How To Connect HRD Research And Practice

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Speaker B: If we take the best research that is there and combine that with the best of what's happening in organizations, then I think we can advance the HRD space in both sides

Speaker A: welcome to Human Resource Development Masterclass, the podcast series from the Academy of Human Resource Development, the organisation that leads HRD through research. I'm your host Darren Short and here in our fifth season we're exploring some of our listeners top how to questions with the help of leading authors, researchers and scholars. In this penultimate episode of the season we're focusing on the question of how to connect HRD research and practice and you'll hear a conversation recorded in September of 2025 to explore this important question. I'm joined today by three experts. My first guest is Dr. Matthew Hurtney, an Associate professor at the University of Texas at AH Tyler. Matt earned a Doctorate in Human Resources with a focus on Organizational Learning, Performance and Change from Colorado State University. With over 20 years of practical experience, Matt has made significant contributions to union management relations, strategic planning and human resources across both non profit and for profit sectors. He has also served as a Dean and academic leader, demonstrating his passion for integrating research and practice and uh, making a meaningful impact. My second guest is Dr. Catherine Rosenbush, an Associate professor of Management in the Costello College of Business, Geor Mason University. She has experience in training and development with private and non profit organizations, including three years living in Indonesia. It was this international experience that inspired her current research in cross cultural Adjustment, international Human Resources and Global Leadership development. Katie earned her doctorate from George Washington University in Human and Organizational Learning. She's currently a Dean's Teaching Fellow and has received outstanding teaching awards at the college and university level. My third guest is Dr. Claire Gubbins, professor in Organisational Behaviour and HRM at Dublin City University Business School. Her research program focuses on workplace social relationships and social networks in facilitating informal learning processes and and tacit knowledge circulation. She also investigates with a team of PhD scholars the impact of new work arrangements such as hybrid remote working, virtual workplaces and human AI collaboration on workplace social relationships. Clare was elected to the board of AHRD in 2025, served as associate editor of Human Resource Development Quarterly from 2013 to 2019, and is chair of the Irish Academy of Management Early Career Development Network. Just Visit all by podcast.com practice to learn more about the bios of the three guests and also to connect with our episode sponsor. Talking of Sponsorship Today's episode is brought to you thanks to the generous sponsorship of Dr. Thomas Garavan of the Department of Management and Marketing, Cork University Business School, University College, Cork in Ireland. Right, let's dive into the episode.

Speaker C: Hey.

Speaker A: Well, it's wonderful to be joined today by Claire, Katie and Matt. Hey, welcome all three of you to the episode.

Speaker D: Thanks Darren.

Speaker C: Thank you for the invite.

Speaker A: I was thinking about a good place to start and I was thinking we have listeners to the episode who are probably new to this as a topic, um, who may be wondering why are we focusing on the connection between research and practice? So maybe for those people it would be helpful to start just by talking a little bit about what you see as the current state of that connection between research and practice and maybe a bit about how we got here. Um, I realize that's a big question, but Katie, are you willing to take our first stab at first, ah, feeding something into what you see as being the current state?

Speaker D: Sure, I'll take the current state. So right now I think some disciplines are better than others about reaching out to the practitioner and getting the sense of what the challenges and opportunities are that they're facing in history. We've kind of been, um, a little siloed as far as practitioners and researchers and we kind of, you know, operate in our own bubbles. History of ahrd Ah, you know, we started out going to ATD association training development, talking with the practitioners, kind of came away and created our own organization of ahrd. And now we're seeing the value going back to really talking to the practitioner and making that connection and translating what we are researching so that they can use it in practice. I always say I try to talk more from a practitioner standpoint so that we're not talking in a language that is foreign to them and they can understand and they can apply to their actual organizations.

Speaker C: I think when we talk about the current state of hrd, I think it's a really interesting discussion for us to have and I think it always has to tie back to our vision statement and our mission statement. So if we think about uh, what's on the website for the Academy of Human Resource Development, it says leading human resource development through research. But one of those bullet points, and I think Katie hit it very well, it's this talks about fostering research and practice linkages. And I kind of come from the camp of Jerry, uh, Gilley. I had the chance to study underneath him when he was talking about scholar practitioners and he really did a good job in our classes and his mentorship, talking about the roles of academics, roles of scholar practitioners and the role of practice. And I agree with Katie from that camp. Our research should be there to help practice, right? Our research should be there to help practice. If we're going to conduct research, it should be there for a meaningful reason and there should be some sort of reciprocal relationship so that uh, we know what we're doing is impactful for the practitioners, but the practitioners are also feeding into our research and helping us and giving us insight and helping to point us in that right direction. I think there's always ebbs and flows with every association. Last uh, year the Academy started to really take a look at this again. And what does this mean from a member, um, value proposition statement. And through that discussion and a strategic initiative, uh, that was taken on, it was clear that we needed to reconnect those, those dots with practitioners. It was clear that we need to have the dialogue, that we need to understand each other and we need to work alongside each other to better our practice.

