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This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role of professional and leader identity and the maintenance of identity, through identity work as IT professionals transitioned to a permanent hybrid role. This study therefore contributes to the under-researched area of permanent transition to a hybrid role in the context of IT, where there is a requirement to enact both the professional and leader roles together.

The study utilised a longitudinal design and two qualitative methods (interviews and reflective diaries) to gather data from 17 IT professionals transitioning to hybrid roles.

The study findings reveal that IT professionals engage in an ongoing process of reconciliation of professional and leader identity as they transition to a permanent hybrid role, and they construct hybrid professional–leader identities while continuing to value their professional identity. They experience professional–leader identity conflict resulting from reluctance to reconcile both professional and leader identities. They used both integration and differentiation identity work tactics to ameliorate these tensions.

The longitudinal study design, the qualitative approaches used and the unique context of the participants provide a dynamic and deep understanding of the challenges involved in performing hybrid roles in the context of IT.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an academic viewpoint on contemporary factors associated with talent management (TM) in the hospitality and tourism sector.

A critical discussion of macro- and micro-level factors is provided, while highlighting opportunities and challenges for TM policies and practices. The influence of senior managers in developing TM, with emphasis on small and medium enterprises, is examined and examples of ‘best practice’ in TM are outlined.

Given the scale and importance of the sector to economic growth, it is imperative that governments assume a greater leadership role in shaping the training and education agenda. TM practices need to reflect the uniqueness and complexity of the sector and effective implementation of TM requires CEO/Owner–Manager commitment and cascading down of a talent mind-set/culture within organizations. Examples of best practice in TM provide a significant opportunity for the sector to improve both its employer branding and competitiveness. Examples include: aligning TM with strategic business goals; provisions of robust data generated across HR functions; and demonstrating the impact of TM on employees’ enhanced emotional labour through higher levels of engagement and motivation and on organizational outcomes.

The paper argues that organizations need to take each dimension of TM more seriously than many organizations have done so in the past. Coherent TM practices, in particular, competitive reward and training and development opportunities, will improve employer branding and will directly have an impact upon the quality of applications received by organizations.

The paper provides important insight and practical recommendations on how the sector can improve its productivity and future sustained competitiveness in the challenging times ahead.

This article introduces the special issue of Learning and Development in Highly-Dynamic VUCA Contexts. The issue reviews the concept of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), highlights its implications for the learning and development function and argues that learning and development play a critical role in helping organisations, people and the societal context in which they operate to work within and navigate VUCA contexts.

The contributions to this special issue propose a novel learning and development framework that will inform L&D as the provision of training, learning and development activities in organisations within highly dynamic VUCA contexts and ensuring a strong external focus including organisational, people, community, economic and societal sustainability.

We, the authors, propose seven features of a strategic sustainability L&D function and L&D professional role that are a fit with highly dynamic VUCA contexts.

The proposed framework has important implications for the way in which L&D is structured, its key priorities and plans and the competencies of L&D professionals to add value to all stakeholders. We also emphasise that the work on the L&D function in highly dynamic VUCA contexts needs to be broader and move beyond a performance orientation.

The proposed strategic sustainability role for the L&D function expands theoretically our understanding of how L&D can have impacts at the nexus of the organisation and highly dynamic VUCA contexts, in addition to broadening the constellation of stakeholders that it potentially enhances.

The purpose of this longitudinal study is to qualitatively investigate the role of the general managers (GMs) and senior managers (SMs) in strategic talent management (STM) in hotels during COVID-19. Using upper echelon theory and the dynamic attention-based view, this paper explores the role of upper echelon theory cognitive characteristics (orientation towards STM and decision-making approach) and three dynamic attention-based view attention dimensions (communication, resource attention to the HR function and new configurations of STM) in influencing STM.

This study uses semi-structured interviews with hotel GMs and SMs at two time points over the duration of COVID-19 in six hotels (family-owned, boutique and international hotel chain) located in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Singapore and India.

The findings of this study reveal that GMs and SMs across the different hotels differed in their orientation towards STM and their decision-making approaches and this influenced cognitive and resource attention to STM. GMs and SMs remained cognitively attentive to STM through their communications around STM, and they revealed resource attention through resources to the HR function and new configurations of STM practices during COVID-19. The authors identify three distinct configurations of STM practices in operation in hotels during COVID-19.

