Abstract
This issue is exciting for me because, in my mind, it represents significant progress toward accomplishing two of the goals I discussed in my first editorial as editor just a few short months ago. First, with regard to my goal of digitizing. Wang’s article is the last article to have been fully processed, from submission to acceptance, using the manual system. All new manuscripts, revisions, and reviews are now managed in the SageTrack automated system. We continue to work with and learn the system to improve our processes. Second, with regard to my goal of diversifying. The issue begins with an article about diversity initiatives and then concludes with two articles addressing a topic of diversity—LGBT issues. This issue includes not one, but two, integrative literature reviews about the state of LGBT literature in the field of HRD. Thus, not only are we explicitly addressing diversity, we are also diversifying into topics that, for many, are challenging and, for others, are thought-provoking or groundbreaking. I hope to continue pushing the boundaries of diversity of content on new topics or new views on “old” topics. But, now, I’ll offer a brief introduction to the issue.
Diversity itself does not directly influence the performance of a group. Instead, Qin and his colleagues suggest that diversity indirectly affects performance through intervening variables at the group level that are, in turn, moderated by contextual factors of the group. They propose that different types of diversity—social or informational—have potentially different impacts on a group’s performance. Thus, this article explains both positive and negative effects of diversity on issues such as turnover, innovation, job satisfaction, and performance ratings. We learn insights about how the relationship of diversity to communication, social integration, and conflict has what may seem to be surprising or contrary influence on performance.
The next article, “Learning to Lead, Unscripted: Developing Affiliative Leadership Through Improvisational Theatre,” is right up my alley! Ever since I coedited an issue of Advances in Developing Human Resources on using popular culture artifacts (such as fiction, movies, or television) to teach leadership (Callahan & Whitener, 2007), I have sought new and innovative alternative ways to help develop leaders. Gagnon and her colleagues offer such an innovative alternative approach. Their article brings to HRD a more collaborative, distributed—affiliative—form of leadership and proposes the use of improvisation to make it happen. Second City Improv in the training room—how fun!
In the third article, Schmidt and his colleagues point out that the field of HRD has few, and only relatively recent, works addressing the issues and needs of LGBT individuals. This is not unlike the literature on critical approaches to race and gender in HRD publications; however, LGBT issues are an even more recent addition to the discourse of diversity within the field of HRD. The first article about LGBT people to appear in an HRD journal was Gedro, Cervero, and Johnson-Bailey’s 2004 Human Resource Development International article on lesbians in corporate America. The data collected for Schmidt and his colleagues’ study ended in 2009 and, at that time, HRDR had not published any articles on LGBT issues. I’m happy to say, though, that Gedro was once again a pathbreaker as her HRDR article on the lavender ceiling was published in 2010 and was a finalist for the outstanding article of the year for the journal. As a whole, however, the leading publications of the field of HRD have published a mere baker’s dozen of articles directly addressing LGBT issues since the first HRD journal inauguration 23 years ago. Thus, not surprisingly, the authors note that HRD has tended to be reactive when confronting diversity issues for LGBT people.
The fourth article is another integrative literature review addressing LGB issues. Collins explores the intersection of leadership and lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity within the HRD literature. Thus, this issue has two articles exploring cutting edge approaches to leadership and two articles exploring LGB(T) issues within the HRD body of literature. Like the arguments made by Schmidt and his colleagues, Collins notes that HRD has not proactively explored how to create leadership environments that are inclusive for LGB people. Collins takes his integrative literature review a step further than most, however, by offering a model of LGB-inclusive leadership that can be used in leadership development programs or in organization development and culture change initiatives.
Finally, this issue concludes with a theory building research methods contribution. Wang’s article, accepted under the previous editor’s tenure, offers a quantitative approach to using formal language as a means to conduct comparative analyses within the field of HRD. While much research in the field uses the constant comparative method as an analytic technique for the natural language of qualitative research, Wang argues that a more systematic approach using formal language would strengthen comparative research in HRD.
I hope you enjoy and are challenged by this issue as much as I have been!