HRD Research Research Articles

Conceptualizing the Marginalization Experiences of People with Disabilities in Organizations Using an Ableism Lens

Existing literature on disability inclusion in the workplace has done little to confront the structural inequalities facing people with disabilities and has instead focused on ideas of assimilation strategies. As a result, in HRD there is a conflation between disability research and research that is “critical.” The purpose of this conceptual article is to examine the persisting influence of ableism on the marginalization experiences of people with disabilities in organizations. Specifically, the present article conceptualizes the effects of ableism on the hiring, retention, and promotion of people with disabilities in organizations. The critical analysis of everyday work experiences of people with disabilities in ableist organizations as offered in this article calls for organizations to fundamentally rethink how they can better support this world’s largest minority group. Implications for HRD research and practice will be discussed.

Crisis leadership during COVID-19: the response of ASEAN and EU regional leaders

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has tested the leadership in organizations of all sizes, industries, and geographic areas. Although substantive literature exists on leadership during a crisis, less attention has been paid to regional leadership and leaders’ response during a crisis. The critical roles that regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) play in a crisis call for a better understanding of how these organizations and their leaders respond to regional crises. This paper provides a comparative insight into regional leaders’ crisis leadership and communication approaches in ASEAN and the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We describe the response timelines of the two regional organizations and highlight the significant roles of regional leaders in coordinating and implementing regional responses during a crisis, including providing consistent communication and collective leadership to facilitate cooperation, solidarity, and efforts towards recovery. We provide implications for HRD research and practice, specifically around the role of regional leaders in creating and implementing Regional HRD mechanisms in response to crises.

Developing sustainable careers for remote workers

ABSTRACT As remote work becomes an option for many, ensuring career development in virtual workspaces will require innovative action from individuals and from HRD. Using the sustainable careers literature as a framework, this article explores how individuals can build viable and meaningful careers working remotely. The research indicates there are both advantages and challenges associated with virtual work. We address how Human Resource Development can help remote workers, maximize the advantages, and navigate the challenges to ensure the sustainability of their careers. In closing, we also offer implications for HRD research.

The increased use of virtual teams during the Covid-19 pandemic: implications for psychological well-being

Organizations have increasingly moved toward decentralized and globalized work processes with the advent and improvement of information and communication technologies, which accelerated the implementation of virtual teams. While researchers and practitioners have previously debated the effectiveness of remote working in virtual teams by weighing its advantages and disadvantage, working remotely in virtual teams has become the new normal after COVID-19. Various challenges of working remotely in virtual teams have significantly affected employees’ psychological well-being. This study aims to (a) synthesize the literature on virtual teams focusing on the definition, antecedents, and outcomes, (b) review the literature on the relationship between virtual teams and psychological well-being, (c) share two practical cases, and (d) offer implications for HRD professionals to improve virtual team members’ psychological well-being. This study contributes to the field of HRD as it addresses several theoretical and practical limitations of the virtual team literature (e.g., lack of an integrative definition, lack of a comprehensive nomological network of virtual teams, lack of studies on psychological well-being in virtual teams). More importantly, since virtual teams have not been explored well in the HRD literature, the findings provide relevant and viable implications on psychological well-being for HRD practices as well as HRD research.

Research Topics and Collaboration in Human Resource Development Review 2012–2021: A Bibliometrics Approach

In celebrating HRDR’s 20 years of publication, this study aims to shed light on research trends in the journal and future research needs by examining 10 years of publications from a structural perspective. We used three complementary computational methods to find major research trends and themes including keyword network analysis, topic modeling, and bibliographic coupling. This paper presents the findings on the research themes, structural coherence, and semantic relevance based on clusters formed by normalized distance measures. Connectivity, co-appearances, and citations are important forms of scholarly communication that represent the body of knowledge in the field. Our findings indicate that research topics greatly expanded beyond the early HRD research topics of learning and development to include various topics related to diversity, critical HRD, and equity issues in organizations and society. We also examined the author-institution-keywords affiliation network and the authors-collaboration network to suggest how scholars can collaborate more in the future.

