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By adopting a multilevel approach, this paper aims to examine the relationships among employee creativity and creative personality, domain expertise (i.e. individual-level factors), non-controlling supervision style and organizational learning culture (i.e. team-level factors). It also investigates the cross-level interactions between individual differences and organizational context influencing employee creativity.

Hierarchical linear modeling was performed to test the hypotheses using multisource data with 416 employees and their supervisors in 86 research and development teams.

This paper found that domain expertise and non-controlling supervision style are positively associated with employee creativity. Also, a positive moderating role of non-controlling supervision style was found in explaining the relationship between domain expertise and employee creativity. However, no significant relationship was found between creative personality and employee creativity, and there was no moderating effect of organizational learning culture. The paper discusses the theoretical implications of these findings and provides practical suggestions based on the findings.

This paper has begun to address the significant gap in the extant employee creativity literature and has departed from the common research practice of investigating creativity at a single level. It has expanded understanding of the antecedents of creativity with empirical evidence, as it revealed domain expertise and non-controlling supervision as influential factors. Further, domain expertise has generally positive effects on creative performance, whether non-controlling leadership is high or low. Additionally, this study brings an interesting insight in interpreting the contribution of organizational learning culture as measured by the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire to creativity and also affirms the importance of autonomy that increases intrinsic motivation and creativity. Another theoretical contribution of this study can be found from an intriguing contradiction in the literature that understands the role of expertise in creative performance. Moreover, the finding on non-controlling supervision supports the effectiveness of a freedom approach.

Benchmarking research has explored the role of organizational practices and business processes rooted with human capabilities for achieving growth performance. The role of high performance work system as an organizational practice and business process is yet to be studied. Even if studied, no study has been conducted on the role of training transfer climate on high performance work system and organizational performance. The current research aims at examining high performance work system on organizational performance. Further, the study also examine training transfer climate as a mediating variable between HPWS and organizational performance.

Data collected from 415 executives of a high performance-based power sector company of Gujarat, India. The survey instrument consists of high performance work system, training transfer climate and organizational performance. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for a simultaneous assessment of overall and specific elements of measurement validity and reliability. Structural equation modelling used to test the hypothesized model.

The result proved the capability of high performance work system to predict organizational performance. Further, the result supports the hypothesis that training transfer climate acts as a mediator between high performance work system and organizational performance.

The result has important theoretical and managerial implications. Theoretically, the research extends the scope of benchmarking to high performance work system. The managerial implications have been discussed from the training transfer climate perspectives.

The originality of the study lies with proving the role of high performance work system and training transfer climate as an organizational practice and business process within benchmarking research.

Managerial coaching has been popularized as a way of motivating, developing and retaining employees in organizations. Yet, there has been a lack of empirical studies to examine the linkage between managerial coaching and its potential impact on employees. This study aims to investigate the interrelationships among managerial coaching, employees’ personal learning and organizational commitment. This study also attempts to revise an existing instrument for measuring coaching skills in organizations created by McLean et al. (2005) to assess managers’ coaching skills.

Data analyzes were based on 187 employees of a top global technology organization headquartered in the USA. The existing instrument for measuring coaching skills was revised and confirmed through a series of efforts including expert reviews, pilot tests and assessing its reliability and validity. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships among managerial coaching skills and employees’ personal learning and organizational commitment.

This study identified five dimensions of managerial coaching skills and validated the revised instrument measuring coaching skills in organizations. It also demonstrated that managers’ utilization of managerial coaching skills had a direct effect on employees’ learning and organizational commitment and impacted employees’ organizational commitment through personal learning.

This study examined the interrelationships among managerial coaching and employees’ personal learning and organizational commitment in organizations. In doing so, this study unveiled the process of how managers’ coaching affects employees’ development and attitudes at work. This study also identified five coaching skills as a tool to assess the level of managerial coaching.

This paper aims to explore informal learning experiences among employees working in South Korean small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with fewer than 100 employees. This study specifically seeks to understand the characteristics of informal learning in Korean SMEs and culturally sensitive contextual factors that shape informal learning.

To understand the complex, holistic nature of the phenomenon, the current study used a phenomenological qualitative approach. Eighteen full-time employees working at South Korean SMEs in knowledge-intensive industries were interviewed. Data were analyzed using Moustakas’s phenomenological analysis.

