Reshaping the Landscape: HRD in an Uncertain Economy

Citation

Wang, B. and Tian, X. (2011), "Reshaping the Landscape: HRD in an Uncertain Economy", Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management, Vol. 2 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jchrm.2011.46502aaa.003

Reshaping the Landscape: HRD in an Uncertain Economy

Article Type: Reshaping the Landscape: HRD in an Uncertain Economy From: Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management, Volume 2, Issue 1

A review of 2011 Academy of Human Resource Development International Research Conference in the Americas

Introduction

Founded in 1993, the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) is the professional home of worldwide HRD scholars and practitioners with a vision of “leading human resource development through research.” AHRD sponsors three international research conferences in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, respectively. The conferences have served as platforms for HRD scholars and practitioners around the world to share research findings and ideas, to experience professional development, and to network for research collaborations. In 2011, the 18th Annual Conference in the Americas was held in Schaumburg, Illinois, USA in February 23-26.

Conference overview

In response to the unsettled global economy, the conference was under the theme of “Reshaping the Landscape: HRD in an Uncertain Economy.” This theme addresses the unfolding nature of the new global economy and the challenges and opportunities for scholars and practitioners in the field of HRD. More than 400 participants from over 20 countries attended the conference. The conference covered a wide range of topics in human resource development and management. Conference sessions included 11 thematic tracks: assessment, measurement, and evaluation; career development; critical and social justice perspectives of HRD; international HRD, global and cross-cultural issues; virtual HRD, technology, and distance learning; leadership; workplace learning, training and development; organizational development and change; performance; strategic HRD; and theory and foundations of HRD. These tracks represent the diverse perspectives of HRD research and practice.

This year’s conference featured four pre-conference sessions, one keynote address, 22 “Food N’ Thought” gatherings, 14 innovative sessions, five poster sessions, ten research roundtable sessions, and 59 concurrent research symposia. The pre-conference sessions were focused on professional development. They included one- or two-day workshops such as “Action Learning – A Powerful Tool for Developing Leaders, Solving Problems, Building Teams and Transforming Organizations” led by Bea Carson, “Pursuing Research in Organizations that is Useful to Practice” led by Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins, and “Successful Virtual Training Design and Delivery” led by Darren Short. In addition, a two-day Emerging Research workshop aiming to developing graduate students’ research skills and learning in HRD theories and research was offered as a tradition at the Americas conferences. It was led by faculty members across HRD academic programs. At the conference, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, on behalf of Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management (JCHRM), sponsored Cutting Edge Award for papers submitted to the 2010 and 2011 conferences.

During the conference, dialogues on HRD research and practice have taken place in a variety of forms in addition to the formal symposia. Research roundtables are designed to offer an opportunity to discuss research in progress and research preparation issues. For example, in one of the sessions, six participants brought different but related research topics to the table. Each presented the research questions, and through interactive discussions exchanged feedback to one another. The roundtable design of the conference provided a platform for scholars to incubate emerging ideas, disseminate new knowledge and resources, and encourage social networking. Similarly, innovative sessions provided an opportunity to share new and innovative HRD work and ideas in a creative and interactive way. On the other hand, Food N’ Thought sessions offered less formal brown-bag settings where participants were engaged in dialogues on a focused scholarly topic of interest during meal time. Interactive poster sessions were more dynamic forums among presenters and enabled in-depth audience conversations and dialogues on a one-on-one basis.

Keynote address

The keynote address of the conference was presented by Dr Robert Brinkerhoff, on a topic related to the conference theme, “Strategic HRD Capabilities: Guaranteeing Value and Impact,” he first raised the question of whether training should be viewed as a benefit for staff to learn new skills or a driver for performance improvement and business impact. According to Brinkerhoff, most organizations fail to evaluate the impact of training investments on business result. Of people who attended a formal training, less than 15 percent used it and achieved a concrete result after returning to the workplace; about 70 percent tried but gave up and went back to old methods or behaviors; and more than 15 percent did not try it at all. He argued that the proper goal for training was not only learning outcome or return on investment but the important contribution to strategic initiatives of the organization. The reality is, with the increased quality, training along is no longer the principal cause of its success or failure. The main challenge is how to enhance organizational capability to leverage business results from learning investments.

