ABSTRACT
Much interest in the late 1980s and early 1990s was expressed in the notion of ‘strategic HRD’; HRD was prescribed to be ‘vertically integrated’ or subject to ‘external fit’ with business strategy, as well as ‘horizontally integrated’ or subject to ‘internal fit’ with other aspects of HRM. However, much theorising in this tradition has been naïve, unitarist, apolitical and over-rational, often urging the ‘matching’ of HRD with competitive strategy, organisational life cycle or strategic type.