The findings emerged from the field data revealed four characteristics of informal learning in South Korean SMEs: absolute reliance on informal learning; rapid/immediate learning and application; relationship/client needs-based learning; and extensive trial and error. The current study also identified South Korean SMEs’ unique organizational context (i.e. a family-like atmosphere, one employee-multiple tasks, passive investment in employees and the absence of systems) and Korean culture (i.e. Gab-Eul relations and chemyon) that drive the emergence of SMEs’ informal learning characteristics.

Very little empirical research has been conducted to explain how informal learning actually occurs and why such learning patterns have emerged in South Korean SMEs. The findings of this study have a profound impact on practice and academia, as it unveils characteristics of informal learning in SMEs, the unique cultural context in which Korean SMEs operate and how these characteristics impact the learning process.

This paper analyzes critically four selected learning theories and their role in online instruction for adults.

A literature review was conducted to analyze the theories.

The theory comparison revealed that no single theory encompasses the entirety of online instruction for adult learning; each theory explains some portion of adult online learning; theories are contextual; and components of all theories can be utilized to improve online learning.

Adult learning theories and their roles in shaping online learning and instruction deserve more attention. The study of adult learning theories, combined with in-depth analysis of psychological and human resource literature, will enable researchers to delve deeper into the subject. More qualitative studies are needed to explore further how instructors’ ability to utilize theoretical principles can improve online learning.

This manuscript offers practical advice to instructors and other practitioners for utilizing adult learning theories for instructional enhancement.

This literature review uniquely contributes to filling the gap in human resource development literature by examining selected adult learning theories, comparing them and extending the theories’ applicability and value in online instruction.

The purpose of this paper is to validate two scales, the factors predicting transfer (FPT) and the effectiveness questionnaire (CdE), in the Spanish Public Administration (SPA).

The FPT was administered at the end of the training, and the CdE four months after training. Participants had attended one of the 62 trainings offered by the SPA. With 1,457 participants, exploratory factor analysis (EFA; n = 728) and confirmatory factory analysis (CFA) (n = 729), randomly assigned, were performed on the FPT, and CFA (n = 726) was applied to the CdE.

A 30-item and four-factor solution emerged for the FPT through the EFA, which was confirmed by a good model fit through the CFA. A seven-item single-factor solution was confirmed for the CdE. Measurement invariance for the mode of instruction and gender was accepted for both instruments.

Further research should be done in a more heterogenous sample that includes private organizations, different sectors and sizes. In the human resource development (HRD) field, these results suggest, in line with previous research, the existence of underlying constructs of factors of transfer that migrate across cultures.

The potential use of the FPT is the diagnosis of factors of transfer, and for the CdE, evaluation of the transfer of interventions at the behavioral level. The instruments are suitable for research and practice that compares online and in-class training.

The study performs the first rigorous analysis of measurement instruments to evaluate factors that predict transfer in Spain.

The purpose of this study is to explore ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of national human resource development (NHRD) policies led by South Korean central government agencies, identifying what policy decisions have been made and how they were implemented.

The authors collected data from the 2016 NHRD policy budget plans of the ministries and used content analysis. The unit of analysis was the fourth level, a sub-task, in each ministry’s policy budget plan. All coded policy contents were analyzed in terms of the centralized NHRD model, as well as through the perspective of developmental task theory.

The study yielded the following policy and implementation problems. First, the current system of NHRD policies established and implemented by individual ministries risks hampering the validity and effectiveness of the policies. Second, the structure of NHRD policy execution may cause similarity and redundancy across policies, thereby hindering the efficiency of the policies. Third, it is problematic when NHRD policies focus on solving short-term problems to the exclusion of long-term ones.

This study provides public recommendations to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of NHRD policies created by South Korea’s Central Government. If such an analysis has been made internally by the government, it has not been made publicly available. It also offers practical insights that might help to improve state-led human resource development policies for other countries – especially developing countries – that are planning to introduce central government-led NHRD or to improve existing NHRD policies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of family-supportive supervisor behaviors and organizational climate on employees’ work–family conflict, job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

To examine the causal relationship, the longitudinal panel data of the work, family and health study were used, using the data of 664 respondents who participated in surveys from all four time-points at two Fortune 500 information technology (IT) companies.

