Human resource development is known to encapsulate a collection of social science disciplines including communications, psychology, and economics. Since these and other similar areas are the cornerstones of HRD, the changing nature of HRD demands constant reflections on the value and building blocks of contemporary HRD inquiries. This article presents a citation analysis of articles published in Human Resource Development Quarterly from 2007 to 2013 to provide an overview of the various disciplines contributed to contemporary HRD research. A total of 5,807 citations were reviewed. An analysis of the citations was conducted to identify the most frequently cited articles, major themes, and contributing fields to HRD. Psychology remains to be a prominent building block to current HRD research while the presence of other major disciplines such as economics and systems theory was not evident. Further details of key findings, implications of this study for research and practice, and limitation of this study are discussed. Human resource development is known to encapsulate a collection of social science disciplines including communications, psychology, and economics. Since these and other similar areas are the cornerstones of HRD, the changing nature of HRD demands constant reflections on the value and building blocks of contemporary HRD inquiries. This article presents a citation analysis of articles published in Human Resource Development Quarterly from 2007 to 2013 to provide an overview of the various disciplines contributed to contemporary HRD research. A total of 5,807 citations were reviewed. An analysis of the citations was conducted to identify the most frequently cited articles, major themes, and contributing fields to HRD. Psychology remains to be a prominent building block to current HRD research while the presence of other major disciplines such as economics and systems theory was not evident. Further details of key findings, implications of this study for research and practice, and limitation of this study are discussed.
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