Human Resource Development Theory Research Articles

Developmental human resource and exploitative leadership interact to influence Employees' creative idea championing and application

AbstractBased on the human resource development (HRD) literature, this study considers HR system and leadership together, focusing on how to promote employees to champion and apply creative ideas. Based on multi‐wave and multilevel field survey data of 252 Chinese employees nested in 42 groups, Study 1 found that developmental HR and exploitative leadership interact to influence creative idea championing and application via reciprocated obligation. The positive effects of developmental HR on creative idea championing and application were stronger and significant when exploitative leadership was lower (vs. higher), and reciprocated obligation mediated these effects. Study 2 replicated these findings with a scenario experimental design utilizing a sample of 186 MBA students from different companies. Our findings remind supervisors that they should not use exploitative leadership as it will reduce the positive effects of developmental HR, providing unique insights into HRD theory and practice.

The impact of digital learning and capacity building on employees’ performance in humanitarian organizations

ABSTRACT Digital learning has arguably enhanced capacity building by strengthening tech-knowledge resilience among employees. However, there are no empirical studies examining path analysis between digital learning, capacity building, and employees’ performance across multinational and cultural diversities in developing countries. We investigate these path relationships using 135 responses collected from a self-administered survey. We used Structural Equation Modeling techniques, alongside the Technology Acceptance Model and human resource development theory, to explain employees’ attitudes towards adopting digital learning initiatives as a tool to augment performance. The results shows partial mediation between digital technology and employee performance. We propose adopting digital learning initiatives in the workplace to boost systematic and integrated capacity building to enhance performance.

Value Management in Pesantren-Based University (Grounded Research on AKPAM System of UNIDA Gontor)

University-based Pesantren has a distinctive curriculum that develops and integrates the Pesantren system with its academic-university system. This means that the assessment at pesantren universities does not only apply to the academic side but also the boarding (kepesantrenan) side. If the academic side is assessed through the Cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA)/Indeks Prestasi Kumulatif (IPK), what about the value of boarding school? We explore the Student Activity Assessment Credit Score (Angka Kredit Penilaian Aktifitas Mahasiswa (AKPAM)) system at Darussalam Gontor University. We designed the qualitative study using a grounded theory approach. We found that AKPAM can counted as a system designed to calculate the kepesantrenan scores of UNIDA students; which is one of the process systems in Integrative Human Resource Development (HRD) typical of UNIDA Gontor; as a pesantren-based university. Second, the AKPAM system is proven to be directly proportional to the HRD theory proposed by Richard Swanson. Third, pesantren-based universities have proven to be competitive in terms of education management in this era. We highlight that this study expands the novel HR management pattern in pesantren universities; as indigenous education.

Determining quality of hire, the holy grail of recruitment: A structuration perspective

Purpose: This research paper aims to justify the need for the Quality of Hire (QOH) construct as a value-adding focus for strategic human resource management (SHRM). The traditional focus on efficiency and cost-oriented recruitment metrics overlooks the importance of QOH in providing a competitive advantage and delivering long-term value. The study expands the economic theory of human resource development and develops a profit-building concept relevant to SHRM by exploring the practices that enable QOH in organizations. Design: The study utilizes a case-study method to examine a target firm’s mechanisms to build QOH in its recruitment process. It applies a structuration theory lens to analyze the behavior of various actors, their agencies, and the continuous interplay between structure and action in enabling QOH. Findings: The findings suggest that assessing and building measures for getting QOH is a complex task for organizations due to the inherent reliance on lag measures such as performance and tenure. The study highlights that QOH can be enabled through changes in the firm’s recruitment practices. Originality: This paper contributes to recruitment research in two significant ways. First, it expands on the under-researched construct of QOH, providing clarity on its definition and importance. Second, it identifies lead practices that organizations can incorporate into their recruitment and selection processes to enable QOH. By using a structuration theory lens, the study explores how actors in the recruitment process adapt and align with new structural rules to enable QOH. Research implications: The research builds on the structuration theory in recruitment and selection and exhorts practitioners in organizations to move beyond efficiency-oriented recruitment practices and focus on practices that contribute to QOH. By considering post-hire outcomes, such as job performance and long-term retention, organizations can improve their talent acquisition and retention strategies, creating long-term value for the organizations.

