The Role of Human Resource Management Function in Promoting Organizational Learning in the Nigerian Context

This study investigates the role of the human resource management function in promoting

individual and shared learning and knowledge creation capabilities in the Nigerian context.

This qualitative study investigates the common theme of human resource management

practices in extant academic expert literature revolving around organizational learning

capabilities. Based on a survey, addressed to chartered human resource practitioners in

Nigeria, the result indicates that strategic human resource management practices are in

place and practiced in some organizations operating in Nigeria, and that these strategic

human resource management practices positively affect organizational learning capabilities,

which in turn has a positive effect on organizational learning. The present study further

establishes that the key factors associated with human resource management practices are

recruitment, teamwork, and employee participation, positively associated with the

organizational learning paradigm in the Nigerian context. Based on the research findings,

the present study proposes an alternative human resource management framework,

adapted based on the inferences drawn from the Nigerian survey results. Finally, the author

presents and discusses inferences drawn from emerging patterns at the meta-inference

stage, where the analysis of rich data pointed towards the existence of a Nigerian human

resource management gap between espoused versus theory in use.