Human Resource Development Review

Social capital has been receiving increasing attention in the field of human resource development (HRD). However, little is known as to how social capital has been formed or has grown over time with HRD interventions. There is limited research and discussion on how reflective practices play a role in the development of social capital as individuals reflect together in interactive social contexts such as networking activities. This article looks at how reflective practices can inform organizational social capital building. This article reviews relevant social capital and reflective practices literatures. An integrative model of institutional social capital and reflective practices is introduced to help explain how the two areas can be interrelated. The article suggests future efforts to integrate research and practice to better develop social capital in organizations.

Female victims of domestic violence—also referred to as “battered women”—face serious career development challenges that necessitate the intervention and aid of human resource development (HRD) practice.The purpose of this article is to identify critical factors having an impact on the career development (CD) of battered women and to offer suggestions for how HRD practitioners may begin work to aid battered women in the development of their careers. This article is primarily concerned with career development interventions with battered women who also experience additional economic, educational, or networking hardships. Therefore, the findings of this article should not be considered inclusive of all female victims of domestic violence, but rather the start of an important conversation. The considerations in this article and the interventions suggested herein need testing and development, as do other methods of CD interventions with battered women. The expansion of HRD to include programs for those who have historically been minimized by systems of oppression should be considered a primary concern of current researchers and practitioners.

Despite the growing interest of business executives, there is limited academic research on the contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations. We address this limitation by using a recently developed typology of virtual world capabilities to investigate the potential contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations. Recognizing that learning occurs at three levels within the organization, we proceed to develop a theoretical framework that relates virtual world capabilities to learning at each level. Our research contributes to the field by integrating multiple theoretically anchored dimensions and offering a framework that should serve as a building block for research on, and use of, virtual worlds in learning interventions in organizational settings.

Human resource development (HRD) is recognized as an interdisciplinary field covering the breadth of behavioral and social sciences. However, since its inception, instructional systems design (ISD), a methodology widely used in the HRD field, has been based on a narrow range of behavioral science. Grounded in general system’s theory, the ISD framework has primarily been presented as asocial in orientation and application, drawing primarily on individual theories of learning. This manuscript considers the emergence and history of current ISD technologies, and presents a social ecological framework to facilitate the integration of behavioral and social science theory into the ISD process. Research and training initiatives using the social ecological framework are discussed as are implication for HRD research and practice.

The concept of employee engagement has garnered attention in both practitioner and academic communities and several approaches for understanding engagement have developed. Whereas many authors have taken their own approach to understanding employee engagement, others have offered reinterpretations of the concept wrapped in well-researched and documented organizational variables. Fortunately, distinct streams of literature have emerged but are widely disparate, surfacing intermittently in the fields of psychology, sociology, management, human resource development (HRD), human resource management, and health care. This lack of continuity is a significant hurdle for HRD professionals being called on to develop innovative solutions to the absence of engagement inside organizations. The purpose of this integrative literature review was to synthesize the current state of scholarly research on employee engagement. As a result, four major approaches emerged, defining the existing state of employee engagement in the academic community. Each approach is explored and interpretations offered. Implications and questions for HRD bring this article to a close.

When it comes to multiple linear regression analysis (MLR), it is common for social and behavioral science researchers to rely predominately on beta weights when evaluating how predictors contribute to a regression model. Presenting an underutilized statistical technique, this article describes how organizational researchers can use commonality analysis to more completely interpret their regression effects and thereby inform theory. Using an empirical example from published literature, readers will see how regression commonality analysis can uncover important theoretical relationships that might be left undetected by only examining beta weights.