Dr Brinkerhoff then presented a systematic learning-to-performance process for business result. It starts with creating clear focus and building valid intentionality before preparing learning and development (L&D) interventions; followed by producing effective learning outcomes when conducting the training events; and then supporting sustained performance improvement after the trainees complete the training. He emphasized that achieving impactful results from training could not be accomplished by the L&D function alone but was the accountability for the organization as a whole. He emphasized that developing a “learning capable” organization to out-learn in order to out-execute competitors was a must in today’s globally competitive market and invited the HRD audience to reflect on how to adopt a business partner mentality to plan and design learning interventions in a way that could drive not just the training results, but the optimal business results.

Highlights from concurrent sessions

In this section, we highlight some sessions that are relevant to the audience of JCHRM. Readers who wish to know more about the conference topics presented at the conference are encouraged to visit the AHRD web site at: www.ahrd.org

Journal analysis

Journals are a major channel to disseminate frontier research findings and knowledge production. In conjunction with the announcement of the journal, Human Resource Development Quarterly (HRDQ) being included into Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) listing at the conference, a number of studies were presented on journal performance analysis. The integrative literature review by Wang et al. (2011) comprehensively reviewed literature regarding scientometrics theories and methods including citation analysis, citing behavior analysis, SSCI, journal quality and the impact factor and other advances in journal and research measurement. This review helps HRD scholars to understand and perform regular self-citation analysis as an effective career development strategy for scholars at all levels. Wang and Sun (2011), in a separate study, conducted the first journal impact analysis for the four HRD journals sponsored by AHRD (HRDQ, HRDI, HRDR, and ADHR) for the period of 2002-2009. The study further compared the performance of the four journals with another journal, Management and Organization Review. The findings offered an overall picture of current status of publications in HRD in quantitative measures and also provided critical insights for editors of the journals and leaders of the academy for future decisions. In a similar vein, Cho et al. (2011) conducted citation network analysis for another HRD-related journal, Performance Improvement Quarterly to understand the current state of Human Performance Technology. Most influential articles, frequently co-cited articles, and key topics were also identified.

Bridging scholar and practitioner

The conference offered a balanced mix of scholarly and practitioner exchanges. The gap between research and practice has been in discussion for a long time in various disciplines, especially for a discipline of applied science such as HRD. Bridging the gap between HRD research and HRD practice is critical to the success of the profession. Short et al. (2009) suggested two indicators on the relationship between HRD research and HRD practice. They are “evidence that HRD research is applicable to the world of HRD practice, and evidence that HRD practitioners access and use HRD research in their practice.” Two other research projects explored methods to strengthen the connection. Carliner’s (2011) interim report on five pilot projects explored the approaches to communicating research with practitioners. In the projects, alternative formats for reporting research were tested. Boulay et al. (2011) presented a case of aligning interdisciplinary expertise between scholars and practitioners. They shared a model of collaboration among HRD faculty and students in a land-grant university, experts in the Industrial Extension Service (IES) center within the same university, and the small- and medium-sized organizations served by IES. They discussed how each unit has benefited from such collaboration. With interest, the audience discussed how such models might be replicated in other HRD programs. The case served as a good example of partnership research that “integrating HRD research and practice is best accomplished when the two activities are woven together as much as possible” (Jacobs, 1997).

Watkins et al. (2011) in an innovative session entitled “Evidence-based change initiatives” discussed current issues and challenges related to driving evidence-based learning culture change initiatives. Based on the learning culture model proposed by Watkins and Marsick (1993, 1996, 1997, 2003), three case studies conducted in South Korea, Australia and the USA were introduced and compared. Although the results are slightly different, the three cases showed critical relationship between investing in learning and financial performance. A critical question was then asked, what need to be done to main the credibility – especially in this economy? The attendees were asked to share their experiences and generate a portrait of what constituted compelling evidence to encourage cultural change. The cumulative findings from case studies and from participants’ examples in this innovative session showed HRD professionals’ commitment and continuous progress on applying research to practice by developing individual capabilities, developing high-performance teams and building organizational capacity.

