ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to argue the case that human resource development (HRD) practitioners in general and management development (MD) practitioners in particular should increasingly adopt research-informed and evidence-based approaches to their professional practice; and second, to illustrate with a practical example how this might readily come about through the concept of HRD Professional Partnership research of the kind defined by Jacobs (1997) and advocated by Hamlin (2001a, 2002a). In so doing two assumptions have been made. First, that management development is a major component of the broad modern-day conceptualization of HRD, which places as much emphasis on organizational development as on people development (Delahaye and Smith, 1998). Second, that managerial leadership is a constituent part of the everyday task of most managers, as suggested by House and Aditya (1997) and demonstrated empirically by Russ-Eft et al. (1996). This latter assumption is further supported by the fact that many if not most managers in most organizations, as well as many modern-day management theorists, writers and researchers, use the terms ‘manager’ and ‘leader’, and ‘management’ and ‘leadership’, interchangeably (Barker, 2000; Alimo-Metcalfe and Lawler, 2001; Alvesson, 2002; Raelin, 2004). Consequently, much of the evidence used to support the arguments presented in this chapter is drawn not only from the management and management development literature, but also from the leadership and leadership development literature.
