ABSTRACT
Human resource development is like many other virtues in that those who advocate it easily outnumber actual practitioners. Some organizations do indeed do a great deal in this area and do it extremely well. And the principles of training, knowledge, skills and development have few detractors, yet, particularly in the market driven economies of the USA and Britain, there are still many firms which operate on the basis of zero skills in which labour is a cost to be minimized. What this chapter seeks to do, in common with the others in this text, is sift the realities of labour market practice from the rhetoric of enthusiasm about the idea of development. It considers the advantages of skill, the way skills are changing and the difference that various work environments can make.