This study’s findings reveal important practice implications in that GMs and SMs have a key role to play in the implementation of STM and the need to reconfigure how STM is undertaken during the crisis. This contrasts with the more espoused role suggested for these talent actors in the literature.

The authors used a longitudinal qualitative research design to surface the dynamic role of GMs’ and SMs’ cognitive and resource attention to STM in hotels during COVID-19 and the key role that orientation towards STM and decision-making approach affected both cognitive and resource attention dimensions.

This study aims to investigate direct and indirect (via perceived caring climate) links between spiritual leadership and hazing at work in the hospitality context. The authors also test the role of employee interpersonal justice values as a boundary condition.

The authors collected time-lagged data from 441 newcomers and their 441 peers (existing hotel employees) and analyzed the data using structural modeling equation in Mplus (8.6).

The authors found a negative relationship between spiritual leadership and hazing behaviors. Further, perceived caring climate mediated the relationship between spiritual leadership and hazing behaviors. The results also provided support for employee interpersonal justice values as the boundary condition on both the direct relationship between spiritual leadership and perceived caring climate and the indirect relationship between spiritual leadership and workplace hazing.

The authors suggest that there is a value in having organizational leaders who demonstrate spiritual leadership behaviors. This will enhance hospitality employees’ perceptions of a caring climate and undermine their engagement in hazing behaviors.

This study makes an important contribution to the nascent literature on workplace hazing behaviors and spiritual leadership in the hospitality context. The study is also noteworthy because it provides important insights into the antecedents and outcomes of perceived caring climate, an important contextual resource that has imperative implications for hospitality employees’ hazing behaviors.

The authors explore the metaphors people from Indonesia use to describe their propriety beliefs about the ethical legitimacy of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS). This paper aims to understand why there is a consensus of propriety beliefs about the ethical legitimacy of TAPS in the face of increased government regulations and international criticism of such marketing practices.

The data were collected from 71 study participants using both focus groups and in-depth photo-elicitation interviews.

The participants use three sets of metaphors to describe propriety beliefs. First, participants used metaphors that described the centrality of TAPS and smoking in Indonesian society. Second, they used metaphors that described TAPS regulations and regulators and third, they used metaphors that described the activities of tobacco firms. Participants’ photographs revealed strong collective validity of TAPS within Indonesia and strong propriety beliefs consensus.

This study is one of the first to integrate legitimacy-as-perception theory and the ecological systems framework to gain a multilevel insight into the TAPS activities are perceived as legitimate and, therefore, not unethical.

The findings have important implications for tobacco control regulators who wish to curtail TAPS in a country where all levels of the ecological system reinforce their collective validity. Policy and regulative initiatives must, therefore, be used in a systemic way to change this collective validity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to use a legitimacy perspective to understand the ethical legitimacy of TAPS in marketing literature. It is also the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to use the three legitimacy-as-perception constructs: propriety beliefs, collective validity and consensus of propriety beliefs. The authors show that despite increased government regulations and international disapproval, TAPS continues to be considered ethically legitimate in Indonesia.

The purpose of this paper is to explore human resource development (HRD) in Mauritius and the challenges and opportunities faced by organisations in different sectors in adopting HRD practices.

This special issue presents four papers that explore dimensions of HRD in public sector, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and tourism organisations. It also reports on human capital development in the Mauritian economy generally.

There is a paucity of knowledge and understanding on HRD in Mauritian organisations. There is significant scope to further explore the effectiveness of national policies and interventions in enhancing HRD and human capital capability.

The four papers highlight the important role of organisational champions and of the selection and implantation of HRD practices that are good contextual fit and which can contribute to organisation performance.

The purpose of this paper is to set the context for the five papers in this issue that propose new perspectives and/or address the current state of specific sub-fields within Human Resource Development (HRD).

The approach consists of an overview of the development of the field from the perspective of research topics, theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.

HRD as an academic discipline continues to evolve and gain a foothold within the broader fields of Human Resource Management (HRM), Education and Organisation Behaviour.

The five papers presented in this issue identify interesting research questions and challenges for HRD as a field of research and practice.