Handbook of Human Performance Technology: Principles, Practices, and Potential, Third Edition

Chapter 7. The Origins and Evolution of Human Performance Technology

Camille Ferond

The quest to achieve organizational success goes back to the beginning of civilization. Throughout history, leaders have had to adapt their attempts to safeguard organizational survival to the socioeconomic and political forces of their time (Dean, 1997b). The natural process by which organizations die often threatens the well-being and livelihoods of employees and at times of entire geographical areas, the local economies of which have come to depend on an organization. Early responses to such evolutionary processes have ranged from intuitive reactions to immediate circumstances, to the pursuit of numerous economic and psychological theories of human behavior (Gould, ...