In the industrial era, the role of HRD department brought focus into managerial aspects that attaching great importance to basics and principles for organizational members. In the knowledge and information-oriented era, however, its role has been chan...
In the industrial era, the role of HRD department brought focus into managerial aspects that attaching great importance to basics and principles for organizational members. In the knowledge and information-oriented era, however, its role has been changed to focus on the role of creative human resource development which makes the most of organizational members' potentials, the role of human resource development which learns the method of coping with changes, and the role of strategic human resource development which prepares for the future. In this vein, if an HRD department clearly perceives the importance of its pivotal role of human resource development in an organization and HRD personnel play their role of satisfying the standpoint of organizational strategies and the trend of human resource development, the HRD department and HRD personnel could clearly secure their identity in an organization.
This study was initiated with the investigator's curiosity of "which role organizational members mostly want their HRD department to play?" If an HRD department did not clearly perceive the needs of organizational members―the beneficiaries of HRD department―for it, it could not play appropriate HRD activities. From the aspects of strategy required by an organization and of strategic human resource development required of HRD department as a strategic partner within an organization, the investigator examined: (1) which role leaders on the business front expect for their HRD department to perceive?; (2) what is HRD personnel's perception of HRD department and what is its current status?; and (3) what is study subject's maturity for its strategic human resource development? Study findings are as follows:
First, as for the role of HRD department in order to carry out its strategic human resource development, leaders on the business front attached more importance to sharing and spreading organizational culture and cultivating next-generation leaders and talented personnel than to supporting to achieve managerial performance and organizational goals and supporting and taking the lead in changes and innovations. The expectation of leaders on the business front was high in general, whereas the implement level of HRD department did not satisfy their expectation.
Second, as for the roles of carrying out strategic human resource development and its current status, HRD personnel attached more importance to sharing and spreading organizational culture and cultivating next-generation leaders and talented personnel than to supporting to achieve managerial performance and organizational goals and supporting and taking the lead in changes and innovations. As for their perception of importance for detailed core tasks in every area, there was difference in priority by business categories and ranks, but the tendency was similar. However, the comparison of priorities of core tasks in every area between the expected perception of leaders on the business front and the actual perception of importance of HRD personnel showed that there is a little difference in all the business categories.
Third, as for the maturity of strategic human resource development by business categories, the scores for all the business categories were distributed between 1.60~2.29 on the measure presented by McCracken & Wallace (2000), thus resulting in 'quite mature'
In this study, the investigator examined the needs for an HRD department from the aspect of organizational strategy, required by an organization itself as an important department that playing the pivotal role of human resource development within an organization, and by leaders on the business front as a strategic partner of carrying out strategic human resource development on the business front, together with HRD personnel's perception. Study findings show that there is difference of perception in the needs for HRD department between leaders on the business front and HRD personnel. In order for HRD personnel to consolidate their position of carrying out strategic human resource development from the aspect of organizational strategy as a strategic partner, they must put every systematic effort to reduce the difference of perception and link their activity to concrete HRD activity.