Improving the undergraduate human resource development curriculum in South Africa

ABSTRACT The Human Resource Development (HRD) curriculum is under-researched at the undergraduate level in tertiary education institutions, particularly in South Africa (SA). This article addresses the need for research on HRD undergraduate education in SA. Using a qualitative case study approach; the researchers interviewed HRD practitioners who have all completed an undergraduate HRD curriculum to determine the deficits in the curriculum under study and what to include in a new HRD curriculum. Findings revealed that the degree title was limited to learning and development only, there were concerns about the faculty that housed the degree, and that the degree replicated lower-level skills certificates. HRD practitioners recommended what to include in a new HRD curriculum that would be relevant and considered credible in practice. The article identifies the implications of the findings for HRD theory, practice, and research. It offers HRD practitioners perspectives on what they consider relevant in an undergraduate HRD curriculum to carry value in the workplace.

Community development and social welfare through entrepreneurship management training

The uneven distribution of superior human resources, which alienates some communities and contributes to the issue of business management literacy in SMEs, is one of the obstacles to community development. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of community empowerment through literacy-based entrepreneurship management training. With a sample of 98 participants, this study use participatory action research (PAR). To select training participants, sampling method is purposive sampling with the criteria used: (1) Indonesian Manpower (TKI) who no longer work abroad; (2) Existing micro or small business owners; and (3) Trainees who have been mentored for at least one year. Methods of question and answer, observation, or questionnaires are used to obtain the data including focus group discussion (FGD), in-depth interviews, and strategies for exchanging stories, and pretest and post-test; behavioral analysis and participatory assessment analysis using percentages and likert scales; and data analysis of training success. This study is new because it explores specifically how to organize, execute, and value manufacturing innovation, inventive marketing, financial management, administrative control, financial reporting, teamwork, and business networking. It was determined that this training is helpful in increasing participants' awareness to fall into the very good category and increasing their knowledge and abilities. This finding is consistent with the notion of resource mobilization in support of human empowerment and human resource development theory, which argues that training is a process of improvement to deal with dynamic change. Government organizations can use this information to improve training programs to increase community engagement.

Unpacking generation Y’s engagement using employee experience as the lens: an integrative literature review

ABSTRACT With the ageing workforce and the impending retirement of Baby Boomers, there is an urgent need for human resource development (HRD) professionals to not only retain but also actively engage Generation Y. They will soon become the major segment of the global workforce dominating the 21st century. Notwithstanding, it has been challenging to keep this generational cohort actively engaged and it remains unclear what is driving higher levels of engagement with Gen Y. The purpose of this integrative literature review was to explore various antecedents of employee engagement identified in the literature for this generational cohort. This review spans two decades (2000–2021) of research and presents a conceptual model that highlights antecedents at three employee experience levels across findings from 82 studies. The proposed model could serve as a general blueprint for future research in HRD theory and practice.

Coaching during a crisis: Organizational coaches' praxis adaptationduring the initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The chaotic initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic severely challenged organizations. Economies shut down and millions of people were confined to their homes. Human resource practitioners turned to organizational coaching, a trusted human resource development intervention for help, however, to remain relevant during the crisis coaches had to adapt their praxis. The working alliance describes the mutual bond, goal, and task alignment between coach and client and is an indication of coaching efficacy. This study investigates to what extent organizational coaches' praxis adaptation at the start of the pandemic maintained a working alliance that still served the human resource development (HRD) paradigms of learning, performance, and meaningful work. Interviews with 26 organizational coaches from USA, UK, Australia, and South Africa recorded during the first general lockdown (April 2020) were inductively analyzed using thematic analysis and deductively interpreted through the working alliance theory and desired HRD outcome paradigms. Findings reveal seven organizational coaching praxis adaptations judged to support all three working alliance components, with "task" and "goal" more prominent than "bond," suggesting a pragmatist preference reminiscent of crisis management. Praxis adaptation also seems to promote all three HRD paradigms of learning, performance, and meaningful work on individual and/or organizational levels. This study strengthens the already well-established link between HRD and coaching by positing that coaching is a dynamic, pragmatic, self-adaptive intervention that supports HRD during a crisis. Understanding coaches' praxis adaptation during the volatile initial stages of a crisis is important for HRD theory and practice given HRDs increasing reliance on coaching.

