD practitioners to think from a systems perspective, integrating different aspects of HRD (e.g., OD, CD, T&D).

Second, Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing bridges HRD and OD by associating the three components with OD frameworks. For example, Tichy’s (1983) technical, cultural, political (TPC) framework, which illustrates the interconnectedness of the three elements (i.e., TPC) within an organization, corresponds to skilling (technical), HIS (political), and shaping. To solve technical (e.g., task-oriented compared to morale) problems within an organization, HRD practitioners use learning and development (i.e., skilling) solutions. Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing can prompt HRD practitioners to examine politics and power dynamics of the HIS carefully. Another example has to do with Likert’s (1979) Systems 1-4 Framework that classified organizations into four types: among the four, System 1 (exploitive authoritative group) corresponds to a closed HIS and closed shaping, and System 4 (participative group) corresponds to open HIS and open shaping. Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing can create a synergy for HRD practitioners’ learning about diagnostic models (see Yoon, 2017a; 2017b for the types of diagnostic models) that may be used to help them understand the client’s HIS, including its environment and internal components such as structure, human resources, system, and culture.

Third, Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing sets clear boundaries for HRD by specifying what constitutes HRD practices. In their earlier drafts, they emphasized that skilling that is not situated in a specific HIS is adult education or human development, not HRD. This perspective can help HRD scholars to differentiate their identity from neighboring fields such as industrial and organizational psychology, leadership, and adult education. A challenge HRD journals face is to receive non-HRD-related papers that are not grounded in HRD research and practice. HRD papers must be associated with HRD practices and implications of their findings must be applicable to HRD settings. In that regard, Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing of HRD practices can be used as a guidance for HRD scholars aiming at publishing in HRD journals. I hope that future HRD papers will articulate the nature of the HIS where HRD is practiced.

Despite these strengths, Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing of HRD practices is accompanied by challenges that cannot be overlooked. First, it seems that they ignored the importance of the personal agency of individuals and HRD practitioners, especially in closed-HIS contexts. Bandura (2001) argued that human beings exercise three modes of human agency: personal agency (pursuing one’s own goals and desires), proxy agency (achieving goals through others or achieving goals on behalf of someone), and collective agency (pursuing goals collectively) (see Yoon, 2019 for further elaboration). However, Wang and Doty (2022) described reality as if people in a closed HIS automatically follow orders from the top, which represents proxy agency as well as negative shaping. However, even in a highly top-down culture, there is room for individuals and HRD practitioners within the HIS to exercise their personal agency, which is to pursue what they desire, though this is limited. Wang and Doty (2022) argued that in a closed HIS, only a few select individuals are allowed to engage in open shaping. However, people have freedom to exercise their personal agency, for example, by taking care of their loved ones and doing something that is meaningful to them as long as they are willing to accept accompanying consequences. The exercise of personal agency includes escaping the system entirely with the possibility of severe penalties as in North Korean defectors. Likewise, HRD practitioners can and should exercise their personal agency even in a closed HIS environment by seizing opportunities that can also meet the needs of the HIS. For example, in the Korean Army (a closed HIS), I (an HRD practitioner) proposed a non-traditional group counseling program for soldiers with suicidal symptoms though I had the choice to simply carry out routine tasks and follow orders from the top. Luckily, prevention of suicides was of very high concern for the HIS. Once the HIS saw that the initial outcome was highly desirable, my superiors allowed me to apply the initiative to other battalions. Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing, therefore, must consider how human agency of individuals and HRD practitioners can be at play in different types of open or closed HISs.

Second, it is a challenging task to adopt appropriate measures for key variables to test the propositions and accompanying mathematical formulations that Wang and Doty (2022) posited, especially in a manner that may be defended. The reality of HISs and HRD practices is far more complex than components and directions proposed. To illustrate this point for those who are more familiar with OHRD, I rephrased Wang and Doty’s (2022) proposition 1 (below) for an NHRD context to make it relevant to an OHRD setting as follows:

 Proposition 1. HRD efforts “combining open shaping with a positive skilling mix in an open HIS context produces positive” (p. xx) outcomes.

To clarify what this means, suppose that the desired outcome of the HIS is to increase sales. Although HRD practices of open shaping and positive skilling can directly affect the outcome, there may be other factors that lead to the success. For example, the company may have a clever marketing strategy or a poor marketing strategy. If the market condition is poor or their products have many defects, negative outcomes can be expected, though open shaping and positive skilling are present. Therefore, isolating the impact of HRD practices is critical to test the proposition through such means as experimental study. Another case of a closed HIS at an organizational level, nested inside a closed national HIS: to be competitive internationally, the HIS at the organizational level may need to have some level of open shaping for certain job functions such as R&D and marketing for organizational survival. A technical issue here concerns how to account for closed shaping at the national level that would have an impact on the organizational open shaping effort. In that case, determining open or closed shaping can be a challenge.

Third, the biggest challenge is how to determine which HIS is closed or open. According to the 2022 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) that Wang and Doty (2022) cited, two of the G7 countries, Japan and Italy, fall under the problematic category in terms of press freedom. Does that mean that these two countries should be classified as closed HISs? The classification mechanism is not clear. Even with the understanding that the use of WPFI was for the conceptual understanding of closed or open HIS, it seems that associated operationalizations are ambiguous. Wang and Doty noted that H is a vector of typology for the HRD host, which is denoted as H- or H₊, and that “any combination of the four governance domains” (p. xx): power centralization, decision-making, accountability, and information flow could be selected to determine the direction. Unless there is a clear rationale and plausible evidence, the combinations could be perceived as arbitrary, and all subsequent claims can be challenged in complex situations. It is possible that a HIS is highly open for power centralization and decision-making for product design and marketing but highly closed for accountability and information flow for production. In that case, how and where should the HIS be positioned? Which one, out of the four governance domains, is more important? Who determines it and why? These are just a few questions that need to be answered.

Lastly, the idea of typology has inherent limitations. Although the authors described shaping and skilling as a continuum, they also adopted the concept of typology that forces the HIS, skilling, or shaping to be on the positive or negative side, perhaps for the sake of clear theorizing. To be specific, when there is a net positive skilling mix, the symbol is denoted as S₊. This means that an HRD researcher needs to determine how to operationalize positive skilling and negative skilling in the manner that they offset the two opposite directions. A HIS can have a very high positive skilling for engineers or engineering skills but at the same time suppress the use of relationship building or critical thinking skills as negative skilling. Should these mixed skilling/deskilling domains be considered as one variable? Or how could multiple variables be considered to develop a net skilling mix direction? Specific illustrations are needed in future research; otherwise, the idea of typology and accompanying mathematical formulations may not fulfil its utility. Instead of deriving a net positive or negative skilling mix, it might be practical to identify the types of skilling or deskilling efforts that result in positive outcomes.

In conclusion, despite the challenges noted above and other criticisms raised by reviewers, Wang and Doty’s (2022) theorizing of HRD practices has the potential to advance the field of HRD, especially when considering its strengths. Addressing the challenges and criticisms presented should fuel future research on theorizing HRD. Through a series of future validation and hypotheses testing of the theorizing of HRD practices, I hope to see some core concepts (e.g., HIS, shaping, skilling) and operationalizations (axioms, theorems, propositions, mathematical formulations) retained or discarded. I look forward to seeing a continuation of theorizing efforts by HRD scholars for the future.