Reshaping the Landscape: HRD in an Uncertain Economy
February 23-26, 2011 | Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel | Schaumburg (Chicago), Illinois, USA
Participants in this international research conference include national and international HRD practitioners, graduate students, and university faculty. The organizations represented include national and international universities, nonprofits, governments, and corporations from around the world.

In addition to the opportunity to submit and attend sessions for papers, abstracts, and posters, attendees are invited to attend preconference sessions and graduate students are encouraged to attend the AHRD Emerging Research Course conducted on the Wednesday and Thursday preceding the conference.

2011 AHRD Preconference Sessions

Schaumberg (Chicago), IL

Effective Talent Management and Succession Planning
Wednesday, February 23 from 8 am – 5 pm

William Rothwell

Managers have an obligation to get the best value for the money they invest on behalf of their organizations. That is as true for the human side of the business as it is for making investment decisions about machines, technology, or even capital. Systematically and strategically picking the best people, and developing them to make them even more productive, is not something to be put off until a rainy day. It is not something that would be "nice to do" when time permits. It is, instead, essential to gaining and sustaining competitive advantage.

Successful organizations of the future will not be those with the most advanced technology or the most liquid capital. They will, instead, be those that are systematically managing and developing talent to gain and sustain competitive advantage.

Many HR practitioners are faced with the need to coordinate the start up of a comprehensive talent management system. However, they often wonder where to start and what to do. This session will provide a detailed approach to guide that start up. While that approach may need to be modified and aligned with each corporate culture, it provides enough details for you to prepare and implement a project plan to implement the talent management system.

Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
Determine whether you have top management support
Link talent plans to HR plans and organizational strategy
Describe the lifecycle of talent management systems and how they influence establishing and maintaining a talent management system
Review the essential components of a talent management system and plan for adding or revising components
Prepare a project plan to implement a talent management system
Select governing values and competencies to be developed
Examine the essential components of a performance management system as part of a talent management effort
Determine the assessment methods to identify future potential
Clarify tracking methods and individual development plans (IDPs) for high potentials
Outline

Introduction
Workshop description
Key issues of the workshop
Participant introductions and key issues
Defining Talent Planning and Management
Definitions
Reasons organizations sponsor talent planning and management programs
Emerging business trends
Population trends
Activity: Rate your organization on talent planning and management
The lifecycle of talent planning and management programs
Replacement charting: Generations 1-3
How to link talent planning and management to HR plans and organizational strategy
Implementing a Talent Planning and Management System
Most common mistakes in a talent planning and management program
The STAR model (see Rothwell, W. [2005]. Effective succession planning: Ensuring leadership continuity and building talent from within. 3rd ed. New York: AMACOM.)
Activity: Using the STAR model
Activity on making the commitment: Determining if you have top management support
Assessing present work requirements
Using job/position descriptions and competency modeling
An activity on competency modeling
Using rapid results assessment
An activity on rapid results assessment
An activity on assessing present work requirements
Evaluating current performance
An activity on evaluating current performance
A sample performance appraisal form
Determining future work requirements
An activity on determining future work requirements
Assessing potential
An activity on assessing potential
Potential assessment form
Closing developmental gaps
An activity on closing developmental gaps
Individual development plan
Evaluating the program
An activity on evaluating the talent planning and management system
Implementing a Talent Planning and Management System
A model of talent planning and management
Notes on career planning programs and mentoring
Activity on mentoring
Action Planning
Take-home action plan
Targeted Audience

This workshop is well suited for leaders with responsibilities for talent management, human resource practitioners, or those individuals interested in learning more about the topics and building their competencies in the area of talent planning and management.

Bio

William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR is Professor of Workforce Education and Development in the Department of Learning and Performance Systems on the University Park campus of The Pennsylvania State University. He leads a graduate emphasis in workplace learning and performance.

Best-known for his extensive and high-profile consulting work in succession planning and talent management with dozens of organizations in the U.S. and around the world, Rothwell is a frequent speaker or keynoter at conferences and seminars around the world. He has authored, coauthored, edited, or co edited more than 300 books, book chapters and articles—including 70 books.


