Grounding and Deepening Academic Writing in Human Resource Development: The Role of Selecting and Representing the Supporting Literature

Role and Function of the Existing Literature in Academic Writing

It is well understood that the process of writing a manuscript includes a review of the existing literature on a given topic, followed by the selection of a smaller set, here labeled supporting literature, for in-text reference and direct or indirect citation. To use an architectural metaphor, the supporting literature should provide a solid foundation and strong internal framing, while the new knowledge gained from empirical or theoretical research gives the unique shape of a new building. The frequency of in-text use of direct and indirect quotes and the often-lengthy reference list at the end of an academic manuscript underscore the importance of the supporting literature. In an empirical research paper, for example, supporting literature sources appear in the introduction to develop the context of the study, argue for its significance, describe its theoretical foundation, and situate research questions and hypotheses. In the subsequent sections of a typical empirical article, an extended review of literature presents the supporting literature in detail, followed by references related to research design and methodological matters. Finally, the conclusion section places the findings into the context of prior studies, arguing for any value the study can add, and proposing remaining questions for future research. This protocol serves to connect new to existing knowledge and to expand the body of knowledge in a given field. It further serves the important function of anchoring the author’s thoughts in a specific scholarly tradition, to establish their academic identity and expertise, and to help build the body of knowledge, insight, and understanding. It is for these reasons, that the selection and representation of the supporting literature are no trivial matters. Academic articles, books and book chapters, research reports, and other forms of publication are data points, not in the narrow quantitative sense of, for example, a statistical table, but as data representing prior studies, theoretical frameworks, conceptual insight, and other matters of fact or assertion. And as other forms of data, the supporting literature deserves forms of rigor and relevance similar to those advocated by Reio (2023) for visibility and reputation of HRD authors, journals, and the collective body of research in our field.

While much as written about the expectations for empirical data, such as trustworthiness, reliability, and validity, far less has been written about the quality characteristics of the supporting literature in academic writing. Guidelines on the academic genre of reviews of literature, such as structured, integrated, and scoping (Rocco et al., 2023), offer elaborate criteria on the boundaries of a given review as well as the treatment of a set of potential articles and other sources (for a good example of a careful treatment of the literature in a systematic review of literature, see Hauk & Gröschner, 2022). Outside of this genre, however, authors are left to their own devices when crafting a manuscript and are faced with a typically very large body of existing research on a given topic. Here, they need to decide how to select from among the many potentially relevant sources and how to connect prior research to their own focus area.

Two characteristics in our field and the wider social and human sciences account for the lack of attention to the matter of selecting and representing the supporting literature. First, HRD draws on the widest possible range of disciplines, including psychology, management, education, sociology, history, philosophy, and economics, and their associated and growing number of applied fields and specialization. At the same time, what counts as the domain literature in our field is not well articulated, and most core theories and conceptual frameworks are derived and adapted from the contributing fields of study. It is not uncommon, for example, to see research articles in the leading HRD journals based to a large degree on research outside of our field, and to contain few, if any references to the HRD literature. Even though the Academy of HRD has identified eight domains of practice, such as strategic HRD and organization development (Academy of Human Resource Development, 2023), these domains overlap substantially with other fields, such as strategic management and micro-organization behavior. The leading journals and research conferences in the field, further, do not structure their publications and presentations along those domains, making it difficult to discern the development of depth and breadth in a given area or track the emergence of a unique body of HRD research in its own right. The result, then, is the impression that most anything in the wider arena of the social and human sciences can be marshalled in support of HRD research, further diluting the articulation of domain-specific knowledge and calling into question the grounds for HRD as a unique and valuable academic area. The success and longevity of academic fields is based on the development of unique bodies of theoretical and applied knowledge not already available elsewhere (Hambrick & Chen, 2008). While higher education scholars have long challenged the tight disciplinary boundaries around academic fields (Clark, 1983), few would argue against the standing of HRD as a unique academic field distinct from its contributing areas of study, and this makes the articulation and further development of HRD-specific research critical for the future of the field.

