National Governance and Promising Practices in Workplace Learning: a Postindustrial Programmatic Framework in Canada

Abstract

The problem and the solution. Implicitly or explicitly, the work of most human resource development (HRD) professionals contributes in some way to national purpose. Even in the private sector, a sense of national identity is not lacking in HRD products, processes, and programs, even though this phenomenon may not be readily apparent to either practitioners or researchers. Viewed through the practitioner’s lens of typical HRD interventions, national HRD (NHRD) as a construct favors a description of the historical evolution of current practices. In this article, this analysis is reversed so that national purpose and supporting policies are used as the lens to assess a possible future evolution of NHRD practices and programs in Canada that support workplace learning in a changing national context.