Speaker B: I guess, uh, uh, when I started out my academic career I was in a, I would say a privileged position where I believed they were one and the same research and practice. So While doing a PhD, I was doing research, but by virtue of teaching post experience students, I was engaging with practice. And I happened to work with a number of professors who did a lot of work in industry. And that took me into various roles and positions in academia. And then I, uh, even left academia to work in practice. And I never felt that they were different entities as such or that they were separate. I guess philosophically and maybe somewhat naively. To me they were uh, one and the same and that we all should work together and that we could advance research and practice by collaborating. Um, one of the universities I worked in had a different stance as to why we provide an education in university to where I did my Ph.D. i guess. And it was again an acceptable position to have, which is that we should educate people in our programs so that they ask questions, so that they critique the world, so that they view it through different lenses. So then when we do research through that lens, it is to challenge and to critique and to question and to put people almost into a philosophical position. And there is, there is immense value in that and um, in that type of research and questioning and critique. And we do need it. But equally there is immense value, value in doing research on questions, challenges and problems that are impacting practitioners, organizations and society. So it's immediately relevant. So I think there's a place for both. And I would never argue that it's one or the other. I think there is a place for both. But I think we do need to do more work as a hrd. Katie mentioned different disciplines. I do think we need to do more work as a HRD community to talk to each other, researchers, practitioners, academics and universities, uh, and organizations so that our work comes together. And I think that was always important. I think it's even more important now because the nature of the world of work, the nature of organizations, what's happening in society, I think the only way we can keep up with that and deal with that and respond to that in a proactive rather than a reactive way is if we collaborate and if we take the best research that is there and combine that with the best of what's happening in organizations, then I think we can advance the HRD space in both sides as a community, a collaborative rather than one or the other.

Speaker A: Uh, it's interesting, as you were talking, Claire, I was thinking about the medical profession where I suppose in theory what we see is research that is being done, that informs practice. And when you go to a medical practitioner, you're trusting them, um, to be on top of what research is saying, so that they are guiding your health care based on research. And um, as I was thinking that, I was thinking, do we see anything that looks like that within hrd? Ah, as in, as uh, in how much of the hrd, ah, research agenda appears to be being put together to inform practice. And also if you were to pull a random HRD practitioner, would they have any sense as to what research is telling them and whether in fact their practice is research informed? It might be, but they may not know it is depending on how they accessed it. Um, are they. The chances are the typical HRD practitioner presumably is not aware of what's currently happening in HRD research and probably not changing their practice based on research until it maybe trickles through to them, maybe through a, ah, Practitioner article or a conference presentation or something like that. Um, so I was thinking it appears to be a significant difference, for example, between HRD and, let's say the medical profession. But I was wondering like, what sort of, what sort of factors sustain that state? Because we've had 30, 40 years now of HRD journals creating research, publishing research, of academic conferences for 30 plus years, years now. Um, I don't necessarily get a sense that the gap between research and practice is closed that much in 30, 40 years for HRD, but maybe I'm wrong. I was wondering what, when you take a look at it, what's sort of sustaining that state that's stopping HRD from becoming more like, let's say, the medical profession?

Speaker D: I think one of it is that are, are the practitioners even reading our journals? Um, you know, do they have access to them? You know, sometimes it's, you know, we're in university setting so we have access to our journals, but is it, is there an outreach that we're actually pushing that out to the practitioner so that they can get a bite of what we're actually discussing? Sometimes that comes through emails and podcasts and all that kind of stuff. But could we do a better job as HRD researchers to translate it and push it out to, um, the practitioners have those conversations where, and meet them where they're at. Right? Meet them at the conferences that they're at. Instead of hoping that they'll come to us, maybe we need to go to them as far as academic academics are concerned, because there's so many, I guess, resources like as far as associations and everything for both the practitioners and the researchers. How do we blend those two together so that we can work in unison? And because it's so fast paced, research is ever evolving, as we know as academics, but practition is ever evolving too. So how do we keep up on both sides to make sure that we are talking to each other and sustaining the conversation? I know one of the things I always suggest is like doing kind of consulting projects to get into the organizations, opening that door so that you actually not only can do the research, but then have that conversation with the practitioner to see what the problems are, see what the challenges, the opportunities, the issues that they're dealing with, because that will probably inspire some of our research questions that we haven't even thought of.

