chapter 16
....................................................................................................................................................TRAINING,
DEVELOPMENT,
AND COMPETENCE
....................................................................................................................................jonathan winterton
16.1 Introduction
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Accordingto the conventional wisdom of ‘nuts and bolts’ personnel manage-
ment, having established personnel requirements (taking into account labor
turnover, retirements, sales forecasts, and the impact of technological changes
on productivity), recruitment, selection, and training follow as a linear trilogy. A
workforce with the requisite skills is the logical end result, enabling the personnel
team to focus on appraisal, remuneration, and motivation until the next round of
‘manpower planning’ (a term that surprisingly endured well beyond the advent
of gender-free language in the profession). Of course this is a caricature of the
standard personnel texts that some of us are old enough to remember, but barely
an exaggerated one despite its distance from the reality of workplace practice.
Modern HRM might emphasize the need for continuous training, and develop-
ment to maintain the dynamic capabilities supporting organizational strategy and
make endless caveats about choices to be made between recruitment, training,
and outsourcing. The rhetoric is more sophisticated, but is it any closer to
reality? In practice, there are innumerable possible combinations for solving the