The Cultural Boundedness of Theory and Practice in Hrd

Abstract

The impact of the forces of globalisation on managerial practices across national boundaries has renewed interest in examining the degree to which culture impacts on the effectiveness of such practices. Increased employee interaction with global customers and the growth in cross-cultural training and international assignments demands the development of an ever wider range of employee skills. While research exists on the role of culture in the areas of recruitment, organisational socialisation and training transfer, there is a critical lack of theoretical rigour related to the impact of cultural issues in the field of human resource development (HRD). It is argued here that cultural influences may affect not only a professional's implicit concept of what constitutes effective practice, but may also affect researchers' explicit theories. At its core, culture encompasses a set of fundamental values that distinguishes one group from another and these values can act as a strong determinant of managerial ideology that consequently affects both HR practice and performance. It is probable, therefore, that much of the existing literature on HRD and related domains may be as culturally bounded as are the actual processes, procedures and practices of language, learning and HRD in particular contexts. This is the argument at the heart of this exploratory paper. With increasing globalisation, e-marketplaces, and intense competition a dawning awareness is emerging of the centrality of cultural issues and a greater acceptance of the fact that strong cultural traditions have their own incommensurable criteria of the true and the false, the productive and the unproductive. Contra this acceptance of relativism and an increased focus on contextualism there is also a resurgence of universalist tendencies, driven by the same forces of globalisation, a certain modicum of ideology, and by the internet and e-business in particular. The convergence-divergence debate continues to have relevance in the field of HRD and is addressed here in the context of societal, critical and globalisation theories. We draw no firm conclusions as this is a tentative attempt to locate various positions and boundaries, including our own.

Keywords: cross-cultural management, convergence-divergence, human resource development, HRD

JEL Classification: J20, J24, J50, M12, M14, M53, M54