L&D professionals in organisations: much ambition, unfilled promise
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Accepted Version
Date
2019-12-05
Authors
Garavan, Thomas N.
Heneghan, Sinead
O’Brien, Fergal
Gubbins, Claire
Lai, Yanqing
Carbery, Ronan
Duggan, James
Lannon, Ronnie
Sheehan, Maura
Grant, Kirsteen
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Emerald Publishing Ltd.
Published Version
Abstract
Purpose: This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach: The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30). Findings: The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise. Originality/value: This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.
Description
Keywords
Careers , Roles , Competencies , Context , Learning and development professionals , Perceived effectiveness
Citation
Garavan, T. N., Heneghan, S., O’Brien, F., Gubbins, C., Lai, Y., Carbery, R., Duggan, J., Lannon, R., Sheehan, M. and Grant, K. (2020) 'L&D professionals in organisations: much ambition, unfilled promise', European Journal of Training and Development, 44(1), pp.1-86. doi: 10.1108/EJTD-09-2019-0166