Roads to Success: The Career Attainment Experiences of Lawyers With Visual Impairments in South Korea

Problem: Disability issues have long been a topic at the margins of HRD research and have rarely been examined outside the United States context or with a focus on a specific disability type. Additionally, largely due to a homogeneous national culture, people with disabilities in South Korea experience unique barriers in career development. Solution: The authors report the findings of a multiple case study on the career attainment experiences of lawyers with visual impairments in South Korea. Data analyzed from interviews with five participants showed that various individual (perseverance, identity as a person with a visual impairment, self-advocacy, and strategic mindset) and social (family and peer support, reasonable accommodation, precedent, and having a leader with a vision for inclusion) factors contributed to their career attainment. Stakeholders: The findings of this study can aid organizational leaders, hiring managers, HRD practitioners in charge of providing reasonable accommodations, and educators of people with disabilities.

Team Learning and the Human Resource Development/Human Resource Management Interface

This editorial reviews my work on team learning published in HRDR, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the journal. The articles conceptualized the value and need for member expansiveness; team’s and individual members’ readiness to change; and the effects of environmental pressures for adaptive, generative, and transformative team learning. I conclude this review with directions for future research and practice in HRD and HRM to support changing conditions, collective self-awareness, and variations in team interactions using advancing technologies.

Unlearning in the workplace: Antecedents and outcomes

AbstractIn the fast‐changing world of business, organizations including individuals and groups/teams need to unlearn old knowledge and learn new knowledge and routines to stay competitive. The purpose of this study is to review the current studies on unlearning in organizations and to integrate the findings to provide insights on how to better manage and facilitate the process of unlearning. We reviewed 37 empirical and related studies to reveal the current research perspectives on unlearning in the workplace. We also identified 30 antecedents promoting unlearning and 44 outcomes of unlearning at the individual, group, and organizational levels. These antecedents and outcomes related to learning, knowledge, and innovation are key HRD research topics. Discussion, implications, and recommendations for future research are presented.

Deconstructing the meaning of engagement: an intersectional qualitative study

ABSTRACT Employee engagement has generated much interest among researchers and practitioners. Since the early 1990s, there have been hundreds of scholarly publications examining the subject. Unfortunately, even with the volume of information available, there is very limited understanding on the role that identity plays in the experience of engagement at work. If engagement research is centered on bringing and being ourselves at work, then we must not ignore the significant role that identity plays in one's development of self. Therefore, pursuing an intentional analysis of how identity (e.g., race and gender) informs engagement experiences in the workplace is necessary. Thus, this study explored how critical HRD research that centers intersectional identities could help broaden the meaning and understanding of the experience of engagement in the workplace. Using an intersectional qualitative framework and a sample of diverse public service employees, we answered the following research question: in what ways does an employee's identities inform their experience of engagement? Our research found that identity has a profound impact on the conditions of engagement and must be considered to examine the full potential across multiple contexts. Implications and suggestions to advance identity-based research and engagement theory and practice are discussed.

Strategic flexibility analysis of HRD research and practice post COVID-19 pandemic

Strategic flexibility analysis of HRD research and practice post COVID-19 pandemic

A Model of Caring in Organizations for Human Resource Development

Although caring and an ethics of care have been part of the nursing and education literature for many years, it has seldom been the focus of research and models in the HRD literature which has tended to be dominated by masculine rationality and models that focus on performance. In this paper, I argue that caring represents an important positive attribute of organizations and that a model of caring provides an alternative to HRD models based on masculine rationality and a performance philosophy. Research on caring in nursing and education is reviewed along with calls for an ethic of care in HRD. This is followed by a review of research on caring in organizations which provides the basis for the development of a model of caring in organizations for HRD. The model demonstrates the relationships between caring from three sources or levels in an organization (the organization or business unit, management, and co-workers), a climate of care for employees, and positive employee outcomes. HRD care-enhancing interventions for developing caring in organizations are then discussed. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of a model of caring for HRD research and practice.

Reducing Voluntary Turnover through Career Development: Strategic HRD Research Proposal

Voluntary employee turnover in the United States continues to spiral out of control and is expected to steadily increase in the coming years. Annual cost to American businesses exceeded $630 billion and is expected to exceed $700 billion within the next 24 months. The reasons for the sharp increase in voluntary turnover are not generational by nature as employees of all generations seek a connection with their employer and the ability to share in the firm’s growth. The reasons expressed by employers and employees include lack of training, weak relationships with managers and a general disconnect from company strategy. The primary reason given in recent years is lack of career development. Scheduled, agenda-driven discussions between senior leadership and the employee is needed to focus on employee skills, capacity for learning and enterprise goals has shown promise in reducing voluntary turnover, increasing employee engagement, and increasing talent depth in medium and large businesses. Career planning and development is not necessarily transactional as it includes specific training for a specific purpose to fit the firm’s strategic objectives. This approach can be used for lateral and vertical movement within the company. This proposal seeks to bridge the gap between existing literatures, current human capital management practices and move the discussion to a level that benefits employees and employers alike.

