This paper examines the theoretic literature relating to human resource development,
sustainability, and competency development. I conducted literature searches using the terms
human resources development and sustainability, and competency development best practices; via
the database EBSCO host, including Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, Green
File, Master File Premier, and the Psychological and Behavioral Science Collection databases from
2000 to 2013 to determine current research in these areas. In addition to the database searches, I
also searched manually using Internet search engines such as Google Scholar, Good Advanced,
and Bing.