The Aesthetic Challenges of Human Resource Development (Routledge Studies in Human Resource Development)

200 Pages·2005·0.2 MB·English

by  Stephen Gibb

Aesthetics and Human Resource
Development
The emergence of Human Resource Development (HRD) as a subject presents many
opportunities for reviewing intellectual and practical boundaries. Many streams of
contemporary thinking can be connected with it, to better illuminate the challenges
of developing people in a time of flux and change. The aesthetic perspective can be
as significant in that process as can political, psychological, social and economic
perspectives. This is because it offers a way to contest the utilitarian economism
which has a stranglehold on HRD and a theoretical, narrow, skills-based, quantita-
tive and theoretical approach. This can be broken and a fresh era in HRD
introduced, for the good of more people, if the dormant, silenced or absent voices,
such as those associated with the aesthetic tradition, are heard.
The connections between HRD and aesthetics are not only intellectual andtheo-
retical. They are intensely practical, too. Alongside the growth of the creative class,
with cultural industries now forming a major sector of employment and wealth
creation, creativity and imagination are becoming highly valued in the workplace.
Aesthetics and Human Resource Developmentexplores how this increasing importance of
creativity impacts on the ways in which we understand HRD, and what its role is in
the future for cultural industriesto prosper. Part of this is to ask whether HRD is an
area of theory and action whose professionals are, or can become, members of the
creative class.
In exploring these intellectual traditions and practical issues around aesthetics
Stephen Gibb identifies how the discourses of, and debates around, creativity,
beauty and imagination have something to offer the world of HRD as it seeks to
evolve beyond the utilitarian paradigmsof human development and people manage-
ment that prevailed in the twentieth century. Aesthetics and aesthetic values can be
used to reconfigure how we might understand and practise HRD anew in the future.
Stephen Gibb is Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the
University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He researches and teaches in HRD with the aim
of continuously testing the boundaries of the subject, keeping it alive and open to
creative and imaginative theorising and practice.
Routledge Studies in Human Resource
Development
Edited by Monica Lee, Lancaster University, UK
HRD theory is changing rapidly. Recent advances in theory and practice,
how we conceive of organisations and of the world of knowledge, have led to
the need to reinterpret the field. This series aims to reflect and foster the
development of HRD as an emergent discipline.
Encompassing a range of different international, organisational, method-
ological and theoretical perspectives, the series promotes theoretical
controversy and reflective practice.
1. Policy Matters
Flexible Learning and Organizational Change
Edited by Viktor Jakupec and Robin Usher
2. Science Fiction and Organization
Edited by Warren Smith, Matthew Higgins, Martin Parker and Geoff Lightfoot
3. HRD and Learning Organisations in Europe
Challenges for Professionals
Edited by Saskia Tjepkema, Jim Stewart, Sally Sambrook, Martin Mulder, Hilde
ter Horst and Jaap Scheerens
4. Interpreting the Maternal Organisation
Edited by Heather Höpfl and Monika Kostera
5. Work Process Knowledge
Edited by Nick Boreham, Renan Samurçay and Martin Fischer
6. HRD in a Complex World
Edited by Monica Lee
7. HRD in Small Organisations
Research and practice
Edited by Jim Stewart and Graham Beaver
8. New Frontiers In HRD
Edited by Jean Woodall, Monica Lee and Jim Stewart
9. Human Resources, Care Giving, Career Progression, and Gender
A Gender Neutral Glass Ceiling
B. Coyne, Edward J. Coyne, Sr, and Monica Lee
10. The Industrial Relations of Training and Development
Jason Heyes and Mark Stuart
11. Rethinking Strategic Learning
Russ Vince
12. Critical Thinking in Human Resource Development
Edited by Carole Elliott and Sharon Turnbull
13. Aesthetics and Human Resource Development
Connections, Concepts and Opportunities
Stephen Gibb
Also published in the series in paperback:
Action Research in Organisations
Jean McNiff, accompanied by Jack Whitehead
Understanding Human Resource Development
A Research-based Approach
Edited by Jim Stewart, Jim McGoldrick, and Sandra Watson

Aesthetics and Human
Resource Development
Connections, Concepts and
Opportunities
Stephen Gibb
First published 2006 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2006 Stephen Gibb
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
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reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested
ISBN10: 0-415-36097-8 (Print Edition)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-36097-5
Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc.
For Jen, making the world beautiful beyond
imagining

Contents
List of illustrations xi
Foreword xiii
PART I
Connections 1
1 Pretty smart: aesthetics and HRD 3
2 Making it up: constructing creativity 20
3 Valuing aesthetics 36
4 The illusion of potential: imaginative truth 51
5 Caring about beauty 65
PART II
Concepts 83
6 Artful HRD: pleasure for pleasure 85
7 Arts-based HRD 96
8 Beyond artfulness: expressing human vitality 109
PART III
Opportunities 121
9 Developing strategies for creativity 123
10 Creative industries 131