Developing Leaders Using On-Line Action Learning: An Activity Theory Analysis

The Problem. There is an urgent need for leadership development in today’s turbulent, organizational context. Methods that support leadership development in collaborative and peer settings as well as spaces and environments where leaders can develop, learn and grow through their collaborative interactions are critical. The Solution. This article explores how an online action learning set established as part of a large-scale management and leadership development intervention provides a space where leadership learning can flourish. The article draws on a theory of practice known as Cultural Historical Activity Theory to identify the micro level details of what occurs when leaders work with others in an online action learning set. The Stakeholders. Human resource development (HRD) researchers, scholars, organizational leaders, practitioners and others interested in contributing to HRD theory.

Using Empathy Interviews and Qualitative Evidence to Improve Human Resource Development Practice and Theory

Scholars have long advocated the use of evidence, particularly quantitative evidence, to guide program improvement efforts in the field of human resource development. Yet, there is also widespread recognition that quantitative data has limitations and that new sources of information are useful. The purpose of this article is to consider the use of qualitative evidence to support program improvement efforts within the field of human resource development (HRD). Specifically, the article describes how HRD professionals might design and conduct empathy interviews, a technique widely used in improvement research, to produce a compelling theory of practice that can be used to support program improvement activities. Empathy interviews are thus positioned as a valuable but under-utilized form of qualitative data in the field. As such, the article describes a design process that considers how to select a perspective, structure the conversation, and analyze data. The completion of this process has implications for the development of HRD theory because it shifts the focus from a program-to user-centered understanding of practice.

Theorizing Human Resource Development Practices in Extended Contexts

Mainstream human resource development (HRD) views are based on assumptions derived from organizations and societies in the western open contexts. They are inadequate and misleading in explaining the causality and regularities of HRD practices in non-mainstream closed contexts, which account for majority countries according to the 2022 World Press Freedom Index. As the fourth study in a progressive multi-stage theorizing program, we theorize HRD as multi-level and multi-context practices to decode the causality and regularities from open to closed sociopolitical contexts. We adopt an emancipatory theoretical stance to derive law-like axioms and theorems of HRD with its corresponding host system (HIS) contexts. We do so through formal and theoretical language and abstraction. We provide illustrative cases at the organizational and national levels to demonstrate the applicability of our theorizing. We further discuss implications for HRD theory, research, and practice, as well as limitations and future research directions for continued theorizing.

The COVID-19 impact on employee performance and satisfaction: a moderated moderated-mediation conditional model of job crafting and employee engagement

ABSTRACT Human Resource Development (HRD) is indispensable for the success of any organization; educational institutions are not an exception. The unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 brought a paradigmatic shift in educational work cultures from supporting primarily face-to-face teaching to online teaching. The global pandemic posed substantial, unique challenges for HRD professionals in educational institutions as they sought to best manage the sudden change. Drawing from the HRD literature we found two promising research variables, job crafting and employee engagement that could help mitigate the ill effects of COVID-19 on performance and satisfaction in higher educational institutions. Based on the Job Crafting Theory (JCT) and Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theoretical frameworks, we developed a conceptual model and examined the relationships among COVID-19 Impact, employee job performance, and satisfaction. We used a carefully crafted survey instrument and collected data from 640 faculty members working in educational institutions. After checking the instrument’s psychometric properties using the LISREL software of structural equation modelling, we used Hayes’s PROCESS for testing the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that COVID-19 Impact is negatively related to job performance and satisfaction. However, the results also support that performance is a mediator in the relationship between COVID-19 Impact and satisfaction. Further, job crafting acted as a moderator in reducing the negative effect of COVID-19 on performance. Perhaps most importantly, employee engagement (second moderator) moderates the moderated-mediation relationship between job crafting (first moderator) and COVID-19 Impact on satisfaction, mediated through employee performance. Overall, the study results reveal that the three-way interaction between COVID-19 Impact, job crafting, and employee engagement on employee performance provides a novel way of explaining the complex relationships in minimizing the adverse effects of the global pandemic. The implications for HRD theory and practice are discussed.

