Abstract
Ten years ago (March, 2002), the first issue of Human Resource Development Review was published. As we conclude this decennial year of the journal, I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect a bit on the journey of the journal. In this brief editorial, I will first share a bit about the history of the journal. I will also comment upon the content that has appeared in the journal—the themes and authors that have dominated the pages over the past decade. Finally, as we begin our second decade of publication, I will reflect upon the future of Human Resource Development Review (HRDR).
I remember being a relatively new assistant professor serving on the Board of Directors for the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD) in late 1999 when Richard A. Swanson presented a proposal to initiate a fourth journal sponsored by the association. One of Dick’s primary priorities was to build theory unique to the field of HRD, and the proposed journal was designed to do just that. At the time, I had a few concerns. Was our association robust enough to support four journals? Did we need a journal dedicated to theory? Would we receive manuscripts for consideration, or would the older, more established journals outpace HRDR?
It turns out there was no need for concern! The journal was officially launched with Sage Publications just a few short years later and has earned its place as a respected outlet for theoretical and conceptual manuscripts about issues of interest for the field of HRD. As Torraco and Yorks (2007) noted, “HRDR was created to fulfill the vision to provide a publication outlet for the best theoretical research to advance HRD as a scholarly discipline and field of professional practice” (p. 4). More specifically, the place of HRDR is that of “a theory journal for scholars of human resource development and related disciplines. HRD publishes articles that make theoretical contributions to theory development, foundations of HRD, theory building methods, and integrative reviews of the literature, as well as addressing philosophies of HRD, historical foundations, definitions of the field, conceptual organization of the field, and ethical foundations” (http://hrd.sagepub.com/).
To shepherd the journal through this mission of being “the” theory journal for the field of HRD, there have been six members of the editorial teams of the past decade. The first Editor was Elwood F. Holton, III and his Associate Editor was Richard Torraco. When Rich took the helm of the journal from Ed, Lyle Yorks came on as Associate Editor. Lyle was unable to assume the editorship when Rich’s term ended, so the baton was passed to Thomas G. Reio as Editor, and to me as Associate Editor. When Tom stepped down last year, I took the reins of the journal as Editor and Julia Storberg-Walker has joined me as Associate Editor.
Under the guidance of each of us, the journal published a wide variety of articles—literature reviews, conceptual frameworks, historical foundations, theory-building, and more. Several distinct themes of topics did emerge in the volumes of the journal since 2002, and I will highlight the top four themes as I perceived them. Over 30 articles specifically addressed issues of learning—continuous, informal, transformational, and more. As Ruona (2000) found in her study of the core foundations of the field of HRD, learning is consistently identified as a vital foundation for the field. Thus, it is not surprising that there have been more articles about various types of learning than any other topic. Related to learning, the topic of development also dominates the pages of the journal. Individual and organization development, and change are also frequent topics within the journal. These articles typically focused on systemic level change and the barriers or facilitators of development within and by organizations. Of interest to me, and my own research agenda, emotion-related topics also figure prominently in published journal articles. Article topics associated with emotion range from emotional intelligence to affect to resilience to stress and beyond. Finally, rounding out the top four topics found in the journal over the past 10 years were articles discussing methods. The majority of these were associated with theory-building methods—how to use a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches to build theories relevant to HRD. However, some were how-to articles for writing the types of articles published in HRDR. Torraco’s (2005) article on writing integrative literature reviews and my own follow up article (Callahan, 2010) focusing on how to structure a methods section for an integrative literature review are but two examples. In fact, Torraco’s article is distinguished as one of the most downloaded articles in the history of the journal.
In addition to the significant topics that appeared frequently in the journal, there were also a number of authors who have been consistent contributors whose works have influenced the field. Five authors contributed at least half a dozen articles to the pages of the journal since 2002—Thomas Chermack, Thomas Garavan, Manuel London, Tonette Rocco, and Greg Wang. Chermack’s articles primarily focused on issues of strategy and planning, he is perhaps most well-known for his work on scenario planning. Garavan has contributed works that have a particular focus on strategic HRD, developmental relationships, and social capital; several of his works draw upon his first article in HRDR about levels of analysis in HRD, one of the most frequently downloaded articles of the journal. London’s seven articles are consistently about group development and learning. Rocco’s work may be best described in two streams; one focuses on marginalized work populations (aging and LGBT workers) and the other focuses on issues of individual development within the context of organizational cultures. Finally, Wang’s articles center on national HRD and the role of economics in HRD. It is authors like these whose prolific contributions have both supported the journal and influenced the field. We very much appreciate their scholarship and hope to see more articles from them in our second decade of publication.
These and other articles influenced me and my desire to be part of the leadership of HRDR.Since I transitioned to Editor of the journal, the editorial team has been quite busy. We began the year by switching our management system to SageTrack, making it easier for us to manage our reviewing and publishing processes and, we hope, making it easier for our authors and reviewers to participate in the dialogue of the journal. New this year is our Outstanding Reviewer Award, sponsored by Sage Publications. Our first outstanding reviewer of the year was Dr. Rajashi Ghosh, whose insightful and timely reviews have helped us and our HRDR authors to produce outstanding articles. As you’ll see in this issue, we have brought back invited responses to select articles. Only once before has HRDR used the invited response, and we are delighted to bring back the practice in this issue. And, in this issue, we have our first, of hopefully several, regional history of HRD with Jim Stewart and Sally Sambrook’s article on the history of HRD in the United Kingdom. We believe that instructors of HRD foundations or international HRD courses will find such histories useful in their classes.
We still have some new things planned for HRDR that are currently in the works, and which may already be up and running by the time you read this. First, with the help of an ad hoc committee of Editorial Board members John Dirkx, Marijke Kehrhahn, and Lyle Yorks, we have created a new reviewer feedback and scoring sheet that fits within the system parameters of SageTrack, and still provides the level of detail needed for the various types of articles HRDR publishes. SageTrack uses a special database for maintaining reviewer information, to include the keywords for reviewer topic preferences. During this past year, we spent a significant amount of time uploading and revising our keyword database. We now have the ability to ask all of our reviewers to update their contact information and keywords so that we can best match submitted manuscripts to their topics of interest for reviewing.
As we round out our first decade of publication, much of the work we have done this year is “behind the scenes.” I wanted to share these logistical details with you because they are changing the way we are able to provide a service to both our readers and our authors. Our new processes have taken some time to learn, but our ability to move manuscripts into and through the review process to publication has significantly improved because of the opportunities afforded to us through the online management system.
In closing, I hope our next decade of publication will continue the themes of learning and development which have marked the identity of the journal in its first 10 years of publication. In my first editorial as editor of HRDR, I called for greater diversity of manuscript submissions; we are beginning to see that, especially with regard to epistemological diversity. I hope we continue to see articles that emanate from multiple paradigmatic perspectives and from authors of multiple national origins and fields of practice. I also called for a greater diversity of types of manuscripts that challenge us to dialogue and think more reflectively about the nature of our research and practice. To spur such dialogue, I round out this last issue of the decennial with an invited response series and would like to see more of these thought-provoking pieces in our next decade.
Here’s to another 10 great years of Human Resource Development Review. I hope you’ll join us on our continued journey into the theories, concepts, and histories that inform research and practice within our field!