Human Resource Development Review

National human resource development (NHRD) literature describes the importance of developing human resources at the national level and presents several models. These models are primarily concerned with the national contexts of developing and underdeveloped countries. In contrast, the NHRD models in the non-HRD literature focus primarily on developed countries. Both types of models describe NHRD strategies with little analytical attention to the larger societal context, which the authors argue has a deep influence on the trajectory of NHRD practices in developing countries. The authors traced the evolution of NHRD strategies through an in-depth analysis of two emerging economies—India and China. Through comparative analysis, this study identifies similarities and differences in the emergence of NHRD strategy and develops a model that provides an enriched perspective on the dynamic process of NHRD strategy development.

This article is a response to the preceding article (Alagaraja & Wang, 2012) on developing a National Human Resource Development Strategy Model. While the article makes significant contributions to the body of literature on National Human Resource Development, there are some limitations to the article, including the selection of the two countries of India and China; unaddressed challenges in these two countries; an imprecise application of the concept of a model; the attempt to create a model based on only two countries; the databases used for the literature review; and the inadequacy of the model developed in the article. Several recommendations for future research are also proposed.

We offer our reflections on McLean’s reaction and critique of our original article in which we developed an NHRD strategy model building process through cross case country comparisons of China and India. We address five major themes raised by McLean – country selection, challenges facing India and China, Model development, cross country comparisons and, research methods in this article. These broad themes also highlight the many areas of NHRD research and practice that are generally underexplored or remain confusing. There is much work to do in this area. We found this scholarly exchange useful and important in two ways. McLean’s critique and our reflections strengthen exploration of existing NHRD research and practice. Further, this literature extends the potential contributions and implications of HRD at the national level.

We construct the historical development of the term “human resource development” (HRD) within the United Kingdom. We argue that HRD has been introduced and employed extensively by academics but not taken up with such enthusiasm by professionals and governments. We trace the development of the term and evaluate its use in these three distinct domains. This includes reference to multiple stakeholders, such as governments, employing organizations, academics, and professional bodies, and their influences including national policy interventions and legislation shaping academic and professional practices and qualifications. We conclude that HRD as a concept and a term to describe an area of academic study and professional practice has had variable impact in different sites of practice.

Role salience is a reflection of the importance and value that people attribute to the roles central to their lives and identities. One pivotal aspect of role salience is individual responsibilities to organizational roles. Role salience has meaningful implications for employees and organizations. Understanding and acknowledging the importance of holistic treatment of role salience has the potential to affect organizational policies, HRD practices, and, ultimately, employee learning and performance. In this study, findings from a systematic review of the role salience literature are reported. Following a search of four Human Resource Development (HRD) journals, the PsycINFO database, and the Academic Search Complete database, 67 articles and papers were identified for inclusion in the literature review. The authors argue that role salience research has implications for HRD professionals; however, role salience has largely been ignored in the HRD literature. The authors speculate on why role salience has not been common in HRD literature and ways in which role salience perspectives and related applications can benefit HRD, organizations, and individuals.

We explore opportunities for assessing and advancing Human Resource Development (HRD) research through an integrative literature review of scientometric theories and methods. Known as the “science of science,” scientometrics is concerned with the quantitative study of scholarly communications, disciplinary structure and assessment and measurement of research impact. The integrative review of scientometric literature showed importance in evaluating HRD research and publications, including citation analysis, citing behavior analysis, and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journal quality control process. We discuss three major implications for engaging HRD scholars in evaluating and assessing HRD research and scholarly communications for the quality control and self-regulation of HRD research.