This article presents the integrative review of literature as a distinctive form of research that uses existing literature to create new knowledge. As an expansion and update of a previously published article on this topic, it reviews the growing body of literature on how to write literature reviews. The article identifies the main components of the integrative literature review, provides examples of visual representations for use in literature reviews, and describes how to write literature reviews that are integrative, definitive, and provocative. The article concludes by discussing the role of the integrative literature review in assessing future directions for policy and practice and in catalyzing further research.
This structured literature review explores disability issues in human resource development (HRD) to ascertain what research exists and suggest future research. This review identifies the work related to disability issues published in the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) proceedings and the four journals. HRD scholarship, germane to our discussion of disability, has focused on organizational entry barriers, organizational post-entry barriers, career development (CD) and advancement, workplace training for disability inclusiveness, workplace training for disabled employees, and harassment, discrimination, and allegations of discharge-related discrimination.
Using the concept of memes as cultural transmitters and replicators, this article explores the origins of a talent meme and the subsequent evolution of talent management (TM). The sociogenesis of TM is traced through historic developments in management thinking. The rise of individualism in the late 20th century created the conditions for the birth of TM, and the proliferation of the meme since birth is analyzed. The meme reproduces through its psychological appeal and the logic of itself, and the article uses an established approach to reveal cultural rather than rational explanations for TM. Five reasons for the attractiveness, survival, and replication of the talent meme in business organizations are identified. They are salience with business conditions, lack of a competing meme, ambiguity, complexity reduction, and enhanced control over a powerful group. Understanding more about the psychological attractors attached to the talent meme forms part of an expanded research agenda.
Despite the potential value of narratives to inform and change workplace culture and practice, many stories from individuals at the margins of organizations often go untold or unheard. Based on a methodological framework of existing narrative approaches—autoethnography, guided autobiography, and narrative inquiry—we present in this article a new, emerging methodology: facilitated autoethnography (FAE). We suggest that FAE has the potential to offer human resource development (HRD) scholars and practitioners a new approach for exploring, collecting, and disseminating workplace narratives to a broad audience. The article concludes with a discussion of the emerging methodology and potential implications for its application in the field of HRD.
Over the past three decades, scholarship on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has grown tremendously and now enjoys a place of relative importance in the managerial, behavioral, and psychological literature. Researchers have traditionally focused their attention on understanding the nomological network of OCB, including its antecedents, predictors, correlates, and outcomes. Such work has also expanded to include cross-disciplinary investigations in areas such as health care, education, public organizations, and service industries, to name a few. Despite the relative prominence of OCB in other literature bases, OCB receives only minimal attention in the field of human resource development (HRD). The purpose of this integrative literature review was to examine and synthesize the available literature on OCB with specific consideration to the aims of the HRD field, namely, performance and learning and development. I present a synthesis of the relevant literature and conclude with a proposed research agenda and implications for HRD theory and practice.
As the topic of talent development (TD) gets more popularity in practice of organizations and among human resource development (HRD) professionals, the need for understanding the nature and the scope of TD activities increases. The aim of this article is to help this understanding through an integrative review of literature. As part of this article, the definitions of and the perspectives toward talent-related activities in TD literature have been analyzed and a comprehensive definition for TD is suggested. Moreover, four major themes within TD literature have been identified: (a) issues related to career development, (b) the influence of contextual factors, (c) the relationship between TD and attraction and retention of talents, and (d) issues of diversity in the context of TD. Based on our findings, some of the gaps in the literature are presented. The potential actions that HRD researchers and practitioners can take to address these challenges will be suggested and discussed.
