Editorial

In its short history of four years, the journal is running its second special issue. The first special issue on Gender (In)equalities in South Asia in June 2015 was a resounding success with high-quality articles on a critical topic, thanks to the efforts of the guest editors. This second special issue has its own origin.

When I was approached last year by my current university whether I would be interested in leading a Australian government-funded training project on human resource development (HRD) in Bhutan, I knew very little about the country, except that it is a tiny Himalayan kingdom nestled between two giant neighbours and famous for its gross national happiness index. Context is critical in HRM and therefore, the trainers needed to familiarize themselves quickly before the Bhutanese managers from different industry sectors arrived in Australia for training.

Bhutan’s population is tiny (750,000), but the HRD issues and challenges are not much different than other comparable countries. It has a rich cultural history. Its political system changed in 2008 from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy. Bhutan still remains a largely rural and agrarian economy. Its economy is heavily dependent on natural resources and hydro power that have made it a lower middle-income country. It is heavily dependent on India in almost all aspects of its economic and foreign policy.

Public sector jobs dominate the formal labour market, accounting for one-fifth of all jobs and are highly coveted by the educated class to the extent that the private sector is struggling to survive due to its inability to attract talent. There are significant skill shortages and skill mismatches. Literacy is quite low and youth unemployment is on the rise.

One of the key HRD issues in the context of Bhutan is that any HR policy and practice should keep in mind the collectivist culture of Bhutan which has significant impact on work values, expectations and outcomes. For example, in analysing the failure of public sector reforms in Bhutan, Ugyel (2016, p. 2) makes a special mention of the performance management system that focused on “… outputs, and incentive systems based on the achievement of those outputs (which) are mostly designed to work in an individualistic cultural setting” and failed to work in a collectivistic society of Bhutan.

According to Bhutan’s National Workforce Plan (NWFP, 2016), key HRD challenges include:

The recommended reforms by the World Bank (2016) include:

One of the distinguishing features of Bhutan is its gross national happiness concept. This special issue features many articles on this concept. It is for this reason we decided to extend the scope of the special issue to include workplace spirituality. South Asia is home to a very rich tapestry of religions and spiritual beliefs, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. We are proud to present many articles that explore the spiritual side of South Asia, in line with Bhutan’s pursuit of gross national happiness.

In the last six months, the journal has gone through two major developments. One, the switch to automated peer review system and two, the establishment of board of reviewers. When we issued a call for reviewers, we revived an overwhelming response from academic scholars from South Asia and elsewhere. We are grateful to the nearly 50 reviewers who have signed up to support the journal to establish a sound quality framework and to complete the peer review process within three months in most cases.

As we enter the fifth year of our publication, we have many plans and dreams, including instituting a biennial international academic conference to be held across the eight South Asian countries covered by the journal. Watch the space for further announcement on this and other exciting plans as we march ahead.