Conceptualizing Critical Human Resource Development (CHRD): Tensions, Dilemmas, and Possibilities

Critical modes of enquiry and practice in human resource development have been taken up relatively recently in the field. It wasn’t until 2002-3 that prominent conferences began to feature sessions exploring critical viewpoints. However interest seems to have mobilized quickly in the years immediately following, and by 2007 CHRD scholarship had burgeoned to the point where Callahan (2007) claimed that it represented ‘a’ future of HRD research. Critical human resource development is by now, argues McGuire and Garavan (2011:5), ‘playing an important role in changing how HRD sees itself and identifying whom it serves ... bringing clarity to the field and helping it secure a sustainable future’. Critical HRD also, as evidenced in the collection edited by Stewart, Rigg and Trehan (2006), is a diffuse association of critical perspectives, pedagogies, and declarations of what critical HRD means.