Critical Systems Thinking and its Implications for HRD

Critical HRD (CHRD), while vibrant and influential in the HRD literature, has not thus far resulted in the transformation of HRD practices in organizational and societal contexts, primarily due to its focus on advocacy and theorization rather than intervention or application. In contrast, mainstream HRD scholarship, grounded in systems thinking, has experienced more successful change outcomes in areas such as employee engagement, efficiency and effectiveness, and high-performance work systems. In this critical essay, we therefore consider conceptual developments in critical systems thinking (CST) (Jackson, 1991, 2001, 2019) and assess its potential contribution to CHRD change agency. Our aim is to explore the possible synergy between CST and CHRD and how such synergy could provide CHRD with a wider range of change intervention options, which, we argue, would benefit the HRD field as a whole. We discuss the practical implications of this synergy using an illustrative case scenario.