Human resource development: from theory into practice

The first thing to note about this book is the claim that it aligns with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) professional standards and its Level 7 Diploma in Learning and Development. To my current knowledge, there is no other book available that could meet that claim, even from Kogan Page, the CIPD’s publishing partner. So, the book could also claim being first to market for those new standards and qualification. In a very general sense, I think the claim is valid. However, the qualification requires completion of eight modules, or units to use CIPD language. The book does not meet all of those units and it will be fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the units that no single book could achieve that coverage. The content of the book, of which more later, is directly relevant to the ‘Designing learning to improve performance’ and the ‘People management and development strategies for performance’ units. It also has some, but not sufficient in-depth content, to support the ‘Leadership and management development in context’ and ‘Technology enhanced learning’ units. This leaves a number of units for which the book has little or no relevance. So, I think the claim is a little overstretched with regard to the qualification. That first point made, it is true that the book focuses on the CIPD’s understanding of Human Resource Development as specified, to use their preferred language, in their learning and development specialist knowledge standards. To quote the author: