Corporate training and development policies and practices: a cross‐national study of India and Britain

The aim of this paper is to report on the existing corporate training and development (T&D) policies and practices in India and Britain. The data were collected from written questionnaires mailed to 252 Indian and 174 British companies. The results and discussions are based on the most prominent comparative and international dimensions of T&D such as key responsibility for T&D function, corporate commitment to T&D, major drivers and key result areas of T&D; purposes, levels, instruments, timing, and designs of evaluation; major perceived deficiencies and challenges of T&D function. The two‐country comparisons revealed that while some of the findings related to corporate T&D policies and practices exhibited differences, others also reflected similarity. Compared with India, more training is done in Britain, more movement to delegating responsibilities or involving line managers in T&D in Britain, there seems also to be more focus on and involvement of individual employees in Britain. British organisations seem to be more concerned with business results from T&D. It may also be argued that the greater importance attached to business results brings about a growing involvement of employees and managers as opposed to HRD practitioners and that it is the greater movement in this direction in Britain compared with India that accounts for most if not all of the differences in the results of the two surveys.