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Human resource development (HRD) as an applied discipline is an example of a scholarly field that has emerged through the collaboration of scholars and practitioners with backgrounds in various foundational disciplines. This study interested in both the influence of other disciplines on HRD research and in HRD’s influence on other disciplines. The purpose of this study is to take stock of the relationships between HRD research and research in other academic disciplines affecting and affected by HRD research.

The study used content analysis of the top 100 most frequently cited empirical articles published in three HRD journals between 2000 and 2019 to identify disciplinary foundations of HRD research. The influence of HRD on other disciplines was scrutinized through citation analysis of work citing the top 100 articles. In addition, categorizing the 100 articles into six research themes, the influence of six research themes on citation patterns was explored.

The findings indicated that empirical research in HRD, as represented by the top 100 articles, relied mainly on theories and frameworks from two disciplines, management and psychology. Another important finding is that the top 100 HRD articles were cited most often in management publications and the rate of citation in management journals has been growing rapidly since 2005. The citation frequency of HRD articles in other disciplines including psychology, social sciences, education and medicine and nursing shows a general upward trend as well. In addition, there was a difference in disciplines providing theoretical foundations to the HRD articles and citing the articles depending on six predominant research themes, identified in HRD articles.

This study empirically identified theories and disciplines contributing to HRD research, considering the influence of cited research on the HRD articles through content analysis. In addition, the findings of this study broadened the understanding of the relationship between HRD research and other disciplines by examining the contributions of HRD articles to other disciplines. Finally, this research provided new information regarding the changes in dominant themes in HRD research over time.

This paper seeks to address the recent challenges in the international human resource development (HRD) research and the related methodological strategy.

This inquiry is based on a survey of literatures and integrates various comparative research strategies adopted in other major social science disciplines.

Based on comparative strategies found in other disciplines, the authors propose a framework to advance comparative HRD research and theory development.

The proposed framework emphasizes methodological consistency in HRD research and improving the relevance and rigor in theory development. It also highlights the required qualities of comparative researchers.

This is an initial effort in analyzing the emerging comparative HRD literature for an alternative framework to advance methodological research on HRD theory building.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a critical review of the mediation studies published in the field of Human Resource Development (HRD) to discern if the study designs, the nature of data collection and the choice of statistical methods justify the causal claims made in those studies.

This paper conducts a critical review of published refereed articles that examined mediation in Human Resource Development Quarterly, Human Resource Development International, Advances in Developing Human Resources and European Journal of Training and Development. Mediation studies published in these journals from 2000 to 2015 were identified and coded. The four journals sampled were chosen to provide breadth of coverage of the different types of empirical studies published in the field of HRD.

The review findings imply that HRD scholars are not employing experimental or longitudinal designs in their studies when randomized experiments and longitudinal studies with at least three waves of data collection are regarded as the golden standards of causal research. Further, the findings indicate that sophisticated statistical modeling approaches like structural equation modeling are widely used to examine mediation in cross-sectional studies and most importantly, a large number of such studies do not acknowledge that cross-sectional data does not allow definite causal claims.

Although the findings urge us to rethink the inferences of mediation effects reported over the past 15 years in the field of HRD, this study also serves as a guide in thinking about framing and testing causal mediation models in future HRD research and even argues for a paradigm shift from a positivist orientation to critical and postmodern perspectives that can accommodate mixed methods designs for mediation research in HRD.

This paper presents a critical review of the trends in examining mediation models in the HRD discipline, suggests best practices for researchers examining the causal process of mediation and directs readers to recent methodological articles that have discussed causal issues in mediation studies.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

Addresses some of the key debates within the HRD literature and considers the extent to which HRD can be described as a field of study. The paper addresses the issues raised in the contributions that make up this special issue and identifies a broad range of methodologies and use of research methods. It argues that all of the contributions fit into at least one theoretical perspective: capabilities, psychological contacts and the learning organization/organizational learning. The paper concludes with a consideration of the prescriptions which the perspectives advocate for HRD in organizations.

This study aims to examine how case study research has been applied in the field of human resource development (HRD).

The authors examined HRD case study research by analyzing 118 refereed, empirical case study articles published between 2000 and 2020 in three Academy of HRD-sponsored journals.

Findings suggest that case studies have an established place in HRD research. The disciplinary convention has been exploratory case studies, which, to a greater extent, draw on single-case research designs. When examining the proportion of case study articles in relation to all empirical, peer-refereed publications in the journals, the authors found a slight decline in case study research publications in recent years. The results of our post hoc exploratory analysis indicate that HRD case study research that contributes to theory development by eliciting concepts and their relationships is likely to receive more scholarly attention than case studies that provide rich descriptions of the phenomenon. The results also suggest that it is rather case study’s contribution to theory than selected features of case study that attracts scholars’ attention.

