Because of the long-standing dominance of the behaviorist tradition in the HR community, informed opinion in the past has been, essentially, that one could be anything or anybody they wanted to be--all that was needed was the proper training.
Because of the long-standing dominance of the behaviorist tradition in the HR community, informed opinion in the past has been, essentially, that one could be anything or anybody they wanted to be--all that was needed was the proper training. This is the assumption behind the traditional Human Resource Development (HRD) paradigm. If a person is not performing up to standard, just develop them.
The evidence for genetic contribution to personality, and hence to performance, has tempered that informed opinion, such that today we have alternatives to the development strategy. We are recommending the discontinuing of the traditional "Human Resource Development" label and replacing it with "Human Resource Optimization." (HRo) This new label for addressing human performance issues recognizes five substantially different approaches to performance improvement.