Although organizational social networks are known to influence career mobility, the specific direction of this influence is different for diverse employee groups. Diversity in organizational network research has been operationalized on various dimensions such as race and ethnicity, age, religion, education, occupation, and gender. Missing in this…

As a result of rapid changes in technology, much is discussed about the use of social media in branding, marketing, and in general corporate communications. The intensity with which social media tools--blogs, wikis, Twitter, instant messaging (IM) and Facebook, among others--have proliferated is staggering. Increasingly important is the role of…

Female victims of domestic violence--also referred to as "battered women"--face serious career development challenges that necessitate the intervention and aid of human resource development (HRD) practice.The purpose of this article is to identify critical factors having an impact on the career development (CD) of battered women and to offer…

This article describes why measurement invariance is a critical issue to quantitative theory building within the field of human resource development. Readers will learn what measurement invariance is and how to test for its presence using techniques that are accessible to applied researchers. Using data from a LibQUAL+[TM] study of user…

Narcissistic leadership can benefit organizational performance. Aberrant narcissism can destroy the psychosocial health of groups, limiting performance. This article examines Dependent Organizational Disorder, a common form of narcissism, which infects leadership, thwarts performance, and interrupts organizational learning. Dependent…

Understanding the intricacies of managing the life cycle of international personnel is a conundrum that continues to perplex HR managers in the global business arena. Although the notion of adjusting to a socioeconomically and culturally distant environment has been explored extensively from the expatriate perspective, the critical issue to…

Despite the growing interest of business executives, there is limited academic research on the contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations. We address this limitation by using a recently developed typology of virtual world capabilities to investigate the potential contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations.…

Community colleges in the United States have become major providers of human resource development services, particularly through offering workforce development training to local employers. The addition of workforce development services to community colleges is a fairly recent phenomenon. Some see workforce development efforts as diluting community…

In an attempt to inform how to approach nanotechnology vocational education training (nanoVET), this article briefly discusses the history of the development of vocational education training (VET) in the United States during the past century. The history of nanotechnology development and the current advances in this emerging field are discussed in…

Human resource development (HRD) is recognized as an interdisciplinary field covering the breadth of behavioral and social sciences. However, since its inception, instructional systems design (ISD), a methodology widely used in the HRD field, has been based on a narrow range of behavioral science. Grounded in general system's theory, the ISD…

This article focuses on the areas agreement between two recent and seemingly disparate Human Resource Development Review articles by Wang and Swanson (2008) and McLean, Lynham, Azevedo, Lawrence, and Nafukho (2008). The foundational roles of economics in human resource development theory and practice are highlighted as well as the need for…

There is common agreement about the importance of workplace learning. Discussions about the topic have mostly focused on two major components: formal training and informal learning. These components have become the defining features of workplace learning. This article proposes a conceptual framework of workplace learning that is comprised of the…

The performance paradigm of human resource development (HRD) practice has served the field well, particularly in enhancing the relevance and impact of HRD interventions. However, in this article, it is argued that the time has come for a new defining paradigm to advance the field of HRD to a higher level of organizational impact. This article…

Crisis management has been a largely overlooked territory in human resource development (HRD) despite the increasingly recognized impact of organizational crises on the individual and organizational performance. This article explores the strategic role of HRD in the context of organizational crisis management using Garavan's strategic HRD model as…

This article proposes a conceptual framework to explain the adoption and diffusion of a national human resource development (NHRD) standard. NHRD standards are used by governments to promote training and development in organizations and increase the professionalization of practices used by organizations. Institutional theory suggests that adoption…