INTRODUCTION
As organizations strive to compete in the global economy, differentiation on the basis of the skills, knowledge, and motivation of their workforce takes on increasing importance. According to a recent industry report by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), U.S. organizations alone spend more than $126 billion annually on employee training and development (Paradise 2007). “Training” refers to a systematic approach to learning and development to improve individual, team, and organizational effectiveness (Goldstein & Ford 2002). Alternatively, development refers to activities leading to the acquisition of new knowledge or skills for purposes of personal growth. However, it is often difficult to ascertain whether a specific research study addresses training, development, or both. In the remainder of this review, we use the term “training” to refer to both training and devel-opment efforts.
The importance of and scholarly interest in training in work organizations is reflected by the regular publication of training reviews in the Annual Review of Psychology since 1971 (Campbell 1971, Goldstein 1980, Wexley 1984, Latham 1988, Tannenbaum & Yukl 1992, Salas & Cannon Bowers 2001). The present review covers the training literature since January 2000. We provide a review that is comprehensive though not exhaustive. Also, in contrast to previously published Annual Review of Psychology articles, we readily acknowledge at the out set that we take a point of view that training in work organizations produces clear benefits for individuals and teams, organizations, and society. We believe that training in work organizations is an area of applied psychological research that is particularly well suited for making a clear contribution to the enhancement of human well being and performance in organizational and work settings as well as in society in general. Thus, in this review we first describe the benefits of training for various stakeholders and then discuss how training can be designed, delivered, and evaluated so that these benefits are maximized.
We acknowledge three unique characteristics of the present review that also differentiate it from previous Annual Review of Psychology articles on the same topic. First, because the training field has grown exponentially in the past decade, we cannot rely on the psychological literature to be the only or even main source of knowledge that has been generated. In preparing to write this article, we reviewed about 600 articles, books, and chapters published in psychology as well as in related fields including human resource management, instructional design, human resource development, human factors, and knowledge management. We believe this multidisciplinary approach is needed given the increasing fragmentation of