Mapping human resource development: Visualizing the past, bridging the gaps, and moving toward the future

AbstractUsing topic mapping techniques, we provide a review of the 3,236 articles published in the five premier HRD journals between 1990 and 2019. We map the key terms evidencing the emergence of five major topic clusters within HRD scholarship: nature and identity of HRD, HRD interventions and outcomes, national HRD, career development, and HRD in academia. Nature and identity of HRD depicts a movement from establishing foundations to expanding horizons. HRD interventions and outcomes reflects a spectrum of research interests from exploring processes to examining desired outcomes. National HRD shows that research topics are increasingly moving toward international and global settings. Career development demonstrates a shift from emphasizing organizational careers to advocating for under‐represented career actors. HRD in academia encompasses topics related to educating HRD professionals and supporting professional development in other fields. We provide a synthesis of the clusters, create a taxonomy of topic areas, and identify the mature, nascent, trending, and growing concepts in HRD. In doing so, our paper provides an overview of where we are in HRD scholarship. We then suggest collaborative, competitive, and configurational boundary work as strategies that HRD scholars can use purposefully to influence future HRD research directions. Our findings inform HRD researchers and can guide interested practitioners in their search for actionable knowledge in HRD.

How is HRD related to other disciplines? The analysis of 100 most frequently cited empirical articles published in three HRD journals

Purpose Human resource development (HRD) as an applied discipline is an example of a scholarly field that has emerged through the collaboration of scholars and practitioners with backgrounds in various foundational disciplines. This study interested in both the influence of other disciplines on HRD research and in HRD’s influence on other disciplines. The purpose of this study is to take stock of the relationships between HRD research and research in other academic disciplines affecting and affected by HRD research. Design/methodology/approach The study used content analysis of the top 100 most frequently cited empirical articles published in three HRD journals between 2000 and 2019 to identify disciplinary foundations of HRD research. The influence of HRD on other disciplines was scrutinized through citation analysis of work citing the top 100 articles. In addition, categorizing the 100 articles into six research themes, the influence of six research themes on citation patterns was explored. Findings The findings indicated that empirical research in HRD, as represented by the top 100 articles, relied mainly on theories and frameworks from two disciplines, management and psychology. Another important finding is that the top 100 HRD articles were cited most often in management publications and the rate of citation in management journals has been growing rapidly since 2005. The citation frequency of HRD articles in other disciplines including psychology, social sciences, education and medicine and nursing shows a general upward trend as well. In addition, there was a difference in disciplines providing theoretical foundations to the HRD articles and citing the articles depending on six predominant research themes, identified in HRD articles. Originality/value This study empirically identified theories and disciplines contributing to HRD research, considering the influence of cited research on the HRD articles through content analysis. In addition, the findings of this study broadened the understanding of the relationship between HRD research and other disciplines by examining the contributions of HRD articles to other disciplines. Finally, this research provided new information regarding the changes in dominant themes in HRD research over time.

Ladies and gentlemen, your implicit bias is showing: gender hegemony and its impact on HRD research and practice

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to capture and further consider remarks I made at the 2018 University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD) Conference in Newcastle, England, on gender hegemony and its impact on HRD research and practice. This article will define features of oppression and facets of gender hegemony, examine how gender hegemony is perpetuated through implicit biases and microaggressions, illustrate overcoming resistance to gender hegemony through embracing gender diversity and identity, appraise and challenge gender hegemonic research in HRD, and embolden HRD to erode gender hegemony in research and practice in ways that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

Bouncing back from Workplace Stress: From HRD’s Individual Employee’s Developmental Focus to Multi-facetted Collective Workforce Resilience Intervention

