Aesthetics and Human Resource Development: Connections, Concepts and Opportunities

If Human Resource Development is to fulfill the hopes of those who believe it is an essential contributor to social and economic success then there are many challenges to be met. Among these are the challenges raised by the growth of the creative class, with creative and cultural industries now forming a major sector of employment and creativity, individuality and imagination being highly valued in the workplace. The Aesthetic Challenges of Human Resources Development questions how the increasing importance of creativity impacts on the ways in which we understand HRD, and what its role is in the future if the creative industries continue to prosper. The book asks whether HRD is an area of theory and action whose professionals are, or can become, members of the creative class. In exploring these issues Gibb introduces discourses of, and debates about aesthetics, creativity, beauty and imagination into the world of HRD, in order to move beyond the non-aesthetics, relativity, beauty and imaginationinto the world of HRD, in order to move beyond the non-aesthetics, creativity, beauty and imagination into the world of HRD, in order to move beyond the non-aesthetic and utilitarian paradigms of human development and people management that evolved in the twentieth century. Aesthetics and aesthetic values are used to re-configure how we might understand and practice HRD.