Human flourishing as a core value for HRD in the age of global mobility

This keynote was given at the 11th International Conference on HRD Research and Practice across Europe (June 2-4, 2010, in Pecs, Hungary). It is among the most recently delivered speeches in this volume, and its occasion marks a special place in the history of HRD conferences, namely, the first international conference held in Eastern Europe. After a decade of alternating the location of the annual European conference between the British Isles and Ireland and the western part of the European continent (primarily the Netherlands and France), the location of the 2010 conference in the heart of Eastern Europe provided the opportunity to expand our collegial network and broaden our understanding of the specific challenges and opportunities in this country and region. At the time of the conference, the global recession and economic contraction had run its two-year course, and there were small but hopeful signs of economic recovery in Europe and North America. Still, unemployment in many parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, remained stubbornly high, and the search for work led many to migrate to other countries, often, however, without a guarantee of finding adequate work. At the same time, the push for global expansion in many multi-national enterprises but also in not-for-profit and non-governmental organizations has brought with it a rapid increase in short-term or long-term work assignments overseas or abroad. In this context, the increased impact and broader responsibility of enterprises on individuals, families, communities and regions around the world has come into relief and has given rise to growing interest in the scholarly and practitioner literatures on the topic of corporate social responsibility, a topic that heretofore had not received adequate attention in our field. Whereas the related scholarship on national HRD, or perhaps better, on HRD as public policy, was a small but influential part of our field, I took the opportunity in this keynote to speak to the broader professional responsibility of HRD in the context of the growing influence of organizations on the welfare of individuals and communities around the world.