Reducing employee turnover intentions in the service sector: The connection between human resource development practices and employee engagement

AbstractEmployee engagement has been researched extensively in the management and human resource development (HRD) literature. However, the relationship between employee perceptions of HRD practices, engagement, and turnover intentions has not been sufficiently studied. In response, this two‐study research examined the extent to which employees' perceived support for participation in HRD practices (PSHRD), engagement, and turnover intent were associated with each other in the service sector. Two samples (nStudy 1 = 490 and nStudy 2 = 511) of U.S. service sector employees were used. Using structural equation modeling, the results of both studies confirmed the theorized partially mediated model. Study 2 expanded on the initial model by adding the moderating variable positive reciprocity beliefs between PSHRD and emotional engagement, which has not yet been empirically tested. However, the moderator was found to be statistically insignificant. Implications for HRD theory, practice, and future research are discussed.

Trends in human resource development in botswana health sector: the case of gaborone private hospital

This paper examines and analyses changes or evolution of human resource developments in nursing profession in Gaborone private hospital (GPH) and how they have impacted the nursing care delivery and how they will continue to affect the delivery of health care services.Gaborone private hospital is in the city of Gaborone. HRD in nursing goes beyond professional boundaries and has a strong connection to the organizational strategy. Healthcare organizations are highly knowledge-intensive foundations which need frequent learning for performance improvement. Creating learning environment is an important matter for the employees (Tsai,2014).Nurses around the world in different health care systems should be prepared such that they are able to function in different settings and still be productive to embrace the principle of universality and this can be achieved through learning and knowledge acquired by individuals themselves and/or through the organization programs. The human resource development model under the theory of human resource development will be used to explore the human resource development trends in Gaborone private hospital.

Pola Penerapan Sistem ‘ngabdi’ yang Dilakukan Pondok Pesantren Bahrul Maghfiroh Malang dalam Konteks Manajemen Sumber Daya Manusia

This study aims to analyze the pattern of implementing the 'ngabdi' system applied to the Bahrul Mahfiroh Islamic Boarding School in the context of HRM. This research is actually focused on the development of human resources in the Islamic boarding school Bahrul Maghfiroh Malang. This is very interesting because there is an integration between pesantren culture and HRM theory which is carried out in the economic and business spheres. In addition, acculturation of human resource development theory and Islamic boarding school culture is also discussed in this study. One of the ways to serve the pesantren is to increase the quality of the output of the students. The method used is a qualitative approach and is included in the descriptive scope because it describes the phenomena that occur in this study. The Miles and Huberman approach model is adopted for the data analysis technique performed. The results prove that 'ngabdi' also applies the HRM theory even though several factors are acculturated with the wisdom of the pesantren itself. In general, the implementation pattern of service in Bahrul Maghfiroh applies the HRM theory starting from recruitment, training, compensation, and termination of employment, although there are modifications according to the needs of the pesantren

Understanding the evolution of the forms of carrying out human resource development

ABSTRACT The forms of human resource development (HRD) have mostly been defined through categorizing similarities among the roles, goals, methods, and theoretical foundations of empirically observed HRD practices. However, this kind of empirical generalization fails to explain how these forms have emerged and how new forms of carrying out HRD develop. This article focuses on these questions. Its purpose is to show how the emergence of new forms of carrying out HRD can be explained on the basis of an activity-theoretical, evolutionary approach. This approach views changes in HRD as processes of ‘retooling’ that take place as an interplay between the emerging developmental challenges in production and the available HRD theories and methods. The conceptual tools provided will thus also help researchers and practitioners assess the requirements and possibilities for developing new forms of realizing HRD that match the complex challenges posed by the current economy. A case analysis is used to demonstrate the approach and its superiority over the classification of the types of HRD practices for understanding the variation in the forms of carrying out HRD and their development.

