HRD and Organizational Change: Evidence-Based Practice

International Journal of HRD Practice, Policy and Research 2016, Vol 1 No 1: 7-20

HRD and Organizational Change:
Evidence-Based Practice
Bob Hamlin, University of Wolverhampton, UK

Most HRD practitioners are, or wish to become, actively involved as strategic business partners of managers, particularly with respect to helping them bring about effective and beneficial organizational change within their own organizations, or within host organizations. This article discusses the complexities of HRD related process issues in the effective management of organizational change, and the value of using HRD-related theory, change management-related theory, and/or academically rigorous internal in-company research to help inform, shape, and evaluate the change agency practice of HRD professionals and the managers they partner. Following a discussion of why many organizational change programmes fail, the author argues that ‘evidence-based HRD’ geared to the strategic thrust of the business will likely lead to the HRD function maximizing its contribution to organizational effectiveness and sustainable business success. Two UK case examples of evidence-based HRD are presented, followed by a discussion of the worth of ‘professional partnership’ research and empirical generalization ‘replication’ research.

Introduction
This article has three aims. The first is to highlight the critical role that HRD practitioners could or should play as strategic business partners of managers in the management of organizational change (OC), and the concomitant necessity of robust change management enhancing research. The second is to present evidence supporting the case for HRD practitioners and managers to consider investing in context-specific OC-related research within their own organizations in order to improve their change-agency effectiveness; and to consider conducting such research in collaboration with academics within ‘professional partnership’ arrangements to ensure the rigour, robustness, and reliability of the findings. The third aim is to argue the case for empirical generalization ‘replication’ research that focuses on context-general OC-related field problems experienced in multiple specific organizational settings, and/or across organizational sectors and nations, in support of evidence-based HRD and evidence-based organizational change-agency practice. Stewart (2015) has argued that HRD practitioners are change agents who help and partner with managers in the facilitation of organizational change programmes within their own or host organizations. Together with other writers, Stewart claims that HRD is a strategic function that can have a significant impact on the long term business success of organizations (see Stewart and McGoldrick, 1996; Fredericks and Stewart, 1996). Furthermore, Gold, Holden, Iles, Stewart and Beardwell (2009) argue that HRD in practice and theory has a major influence on the interplay of leadership, culture, and employee commitment through: (i) helping to develop current and future leaders; (ii) involvement in shaping the organizational culture; (iii) building commitment among organization members; and (iv) anticipating required managerial responses to changing conditions. Similarly, McKenzie, Garavan and Carbery (2012) observed that “the shift from operational and tactical HRD to strategic HRD has witnessed a metamorphosis for HRD practitioners increasingly becoming partners in the business tasked with aligning people, strategy, and performance rather than simply promoting learning and development” (p.354). This observation echoes Kohut and Roth’s (2015) claim that “HRD practitioners and scholars need to enter the fray of the discussion on change management” (p.231). Over the last three decades of the twentieth century, the need for managers to initiate and facilitate organizational change management programmes effectively and beneficially has continued to increase in frequency, pace, and complexity (see Hamlin, Keep and Ash, 2001). In this context a major challenge facing modern day HRD practitioners is how best to help their colleague managers in this endeavour.

Volume 1 No 1