Globalization and transitioning economies received increased attention from human
resource development (HRD) scholarly in recent years. A topic termed as national HRD
(NHRD) has emerged in the literature. In a broader sense, most NHRD writings
highlighted national socio-cultural contexts in different developing countries with
issues arguably related to specific HRD components (e.g. Lynham and Cunningham,
2006; McLean et al., 2004). Apparently, the establishment of such new paradigm was
due to a recent “rediscovery” (McLean, 2006, p. 9) of an earlier use of a term, human
resource development, by Harbison and Myers (1964), and a corresponding four levels
of country typology. While the new paradigm seems to be exciting and promising, it is
necessary to clarify some premises and theoretical foundations, and HRD’s role in
national economic development. It is also important to rationalize some critical
fundamental issues at the initial stage of such research in order to properly define the
domain of the research and add new knowledge and theoretical strengths to HRD
theory base. This study is an attempt to achieve this goal.