Achieving Strategic Coherence in HRD through Competence‐based Management and Organization Development

Human resource management (HRM), in contrast to “personnel management” and “personnel administration”, is often held to be proactive rather than reactive, strategic rather than tactical, and integrated with corporate strategy rather than marginal or peripheral. Argues that it is important to distinguish several dimensions of “integration” ‐internal, external and institutional – and that the strategic integration of human resource development (HRD) is achievable through the adoption of career‐focused, competence‐based models. However, existing competence frameworks are criticized for their generic character, their retrospective orientation, their abstract nature and their focus on the individual job rather than the career stream or wider organizational role. Prospective, organization‐specific, anchored, collaborative and career‐focused models seem more promising vehicles for achieving not only “internal integration” – the consistent, coherent application of a range of HR policy levers – but also “external integration”, the integration of HR strategies with corporate strategies. Explores such a framework in relation to two empirical studies of competence‐based approaches to managerial assessment and development, one a management development programme in the National & Provincial Building Society, the other a senior management development workshop in Oxford Regional Health Authority.