The results of the data analysis suggested that family-supportive supervisor behaviors have a minimal, but statistically significant, impact on work-to-family conflict and organizational work-family climate. Moreover, work-to-family conflict minimally mediated the relationship between family-supportive supervisor behaviors and employees’ turnover intentions. An organizational work-family climate had a small, but statistically significant, mediating effect between family-supportive supervisor behaviors and job satisfaction/turnover intentions.

This study has practical implications by noting that relying on only individual managers’ roles or training managers to be family-supportive may not be enough to improve family-oriented organizational culture, work–life balance and job-related outcomes.

Using a longitudinal mediation model, the authors examined the effects of family-supportive supervisor behaviors and how those behaviors impact other variables over time. Despite the expectation of such an impact, the authors found minimal effects among variables. This study is valuable because it can stimulate future research to advance the theoretical and practical understanding of family-supportive supervisor behaviors to help determine why the study found that it had very little impact on both work–family conflict and a family-friendly organizational climate to increase employees’ satisfaction to continue to work.

Qualitative paradigmatic perspectives are increasingly recognized as providing in-depth, rich and nuanced interpretations and critiques of complex phenomena. Nonetheless, positivist and post-positivist epistemologies still dominate social science disciplines. The authors were unable to identify published information on the state of qualitative research in human resource development (HRD) despite the numerous theoretical foundations, epistemological stances and global approaches that shape HRD. To fill this gap, this study determined the prevalence of qualitative designs, data collection methods and data analysis techniques that have been used in Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD)-sponsored journals. This study identified gaps in the use of qualitative research to be explored by HRD scholars to advance research and practice.

A descriptive case study approach was used to determine the state of qualitative research in three AHRD-sponsored journals.

Qualitative articles have increased in number but still account for a lower percentage of articles when compared with other peer-reviewed articles, including quantitative methodologies and conceptual papers. Most articles lacked grounding in stated ontology and epistemology needed to guide researchers’ investigations, potentially leading to weakened methodological choices, interpretations and authenticity of conclusions.

To provide in-depth understanding of HRD-related phenomena, all important elements of qualitative articles should be addressed to strengthen the credibility and authenticity of the research process. Qualitative theorists and researchers can build on and embrace the soundness of qualitative research and theories in HRD. Expanding on the credibility and authenticity of rigorously conducted qualitative research will help to broaden the perspectives of researchers who may be hesitant to explore this methodology of inquiry. This will strengthen methodological sophistication and expand the knowledge base of qualitative research.

HRD professors/instructors will find this study to be a useful guide for graduate students who are exploring and using qualitative inquiry for their research and for understanding others’ research. Practitioners will also find it useful to understand HRD research to determine possible interventions in their workplaces.

This study identifies trends and patterns of epistemologies and methods used in HRD qualitative articles and provides a foundation on which to build future studies and establish unexplored, unconventional qualitative methodologies and methods.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of first-generation college graduates in the USA, as they transitioned from higher education into employment in the private sector. First-generation college graduates are from families in which neither parent had a bachelor’s degree.

This paper used phenomenology to gain an understanding of the transition experiences of first-generation college graduates employed within the corporate sector.

First-generation status influences the experiences of students beyond college and limits their awareness of and access to graduate employment. Lack of college education in the family affects the graduates’ career decision-making, familiarity with corporate culture and expectations, preparedness for the corporate sector and restricted access to people with the ability to ease their entry into the sector. These translate into transition outcomes such as starting at entry-level positions not requiring a college degree, delayed access to graduate-level positions, having to engage intentionally in additional efforts to reach graduate-level positions and potential to be discriminated against during the recruitment process, albeit unintentionally.

Is first-generation status yet another structural contextual factor that influences career decision self-efficacy? Is the influence of FG status common across sectors? Longitudinal studies need to be conducted across sectors, regions and countries.

There is a need to sensitize faculty and career service staff to career-related challenges of first-generation students and for programs and policies that increase awareness of these students regarding professional environments and expectations. There are social justice implications for recruitment strategies and overcoming discrimination.

This paper explored first-generation college graduates’ experiences, an issue hitherto not explored in depth.