The study identified several approaches to conducting case study research that have received less attention by HRD researchers. The authors encourage HRD researchers to expand their repertoire of case study approaches. The authors also provide recommendations addressing the issues of methodological self-awareness, rigor and transparency in case study research.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This paper aims to identify the life-cycle of leadership theory from both the human resource development (HRD) and the organizational/leadership literature while providing a contrast between the two bodies of literature. The current research identifies which theories are being represented within the HRD literature, followed by a review of current directions in the leadership fields, primarily from literature in the organizational and leadership fields. By identifying these two bodies of leadership theories, the following research question will be answered: How current are the leadership theories provided in the literature of HRD compared to research that is reported from other external leadership fields?

This paper examines how leadership theories are represented in the HRD literature. Data for the current article provide a preview of leadership theories that are used to inform HRD scholars and scholar–practitioners for a period of 15 years (2000-2015) in the four Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) publications (Advances in Developing Human Resources; Human Resource Development International; Human Resource Development Quarterly; and Human Resource Development Review). The four journals within the AHRD were reviewed to identify which leadership theories were being researched and used to inform members of HRD. The search terms for the current study included “leadership AND theory,” “team AND leadership,” “leadership AND development” and “team AND development.” Studies that presented a leadership theory and either described or defined the theory were coded for the current study. Within this body of literature, there were a total of 74 leadership theories identified (some repeating), among those there were a total of 20 unique leadership theories. The literature external of HRD was identified using the ScienceDirect database for 10 years (2007-2017) with the topics limited to “topics–leadership.” Once the HRD and organizational/leadership literature are presented, a comparison between the two literature streams will be provided, highlighting any deficiencies within either body of literature and recommendations for future research efforts for the field of HRD.

This examination of leadership theory study within HRD and other fields highlights the deficiencies within either body of literature and offers recommendations for future research efforts for the field of HRD. In line with the trend in leadership research, HRD should call for more longitudinal and multi-level research efforts to be conducted as opposed to cross-sectional studies.

The current study is limited in the literature that was used to collect/code data. Also, the time frame for the HRD literature ended in 2015 due to the long duration required to review articles and to code the data. Secondary data were obtained from organizational/leadership literature and are more current because they are more recent. Overall, even with an end date of 2015 for the HRD literature, the HRD field has not changed too much during this time and the authors recognize some minor changes, but the research findings are still relevant and the leadership deficits presented are still realized.

The field of HRD is behind when it comes to leadership theories. This paper identifies this in an effort to aid researchers, students and practitioners to look beyond the leadership theories presented in the HRD literature for more relevant and current leadership theories. This paper highlighted a number of newer and current leadership theories and trends for scholars and scholar-practitioners to begin to focus on; however, this list is only a snapshot and is bounded by the data collected for the current paper.

This paper is original in that it is both critical of leadership research within the HRD literature while also providing new directions for the field. The snapshot of where the field of HRD is compared to the leadership and organizational fields becomes apparent with multiple future directions for research.

The purpose of this study is to determine the quantity, nature and frequency of intervention research published in Human Resource Development (HRD) journals.

The methodology for this study was a literature review, analysis and synthesis with specific attention to locating intervention research in HRD journals.

Based on the results of this study, it seems clear that intervention research is not a fundamental research method for HRD professionals and is not being consistently conducted across the HRD field. This raises potential questions about the extent to which HRD professionals are integrating research and practice. The presence and conduct of intervention research applied to HRD-related problems may provide another means for practitioners and scholars to work together toward optimal, practical solutions with evidence to support them.

Creating a community of professionals who assess and/or evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions and disseminate the information that lean toward causal claims is critical. Intervention research could represent a cultural shift for the HRD discipline because it lends weight to claims of causality and practical recommendations. Under these circumstances, HRD intervention research could be used with confidence by HRD practitioners to inform, shape or evaluate the content of their management and leadership training programs, including the training and development of coaching managers and coaching leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between leader‐member exchange (LMX) and human resource development (HRD) to gain a better understanding of the LMX‐performance relationship through connecting LMX and HRD theory.

Dubin's framework is used for the purpose of linking LMX with HRD. Except that the last three steps (empirical indicators of key terms, hypotheses, testing) involved conducting empirical research, the authors employ steps 1 through 5 to build an HRD‐based LMX model, i.e. the first step specifies that the units of the theory be identified; the second step involves establishing the laws of interaction applicable to the units of the theory. The third and fourth steps define boundaries for an HRD‐based LMX model and suggest propositions for future empirical research. In addition, to lessen the likelihood of some redundancy the system states are included with the laws of interaction.

LMX and HRD (as represented by identified outcomes) theories are linked by at least three key factors: trust, empowerment, and performance. A theoretical model linking LMX and HRD also describes the contributions of trust, empowerment, and performance to LMX theory of leadership with the help of two specific HRD interventions – trust building and empowerment facilitation.

The confirmation of the theoretical model through empirical research is still required.

In the aspect of relational performance, this paper proposes a basis for designing and implementing strategic HRD activities and recommends the conceptual model as an intervention technique for organizational change.

This paper illuminates the base of LMX leadership theory and seeks to develop new practical insights of the theory. In so doing, it aims to contribute to reducing the tension between leadership theorists and leadership development practitioners, described as validity versus usefulness.