- Books: A Review of Canadian and American Training Practices

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Summary:

In recent years, globalization and associated increases in capital mobility and the enhancement of trading blocs in Europe and North America have resulted in extensive industrial restructuring and heightened competition. These pressures have stimulated the drive for new sources of competitive advantage. The fundamental challenges are to identify which human resource management practices contribute most to firm performance and competitiveness and to determine how then to facilitate the diffusion of these ‘best' practices. There is, however, ongoing debate over the precise role of human resource management practices in contributing to firm performance and, more generally, to competitiveness. Viewed as a form of human capital investment, training investments have been linked to increased employee productivity and increased earnings. As the Canadian economy continues to restructure through the mid-1990s, firms and individuals appear to be undertaking (re)training activities in response to several requirements, including the need to adjust to ongoing technological changes in the production process and the need to increase the productivity of the workforce. This review includes the empirical results and institutional analyses from the human resources management, industrial relations, and economics literature about training practices and requirements and about the linkages between training and firm performance.

Richard Chaykowski is Associate Professor of Industrial Relations at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. He was a co-founder and is currently the Co-chair of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Workplace Research Network.

Brian Lewis is an Institutional Research Analyst at Queen's University, where he has applied his number crunching skills in the area of enrolment planning. Prior to joining the office, he worked for several years in other departments at Queen's and worked as an economist and business analyst with the Ontario government and Canadian Pacific.