His most recent publications are Competency-based Training Basics (ASTD, 2010), Effective Succession Planning, 4th ed. (AMACOM, 2010), The Manager's Guide to Maximizing Employee Potential (AMACOM, 2009), Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Consultants, 3rd ed (Pfeiffer, 2009), Cases in Government Succession Planning: Action-Oriented Strategies for Public-Sector Human Capital Management, Workforce Planning, Succession Planning, and Talent Management (with Mark Bernhard and James Alexander, HRD Press, 2008), Working Longer: New Strategies for Managing, Training, and Retaining Older Employees (AMACOM, 2008), Cases in Linking Workforce Development to Economic Development: Community College Partnering for Training, Individual Career Planning, and Community and Economic Development (American Association of Community Colleges, 2008), and Human Resource Transformation: Demonstrating Strategic Leadership in the Face of Future Trends (Davies-Black, 2008).

Action Learning - A Powerful Tool for Developing Leaders, Solving Problems, Building Teams and Transforming Orgaizations
Wednesday, February 23 from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Dr. Bea Carson, MALC

Action learning is not only an effective problem solving process but also has been valuable to a growing number of organizations worldwide as a powerful tool for developing leaders, teams and organizations. In this session, participants will discover the six essential components for successful action learning programs, explore the steps and processes of implementing action learning, and have the opportunity of practicing action learning in groups of 5-6 members. Successful application of action learning in companies such as Microsoft, General Electric, Siemens, Goodrich, Samsung, and Boeing as well as with universities and government agencies will be described.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

Understand and demonstrate how and why action learning is effective in solving problems, building teams, developing leaders, and creating learning organizations
Apply the six components and two ground rules of action learning as well as the questioning and reflection processes of action learning
Understand the skills and roles of the action learning coach
Identify the various options available in introducing and tailoring action learning for an organization or academic program
Workshop Schedule

Introduction and overview of action learning
Essential elements in action learning
Types of action learning programs
Stages in action learning
Demonstration of action learning
Solving real problems in action learning teams
Groups of 5-6 members work on real problems
Members will volunteer problems/challenges within each group to use the action learning process
Volunteer action learning coaches will manage the time and use questions to facilitate actions and learnings
Leveraging the benefits of Action Learning
Problem-solving
Team building
Leadership development
Organizational learning
Professional growth and development
Steps for Introducing Action Learning into your Organization
Tailoring action learning to your environment
Pathways and pitfalls in establishing action learning in an organization
Assessing success in implementation
Questions and answers
Bio

Dr. Bea Carson is an author, speaker and expert in the field of Action Learning. Dr. Carson has mastered teaching Action Learning to the full spectrum of organizational levels. She is an external OD consultant specializing in leadership development, problem solving and strategic planning. Bea has worked in private and public sectors, with profit and not-for-profit organizations, locally and internationally, for organizations of all sizes. Much of her work has been with highly technical organizations.

Dr. Bea is frequently asked to be a visiting faculty member at universities across the country. Bea has over 40 presentations and articles to her credit. She is a active member of the board of directors of the Rotary Club of Annapolis and the World Institute of Action Learning. Previously, she served on the boards for Special Olympics Maryland, and the Monarch Academy.

Bea is president and owner of Carson Consultants; cofounder and Vice President of Education and Certification for the World Institute for Action Learning; and cofounder of Workplace Stars.

Pursuing Research in Organizations that is Useful to Practice
Thursday, February 24, 8 a.m. – noon

Victoria Marsick & Karen Watkins

Tight funding can make it difficult to secure funding for research in organizations that need to justify its value for practice. In this session we revisit the time-honored dilemmas of rigor vs. relevance. We explore primarily qualitative research tools for evaluating experiential executive development programs and creating a learning culture to illustrate research that builds knowledge and helps our partners enhance their efforts towards organizational change. Two case examples will illustrate approaches to evaluation- one a theory of change approach, and the other drawing on survey data, narrative circles, and case studies. The first is a global medical company's executive talent development program. The evaluation itself is designed to stimulate reflection both on the learning and the culture to support learning among top executives. The second is a large-scale implementation of a learning culture initiative in the Australian army that is augmented by case studies to spur change in high need areas identified in the survey. Finally, participants will experience two of these techniques and explore possible uses in their own organizations.

