Executive coaching is a booming, but understudied, HRD-related practice. Given the limited number of available studies that have been deployed with rigor and systematic methods, the study by Nieminen et al. adds to our understanding of the impact of executive coaching and multisource feedback on leadership development. Explored in the context of a…

Mentoring as a form of strategic human resource management is an interesting addition to the HRD literature because it provides a mechanism of change for individual employees. Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of mentoring to both the employee and the firm; yet, a recent review of mentoring research argues that mentoring has less…

Although calls continue to establish certification, several certifications for human resource development (HRD) practitioners already exist, although none use the name HRD. This Forum explores what those certification programs are and what their availability means to the development of the HRD "brand" (the impressions of the service derived from…

Contemporary literature lacks a comprehensive set of constructs that provides for understanding both the organizational and job factors that influence employee work passion. Through a detailed analysis of literature, this research identifies eight constructs that form the basis for the appraisal of an employee's work experience with the use of…

This descriptive qualitative case study investigated the perceptions of dislocated workers offered program services through the Workforce Investment Act's (WIA) Dislocated Worker program in Minnesota. This research focused on recently dislocated workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and hence were eligible for unemployment…

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…

This article is in part inspired by an HRD director's insight that his HRD staff should view themselves as HRD Family Doctors, suggesting that a doctor-patient relationship was similar in many respects to the HRD-manager consulting relationship. Although that is possible in some organizations, the author's interviews with corporate managers and…

The preceding article (Clarke, 2010) examines an important and interesting question; that is, under what conditions can learning contribute to the development of emotional intelligence (EI)? Despite the controversy surrounding the definition and construct of EI, its prevalence for the human resources development (HRD) field and its implications…

Competencies represent an important and popular topic in human resource development. Despite this popularity, a divide exists between practitioner approaches to developmental competency measures and the empirical scrutiny of such approaches. However, the scarce empirical studies on competency measures have begun to bridge this gap. In the present…

The attention given to the contingent segment of the workforce has significantly increased over the past decade. Investigative topics include the correlates of temporary employee work attitudes and behaviors. This study used a correlational design to examine leader behaviors outlined by the path-goal theory of leadership, as perceived by temporary…

Trainee perceptions of transfer climate have been found to be an important predictor of transfer of training. Self-efficacy has also been identified as an important individual difference related to transfer. Few studies have examined how these variables work together to enhance or limit performance following training. In a field study of 37…

A citation network analysis among four journals in human resource development (HRD) was conducted to discover the major themes of published articles in HRD. A total of 1,410 articles from 1990 to 2007 were coded. Main path analysis, influence analysis, and reduced network analysis were conducted for citation network analysis. The key findings are…

The present investigation offers some insight for human resource development (HRD) practitioners and researchers focused on helping employees pursue learning goals as they adapt to organizational changes. Using a repeated measurement over a five-year time period, this study examined goal orientation, learning self-efficacy, climate perceptions,…

This article presents a provisional grounded theory of conceptual development for applied theory-building research. The theory described here extends the understanding of the components of conceptual development and provides generalized relations among the components. The conceptual development phase of theory-building research has been widely…

This study explores the presence of technology-related research in HRD (human resource development), identifies what the research addressed, and analyzes how the research was addressed. We reviewed 1,675 papers in five publications. During the seven-year period examined, 169 articles were technology-related. Through a content analysis, we…