Transformational leadership and human resource development: Linking employee learning, job satisfaction, and organizational performance

AbstractThis large‐scale study (n = 5,349) explores a long‐standing, but rarely validated value chain. Since the inception of human resource development (HRD), the intersection between top organizational leadership, HRD, and organizational performance outcomes has been emphasized by scholars and practitioners. Leadership has been highlighted as the key catalyst both in encouraging employee learning and performance and in formulating an HRD supportive culture toward key organizational outcomes. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies that have focused on the intersection of leadership, HRD, and organizational performance, and virtually no studies have systematically investigated specific leadership practices, such as transformational leadership (TL). We explore the intersection between TL, HRD, and organizational performance by engaging 3,474 employees and 1,875 customers from 69 healthcare locations in the United States. Ideally, transformational leaders encourage followers to enrich their knowledge, skills, and abilities in order to increase individual and shared learning to advance organizational performance. A major organizational support function toward such employee development is HRD and its core domains—learning and performance. Those organizations fostering excellence in learning and performance have been identified as having strong organizational HRD cultures. The study reported herein supported that TL behaviors aligned to support HRD culture through leader support of employee learning and performance in the US healthcare context. Organizational HRD culture was found to align with key positive employee and customer‐reported performance outcomes. Implications for leadership and HRD research, theory, and practice are explicated.

The Changing Nature and Organization of Work: An Integrative Review of the Literature

Economics, demographics, technology, and other factors are changing the composition and availability of jobs. Newer forms of freelance, contingent work, also known as gigs, are gradually eroding traditional jobs. A venue that affords employment opportunities for a growing number of gig workers has become known as the platform economy. Those engaged in the platform economy already represent 10.1% of the U.S. workforce. This article explores the factors that give rise to these new work structures and examines the new opportunities they offer for employment and income. The social and economic consequences of the growth of these new work structures, intended and unintended, for workers, consumers, employers, and the public are discussed. The article concludes with a synthesis model of human resource development (HRD) research and the implications of the growth of these new types of work for HRD theory and practice.

Happiness and healthiness: A replication study

AbstractResearch coalescing around psychological climate, engagement, and well‐being has been receiving considerable attention in management and human resource development (HRD) literature. However, research associated with these variables has generally been limited to for‐profit businesses and organizations with little attention within the context of institutions of higher education. In response, this cross‐sectional replication study examined the extent to which psychological climate, engagement, and well‐being were associated with each other in higher educational institutions. Study data included a sample of 259 individuals employed by institutions of higher education in the United States. Using mediation analyses, the study found that psychological climate, engagement, and well‐being were positively associated with each other, and that engagement mediated the relationship between psychological climate and well‐being. Implications for HRD theory and research, as well as specific recommendations for leaders and administrators in higher education are discussed.

Pengembangan SDM Iptek (peneliti dan perekayasa) sebagai kunci keberhasilan Riset dan Teknologi di Indonesia

This study focuses on researcher human resources of government research and development institutions in Indonesia, who are facing the issues of low research and development outputs and minimum impacts to the market. Employing post-positivism paradigm, qualitative data collection method, it aims to examine the ideal development of future researcher HRs. The findings indicate that the research and development institutions had good awareness of the concept of human resource development, giving opportunities for researchers to learn. However, it is also revealed that the institutions were not on the right track in developing human resources, which includes trainings and development, and career and organization development. This research recommends the establishment of leader (management), both as the head of the program/team that acts as a team of change and a framework of integrated human resource development, comprising individual development aspects, career, and organizations accurately implemented using particular stages from analysis, design, implementation and evaluation. The need to conduct needs analysis of training and development. It has been identified that prior to the analysis of training and development, track records of researchers, businesses with their databases, and activities of development and evaluation are needed as feedback for the team of change in the available human resource development theory.