Reflection on the Past Three Years (2020-2023)

What We Have Accomplished

During our term, we have accomplished the following:

• We published an anniversary issue with articles celebrating 20 years of growth in HRDR (Cho et al., 2022).

What We Are Missing

Five HRD journals (Advances in Developing Human Resources, European Journal of Training and Development, HRDI, Human Resource Development Quarterly, and HRDR) publish articles on: formal/informal/organizational learning, training & development, career development, organization development, leadership development, learning/training transfer, diversity, critical HRD, and technology (Cho & Zachmeier, 2015; Shirmohammadi et al., 2021; Yoon & Chae, 2022), all of which are common HRD topics at individual, team, and organizational levels but not beyond. There is a strong need to expand the boundary-spanning HRD research to fill the gap between research and practice through embracing more socially and globally impactful and actionable research topics for theory building in HRD. Future research agendas, therefore, call for attention to:

• Transformation of HRD research, education, and practice

A group of HRD scholars have held a symposium on the transformation of HRD research, education, and practice at the 2023 Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) Conference (March in Minneapolis, USA) and the 2023 University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD) Conference (June in Dublin, Ireland) to critically review the current state and to envision the future (Kuchinke et al., 2023; Lundgren et al., 2023), asking the following questions:

• Are we asking the right questions for the transformation of HRD research?

In his keynote speech at the UFHRD Conference, Garavan (2023) argued that HRD research lacks in “addressing big social challenges and generating policy implications,” based on a review of articles on the topic published in five HRD journals. To move forward to investigating such uncharted topics, he suggests using the UN’s SDGs (e.g., SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth) as research frameworks for HRD research as Zarestky and Collins (2017) suggested addressing the UN’s SDGs in international HRD research years before.

Diversity research in HRD has recently been a sought-after topic and still is; however, it has largely been race- and gender-focused (Triana et al., 2021) but is limited beyond that. Although intersectionality (Rodriguez et al., 2016) surfaced as manifesting the complexity of diversity, we still don’t sufficiently pay attention to “forgotten minorities in organizations” (Stone et al., 2023): people with psychological and other types of disabilities (e.g., Kwon, 2023), veterans (Carpenter & Silberman, 2020), Native Americans (Grann, 2017), indigenous people (Buergelt et al., 2022), people who have a criminal history (Western, 2018), and the working poor (Torraco, 2016).

To not stay stagnant in the current HRD research and contribute to HRD practice, journal editors and senior scholars in HRD are called on to set the stage for the missed research topics by asking the right questions: who and what is research for (Davis, 2015; Hoffman, 2021; Tsui, 2022)? Why do we need theory (Gray, 2023; Reinecke et al., 2022)? And what does the transformation of HRD research mean, for what purposes, for whom, and in what contexts?

Words of Gratitude

HRDR’s impact factor has continuously increased during our term as follows:

OPEN IN VIEWER

Year	2019	2020	2021	2022
Impact Factor	2.765	4.742	6.273	6.4

This positive trajectory of the journal’s impact factor has been made possible by the quality articles published, which were developed in the extended review process by our outstanding editorial team of three Associate Editors (AEs): Meera Alagaraja from the University of Louisville, Julie Davies from University College London, UK, and Hyung Joon Yoon from Penn State University, along with Managing Editors (MEs) Zandra Boise (Year 1) and Beth Hyatt (Years 2 and 3) and Media Editor Ryan Riojas from the University of Texas at Tyler. My daily working partner, Beth Hyatt, reflects:

I recall the time when the Editor-in-Chief (EIC), Yonjoo Cho, approached me with an opportunity to fill the role of ME for HRDR in August of 2021 while I was about to start my second year as a doctoral student. I was ecstatic about the opportunity to delve into the publishing world of academia. I thought this was my opportunity to engage with leading HRD scholars and to get a first-hand look of what the peer review process entailed. I also considered how taking on this role would most certainly develop my skills as I work towards publishing future research of my own. To my surprise, my experience as ME at HRDR went much further than that. I gained so much from reading each of the submissions regardless of whether they reached publication or not. I learned about HRD areas where we could use more HRD research, such as indigenous and historical research. I particularly enjoyed learning theory development in HRD. Observing and managing Wang and Doty’s (2022) article on theorizing HRD practices stands out as leading HRD scholars assigned to review the manuscript held strong, varying viewpoints. Under the EIC’s leadership, HRDR saw a surge in Instructor’s Corner articles, which have greatly helped me as a doctoral student understand diverse HRD research topics with ease and clarity. I hope that the new editorial team will continue this tradition. From the administrative side of my work, I gained a greater appreciation for the time and effort that HRD scholars took out of their busy schedule to offer critical reviews and articulation as to how we handled making challenging decisions on manuscripts. My knowledge grew tremendously from their feedback on submitted manuscripts.

We deeply appreciate our EB members’ continued support and quality reviews. Mina Beigi from the University of Southampton, UK, Darlene Russ-Eft from Purdue University, and Victoria Marsick from Columbia University Teachers College are just three of many EB members supporting us whenever needed. Sage Publishing Editor Amy Quon, Km Ranjana from the review team, and Aravind Dhanasekar from the production team were very instrumental to publish the journal issues on time. My heartfelt thanks go to former editors’ vision, commitment, and hard work to have made HRDR grow more than expected over the past two decades.

Finally, we welcome the incoming editorial team led by the EIC, Tom Garavan who is an outstanding HRD scholar and has decades of experience as a veteran editor in HRD journals. No doubt, he will make the journal truly global by forming a team of diverse AEs and EB members and strengthen HRDR’s foundational base to stay focused steadfastly on theory building in HRD by his expertise, commitment, and leadership.