Bios

Dr. Victoria J. Marsick, Professor of Adult Education/Co-Director J.M. Huber Institute, Teacher's College, Columbia University. As Co-Director of the J.M. Huber Institute for Learning in Organizations at Teacher's College, Marsick regularly faces this session's funding dilemmas. Named Scholar of the Year by the Academy of Human Resource Development, she was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in 2006.

Dr. Karen E. Watkins is Professor of Human Resource and Organizational Development, College of Education at The University of Georgia. Watkins is the author or co-author of over 100 articles and chapters, and 6 books. Named Scholar of the Year by the Academy of Human Resource Development; she was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame in 2003.

Dr. Steven Talbot, Defence Sociologist, Defence Science and Technology, Department of Defence, and Dr.Paddy O'Toole, Senior Lecturer, Monash University, Australia

Successful Virtual Training Design and Delivery
Wednesday, February 23 from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Darren Short

In the current challenging economic climate, many organizations are looking to virtual training as a way of reducing training costs. However, many trainers are suspicious of virtual training, believing it reduces satisfaction, learning and impact. This workshop explores how to design successful virtual courses, and also how to convert in-person courses to a virtual format.

The pre-conference focuses on key steps in virtualizing training with a focus on three example programs where a move to virtual delivery generated no negative impact on evaluation numbers for satisfaction, learning, impact or business results.

The three examples are:

Converting a four-day onboarding program to a three-day virtual
Designing a three-day project management course to run in both in-person and virtual formats
Creating a virtual training campus in Second Life.
Each example illustrates specific approaches that can be adopted by most organizations. In addition, each example is backed up by evaluation data that show the effectiveness of the designs, and allow comparison of comparable in-person and virtual designs.

Bio

The workshop is led by Darren Short, Director of Global Learning & Development at Avanade, Inc – a 11,000-employee global high-tech consulting company based out of Seattle. Darren leads a team of global HRD professionals who have designed and run hundreds of successful virtual classes for thousands of employees worldwide. Darren also led the design team for Avanade's new Virtual Campus in Second Life, which hosts training courses and presentations for employees around the world.

Conducting Hierarchical Linear Modeling in Human Resource Development Research
Wednesday, February 23, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Kim Nimon, James Bartlett, J. Kyle Roberts

Hierarchical linear modeling continues to receive great attention among the organizational research community as an alternative to traditional fixed-effect modeling techniques (Schonfeld & Rindskopf, 2007). Traditional fixed-effects modeling techniques (e.g., ordinary least squares regression) involve an assumption of independent observations. This assumption, however, is frequently violated, especially in the field of human resource development (HRD) where data are collected in organizations. The inherently hierarchical nature of organizations creates nested entities of data (e.g., employees in work groups, work groups in departments, department in business units) which presents problems in traditional fixed-effects analysis (Hofman, 1997; Osbourne, 2000).

Data from nested entities typically violate the assumption of independent observations since individuals within hierarchies tend to be more similar to each other than individuals randomly sampled from the entire population (Osboure, 2000). For example, employees in a particular IT department are likely to be more similar to each other than to employees randomly sampled from a particular business unit, or from the population of employees in a company. This stems from the reality that employees are not randomly assigned to departments from a company, but are assigned to departments based on particular knowledge or expertise. Thus, employees within a department tend to be more homogenous in how they approach work than the population as a whole. Furthermore, employees within a particular department may share the experience of having the same boss or working in the same physical work environment which may lead to increased homogeneity over time.

