In this chapter I discuss various ideas and actions associated with critical practitioners. I should emphasise from the outset that I am not talking about ‘the critical practitioner’ (as in ‘the reflective practitioner’). In fact, I am trying not to talk about the individual practitioner at all. There is plenty that has already been said about the HRD practitioner and his or her capabilities, behaviour, role and responsibilities for the development of people and performance. There has been plenty said about the techniques, instruments and approaches that the HRD practitioner can employ to develop, empower and stimulate the corporate citizen. In using the term critical practitioners, I am saying that HRD can also be appreciated as a collective endeavour, even where an individual occupies an explicit HRD role. To conceptualise and to act on HRD as a collective endeavour generates critique and insight about the relationship between HRD and organising. In this way, HRD is seen less as a combination of individual responsibility and professional technique, and more as a key part of ongoing, ‘negotiated narratives’ of learning and change (Watson, 2001). There are two related critiques of HRD implied in what I have said, and these emerge and develop throughout the chapter (although I do not draw firm conclusions on them). To summarise, the first concerns a shift in the practical emphasis of HRD away from effective development and towards provisional knowing within a political context. The second stems from the first, and concerns a transformation of the role of HRD within organising. HRD is not peripheral in the sense of implementing the development needs implied in strategic decisions, but pivotal in the sense of being the medium through which strategic learning takes place.
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