Introduction

There is evidence of prolific scholarship in the emergent field of human resource development, with a number of student texts and scholarly monographs which have been published since the mid-1990s (Stewart and McGoldrick 1996; Stewart 1999; Walton 1999; Wilson 1999; Gibb 2002). The Routledge Studies in Human Resource Development – a series of research monographs and edited collections under the overall editorial direction of Monica Lee – has been a particularly fruitful source of new ideas in HRD with titles including Understanding Human Resource Development (Stewart et al. 2001), Action Research in Organisations (McNiff 2000), HRD and Learning Organisations in Europe (Tjepkema et al. 2002), Human Resources, Care-Giving, Career Progression and Gender (Coyne et al. 2003), Work Process Knowledge (Boreham et al. 2002), Interpreting the Maternal Organisation (Höpfl and Kostera 2002) and Science Fiction and Organization (Smith et al. 2001).