Paradoxes Human Resource Developers Face

Abstract

It is clear from the work of Watkins and Marsick that management devel opers - both internal and external to the organisation — will often undermine their own objectives through inconsistent, paradoxical behaviour. Through the literature on group and family therapy, it can be seen that paradoxes are a normal by-product of the way people assign meaning to interpersonal action. Case studies from the author's separate research efforts illustrate four paradoxes which affect human resource or management developers. A model for encouraging reciprocally reflective learning based on the works of Argyris (1982) and Schon (1987) is offered to enable individuals to critically examine paradoxes in their work.