This article proposes a theoretical model linking the relatively new concept of work engagement to three major domains of employees’ lives—work, personal life, and community—and demonstrates the added value of engagement to each of these domains, above and beyond other well-known concepts in the employee–organization relationship. We propose that promoting work engagement among employees provides organizations with a competitive advantage. Moreover, we maintain that work engagement also creates added value beyond the boundaries of the workplace and has the potential to enrich other major areas in an employee’s life. When compared with similar work-related attitudes such as job involvement and job satisfaction, the work engagement concept also provides added value to organizations, their employees, and their community beyond these similar concepts. This article addresses the paucity of structured literature on the multiple facets and added value of work engagement within organizations and beyond, and presents a comprehensive, holistic model for improving engagement in work that human resource development practitioners can implement.
This article reviews the effect of two post-training transfer interventions (relapse prevention [RP] and goal setting [GS]) on trainees’ ability to apply skills gained in a training context to the workplace. Through a review of post-training transfer interventions literature, the article identifies a number of key issues that remain unresolved or underexplored, for example, the inconsistent results on the impact of RP on transfer of training, the lack of agreement on which GS types are more efficient to improve transfer performance, the lack of clarity about the distinction between RP and GS, and the underlying process through which these two post-training transfer interventions influence transfer of training. We offer some recommendations to overcome these problems and also provide guidance for future research on transfer of training.
Human resource development (HRD) practitioners have a critical role to play in understanding interdisciplinary learning among cross-sector stakeholders addressing large-scale social issues. Recent trends within philanthropic and governmental grant making agencies reveals a movement toward prioritizing and funding large-scale social change rather than the historical focus on individual project solutions. This shift has precipitated a need for cross-sector collaborative organizations dedicated to social innovation to learn from each other, lending themselves to study by HRD professionals. The purpose of this paper is to discuss Peter Senge’s shared vision discipline as applied to an inter-organizational learning context of multiple stakeholders working toward social innovation. A new model and theoretical HRD understanding will be introduced hereafter referred to as socio-networked learning to identify the learning across organizations dedicated to social innovation. Socio-networked learning is therefore learning across organizations (public and private) dedicated to addressing large-scale social issues.
This research used a multiple ethical paradigms approach to examine the Standards on Ethics and Integrity (Standards) published by the Academy of Human Resource Development. After a thorough analysis of the current text of the Standards in terms of the four ethical paradigms of justice, care, community, and critique, we discuss issues and offer propositions to address those issues. Included within our discussion are the need for discussion forums on ethical issues, further reflection on a client- and community-centered approach in the Standards, and the introduction of professional language protocols and codes of Internet communications and technologies. We conclude this research with practical recommendations for updates, diffusion, and utilization of the Standards to enhance its further ethical contribution to the field of human resource development.
Due to the continued growth of the global services sector, it is essential that service firms have a greater understanding of the implementation of human resource development (HRD) in different cultures and how HRD relates to service quality. The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical model that stresses the importance of HRD alignment with national and organizational culture in increasing perceptions of service quality. In this article, we present a model that integrates the role of national culture, organizational culture, and HRD into a conceptual framework and develops several propositions. This article suggests that the overall effectiveness in service quality will likely increase when HRD interventions are aligned with the national culture and organizational culture. HRD managers in service firms should understand the role of national culture and organizational culture when implementing HRD. Managers who fail to consider national values and their relationship with organizational culture will be less successful at implementing HRD.
I deconstruct the body of literature that frames education and learning in Democratic Kampuchea (DK), 1975-1979. This historical analysis posits that new alternative interpretations can arise when viewing learning under Pol Pot’s DK through a human resource development (HRD) lens. The paucity of research or the lack of HRD perspectives on genocidal situations is concerning. An HRD focus as this paper demonstrates will reveal insightful information on the whys and hows the Khmer Rouge (KR) learned. Learning designs contrived for Khmer learners connote an employee-work relationship (forced labor); hence, why the need for an HRD interpretation of these learning events. Many DK scholars assert that education under the KR was unorganized, inconsistent, and without planning. My deconstruction of the DK historical record will call these views into question. When reviewing the historical record through an HRD lens, KR educational initiatives made sense within the context of the madness they perpetrated.
Human Resource Development (HRD) incorporates an ethical paradigm to evaluate the standards of behavior that inform Human Resource (HR) practice. HRD professionals who stress principles of ethics and integrity as guidelines promote and foster an environment conducive to building productive teams and socially responsible organizations. However, integrity has been so diversely defined that the role of HRD practitioners as guardians of ethical conduct remains obscure. Meanwhile, ethical scandals continue to challenge organizations globally and the cognitive hurdles to behaving with integrity remain unknown. Thus, it is the purpose of this article to direct scholarly attention to the construct of integrity from an intrapersonal perspective and the pivotal role that it plays in the ethical decision-making process of the individual. Specifically, this article identifies, defines, and distinguishes various types of integrity for the purpose of proposing models of alignment and incongruencies. Recommendations for HR theory, research, and practice are generated.
In an attempt to develop a means for researchers to reach a common understanding of the substantive meaning of diversity, this article first reviews different approaches to diversity conceptualizations, identifying three common threads that are incorporated in various diversity definitions. Our discussion examines the variety of diversity conceptualizations by addressing the three key aspects that present two general trends that emerge in the literature. We then propose a framework to unify the fragmented definitions and understandings of diversity. The implications for practice and future research are also discussed.
The relationship between an individuals’ mood and perceived self-efficacy (SE) has been of fundamental interest for organizational researchers. However, the causality of this relationship has not been agreed upon in existing research. While one set of studies propose that mood influences SE the contrasting view contends that this relationship is not significant. The article presents a conceptual model on the relationship between mood and SE, positioning hedonic and utilitarian motivation as moderators of this relationship. The literature concerning these constructs is reviewed and linkages between them are examined. A four-quadrant framework delineating the impact of hedonic and utilitarian motivation on the relationship between mood and SE is proposed. Propositions are built around this framework and implications for human resource development are discussed.
Scholarly dialogue in HRD (Human Resource Development) has become gradually more accepting of essential conversations regarding equity and social justice in research. However, much work remains in bridging the gaps between this scholarship and the practice of HRD. One way to create change is through teaching, as the ways in which we choose to educate students of HRD inevitably shapes the future of the field. In reflecting on one of my own works, "Identity matters: A critical exploration of lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity and leadership in HRD," it occurred to me that even well-meaning and skilled instructors could struggle to incorporate its ideas into the dialogue in their classrooms and research. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to use "Identity Matters" as an explicatory example in discussing how emerging critical perspectives could be taught.
Our objectives in this article were to summarize research relevant to obstacles that people with disabilities face in the workplace and to identify directions for future research on the topic. We included review, theoretical, and empirical articles in management journals and those in psychology or rehabilitation journals if they had clear workplace implications. We argue that obstacles identified in prior research may only partially reflect organizational reality. This is because of the heavy reliance on laboratory studies, which we urge researchers to replicate in organizational settings. A better understanding of obstacles will lead to more evidence-based solutions for human resource development (HRD) practitioners to create a less exclusionary workplace wherein all employees are provided opportunities to use their talent.
Scholars have largely overlooked philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s thoughts on occupational, vocational, and work topics, although he did concern himself with occupational topics. This theoretical piece explores Kierkegaard’s concept of "leveling" (Nivelleringen), connecting it to human resource development (HRD) and organizational socialization processes, which are often conducted by HRD departments. Organizational socialization is important as it provides newcomers with functional and cultural information. Similar to the concept of leveling, however, organizational socialization can provide employees with taken-for-granted socially constructed definitions of the self. This article proposes expanding edification and capability for individuals in the workplace via Kierkegaardian indirect communication in HRD and organizational socialization practices.
A focus on creativity has increased in the last two decades due to the turbulent changes in the business environment, the fierce competition in the global market, and the knowledge-based economy that has made jobs more complex and mobile. This article discusses the history and transition of creativity research based on three perspectives of creativity: personal characteristics, contextual perspectives, and integrative perspectives. This article also reviews the extant empirical studies that have been published from 2001 to 2012. Furthermore, to stimulate more rigorous creativity research in human resource development (HRD), this article provides a conceptual framework integrating personal factors and contextual factors such as organizational, social/group, and job contexts. Finally, theoretical implications and recommendations for future creativity research in HRD are discussed.
Through this article, we assert that given the individual-oriented literature on identity, and the fact that workplaces are increasingly becoming globalized, collective identities might struggle and run up against dominant, individualistic forms of identity-formation. This struggle may have serious implications for workplace practices, including workplace learning. Through our reflective analysis on various identity-formation theories, we argue for a reconfiguration of workplaces and workplace learning to consider collective perspectives on identity-formation so that work can be more relevant and responsive to the plural needs of workers. Such a move may create a workspace that validates and values workers’ identity-differences.
Newcomer adjustment, the process an individual goes through within the first year at a new organization, can be a challenging transition for traditionally aged recent college graduates. Unsuccessful adjustment can have profound negative consequences for young adults, organizations, and undergraduate institutions. Gaps exist in the human resource development (HRD) and undergraduate education literature leaving practitioners in both fields unsure of how to address this problem. Research regarding individual psychological capital (PsyCap) and proactive behaviors offer new perspectives that enhance understanding of newcomer adjustment and guide practice. In this integrative literature review we present a synthesis of research demonstrating positive interrelationships among PsyCap, proactive behaviors, and newcomer adjustment outcomes such as job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Based on the outcomes we offer a model of newcomer adjustment that can guide researchers and practitioners in HRD and undergraduate education in working together to promote successful newcomer adjustment among recent college graduates.
As a result of rapid changes in technology, much is discussed about the use of social media in branding, marketing, and in general corporate communications. The intensity with which social media tools—blogs, wikis, Twitter, instant messaging (IM) and Facebook, among others—have proliferated is staggering. Increasingly important is the role of social media tools as a way to enhance and advance workplace learning and knowledge management. To more accurately describe the purposes for which social media tools are utilized within organizations, we propose the term collaborative media. The clarity brought by this term serves to help HRD professionals within organizations adopt collaborative media tools as a workplace learning and knowledge management strategy and to attain organizational support for such tools at the highest level and capacity. Also discussed is the need for future research by HRD scholars that facilitates the role of collaborative media tools in workplace learning and knowledge management.
Adults with limited education and skills—those who lack the education and skills needed for full participation in U.S. culture and economy—are increasing in numbers. However, the knowledge base addressing this population and their educational needs is fragmented across the literature of several disciplines. A comprehensive review and critique of the literature on adults with limited education and skills have not been done. This study fills this void by reviewing literature from five streams of research that address this population and synthesizing it into a framework that offers an integrated perspective on the topic. Implications for human resource development and an agenda for further research are discussed.
The topic of engagement has developed into a current trend in emerging and explorative research within the field of Human Resource Development. The maturation and swiftness at which the construct is emerging is a testament to the serious research scholars are undertaking, as well as the popularity of the construct in practice throughout a myriad of organizations. This article is a reaction to the preceding article (Kim, Kolb, and Kim, 2013), which seeks to investigate the relation between work engagement and performance utilizing a review of empirical literature. This reaction considers the findings espoused by Kim et al (2013) and suggests further thematic observations on the reported conclusions. Several recommendations for research and practice are suggested for further consideration.
Engagement has been defined in a variety of ways. Engagement in the workplace generally is viewed as a positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work-related well-being. Due to its structural relationship between antecedents (e.g., job resources and personal resources) and consequences (e.g., performance and turnover intention), work engagement has been receiving considerable attention from both scholars and practitioners in the fields of human resource development (HRD), organization development (OD), psychology, and business. In spite of this popularity, there is a scarcity of empirical research on work engagement in the academic literature. The relationship between work engagement and performance, in particular, is deserving of attention given our field’s focus on performance improvement. In this article, we review and analyze relevant research and then propose a research agenda to guide future research on this topic. Conclusions and implications for HRD and OD are discussed.