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The purpose of this paper is to argue that human resource development (HRD) needs to embrace and include futures and foresight learning (FFL) as a new addition to its field of theorising and practice. The question to consider is: How can FFL become a new feature of HRD? A key part of the authors’ argument is that the inclusion of FFL will enable HRD to add to the success of any organisation and make a vital contribution to the management of people at work.

This paper firstly considers some of the debates surrounding the meaning of HRD. The authors suggest that instability of the time serves to disturb any comforts that have been created in HRD and that there is a need to consider how there might be different futures for what we still call HRD in research, practice and praxis. This paper then considers how FFL might become one possibility for expanding the existing boundaries of HRD. The authors characterise futures and foresight as a learning process, which provides new but complementary features to what is already considered as HRD. This paper will show how FFL can lead to organisation's success and the way this can be achieved.

There is a wide variety of meanings of the term HRD; however, HRD is still cast as a “weakened profession” which has to play a subservient role to others in the workplace. Over the last 15 years, the expansion of the meaning of HRD has been seen as evidence of its evolving and emerging nature and development based on a co-creation with other disciplines. This creates a space for FFL, defined as an ongoing learning process to find predictable, probable, possible and/or a variety of long-term futures. FFL embraces three key processes of scanning, futuring and reconfiguring, all of which contain a high potential for participants and others to learn as they proceed, providing outcomes at each stage. FFL has been shown to enhance organisation performance and success and HRD interventions can play a key part in implementation. This represents a significant opportunity for the HRD profession to move from weakness towards strength.

For HRD researchers, while FFL is not yet on its radar, the authors would argue that the uncertainties of the future require that more attention be given to what might lie ahead. Indeed, HRD researchers need to ask the question: What is the future of HRD research? In addition, if the authors’ call for FFL to be included in the practice of HRD, such practice will itself provide new pathways for HRD research. Further research questions might include: To what extent is FFL practiced in organisations and what role do HRD practitioners play in delivery? How does FFL impact on organisation behaviour and outcomes? What new products and services emerge from FFL? What new skills are required to deliver FFL? Can FFL enhance the status of HRD practitioners in the work place and its role in decision-making? and How can the HRD profession develop as a hybrid profession with respect to machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI)?

FFL produces outcomes that have importance for strategy, HRD practitioner can learn to facilitate FFL by action learning and in leadership development programmes. FFL offers a significant opportunity to enhance the importance of HRD in organisations and beyond. FFL offers those involved in HRD a significant opportunity to transfer ideas into practice that have an impact on organisation sustainability. HRD can play a significant role in the design and delivery of ML and AI projects.

This paper concludes with a call for embracing FFL as a challenging but important addition to how we talk about learning at work. The authors argue that FFL offers a significant opportunity to enhance the importance of HRD in organisations and beyond. At its centre, FFL involves learning by people, groups, organisations and machines and this has to be of concern to HRD.

This paper aims to analyze the development of global human resource development (HRD) articles published in journals indexed in the Scopus database since 1960s until present time.

A publication collection of 1,905 articles collected from the Scopus database was downloaded and analyzed by using bibliometric techniques available in the VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software.

Three different development stages of HRD research have been identified: a seeding stage between 1962 and 1989, a growth stage between 1990 and 2007 and a development stage from 2008 onward. The USA and the UK were the biggest contributors who participated to 30.02% and 12.55% of articles in the collection and received 43.82% and 19.54% of the total number of citations, respectively. Scholars with the most publications and citations are mostly from the USA and the UK, and nine over ten most cited articles having first author’s affiliation located there. Emerald Group is the most popular publishing house, as five over ten most popular journals belong to this publishing house.

After six decades of development, it is necessary to examine the evolution of HRD research, its characteristics and its intellectual framework as this type of analysis is not yet available in the literature. This study helps scholars better understand this research field, as well as better prepare for future work in HRD.

This research investigates the challenges and benefits of working from home and the needs that organisations should understand when adopting working from home practices.

Self-determination theory was used to understand the drivers of motivation when working from home, to provide a deep understanding of how organisations may support employees working from home. A cross-sectional qualitative survey design was used to collect data from 511 office workers during May and June of 2020.

Employees' needs for competence were thwarted by a lack of direction and focus, unsuitable work environment, work extensification and negative work culture. Employees' experiences and needs for relatedness were more diverse, identifying that they enjoyed spending more time with family and having a greater connection to the outdoors, but felt more isolated and suffered from a lack of interaction. Employees' experiences of autonomy whilst working from home were also mixed, having less autonomy from blurred boundaries between home and work, as well as childcare responsibilities. Conversely, there was more freedom to be able to concentrate on physical health.

Employee’s needs for competence should be prioritised. Organisations must be conscious of this and provide the support that enables direction and focus when working at home.

Swathes of research were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but overwhelmingly focused on quantitative methods. A qualitative survey design enabled participants to answer meaningful open-ended questions, better suited to explain the complexity of their experiences, which allowed for understanding and richness not gained through previous studies.

The authors explore the under-researched area of post-decision evaluation in PPPs (public–private partnerships), focusing upon how and whether Post-decision Project Evaluation (PdPE) is considered and provided for in United Kingdom (UK) public infrastructure projects.

The authors’ research design sought insights from overviewing UK PPP planning and more focused exploration of PPP operational practice. The authors combine the extensive analysis of planning documents for operational UK PPP projects with interviews of different stakeholders in PPP projects in one city. Mobilising an open critical perspective, documents were analysed using ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis consistent therewith. The authors theorise the absence and ambiguities of PdPE drawing on the sociology of ignorance.

The authors find a long-standing absence and lack of PdPE in PPP projects throughout planning and operational practice, reflecting a dynamic, multi-faceted ignorance. Concerning planning practice, the authors’ documentary analysis evidences a trend in PdPE from its absence in the early years (which may indicate some natural or genuine ignorance) to different levels or forms of weak inclusion later. Regarding this inclusion, the authors find strategic ignorance played a substantive role, involving “deliberate engineering” by both public sector and private partners. Interview findings indicate lack of clarity over PdPE and its under-development in PPP practice, deficiencies again suggestive of natural and strategic ignorance.

The authors draw from the sociology of ignorance vis-à-vis accounting's absence and ambiguity in the context of PPP, contributing to an under-researched area.

This chapter on anti-racism struggles applies an anti-racist activist framing, both critically examining and recognising the milestones achieved through centuries of pro-justice and anti-racism struggles. It delves into the arduous journey that the global fight for racial equity has undergone and highlights the significant progress as well as setbacks experienced during this lengthy struggle. The earliest history of the fight against racial oppression and domination goes back to anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements. Scholars have analysed the emergence, development and state of global anti-racism struggles in a variety of ways. I approach this subject from a sociological perspective, highlighting the role of social structures, groups and institutions that have contributed to shaping the outcomes of anti-racist initiatives. While recognising the role of individuals and leading political activists, this chapter emphasises anti-racism as a collective social justice struggle. To do this, I explore various local and global anti-racism endeavours and examine how they may influence discussions on race, racism and racial equity and their evolving trajectories across different societies.

In 2020, Sports Illustrated proclaimed its “Sportsperson of the Year” as something dubbed “the activist athlete,” choosing five athletes – LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif – that represented the term. Like so many athletes who came before them, these athletes vividly demonstrate the potential of sport to shine a spotlight on critical issues in society, yet again solidifying how sport does not exist merely as some kind of escape, but is a major stakeholder in global campaigns for social justice.

This chapter historicizes the contemporary resurgence of athlete activism, largely connected to the reawakening of Black Lives Matters (BLM) in 2020, within what journalist Howard Bryant has called The Heritage, with athletes who acknowledge and accept the charge to use their spotlights for those who have none. From the turning point of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which saw collective movements of African-American athletes culminate in the powerful Black power protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a protest that built upon the legacies of so many, to the ongoing debates that surround the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Rule 50, athletes have long understood how sport serves not only as an integral part of society but also as an agent for change. Contemporary cries for athletes to “shut up and dribble” echo past claims that sport takes place on a level playing field that transcends politics. The history of sports demonstrates otherwise, as athletes embody every imaginable, intersectional, classification of political actor.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between talent management, organizational commitment and turnover intention. The moderating role of gender and experience in relationships was explored.

A conceptual model was developed, and relationships were studied by collecting data from 392 faculty members working in higher educational institutions (HEIs) in southern India. After checking the instrument’s psychometric properties using the LISREL package of structural equation modeling, data were analyzed using Hayes’s PROCESS macros.

The results revealed that talent recruitment strategies positively predict organizational commitment and negatively predict turnover intention; organizational commitment mediates the relationship between talent management and turnover intention. Further, the results documented that experience (first moderator) and gender of faculty members (second moderator) influenced the relationship between talent management and organizational commitment and organizational commitment and turnover intention.

The outcomes of this research are helpful for the administrators of HEIs to strategize to attract and retain talented faculty to maintain sustained competitive advantage. This research also helps to understand gender differences that exist in talent management and retention and organizational commitment in HEIs.

The three-way interactions between talent management, gender and experience in influencing organizational commitment and turnover intentions is a novel idea that contributes to the talent management literature – the relationship between talent recruitment strategies and talent engagement. The implications for talent management theory and practice are discussed.