Human Resource Development Review ’s 20th Anniversary of Publication: Main Topics and Influence

Abstract

To celebrate Human Resource Development Review’s (HRDR’s) 20th anniversary of publication, I was asked by the HRDR Editor-in-Chief to conduct a topic analysis of HRDR articles over the past two decades. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to identify major topics from all HRDR articles published from 2002–2021 by reviewing keywords and citation frequency. After identifying 394 articles (excluding editorials), the main topics and the most influential articles were identified. Literature review articles followed by employee engagement were the most frequently cited over the past 20 years. In the future, there is a need to conduct more in-depth analysis to better understand the relevant topics and influence of HRDR articles using accurate categories and advanced techniques.

Keywords

HRD topics publication trends

Human Resource Development Review (HRDR) has promoted theory development and methods in HRD and related fields by publishing non-empirical research articles since its inception in 2002 (Cho, 2021a; Holton, 2002). As HRDR’s unique strengths are related to theory building, scholars have often referred to HRDR when analyzing HRD research (Jo et al., 2009; Shirmohammadi et al., 2021; Yoo et al., 2019).

To celebrate HRDR’s 20th anniversary of publication, I was asked by the Editor-in-Chief of HRDR to conduct a topic analysis of HRDR articles over the past two decades. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to identify major topics from all HRDR articles published from 2002–2021by reviewing keywords and citation frequency. The research questions guiding this study are as follows: What are the key research topics in articles published in HRDR? and What articles have been the most frequently cited?

To answer these questions, 394 articles (excluding editorials) were identified and analyzed based on titles and keywords. An Excel spreadsheet was created to organize the article information including title, year, first author, keywords, and citation frequency. For topic analysis, the titles and keywords of all articles were reviewed. Keywords were counted based on the frequency. Among the keywords, human resource development or HRD was excluded because it is too broad to identify specific topics. Citations were also counted to determine (a) the relationship between frequently mentioned keywords and cited articles; and (b) the influence of HRDR on academia. The sources of the citations of each article were identified using Google Scholar as of November 1, 2021.

In this article, I first provide a summary of the main research topics identified in HRDR based on the frequency of keywords and then present HRDR’s top 20 most frequently cited articles published from 2002–2021. I conclude with a discussion, implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research.

Main Research Topics

In this section, the main topics of 394 articles were analyzed based on their titles and keywords. A total of 1226 keywords were extracted excluding 85 keywords (human resource development or HRD). After analyzing the 1226 keywords, 11 main topics were identified: (1) research and theory, (2) employees and outcomes, (3) organization development, (4) learning, training, and development, (5) critical perspectives, (6) sectors, (7) cross-cultural perspectives, (8) leadership, (9) careers, (10) national HRD and policy, and (11) others (e.g., countries, names, society, and religion).

Each main topic included multiple subtopics based on relevance. For example, the critical perspectives topic (93 keywords) was the fifth topic according to the total number of the keywords in HRDR and had five subtopics: minorities (24 keywords), diversity and inclusion (23), gender and women (19), LGBT (18), and critical HRD (9). Keywords on minorities included ethnic minority, disability, older workers, to name a few. Similarly, all keywords were categorized into subtopics based on their relevance. Table 1 summarizes the main topics and subtopics of the 394 articles in order of keyword frequency.

Table 1.

Main Topics of HRDR Articles 2002–2021.

No	Main Topics (Number of Keywords)	Subtopics	Frequency of Keywords
1	Research and theory (293)	Research methods	80
		Theory building	68
		Theory	50
		Literature reviews	43
		Theory-to-Practice	27
		Disciplines (e.g., economics and psychology)	25
2	Employees and Outcomes (264)	Performance, competences, and skills	65
		Attitude and behavior	63
		Employee engagement	28
		Emotion and spirituality	26
		Workforce	22
		Work-life balance & well-being	19
		Organizational commitment	12
		Motivation	11
		Practitioners	10
		Turnover intention	8
3	Organization development (214)	Organization development	37
		Change and innovation	34
		Job and work	33
		Group and team	30
		Ethics and social responsibility	25
		Organizational culture	25
		Social capital and networks	23
		Strategies and strategic HR	22
		Technology	16
		Justice	7
		Systems	6
4	Learning, training, and development (138)	Learning	89
		Training	56
		Development	29
		Coaching and mentoring	27
		Knowledge	18
		Evaluation	8
5	Critical perspectives (93)	Minorities	24
		Diversity and inclusion	23
		Gender and women	19
		LGBT	18
		Critical HRD	9
6	Sectors (84)	Business and management	43
		Higher education	24
		Art and humanities	11
		Public sector	6
7	Cross-cultural perspectives (42)	Expatriates/Repatriates/Inpatriates/Immigration	11
		International HRD	8
		Cross-cultural adjustment	6
		Cultural/Global/Intercultural perspectives	6
		Cross-cultural training	3
		Cultural intelligence/Cultural due diligence	3
		Cultural socialization	3
		Cultural distance	2
8	Leadership (42)	Leadership	11
		Leadership development	8
		Leadership behavior/Skills/Style	4
		Transformational leadership	3
		Women’s leadership	3
		Global leadership	2
		Other leadership types	11
9	Careers (28)	Career development/Advancement	15
		Career transition	4
		Boundaryless careers/Protean careers	3
		Career motivation/Resilience/Success	3
		Careers	2
		Career-enhancing interventions	1
10	National HRD and policy (27)	National HRD	17
10	National HRD and policy (27)	Policy	10
11	Others (24)	Countries	12
		Names	6
		Society	4
		Religion	2

