Abstract
This issue of Human Resource Development Review (HRDR) offers an interesting array of new and innovative ideas, provocative suggestions for future research, and interesting challenges to the way we think about the scholarship and practice of human resource development (HRD). The topics include mentoring, offshore outsourcing, stress, organizational learning, and autoethnography. One of the common threads in the articles is a call to understand or examine HRD phenomenon in a different way. Each article accomplishes this goal a bit differently, and it is interesting to examine the different strategies used in the articles to make scholarly contributions.
Two of the articles could be said to follow a traditional path to generate new knowledge by building on past scholarship and combining old ideas in new ways. The other three articles seem to rely on more contemporary practices for new knowledge generation. One article uses language to propel a new idea forward, one argues that new knowledge is generated only when the researcher adopts different understandings of a phenomena, and one offers an evocative performance to convey new knowledge advancement. Taken as a whole, these different strategies provide us with different examples of the intellectual ferment within the discipline of HRD, and all offer compelling evidence that the scholarship of HRD is flourishing in this early part of the 21st century. I provide a brief overview of each of the contributions below.
In “Emotionally Intelligent Mentoring: Reconceptualizing Effective Mentoring Relationships,” Rose Opengart and Laura Bierema illustrate the value of emotional intelligence (EI) to mentoring. Through a systematic literature review, the authors suggest that EI affects the mentoring relationship and influences the experience of both the mentor and protégé. The article proposes a model of emotionally intelligent mentoring (EIM) that places EI as a moderator within mentoring relationships. Through a comprehensive presentation of research-based evidence, the authors provide a compelling argument for re-thinking EI and how it matters to mentoring. The article concludes with focused suggestions for future empirical HRD research.
Valerie Anderson, in “International HRD and Offshore Outsourcing: A Conceptual Review and Research Agenda,” challenges us to reconsider the typical “headquarters perspective” used to understand offshore outsourcing. The article examines relevant international HRD (IHRD) and outsourcing theories to identify potential connections and synergies between the two literatures. This review and analysis generated a conceptual framework that integrates the IHRD and the offshore outsourcing literatures. The article concludes with an IHRD research agenda to examine the HRD effects and contributions of offshore outsourcing arrangements for both provider and client organizations.
Wendy Becker, Matthew Hargrove, and Debra Hargrove upend the typical accounts of stress as bad. Instead, the authors argue that HRD—through positive stress called eustress—can help challenge employees to attain goals and personal development. Their article, titled “The HRD Eustress Model: Generating Positive Stress With Challenging Work,” presents a model that extends theory from positive psychology and positive organizational behavior to improve individual and organizational performance. Through a focused review of the literature, the authors re-frame the conversation about individual and organizational stress from something to be avoided into a potential source of energy for individual and organizational growth and development.
Irina Popova-Nowak and Maria Cseh, in “The Meaning of Organizational Learning: A Meta-Paradigm Perspective,” present a meta-paradigm framework of organizational learning that accounts for the complexities found within organizational learning as well as connections between its levels (group, organizational, and inter-organizational). The authors suggest that HRD scholars and practitioners need to develop “multiple mutually complementing frames of reference” (page 301) that transcend mono-paradigm viewpoints and perspectives. Grounded in a postmodern perspective of paradigms, the authors followed a three-step process for developing the multi-paradigm framework and present organizational learning from functionalist, constructionist, critical, and postmodern perspectives. The authors conclude with both research and practice suggestions, most notably, to boldly assert that multi-paradigm views in HRD can enhance our ability to reconcile alternative research agendas, build tolerance for diversity of thought, and foster inclusivity instead of exclusivity in our research designs, epistemological positions, and ontological beliefs.
Finally, Robin Grenier, in “Autoethnography as a Legitimate Approach to HRD Research: A Methodological Conversation at 30,000 Feet,” challenges the field of HRD to expand its methodological approaches, to be rebellious, and to look beyond its standard research procedures. Grenier presents a compelling case that autoethnographic methods are well suited to the challenges of exploring organizational and work life as well as fertile ground for developing new theories of HRD. This article advocates for a reflexive ethnographic approaches, the use of rich data sources, and non-traditional approaches to qualitative inquiry. Using innovative rhetorical strategies, Grenier follows in the footsteps of Carol Ellis and Art Bochner by blurring the distinction between scholarship and literary non-fiction to offer a new form of scholarly performance for HRD.
Taken as a whole, these articles offer compelling evidence that the intellectual currents within HRD continue to run both deep and wide, with no sign of eddies or calm blue. HRD scholars continue to problematize taken-for-granted assumptions, continue to push at the limits of tradition, and continue to conjure up well-argued and well-reasoned claims for new ways of thinking about the things that matter to HRD. It is a pleasure to ride these waves as your Editor, and I hope you find the articles in this issue as provocative, compelling, and challenging as I.
Happy reading!