CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
In recent times, world attention is being focused on the importance of human resources development as panacea to problems associated with economic growth of nations. This is due to the fact that the growth of tangible capital stock of a nation depends to a considerable degree on human capital development. Without adequate investment in developing human capital which is the process of increasing knowledge, skills and the capacities of people in the country, the possibility of the growth of that nation might be minimal (Gyang cited in Sowunmi et al., 2015).
The success of any organization in the contemporary business world depends on the quality of human resources available to it to initiate and implement its policies and programmes. According to Solkhe and Chaudhary (2011) human resource is the most vital factor of production and labour productivity. They also maintained that a positive future-oriented human resource development is essential for the efficiency and effectiveness of employees whether in the public or private sectors.
In line with this, Appah, Coleman and Busine (2011) pointed out that organizations especially in the developed world often invest several millions of money on training and development of their human resources for the performance of their respective organizations. This demonstrates the importance organisations attach to their human resource in the achievement of their corporate goals. However, in the developing world like Nigeria little or nothing is being done to train and develop employees in most organisations, as employees often become obsolete like machines thereby hindering their ability to effectively and efficiently perform their duties (Odumeru and Ilesanmi, 2013).
According to Saraswathi (2010) human resource development in organizational context is a process by which the employees of an organization are aided in planning a way to: obtain or hone capabilities required to perform various functions associated with their present or expected functional roles; develop their general capabilities as individuals and discover and exploit their own inherent potentials for their own, and, or organizational development processes; develop an organizational culture in which supervisor-subordinate relationship is positive or strong; teamwork and collaborations among sub-units are strong and contribute to the professional well-being, motivation and the pride of employees.