Organisations should be conscious that, if
left to individuals, the accumulation of
knowledge could be detrimental to
organisations. It is likely that individuals
may establish knowledge protectorates;
furthermore there may be an inefficient
use of learning time and the value of the
investment itself may be a cost to the
organisation. Given the requirements of
the organisational perspective the
possibility exists that many individual
learning investments will focus on
enhancing employability, investment in
learning activities. Learning should be
aligned to business goals and strategies.
. HRD investment is a necessary, but not
sufficient, input to ensure that human
resources have the potential to create
knowledge and be innovative. These two
outcomes require both competence and
the creation of a culture of risk-taking.
Pfeffer and Sutton (1999, p. 26) argue that
``in building a culture of action one of the
most critical elements is what happens
when things go wrong''. Bennis and Nanus
(1997, p. 17) suggest that all learning
activities involve some failures and it is
from this failure that individuals can
continue to learn. They propose that
``reasonable failure should never be
received with anger''. Some commentators
(Hope and Hope, 1997; Herriot and
Anderson, 1997); consider innovative
capacity to be a unique and particular
output of talented human resources. It is
manifest in the potential to produce novel
responses to the knowledge they are
working with. HRD represents a
particular strategy available to
organisations to enhance that potential