The operations executive who facilitated
the internal management–HRD alignment discussions stated that management
“needed to look at the opportunities we were missing [with the HRD division]
and we found ways to align our roles and efforts towards our shared strategic
goals” (as quoted in Egan, 2010, p. 121). Based on shared interests, management
and HRD partnered to perform a task analysis and redesigned several job
descriptions to ensure “crossover responsibility” between key management and
key HRD stakeholders. Additionally, an organizational restructuring moved the
highest-ranked HRD leader to the executive management team for the first
time. In this case, the malleability of HRD and managerial roles and the new
organizational chart enabled HRD and management to better align. In my subsequent
discussions with the same executive, I introduced the notion of moderately
defined roles by asking about the partnership relationships her central
management group had with other parts of the organization, including operations
(led by engineers), legal, and accounting. In addition to indicating that
the partnerships were strong because operations, legal, and accounting all had
a seat at the executive table, along with the newly appointed senior vice-president
of HRD, the executive expressed the following opinion: