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As a part of a larger study, the purpose of this study was to explore the learning outcomes for the “manager as coach” when exemplary managers are engaged in coaching their respective employees.

A qualitative, multi-case study using an adaptation of the critical incident technique (CIT) and semistructured interviews was employed with 12 managers and their respective direct reports totaling 24 interviews. Content and constant comparative analyses were used to analyze the data.

A total of five themes and 19 subthemes were identified regarding managers’ learning outcomes from managers’ perspectives. From the perspectives of their employees as coachees regarding their managers’ learning outcomes, one theme with three subthemes emerged.

Limited empirical research has explored the developmental outcomes for managers who serve as coaches for their employees. This study examined the outcomes associated with managerial coaching from both the perspectives of the managers who coach and their direct reports. The findings of this research provide more insight into the benefits managers derive from coaching their employees.

The purpose of this study was to apply social exchange and organizational support theories to examine the relationship between mid-level strategic enrollment managers’ perceptions of managerial coaching behaviors enacted by their senior managers and their own reported job engagement, as mediated by perceived organizational support (POS) within the US higher education context.

A quantitative survey-based half-longitudinal design, which used the latent marker variable technique, was conducted with a sponsoring professional organization in the strategic enrollment management (SEM) field in the USA. A total of 301 usable surveys were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results of this study indicate that SEM managers’ job engagement and the perceived managerial coaching behaviors provided to them by their senior managers were positively correlated, and that POS fully mediated this relationship. These findings highlight how coaching behaviors may allow managers to elicit positive emotional responses and, by fostering enhanced POS, ultimately enhance job engagement among their team members.

This study addresses several calls for research on managerial coaching, job engagement and POS in an under-examined higher education context within the human resource development field.

The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this special issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that ‘leaders mentor and coach those they lead’ is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) that is most highly-correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that ‘future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization’. In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed.

This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts.

Existing literature suggests that to ‘provide strategic leadership for learning’, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, ‘leaders who mentor and coach’ has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning.

The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

The critical incident technique (CIT) is widely used in many disciplines; however, scholars have acknowledged challenges associated with analyzing qualitative data when using this technique. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to address the data analysis issues that have been raised by introducing some different contemporary ways of analyzing qualitative critical incident data drawn from recent dissertations conducted in the human resource development (HRD) field.

This article describes and illustrates different contemporary qualitative re-storying and cross-incident analysis approaches with examples drawn from previously and recently conducted qualitative HRD dissertations that have used the CIT.

Qualitative CIT analysis comprises two processes: re-storying and cross-incident analysis. The narrative inquiry–based re-storying approaches the authors illustrate include poetic narrative and dramatic emplotting. The analytical approaches we illustrate for cross-incident analysis include thematic assertion, grounded theory, and post-structural analysis/assemblages. The use of the aforementioned approaches offers researchers contemporary tools that can deepen meaning and understanding of qualitative CIT data, which address challenges that have been acknowledged regarding the difficulty of analyzing CIT data.

The different contemporary qualitative approaches that we have introduced and illustrated in this study provide researchers using the CIT with additional tools to address the challenges of analyzing qualitative CIT data, specifically with regard to data reduction of lengthy narrative transcripts through re-storying as well as cross-incident analyses that can substantially deepen meaning, as well as build new theory and problematize the data through existing theory.

A strength of the CIT is its focus on actual events that have occurred from which reasoning, behaviors, and decision-making can be examined to develop more informed practices.

The CIT is a very popular and flexible method for collecting data that is widely used in many disciplines. However, data analysis can be especially difficult given the volume of narrative qualitative data that can result from data collection. This paper describes and illustrates different contemporary approaches analyzing qualitative CIT data, specifically the processes of re-storying and cross-incident analysis, to address these concerns in the literature as well as to enhance and further evolve the use of the CIT method.

The concept of managers assuming developmental roles such as coaches and learning facilitators has received considerable attention in recent years. Yet, despite the growing body of expert opinion that suggests that coaching is an essential core activity of everyday management and leadership, the literature base remains largely atheoretical and devoid of empirical research. While there is some consensus about what effective coaching looks like, little if any empirical research has examined ineffective coaching behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to compare the empirical findings from three separately conducted studies to derive a comprehensive understanding of the ineffective behaviours associated with managerial coaching.

The current study adopted a cross‐national “etic” methodology based on the empirical findings generated by three previously conducted and purposefully selected “emic” studies. Drawing on Berry's and Lyons and Chryssochoous' “emic‐etic” approach and cross‐cultural comparisons, the researchers employed Guba and Lincoln's file card approach to analyze and compare the three behavioral datasets of the previously conducted studies.

The findings from this cross‐national comparative “etic” study revealed that the vast majority of ineffective coaching behaviours previously identified in the emic studies were held in common with each other. The predominant ineffective behaviours included using an autocratic, directive, controlling or dictatorial style, ineffective communication and dissemination of information, and inappropriate behaviours and approaches to working with employees. Of the 17 ineffective behaviours that were compared only three were not held in common.

Limitations associated with this cross‐national study included minor variations in the use of data collection approaches and samples of managers in the previously conducted emic studies.

The ineffective managerial coaching behaviours derived from the cross‐national comparisons can be integrated as diagnostic tools into coaching training programmes and management and leadership development programmes to improve the practice of managerial coaching. They can also be used to increase managers' awareness of the behaviours that impede their coaching interventions with their respective employees.

The literature base on coaching in general and managerial coaching in particular has been criticized for not being research‐informed and evidence‐based, but rather predominantly practice‐driven and guru‐led. The findings from the current cross‐national etic study not only add to a sparse base of empirical research on managerial coaching, but also illuminate an underdeveloped area, namely that of ineffective managerial coaching practice. Furthermore, the findings provide a foundation on which to compare and contrast future empirical research that may be conducted on managerial coaching behaviours.

The concept of digital badges (DBs) as a form of microcredentialing has gained considerable traction in higher education and workplace settings in recent years. This scoping review aims to map the empirical research conducted on DBs in higher education and workplace settings.

The design of this study is a scoping literature review. This scoping review adopts the five-stage scoping framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005).

Based upon our review of the 45 studies that comprised this scoping review of the empirical literature on DBs, we advance a typology that segments the empirical research based on whether DBs are used as pedagogical tools (PTs) or microcredentials. The authors found some confusion regarding nomenclature, numerous theories offered to explain DBs and divergent findings that suggest room for further exploration of this relatively new phenomenon.

This scoping review of the literature helps make sense of the emerging research landscape on DBs. The findings suggest that using DBs as a PT or as a microcredential has implications for a wide range of stakeholders regarding promoting lifelong learning, upskilling and reskilling the workforce. With the financial constraints facing higher education in a postpandemic environment, understanding the impact of DBs is needed before making an investment in this arena.

There is an ongoing shortage of talented supply chain managers with the necessary skills and business-related competencies to manage increasingly complex and strategically important supply chain processes. The purpose of this paper is to propose that organizations can create and maintain competitive advantage by leveraging the expertise of human resource development (HRD) professionals to provide a range of developmental and change-oriented interventions related to critical supply chain manager skill sets that are currently in short supply.

This is a conceptual paper.

This is a conceptual paper.

Supply chain management (SCM) decisions significantly influence financial performance since firms expend up to 75 percent of their revenue on supply chain activities. HRD professionals' intervention capabilities in training and development, organizational development and change management uniquely equip them to disseminate a deeper and broader understanding of the SCM concept within organizations, to help prioritize the development of supply chain managers and to address the complex interpersonal issues associated with helping people to work together collaboratively to foster operational innovation and make increasingly complex supply chain processes function effectively.

The requisite skill sets for effective supply chain managers are described, linkages between HRD and SCM are highlighted, and areas of HRD professionals' expertise that can be exploited to better develop supply chain managers' skill sets and competencies are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the beliefs held by managers about their roles as facilitators of learning with their employees in a public utilities organisation.

The research was based on Ellinger and Bostrom’s (2002) study on managers’ beliefs on their role as facilitators of learning in learning-orientated firms. Abductive research logic was used in a small sample in depth qualitative study using critical incident interviews.

Managers in the study conveyed strong self-efficacy and outcome beliefs confirming the central role in workplace learning of line managers who adopt a coaching approach. Key new insights were also found in managers’ beliefs on acting as role models within the organisation and their beliefs on the need to manage skills-related organisational risk.

A key limitation of the research is inherent in the use of critical incident technique, as it provides information on the nature of “atypical events” as opposed to more gradual, tacit and typically ongoing learning at work.

The managers’ belief map derived from the data provides a context-specific “target of change” with which to challenge the wider organisation regarding learning facilitation. The research also shows how industry-specific contexts may provide specific pathways for developing managers in their role as facilitators of learning.

The value of the research is twofold: first, providing further validation of the findings from Ellinger and Bostrom’s (2002) research on managers’ beliefs on the effective facilitation of workplace learning; second, additional insights on managerial beliefs regarding role modelling and succession planning are identified, and the implications for management development are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to examine a unique application of mega-events theory in a US health-care organization. The organization hosted 50 virtual listening calls (LCs) in the summer of 2020 to understand and to hear their employees’ voices regarding their emotions about issues of racial injustice and to solicit their ideas for creating a more inclusive workplace.

This study used an illustrative, descriptive qualitative design. Using Saldaña’s (2015) structural coding approach, data from 388 employees who voluntarily participated in 50 virtual LCs were analyzed.

A total of eight themes with respective subthemes emerged regarding employees’ range of emotions and six themes emerged regarding employees’ specific suggestions for creating a more diverse and inclusive organization. This research suggests that hosting these open, virtual LCs enabled a space for employees to authentically voice their perspectives, learn from each other and afforded a powerful learning opportunity for organizational leaders to inform their diversity and inclusion practices.

This study represents a unique application of mega-events theory, focuses on pivotal events in the summer of 2020 that have been nationally and globally impactful and demonstrates the power of listening and learning to inform taking action in a health-care organization already constrained with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The on-going COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted healthcare systems worldwide. Understanding the perspectives and insights of frontline healthcare workers caring for and interacting with patients with COVID-19 represents a timely, topical, and important area of research. The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to assist one US healthcare system that has an expansive footprint with the implementation of a needs assessment among its frontline healthcare workers. The leadership within this healthcare system wanted to obtain a deeper understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting the personal and professional lives of its workers. Further, the organisation wanted to solicit employees’ feedback about what they needed, understand the issues they were facing, and solicit their ideas to help the organisation know where to take action.

This qualitative research employed 45 focus groups, referred to as virtual listening calls (LCs) in this organisation, which were held over a four-week period. A total of 241 nursing staff, representing healthcare facilities across the country, attended 26 of the LCs. A total of 19 LCs were held with 116 healthcare workers who are employed in other clinical roles (e.g. therapists) or administrative functions.

Extending beyond the available research at the time, this study was initiated from within a US healthcare system and informed by the frontline healthcare employees who participated in the LCs, the findings of this study include the perspectives of both nursing and other healthcare workers, the latter of which have not received considerable attention. The findings underscore that the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the personal and professional lives of all of these healthcare workers and has exacted an emotional toll as noted in other studies. However, this study also highlights the importance of listening to employees’ concerns, but more importantly, their recommendations for improving their experiences. Notably, the organisation is in the midst of making changes to address these frontline workers’ needs.

The study, inclusive of nursing and other healthcare staff, demonstrates how an organisation can adapt to a crisis by listening and learning from its frontline employees.