The contributions of human resource development research across disciplines: A citation and content analysis

Abstract

The primary purpose of the current study is to identify how human resource development (HRD) research has contributed to the knowledge base across social science disciplines during the past two decades. We identified the top 20 Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) journal articles that have been most frequently cited in research articles published in journals other than the four AHRD journals. With the use of content analysis of the most-cited articles, three key research themes were identified: (a) training transfer and evaluation, (b) learning in organizations, and (c) knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. The research contributions of HRD within the field of HRD and across disciplines are discussed.Research-pursuit of new knowledge and its dissemination-is the soul of academia.-Richard A. Swanson This article attempts to identify the inherent contributions of human resource development (HRD) as an academic discipline to the broader community of academia. In practice, it has been agreed that human resources in an organization are the primary source of core competitive advantage (Garavan, 2007). Increasingly, there is a need for the continuous improvement and development of human resources to help organizations adapt to changing environments, so companies have emphasized the importance of HRD. However, HRD still holds a peripheral position in the academic realm. For instance, despite the continuous efforts of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD), the leading scholarly body of the discipline, no AHRD-sponsored journal has been listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) (Russ-Eft, 2008 Jeung, Yoon, Park, Jo degree titles and affiliations of undergraduate and graduate programs addressing HRD tend to be inconsistent across colleges and universities. These issues imply that there is a lack of recognition from the larger academic community, as well as an incomplete establishment of the distinct identity of HRD.HRD is known as a multidisciplinary field (e.g., McLean, 1998;Swanson, 1999;Weinberger, 1998), which owes its foundation to external academic fields (Jacobs, 1990;McGuire & Cseh, 2006). However, although HRD has built a unique body of work that has made significant contributions to various social science fields over several decades, it has not received adequate recognition. Given that little attention has been paid to the HRD community' s scholarly contributions across disciplines, there is a need to understand the identity of HRD by identifying the "multidisciplinary" contributions of HRD research across various disciplines. Unfortunately, few attempts to explore the scholastic contributions of HRD have effectively transcended the boundaries of the AHRD community.Our approach to explore the contributions of HRD is to count citation frequency. A citation link between any two documents shows an association of a research topic and a connection between the scholastic ideas. In research communities, citation frequency is used as a method to assess professional recognition and relat...

Single‐ and Multiple‐Informant Research Designs to Examine the Human Resource Management−Performance Relationship

“…A direct content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) was conducted to classify the papers. The reliability of the allocation of articles in each category was addressed following the two-step procedure used in other content analyses such as Furrer, Thomas and Goussevskaia (2008), Jeung et al (2011) and Clark et al (2014). The reliability of the allocation of articles in each category was addressed following the two-step procedure used in other content analyses such as Furrer, Thomas and Goussevskaia (2008), Jeung et al (2011) and Clark et al (2014).…”

Building Blocks of Contemporary HRD Research: A Citation Analysis on Human Resource Development Quarterly between 2007 and 2013

“…Several scholars in the field of HRD have used citation analysis to examine the impact of research among disciplines (e.g., Azevedo & Hedayati, 2013; Ghosh et al, ; Jeung et al, ; Jo et al, ; Sleezer & Sleezer, ; Sun & Wang, ). Using citation analysis, Sleezer and Sleezer () investigated the status of research in HRD in the United States through the years 1980–1994 and reported a list of 17 journals that published more than 15 HRD related articles.…”

“…Using citation analysis, Jeung et al () examined key research areas that HRD has contributed to for 20 years, and identified the top 20 most frequently cited HRD articles by other journals. The three key research areas were training transfer and evaluation, learning in organizations, and knowledge sharing.…”

“…This study explores the articles cited in HRDQ publications, which is known as the most accredited among four major journals of the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD). Also, an analysis on the contribution of the four AHRD journals over 20 years by Jeung et al () reported that the scholarly publications in HRDQ were most frequently cited by the other three HRD journals (i.e., Advances in Developing Human Resources, Human Resource Development International, Human Resource Development Review). They found that 15 HRDQ journal articles were on the list of the top 20 most frequently cited articles.…”

Setting the stage for innovation: towards a conceptual model of the HR-innovation link

“…In the introduction to this article, a number of important developments in HR research and practice are highlighted, such as a greater interest in strategic HRM and HRD (Boxall and Purcell, 2011;Garavan, 2007), demands for a tighter fit between HR and organisations' strategies and goals (Ulrich et al, 2009), and a growing focus on change and development activities in organisations Jeung et al, 2011) -particularly with respect to HR activities that may foster different types of innovation (Beugelsdijk, 2008;Jiang et al, 2012;Shipton et al, 2005). Furthermore, it has been argued that research should assume a more holistic and integrative approach to both HRM and HRD concepts-and to specific HR activities -instead of considering them isolated practices (Laursen, 2002;Laursen and Foss, 2003;Ruona and Gibson, 2004).…”