ABSTRACT
The stimulus for this chapter arises from a particular set of demands that we see confronting practitioners and theorists of HRD in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. Our purpose is to examine whether or how these demands might be reconciled, and how we might better understand and practice HRD in the light of these competing realities/claims on the self. The wider notions of individuality and community, and the changes in social and communal relationships that are shaping organisational practices have arguably not been sufficiently addressed within HRD. Our aim is to open a debate that will help us to make sense of these contradictory tensions in HRD. Our secondary purpose is to encourage a more interdisciplinary form of HRD research that extends its exploratory and explanatory reach.
