environment, and that this may often be a more powerful influence than off-line training can provide. Secondly, there is at worst a strong suspicion that an under-trained workforce is a contributory factor to poor economic performance, and that the priority should be to target the workforce in employment to redress this situation both for demographic reasons and to create a learning culture in the work environment. From a theoretical perspective, the development of work-based learning therefore offers substantial potential.There are, however, a number of as yet unanswered questions regarding practical implementation of work-based learning. The first of these concerns the type of organisation, which will most readily adopt work-based learning. The literature on organisation development and its relationship with HRD is somewhat unhelpful. A typology of organisational approaches to HRD, based on personal experience, suggests four categories: Pre-historic: either predators solving skills shortages through recruitment, or simply ignoring the need to develop staff and thus doomed to extinction Opportunist: reacting to HRD needs on an ad hoc basis Juggernauts: have an established pattern of HRD which is represented most evidently by the annual training budget, and by a parcel of courses offered each year Strategic: HRD is planned and accords with business, market, and technology aims. Following this typology, target organisations to develop work-based learning would be those, which have a strategic orientation to HRD, linked to other aspects of organisation development. In the main it is larger organisations, which possess the resources to plan in this integrated way.The second unanswered question concerns current changes to workplace organisation. The process of downsizing in large organisations has meant fewer people are in permanent full-time employment :On the one hand, the prospect that work-based learning...