The ProblemHuman resource development (HRD) research has sought to demarcate a human developmental problem by identifying learning interventions through which individuals can contribute towards group and organizational growth. However, there remains the fundamental problem, which is how to go beyond individualized employee development to a more collective resilience model building against workplace stress. Such lesser effectiveness has led to financial, emotional and psycho-social costs to individuals and collectives. Based on the theoretical analysis of human capital theory, HRD research and literature are lacking in how to more effectively operationalize collective resilience against workplace stress.The SolutionA multi-faceted collective workforce resilience intervention conceptual model is proposed to enable both management and employees to overcome ineffective implementation of human development and thereby bounce back from workforce stress. Four aspects of the model’s practical operationalization are proposed as steps to help the HRD community of practitioners and scholars to engrain resilience as a workplace culture in resolving stress. Implications on (1) the identification of workplace stress, (2) the effective design and operationalization of development capacities. (3) the resilience intervention initiatives, and (4) the management of collective workforce resilience are highlighted.The StakeholdersThe proposed model is designed for the HRD community, including scholars, practitioners, employees and managers in related HRD contexts.

Conceptualizing meaningful work and its implications for HRD

Purpose Human resource development (HRD) research and practice mostly have focused on performance improvement although HRD fundamentally pursues human development as a whole. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize meaningful work in the context of HRD and provide implications for HRD research and practice. Design/methodology/approach This study reviewed the literature on topics such as meaningful work, the meaning of work, workplace spirituality, the value of work and work as a calling, to understand the concept of meaningful work. In addition, this study reviewed existing studies on meaningful work in HRD journals to investigate the current status of meaningful work research within the field of HRD. This study reviewed the related literature such as meaningful work, the meaning of work, workplace spirituality, the value of work and work as a calling, to understand the concept of meaningful work. In addition, this study reviewed the existing studies on meaningful work in HRD journals to investigate the current status of meaningful work research in HRD. Findings The findings of this study identified three main themes in conceptualizing meaningful work, namely, positivity; significance and purpose; and human fulfillment. The authors also suggest that the meaningful work discourse in HRD expands a research boundary of HRD and enables a holistic approach to HRD research and practice. Research limitations/implications For future research, the authors recommend that HRD research deepens its understanding of meaningful work and its related concepts. They also recommend studies pursuing empirical evidence to reveal the significance of meaningful work. Originality/value Given the limited studies on meaningful work in HRD and a lack of understanding of meaningful work, this study proposes a comprehensive understanding of meaningful work, especially within the HRD context. This study also suggests a holistic approach to HRD by stressing a humanistic perspective beyond the performance-oriented HRD.

HRD research and practice after ‘The Great COVID-19 Pause’: the time is now for bold, critical, research

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life as we knew it and created an unprecedented opportunity to pause and assess ‘normal’ life and work. We have an opportunity to create a new ‘normal.’ What possibility does the chance to show up differently in our lives and work hold? The pandemic has caused significant shifts in values that will affect individuals, organizations, communities, and nations. This article challenges HRD scholars and practitioners to imagine how HRD might create a new normal through bold, critical research inquiry that interrogates exclusion, pursues organization and social justice, and creates humanly sustainable organizations and communities.

Flattening the learning curve of leadership development: reflections of five women higher education leaders during the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020

ABSTRACT For an adult, non-traditional student focused college, the pandemic brought into stark reality the challenges that the dislocation brought ‘home,’ literally, for many people. This article presents a set of reflections of five women leaders at a public institution of higher education. Through their reflections, they discuss their responses to the challenges faced by faculty, staff and students during the pandemic. Issues of gender, race, class, precarious work, technological access, and related challenges are raised to the surface. We offer three implications for HRD and leadership development research and practice.

Strategic flexibility analysis of HRD research and practice post COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT While governments, intergovernmental organizations, non-profits, corporations are all aware that disruptions through pandemics and other natural bio-disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic can happen, barely are we proactive about them. Instead, we are always reactive. In a virtual Town Hall meeting of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) held on 9 April 2020, on the theme ‘How is the pandemic a game-changer for HRD?,’ the President of AHRD, Laura Bierema, challenged HRD scholars to determine the possible futures of HRD scholarship post-COVID-19 Pandemic. This article proposes the use of the Strategic Flexibility Framework (SFF) to determine the possible futures of HRD post-COVID-19 pandemic. I first discuss the SFF as a scenario planning and analysis tool. I then developed four scenarios of possible futures for HRD Research and Practice post-COVID-19 pandemic. These scenarios include the ‘Meaning of work,’ ‘Leadership,’ ‘Contactless Commerce & Education,’ and ‘Volunteerism.’ I conclude by discussing the important opportunities that can serve as intervention points for post-COVID-19 HRD theory, research, and practice.