A second characteristic impacting the selection of the supporting literature for an HRD manuscript is the strong growth in the number of academic and practitioner-level publications coupled with the ease of access through online search engines and data bases. Bibliometric research shows an average annual growth rate of over four percent for the physical and life sciences resulting in a doubling time of English-language published academic knowledge about every 17 years (Bornmann et al., 2021). Similar trends exist in the social sciences. Savage and Olejniczak (2022) investigated the publication record of university faculty at 290 doctoral granting institutions in the US and found a mean rates of increase in journal publications in 12 social science fields of 38% over the 10-year period between 2011 and 2019, ranging from a low of three percent for economics to highs of 64 and 61% for educational psychology and social work respectively.

The magnitude of published new knowledge is accompanied by the virtually complete shift to electronic publications and the demise of printed journals and, increasingly, academic books. According to the Associate Dean for Collections at the University of Illinois, the change to electronic publishing began during the early 2000s. Towards the end of that decade, most large academic publishers, such as Wiley, Sage, and Taylor & Francis had switched from printed journals and catalog indexing to electronic articles, online data bases, and internet-based access to full text versions (Teper, personal communication, June 22, 2022). For prior generations of students and scholars, including the present author, the process of searching for relevant literature meant long hours spent in university libraries: pulling bound journals from reference shelves, one volume at a time, for page-by-page copying, searching through catalog index cards and filling out request forms for the librarian to retrieve from the stacks or order it through inter-library loans. While this process might have promoted a more deliberate engagement with a smaller number of sources, today’s online access allows researchers access to vast numbers of publications very quickly. To illustrate, a search on Google Scholar (March 28, 2023) for publications on the term leadership between 1980 and 2023 resulted in 1,620,000 sources in a matter of .07 seconds, each fully referenced and available in abstract or even full text formats.

The increasing volume of publications in fields contributing to HRD and the vastly more efficient ease of access has made the identification of existing literature on a given topic and the selection of the smaller set of the supporting literature easier than ever before. At the same time, scholars must decide and choose: how wide to cast the net? When to stop searching for additional sources? How to select the salient and relevant few from the magnitude of potentially equally important publications? How to achieve the goal of saturation of background reading and comprehensive coverage of relevant literature given the vast and growing body of research?

Historians of science consider the nineteenth-century German physicist Herman von Helmholz the last polymath, a scholar with comprehensive understanding of a wide variety of scientific fields (Nature, 2018). Given the growth of publications, the splintering of academic fields into subfields, and the ease of access to material published world-wide, a comprehensive coverage on given topic is no longer feasible. A deductive search strategy for a literature review—surveying the universe of published research on a topic and then selecting relevant studies, is impossible. The default, then, is an inductive approach—beginning with a small number of publications on a topic, for example recent research, annual reviews, topical journal issues, and dissertations, and moving outward from the reference lists to new material. Pragmatic as this approach to selecting existing sources is, it all but guarantees a partial review of the existing literature as well as partiality or even bias of the supporting literature for a new manuscript. Unavoidable as this state of affairs is, the role of the supporting literature when crafting a new manuscript is too important to leave to chance. The selection of source material should not be an arbitrary undertaking. The following criteria encourage authors to be mindful when selecting the literature base for a new piece of academic writing paper, and to allow readers to glean the rationale for the choices made in the process of research and writing.

Selecting and Representing the Supporting Literature

Because of the importance grounding a new piece of academic writing in the scholarly literature, the selection and representation of the supporting literature deserves a degree of diligence not unlike that accorded to empirical data; in-text references and direct or indirect citations of prior studies are, after all, records of prior research and, as such, should be relevant and trustworthy. The growth of academic publications, ease of access, and multi-disciplinary nature of HRD present authors with an embarrassment of riches of potential sources, and the selection and representation of the supporting literature should be purposeful rather than haphazard. The three criteria discussed in the following paragraphs offer principles for selecting material from the existing literature; authors are encouraged to consider questions of fit, relevance, and commensurability, and to be judicious and transparent when representing the supporting literature in a new manuscript.

Conclusion

Boundary issues and conflicts over ownership academic lines of research are endemic to multi-disciplinary fields and particularly so in areas that address complex and fast-moving features in social and organizational life. HRD is no exception, and some scholars have pointed to the folly of artificially setting boundaries around our domain (Lee, 2004). At the same time, however, our field is anchored institutionally through its professional associations, academic programs, faculty appointments, academic journals, and conferences that educate and support HRD researchers and HRD practitioners. Against this background, it matters what scholars mean when they write about human resource development, and this short article aims at encouraging greater clarity about the fit of a new manuscript with our field. Knowledge gain in the sciences is incremental, and scholars, new and experienced, position their work in what has been written before, they do so in substantial manner and in virtually all sections of a typical manuscript. In referring and citing prior research, authors position themselves in specific intellectual traditions, carrying those traditions forward in a new publication, and offering the basis for future scholarship on a given topic. Collectively, then, HRD authors contribute to what might be called the body of research in our field, and it is in this respect that the selection of the supporting literature should not be haphazard. Rather, the overall goal should be one of building out the knowledge base in HRD and contribute to the mission of leading the field through research.

Given these understandings of the role and responsibility of authors in building out our field, the selection and representation of the supporting literature has received little attention in the literature, nor have the field’s gatekeepers, such as members of journal review boards, editors, and conference reviewers, offered more than vague criteria for doing so. This article focused on three suggestions: first, to encourage authors to situate their work clearly in the context of HRD, to communicate their understanding of our field, to select supporting literature to back up their stance, and to argue for the relevance when referring or citing material from outside of HRD. A second suggestion is to clarify the fit of a given paper with one of the HRD practice domains, to position it in the context of our field of practice, and to select the supporting literature accordingly. Third, I argued that authors have a responsibility to clarify the value base of their scholarship and, again, use supporting literature that speaks to specific communicative interests the paper is pursuing. While positionality statements are common in some forms of research and while critical research is often transparent in this respect, all forms of writing pursue goals and interests, and it is a matter of intellectual honesty to be transparent, if only to issue the invitation for alternative points of view rather than foreclose future debates through ex-cathedra pronouncements.

The three elements discussed here should not complicate the already arduous work of academic writing but offer guidance for selecting literature from the vast store of existing research in support of their work. In addition to considering fit with our field, practice domain, and value stance, authors should also be discerning about further issues, that are beyond the scope of the present paper. They include considerations about the level of recency—the age of empirical and conceptual literature to be included as well as the appropriate use of what is considered classic texts (for a bibliometric discussion on the impact of older scholarly articles, see Verstak et al., 2014). In addition, authors are frequently encouraged to read and cite original scholarly sources, but there are circumstances when secondary and even tertiary literature sources are appropriate, for example when referencing non-English publications, ancient texts, or philosophical frameworks, such as existentialism and phenomenology. A third consideration relates to the principle of parsimony in references and citations. It is preferable to include fewer rather than a multitude of redundant references and address their content in-depth. Here, Reio’s (2021) paper on critiquing empirical studies is a good example: the author provides detailed summaries of a smaller number of relevant articles in his review of the background literature, demonstrating not only his careful reading of the sources cited, but also offering detailed information to the reader.

The selection and representation of the supporting literature should receive greater attention, and here the role of the academy’s gatekeepers is important. Academic writing and thesis development instructors as well as HRD faculty teaching advanced courses should encourage their students to carefully review available literature source and select them according to their fit with our field, its practice domains, and their communicative interest. Journal and conference paper reviewers should be encouraged to pay closer attention to the quality of the supporting literature when providing feedback to authors. Journal editors should offer encouragement when inducting new reviewers and also revise manuscript evaluation rubrics.

HRD has emerged as a field in its own right, but its continued growth will depend on the ability of HRD scholars to articulate a unique body of applied and theoretical and applied knowledge not already present elsewhere. Given the broad range of HRD practice, the far more developed research infrastructure of other social science disciplines and associated applied fields, scholarship from contributing fields will continue to be important and relevant, but their fit as well as their limitation for HRD need to be argued for rather than unquestionably taken for granted.