The title “Humor in HRD and training” attracted quite a few audience members to Larry Weas’ Food N’ Thought session. Weas explored various findings of the effects and impact of humor on learning outcomes from research and identified opportunities for incorporating humor into the training classrooms. Staying positive in today’s economy seems to result in more than feelings of joy but also boosted morale, enhanced creativity, and increased productivity. In another Food N’ Thought session, Yoon and Jacobs (2011) presented a case study with a global automotive company on performance improvement issues in cross-cultural work setting. They interviewed multiple managers with a scenario of “describing a situation when there was a misunderstanding between a Korean and local manager.” Many root causes of the performance problem were identified such as different level of clarity on work instruction and expectation on performance.

China HRD-related research and activities

As all previous AHRD conferences, Greater China has again attracted considerable research attention. There were a number of symposia related to China and Taiwan. Topics included ethic issues in state owned-enterprises, MBA education in China, expatriate social network, and self-initiated expatriate and career development, as well as communication climate and learning readiness in Taiwan.

Owing to increased research interests in Greater China, AHRD formed a special interest group (SIG) in 2009 focusing on China HRD. This is a network of scholars and practitioners interested in advancing China’s HRD research and practice. According to the charter of China HRD SIG, the regional coverage of China SIG is defined by its cultural boundaries including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (often called Greater China), as well as the areas influenced by Chinese culture such as Singapore. To support AHRD’s vision of “leading the HRD profession through research” and foster HRD research activities in Greater China, the SIG is striving to nurture collaborative research among scholars and practitioners who are interested in China-related HRD research. The SIG is also interested in research and practices on Chinese cultural impact in HRD and comparative studies. Particularly, the SIG encourages collaborations among Chinese scholars in Chinese universities and universities around the world. Currently, China HRD SIG maintains a web site and listserv and coordinates meetings and special sessions in AHRD conferences. For example, a pre-conference session was sponsored by the China HRD SIG at the 2010 Asian AHRD Conference in Shanghai in December 2010.

Reflections on Chinese HRM

With participants coming from many parts of the world, the 2011 AHRD International Research Conference in Schaumburg provided a unique environment for scholars and practitioners to share new HRD and HRM research and practice in all domains of organizations for a variety of topical tracks in relation to the uncertain economy. The official survey on participants’ experience has not been published yet, but we received very positive feedbacks in informal discussions from some regular attendants and first-time attendants. We envision the next 2012 AHRD International Research Conference in Denver, Colorado will build on the success of the 2011 conference and continue to advance the field of HRD through research.

For scholars and practitioners in the realm of Chinese HRM, we provide the following reflections: first, while HRD research offers a unique perspective (Swanson and Holton, 2009), we see a trend in organization reality that HRD and HRM are converging particularly in Chinese HRM practice (Wang, 2011). With the technical aspects of HRM functions such as recruitment, compensation, and benefit being out-sourced or automated in the form of e-HR, the role of HRM has evolved toward organizational change, learning, and performance. We encourage Chinese HRM scholars and practitioners to learn more about the field of HRD and explore common domain of HRD and HRM.

Second, although HR functions have begun to play a strategic role by assuring the competence of employees to meet the organization’s present performance demands, there is great opportunity for such functions to demonstrate their values and truly achieve business impacts particularly in Chinese organizations. As pointed out in Brinkerhoff’s keynote, HR functions are to add value to help organizations outperform their competitors. For China HRM scholars and practitioners, it is to balance the daily operations and value-added services and to assess the strategic relevance to the business of their activities.

Third, bridging research and practice in HRD and HRM is another prominent area for those involved in Chinese HRM. The research and practice divide has long been noted in the HRM literature (Deadrick and Gibson, 2007). It is equally important for Chinese HRM to close the gap. Given the unique Chinese culture and transitioning contexts, HRM practices in China may help derive indigenous HRM theories that can be used to inform future practices. The AHRD conferences attempt to provide such opportunities for partnerships between scholars and practitioners. We hope to engage more practitioners from the Greater China region in the future conferences for the ongoing discussions of bridging the gap between research and practice in the area of Chinese HRM.

Bryan WangThe Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USAXu TianThe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA