ABSTRACT
Since those early days, OD has changed in many ways. The problem, however, still appeared to be with us in the 1960s. During that decade, the U.S. government mounted several national programs to help the disadvantaged enter the work force. Towards the end of that decade, the Harvard Business Review asked us to do a study to see if we could identify which company practices contributed to the success of those programs [76]. Although we studied mostly educational programs rather than training, a pattern began to emerge. We pursued this further in training programs with a variety of different populations and objectives, and it was from that that we developed a concept and a model that we labeled Support Systems. We do not claim that we were the first or only HRD group to identify this aspect of organizational behavior. Unfortunately, however, too little research and writing has been done on the specific actions an organization should take to support its training programs.