Hierarchical linear modeling provides HRD researchers with the opportunity to analyze data that appropriately models the nested structure from which the data are drawn. This need to "honor" the nested structure of data involves partitioning the variability between individual pieces of data (level-1 units) from the variability between higher clustering levels (level-2 units). Examples of this nesting structure include employees nested inside business units or departments, employees in departments which in turn are nested inside companies (three-level model), measurement occasions that are nested inside employees (repeated measures) amongst many others. Failure to honor these structures could lead to underestimated standard errors and less efficient models (Hox, 2002; Kreft & de Leeus, 1988; Raudenbush & Byrk; Snijders & Bosker, 1999)

Session Purpose
The purpose of this session is to initiate a community of practice that supports the application of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) within the field of HRD. In this session, participants will review the advantages of HLM and see how its' principals can be taught to HRD practitioners and researchers who are unfamiliar with the technique. This session will cover how to fit the base/null/unconditional model (multilevel ANOVA), as well as a fixed- and random-effects model using the free software package R. Participants should have a basic understanding of statistics and regression. Participants are encouraged to bring laptops as free software will be distributed and demonstrated (R). If participants do not have access to a laptop, they will be able to review hard copies of software syntax and output. At the conclusion of the session, participants will discuss the opportunity of creating a social networking group where they can post questions and share information relating to HLM. This session will not only bring attention to the importance of innovative, quality and rigorous research and learning in HRD theory building and theory development method, it will also be an interesting, interactive, and enjoyable session for HRD professionals to attend.

Session Objectives
At the completion of this session, participants will be able to demonstrate how to: (1) Model the types of nested data structures that are most pertinent to the field of HRD, (2) Translate a given research question into the relevant model, (3) Understand how to interpret the parameters being estimated in each model, and (4) Compare and contrast results from the HLM models to traditional fix-effect models. These goals will be achieved by taking participants through illustrative lectures that demonstrate how to fit the following models in R:

Traditional fixed-effect model (e.g., OLS regression)
Null model (multilevel ANOVA)
Random intercepts model
Slopes as outcomes model
Session Overview and Format

Introduction and History of Multilevel and Hierarchical Linear Models (1 hour)
Introduce the background and rationale for the development of these models
Lay the groundwork for discussing the models by defining specific terminology associated with HLM, such as intercept slope, nested data, variance estimates, intraclass correlation, design effect, and fixed versus random effects.
The Multilevel ANOVA and Introduction to R (2 hours)
Introduce the R architecture for data analysis.
Discuss notation of models and presents a fitted base model (intercept only). Talk about model specification, model estimation, model fit statistics, statistical significance, and interpretation of variance estimates.
Lunch (1 hour)
Adding predictor variables (2 hours)
Discuss the addition of single Level 1 predictor variable with no random effect.
Model predictor's coefficient as a random effect and discuss model specification, interpretation, graphing, and the addition of new variance estimates.
Add another variable to the model and discuss interpretation of estimates in the presence of other variables. Also discuss the interpretation of interaction effects and the importance of centering.
Discuss fitting model diagnostics such as examination of error structures, MCMC sampling, and graphing.
Multilevel repeated measures models (1 hour)
As an extension of the two previously discussed multilevel models, discuss how to build and specify a two-level (measurement occasions nested inside individuals) model with interaction effects and random effects.
Wrap up (30 minutes)
Open the class to discussion.
References
Hox, J. J. (2002). Multilevel analysis: Techniques and applications. Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kreft, I. & de Leeuw, J. (1998). Introducing multilevel modeling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hoffman, D. A., & Gavin, M. B. (1998). Centering decisions in hierarchical linear models: Implications for research in organizations. Journal of Management, 24(5), 623-641.
Osborne, Jason W. (2000). Advantages of hierarchical linear modeling. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(1).
Raudenbush, S. W. & Bryk, A. S. (2002). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Schonfeld, I. S., & Rindskopf, D. (2007). Hierarchical linear modeling in organizational resarch: Longitudinal data outside the context of growth modeling. Organizational Research Methods, 10, 417-429.
Snijders, T. & Bosker, R. (1999). Multilevel analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Emerging Research Course
This course, designed for students, will examine the role of research in HRD, emerging themes in HRD research, criteria for evaluating research in HRD, critique of past and future conference presentations, the role of professionalism and professional organizations in HRD. This course is offered in association with the annual conference of the Academy of HRD.

Participants will have the opportunity to engage with students and faculty across HRD academic programs. They will also describe the role of theory and research in HRD and understand various research paradigms. There will be an opportunity to meet HRD scholars who will share their professional journeys.

The program will describe standards for good HRD research, outline the criteria for evaluating HRD research, and describe the review and publication process for HRD research.