Discussions
The disruptive potential of IoT could drive profound changes across many
dimensions—in the lives of individuals, in business, and across the
global economy. The IoT is such a sweeping concept that presents a
challenge about how to imagine all the possible ways in which it will
affect businesses, economies, and society (Manyika et al., 2013).
However, it is undeniable that it will have a significant impact and all
aspect our lives and the way human resources should be developed. Since
2010, when a special issue on Virtual HRD (VHRD) was published in theAdvances in Human Resource Development , there has been an
increasing stream, albeit, slowly the literature on technology-enabled
HRD. However, there has not been any serious discussion or research as
to the role HRD will play in the age of IoT and the impact of IoT on the
practice of HRD as a profession in the mainstream HRD discussions. It
is, therefore, gratifying to learn that the keynote speaker for the 2018
Academy of Human Resource Development International Research Conference
is a recognized expert and thought-leader in the adult development arena
and will be discussing “Re-thinking learning and HRD for the Age of
Artificial Intelligence.” As, authors we share the same view as the
Keynote Speaker [Pat McLagan] that “learners’ capabilities,
confidence, and self-image in learning need a radical change to thrive
in a world of proliferating resources, information overload, artificial
intelligence, and many other paradigm-shifting forces.”(AHRD, 2018,
p.1)
Bennett, (2014) defines Virtual Human Resource Development (VHRD), as a
“media-rich and culturally relevant webbed environment that
strategically improves expertise, performance, innovation, and
community-building through formal and informal learning” (p.265). While
we agree with this definition, we contend that there should not be
anything like VHRD. While this may sound controversial, our reason is
that in the age of IoT the entirety of HRD including its connected yet
disparate areas of scholarship like Strategic HRD, Critical HRD,
International/Global HRD, etc., are all covered in the description of
VHRD provided by Bennett, (2014). We can no longer see VHRD as a
separate area of study under HRD but the new paradigm of HRD or the
evolution of HRD. Bennett and Bierema, (2010) stated that “VHRD can be
viewed as a living system because of the interactivity, learning, and
development that occurs through its enabling technologies.” We argue
that the entirety of HRD in an IoT era should be viewed as such. HRD
professionals need to identify potentially disruptive technologies, and
carefully consider their potential before these technologies begin to
exert their disruptive powers in the workplace and society. The impacts
of IoT on HRD are considerable. The advances in IoT create a demand for
new sets of skills, and as working adults assume these jobs, they need
to be retrained and reskilled. Training and preparing the human capital
needed to fill the high demand of high-tech jobs is going to be a
considerable undertaking, which makes the implications for HRD enormous.
During the last few decades, millions of individuals globally have been
raised from poverty into the middle class, which means they not only
need but demand access to higher education (Kortuem et al., 2017).
Hence, in the age of IoT, Adult Education and HRD are uniquely
positioned to provide the education and training needed not only by the
workforce of today but also that of tomorrow, which will face
increasingly high-tech and shifting demands in the workplace.
We envisage the impact of IoT on HRD and the role HRD should play in
maximizing the benefits and challenges of IoT under three dimensions of
IoT applications to:
- Inform – gathering information through sensors to inform
policy and HRD decision making, research and practice.
- Automate – design and develop activities by allocating a
function to a system or by supervising the fulfillment of activity
through an IoT device that can generate Big Data for effective
predictions for the future.
- Transform – redesigning learning and development processes to
moderate the distractions of the IoT.