The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between HRD value orientation and adult education philosophy of HRD professionals in Korea. To accomplish the research purpose, the following was examined: First, to investigate the charact...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between HRD value orientation and adult education philosophy of HRD professionals in Korea. To accomplish the research purpose, the following was examined: First, to investigate the characteristics of the HRD value orientation; Second, to investigate the characteristics of adult education philosophy and categorize adult education philosophy; Fourth, to investigate the differences in HRD value orientation by the types of adult education philosophy.
The population of this study was all HRD professionals in Korea. In this study, HRD professionals refers to the specialists working in the HRD field including research and practice. Accordingly, in the case of the research part, target people were the researchers who have published HRD-related topics in 12 Journals that are associated closely with HRD research., and in the case of the practice part, the target people were HRD consultants of HRD consulting firms and HRD practitioners in 40 companies listed by the Fair Trade Commission which are considered to have enough HRD facilities, equipment, and professionals for the HRD operation. However, it is difficult to identify the number of HRD professionals, by considering the number of cases and the return rate based on previous research, a total of 420 people were sampled by purposeful sampling.
As for the instrument of investigation, the questionnaires consisted of HRD value orientation, adult education philosophy, and general characteristics such as gender, age, education, major, organization, HRD career, and HRD domain. The data was collected from the 9th of April, 2013 to the 19th of May, 2013. Two hundred and seventy two of the 420 questionnaires were returned (return rate 64.76%), of which 249 were used for final analysis after data cleaning. All data analysis was accomplished by using the SPSS 20.0 and Mplus6.12, utilizing descriptive statistics like Frequency and percentage, mean and standard deviation, and reliability analysis, t-test, ANOVA, χ2 test, Latent Profile Analysis(LPA). An alpha level of 5% was established prior to determining significance in inferential statistics.
The results of this study were as follows: First, the level of HRD value orientation perceived by HRD professionals was in Improving individual job performance, Improving organizational performance, Enabling meaningful work, Building learning systems, Providing individual learning experiences and Building socially responsible organizations, and there were statistically significant differences in education, organization, and HRD career. Second, the level of adult education philosophy for HRD professionals was in progressivism, behaviorism, liberalism, humanism and radicalism, and there were statistically significant differences in gender, age, education, organization. Adult education philosophy of HRD professionals could be divided into three types, based on the theoretical structure, each type was named as: Type 1 is non-radical progressivism type, Type 2 is non-progressive behaviorism type, and Type 3 is non-liberal progressivism type. The result of analyzing the differences in demographic characteristics, there were no significant differences except gender. Third, according to the types of adult education philosophy, HRD value orientation had statistically significant differences in Improving individual job performance, Improving organizational performance, and Building socially responsible organizations. In the case of Improving individual job performance, the level of non-radical progressivism type was higher than that of non-progressive behaviorism type and non-liberal progressivism type. In the case of Improving organizational performance, the level of non-radical progressivism type was found to be higher than that of non-progressive behaviorism type and non-liberal progressivism type. In the case of Building socially responsible organizations, it was higher than the level of non-liberal progressivism type to that of non-progressive behaviorism type.
The conclusions based on the results of this study are as follow: First, HRD value orientation of Korean HRD professionals has a strong tendency toward Improving individual job performance and Improving organizational performance. It means performance orientation is mainstream among Korean HRD professionals, and what they think to be the main purpose of HRD is performance orientation. Second, Korean HRD professionals have the strongest tendency to progressivism in adult education philosophy. There are no statistically significant differences in adult education philosophy by major, HRD career, HRD domain. Because, it seems that HRD value orientation formed by the person’s various experiences in the long-term are relatively immovable things. Third, it was observed to be the growth of Meaning in Work orientation in HRD paradigm. This suggests that HRD needs to consider the expansion of the range beyond the scope of a single organization. Fourth, there were statistically significant differences in the Learning system between research and practice of HRD. It reveals the difference of awareness between research and practice of HRD. Fifth, Learning orientation did not differ by the types of adult education philosophy. In the case of Building learning systems, non-radical progressivism type have a higher level than that of non-progressive behaviorism type. So, it shows the myth that behaviorism is directly related to performance paradigm in HRD is not adequate. Sixth, there are differences in performance orientation and Building socially responsible organizations by the types of adult education philosophy. It shows that adult education philosophy is reflected in the purpose of HRD perceived by HRD professionals.
Based on the conclusions, some recommendations for the practice field of HRD were suggested: First, organizations need to make an attempt to deeply unify the differences and understanding of each other by considering the actual situation in existing individuals mixed by differences in the types of adult education philosophy. Second, in conducting HRD functions, HRD practitioners need to recognize the purpose of HRD aimed by their organization, and conduct interventions by considering its educational philosophical background. Next, some recommendations for the research field of HRD were suggested: First, further research is needed to develop and utilize various tools and research methods in order to investigate adult education philosophy and the HRD value orientation of HRD professionals more precisely. Second, further research needs to be done to investigate the HRD value orientation of relevant stakeholders in HRD as well as HRD professionals to establish an identity of HRD. Third, in accordance with the performance orientation as the mainstream, further research needs to develop tools and research methods in order to properly evaluate the effectiveness of HRD functions. Forth, further research needs to be expanded to investigate the relationship between HRD value orientation and adult education philosophy.