Most Cited Articles

Citation frequency assesses professional recognition and related value-added contributions in academia (Klein & Chiang, 2004; McCain, 1986). Therefore, examining the citation frequency of articles published in HRDR gives us an opportunity to understand the influence of articles on the HRD community and neighboring fields.

Table 2 shows the top 20 HRDR articles based on citation frequency. As indicated in Cho (2021b), Torraco’s (2005) Instructor’s Corner article on integrative literature review was the most frequently cited article. Most articles were published in the 2000s, while five articles were published in the 2010s. The main topics of the top 20 articles include literature review (3 articles), employee engagement (3), coaching (2), organizational change (2), and training (2), followed by employee attitudes and behaviors (e.g., burnout, hope, motivation, resiliency, and organizational commitment), competence, employability, and knowledge sharing.

Table 2.

HRDR’s Top 20 Most Frequently Cited Articles 2002–2021.

Citations	First Author (Pub. Year)	Title	Key Theme	HRDR Main Topic
2301	Torraco (2005)	Writing integrative literature reviews: Guidelines and examples	Integrative literature review	Research and theory
2232	Ipe (2003)	Knowledge sharing in organizations: A conceptual framework	Knowledge sharing	Employees and outcomes
1751	Burke & Hutchins (2007)	Training transfer: An integrative literature review	Training transfer	Learning, training, and development
1165	Shuck & Wollard (2008)	Employee engagement and HRD: A seminal review of the foundations	Employee engagement	Employees and outcomes
1079	Luthans et al. (2006)	Developing the psychological capital of resiliency	Resiliency	Employees and outcomes
699	Alvarez et al. (2004)	An integrated model of training evaluation and effectiveness	Training evaluation	Learning, training, and development
611	Joo (2005)	Executive coaching: A conceptual framework from an integrative review of practice and research	Executive coaching	Learning, training, and development
527	Shuck (2011)	Integrative literature review: Four emerging perspectives of employee engagement	Employee engagement	Employees and outcomes
526	Brewer & Shapard (2004)	Employee burnout: A meta-analysis of the relationship between age or years of experience	Employee burnout
522	Luthans & Jensen (2002)	Hope: A new positive strength for HRD	Hope
511	Rocco & Plakhotnik (2009)	Literature reviews, conceptual frameworks, and theoretical frameworks: Terms, functions, and distinctions	Literature reviews and conceptual and theoretical frameworks	Research and theory
500	Torraco (2016)	Writing integrative literature reviews: Using the past and present to explore the future	Integrative literature review	Research and theory
487	Choi & Ruana (2011)	Individual readiness for organizational change and its implications for human resource and organization development	Organizational change	Organization development
481	Sachau (2007)	Resurrecting the motivation-hygiene theory: Herzberg and the positive psychology movement	Motivation	Employees and outcomes
467	Thijssen et al. (2008)	Toward the employability–link model: Current employment transition to future employment perspectives	Employability
422	Stoof et al. (2002)	The boundary approach of competence: a Constructivist aid for understanding and using the concept of competence	Competence
419	Lines (2005)	The structure and function of attitudes toward organizational change	Organizational change	Organization development
394	Shuck &Herd (2012)	Employee engagement and leadership: Exploring the convergence of two frameworks and implications for leadership development in HRD	Employee engagement	Employees and outcomes
385	Mercurio (2015)	Affective commitment as a core essence of organizational commitment: An integrative literature review	Organizational commitment	Employees and outcomes
377	D’Abate et al. (2003)	What’s in a name? a literature-based approach to understanding mentoring, coaching, and other constructs that describe developmental interactions	Mentoring and coaching	Learning, training, and development

Table 2 also shows the relationship between key themes in most frequently cited articles and the main topics in HRDR (in Table 1), including three articles focusing on research and theory (Rocco & Plakhotnik, 2009; Torraco, 2005, 2016), 11 articles on employees and their outcomes (Brewer & Shapard, 2004; Ipe, 2003; Mercurio, 2015; Luthans & Jensen, 2002; Luthans et al.,2006; Sachau, 2007; Shuck, 2011; Shuck & Herd, 2012; Shuck & Wollard, 2008; Stoof et al., 2002; Thijssen et al., 2008), two articles on organization development-related topics (Choi & Ruona, 2011; Lines, 2005), and four articles on learning, training, and development (Alvarez et al., 2004; Burke & & Hutchins, 2007; D’Abate et al., 2003; Joo, 2005).

Discussion

The major topics presented in this article highlight that HRDR has paid considerable attention to theory and research topics, such as research methods (80 keywords), theory building (68), theory (50), literature reviews (43), and the link between theory and practice (27), and disciplines (25). Research methods included basic research areas (e.g., epistemology, methodologies, research questions, research design, and validity), quantitative (e.g., factor analysis, measures, and meta-analysis), qualitative (e.g., autoethnography, ethnography, and phenomenology), and mixed methods. Theory focused on specific theories adopted in HRD (e.g., activity theory, learning theory, and resource-based theory). Theory building articles included theoretical foundations and theory development in HRD. Literature reviews included both general and specific types of reviews such as integrative, systematic, scoping, and structured literature reviews. Articles on the link between scholars and practitioners have focused on reducing the gap between them. Disciplines included HRD-related disciplines (e.g., economics and psychology).

The study findings are consistent with HRDR’s focus and its four types of non-empirical research articles (theory and conceptual articles, theory building research methods articles, foundations of HRD articles, and literature reviews) (Holton, 2002). HRDR has covered topics that have been commonly addressed in HRD (e.g., careers, learning, leadership, organization development, and performance) by allowing scholars to explore existing topics (e.g., employee behaviors and outcomes, training and development) and emerging topics (e.g., minority-related issues and diversity and inclusion) through non-empirical research articles.

Citation frequency analysis indicates that HRDR articles have been cited in diverse areas. For example, literature reviews (Torraco, 2005, 2016) have been cited more than 2800 times over the past 20 years. Research articles on employee engagement (Shuck, 2011; Shuck & Herd, 2012; Shuck & Wollard, 2008) have been cited more than 2000 times. Knowledge sharing (Ipe, 2003), training transfer (Burke & Hutchins, 2007), and resiliency (Luthans et al., 2006) have been cited more than 1000 times. Articles on major areas in HRD (e.g., training and development and organization development) have also been frequently cited. For instance, coaching (988 times) (D’Abate et al., 2003; Joo, 2005), organizational change (906 times) (Choi & Ruona, 2011; Lines, 2005), and training evaluation (699 times) (Alvarez et al., 2004) have been commonly cited topics in HRD (Shirmohammadi et al., 2021).

Among the 11 main topics (Table 1), articles on several topics (e.g., critical perspectives, cross-cultural perspectives, leadership, careers, and national HRD) were not counted as frequently cited articles (Table 2) because of the cutoff number (top 20). The extended list indicated that articles discussing these topics have had numerous citations including cross-cultural training (361 citations, the 23rd) (Littrell et al., 2006), team diversity (358 citations, the 24th) (Horwitz, 2005), leadership (267 citations, the 34th) (Carasco-Saul et al., 2015), career development (221 citations, the 38th) (McDonald & Hite, 2005), and national HRD (90 citations, the 98th) (Wang & Swanson, 2008).

Limitations and Recommendations

In this study, citation frequency provides descriptive information on the total citations over 20 years, which means that articles cited less than the top 20 articles were excluded regardless of their quality and significance. For example, Manuel London is among the most productive authors who has published eight articles on group/team learning in HRDR over the past two decades (e.g., London et al., 2005; London & Sessa, 2006). However, given that the total citations of his eight articles were less than 500 times, his work was not included in Table 2. Overlooking these seemingly important authors may be a downside of this descriptive approach to citation frequency.

In addition, I took a broad approach to categorizing topics and keywords. For instance, literature reviews in this study included both literature reviews and conceptual articles, although these two types of articles are quite different. In addition, performance, competence, and skills, for example, were categorized as one group for convenience. The same keywords used in different contexts (e.g., communication in organizational change and group process) were also not identified. These category criteria of research topics may have affected the findings of this study.

In the future, network analysis can be used for more advanced analysis to determine the dynamic trends of the keywords in articles and citations of key articles and concepts. Citation network analysis can help scholars observe the overall influence of the top 20 articles in academia, for instance, to determine if the top 20 articles have been widely cited within HRD or across disciplines. For a more in-depth analysis of research topics, keyword network analysis could be adopted to understand the connections and extension among keywords. The same keywords can be reviewed and identified according to topics and contexts.

For further study, this review could lead to a possible research agenda to address several important questions such as (a) What topics have been excluded over the past 10 years and need to be included in the next 10 years in HRDR? (b) What are the research trends in HRDR in terms of topics? and How are HRDR articles and topics unique compared to previous studies on HRD research trends? (c) Which HRDR articles are most frequently cited across and over diverse disciplines? and (d) Compared to other theory journals in related fields, what topics and perspectives are dominant in HRDR? How can these characteristics help HRDR elevate its position in academia and beyond HRD?

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sunyoung Park

Author Biography

Sunyoung Park is an associate professor in the School of Leadership and Human Resource Development at Louisiana State University. Her research interests include organizational culture and behavior, learning and performance, and HRD research trends.

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