Speaker C: I think that's a good point. What's interesting is a lot of researchers, uh, that I meet in the world of HRD have a practical background. They come from practice. Right. But yet we still have this, this bridge that we got to create and, and this communication linkage. I think you, Darren, I think you addressed it well. Like in natural science it's, there's always this very clear linkage that research is there to inform practice, especially medical science. In the world of hrd, I almost wonder sometimes if it's a brand awareness. I think Katie kind of hit it right on the, on the spot when we talked about magazine or our journals. Do they even know our journals are there? Are they accessible? Is our research accessible? Claire talks about this a lot when she talks about writing blogs or she talks about maybe we should take a research journal articles and find a way to write that in a practitioner tone uh, so that they can read that. It's interesting. One time I was doing a lecture or a uh, presentation at a SHRM conference. Everybody knows what SHRM is. They raise their hand. Obviously they're there at shrm, right? And I ask them what's the role of shrm? Well, it's hrm. And they'll say also training development. Then the next thing I say is, well, I'm a board member of the Academy of Human Resource Development. Do you know, have you ever heard of us? And maybe one or two people out of a hundred would raise their hand and I think that's very insightful. Even though that our research that we do ends up in the textbooks of uh, the HR classes that they're taking, right? We see things like Swanson, that's getting out there. We see things like Bradshaw and employee engagement getting out in textbooks. But there's still not a clear linkage of what they're learning to hrd.

Speaker B: Darren, I go back to where you started in terms of medicine, evidence based medicine, which is basically doing medicine. Being a GP or a surgeon based on the best available research came about because at a point in time people were complaining that if they went to one doctor they got one diagnosis and if you went to another doctor they got another diagnosis. And if you went to this surgeon, you got one surgery done one way. And if you went to that surgeon, so way, way back, way back. That's how evidence based medicine came about. And as a result all the institutions that taught medicine included in their education processes, subjects, uh, to ensure that medical practitioners were taught to constantly keep up with medical research and apply it to their practice. But in addition to it being built into educational programs on how to read research efficiently, journals in the medical field went about finding ways and medical institutions went about finding ways to take that 25 page academic article and convert it into a two pager because you don't have time as a medical practitioner or a surgeon about to rush into surgery to say, hang on now till I just check that 25 page document and extract what I should do. So the medical field progressed from that same insight that you were talking about, Darren, to building it into their education system to teach people how to read and extract knowledge, to teach people how to extract from the data in those studies what they should implement in practice, and then to translate academic research into quick absorbable pieces of documents in management, human resource management, hrd. We haven't gotten as far along that line. I will say I do believe our educational institutions, our universities, are certainly increasingly focusing on teaching um, students and practitioner students how to learn. Not just giving them knowledge, but teaching them how to learn how to be critical thinkers, how to read academic articles, how to recognize the value of research for their practice when they leave the university. So I do believe that HRD practitioners that have been through some of those educational systems, that those people probably do use research and try to engage with research to keep their practice up to date. But back to what Katie said, they can be limited by the very fact that most of the academic work that we publish is behind paywalls, library databases and you can't necessarily get access to it, which is obviously a problem. So you get this education and you know, you need to read research, but then you leave the university and then you can't get access to it. So that does not help bridging research and practice. The other element there is, you were all talking about conferences. I mean if you look at it, the practitioners go to the practitioner conferences and all the speakers are practitioners, the academics go to academic conferences and depending on the discipline, most of the speakers are academics. And yeah, it's time to move that dial. Practitioner conferences should be including researchers presenting up to date research on key topics and um, academic conferences should be bringing in practitioners to, you know, surface what's going on in their worlds. And some of what's going on in HRD practice is really insightful and extremely valuable for HRD research. In some organizations I've come across, HRD practice has um, engaged in conducting their own research on areas where there, where there may not be research. And it's wonderful and it's really well done. And of course then there's other organizations that do their own research and it's not wonderful and it's not really well done and they're acting on things that they shouldn't. So, so there's A mix. So yeah, back to what's, what's keeping it there, what's sustaining it? Uh, uh, having access to that research is definitely a challenge for practice. Being educated or trained, whichever way you want to look at it, to know how to use research, um, for your practice is important. And then it goes the other way. Practitioners need to engage with researchers and have conversations and tell us what's going on and vice versa. Um, there needs to be collaboration, that needs to be a two way story and there's different perceptions. So researchers, academics and practitioners have a different perception as to what research is. Again that can vary with the education um, levels of all concerned. And the examples I've come across is like measurement instruments that are often used in some organizations. They're not rigorous and they are certainly not measuring behaviors in a psychologically strong way in a proper methodologically strong way. And it's very concerning because then practitioners and organizations are implementing interventions on the back of faulty, biased, untrustworthy data. Boars it's quicker to roll it out that way. It's quicker to measure things, it's quicker to survey things and it's much quicker to get research done that way. But that doesn't make it better. As a matter of fact it can be more harmful. So the timelines at uh, which research can be done, how long it takes, how detailed it has to be, perceptions about that differ between the communities. So there is, and I remember working on a project with a man in an organization and he's the best example I have because he kept asking me questions. Claire, why did you ask about that behavior five different ways? Clare, why does the survey have to be that long? Claire, why do we have to roll it out more than once? But for every question he asked I could give him an explanation. And then he became the biggest advocate for rigorous research methodology behind that project for everyone in his organization. So just helping people understand the reasons why between our uh, two or uh, between research and practices is very important.

Speaker A: It sounds like listening to each of you talk there, depending on what metaphor we use, there's a need to bridge research and practice or a need to bridge researchers and practitioners. Uh, and I'd love to spend some time talking about how we build that bridge. I guess before I do that it's worth asking. People are going to say so what's in it for me? So you know, what would be the benefits to me as an academic or to me as a practitioner? Uh, how would you answer that question about the what's in it for me? What would be the benefits to academics and practitioners of us actually making this right.

Speaker B: If I put my practitioner hat on you go back to the analogy with the medical field. Do you want to be implementing interventions on the back of advice from the dark ages? I would suggest you don't. So on that basis, it would be useful to have access. How you get it is a debate, obviously, but how you. It would be useful to have access to the best available research, whatever that might be, as opposed to trying to design an intervention on the back of nothing where you have no research whatsoever. Now, obviously every organization can conduct their own research on their own interventions and trial them out that way, which is a fantastic way to do things. But before you go down that road, it would be helpful in designing an intervention to look and see is there any research in this field? So for some areas of HRD practice, like how do you motivate people to learn, there's loads of research that would give you some insights into what are the behaviors you need to put in place, what are the practices you need to put in place in an organization that would encourage motivation to learn. How do you improve knowledge worker performance? If you read the articles on that as a practitioner, let's pretend you decide, I'm going to look at all the research now on that and you're reading 20, 30, 40 articles and you're getting 20, 30, 40 different answers, then you don't know what to do. However, if you manage to come across a piece of research which is synthesized. So some, some publications are basically synthesis of research on a topic. Some are called meta analysis, some are called systematic reviews, some are called rapid evidence reviews, some are in very good books and that synthesizes decades of research. And on in terms of improving knowledge worker performance, you find out that, uh, there's 85 ways to improve knowledge worker performance, but there's nine that are worth chasing and that have significant effects on improving knowledge worker performance. So as a practitioner, isn't that much nicer to read a piece of work that's a systematic review or a meta analysis that says, okay, here's everything, but here's the top five. Focus on that and it increases the chances that you will design and implement an intervention that will actually work. If you don't want to do that, how's about working with researchers and academics and coming to them with your challenge, your question and your problem and coming to people who have the rigorous methodology knowledge skills and who can, uh, design a research study for you on your organization and who can do whatever you need to do in order to figure out what's the best way to design your intervention. I mean, that's not unheard of. Like, pharma companies often outsource their R and D if they don't have the skills in house, they often find those innovators and startups and incubators and entrepreneurs outside and they back them in the hope that some of that research and some of those ideas become their next big. The next big product. They might be able to manufacture products, but they may not have sufficient R and D skills in house to do the research on potential new products. So I think academics, researchers, could be that R and D team, an external R and D team.

Speaker D: Darren, I think one thing too is when it, what's in it for me? Um, we think differently. A practitioner kind of thinks differently than a researcher and a researcher kind of thinks differently than a practitioner. And that's a mutual benefit for you in an organization. I know I do have a consulting practice on the side. So when I come in with the hat, I come in with a different set of questions, maybe from a research standpoint than I do a practitioner. But they go hand in hand. One is the more rigor. What Claire just kind of. I go deep and I understand and I ask a different set of questions than if I was kind of doing it from a practitioner. And how we actually implement. Both go hand in hand. Both are complementary, each other, and both are needed. Um, and so a practitioner, because I have that hat too, will ask very different questions than a researcher would maybe, but both will come to a good conclusion that both probably would help with the intervention that is needed for that organization. And so sometimes I've had my client or my practitioner go, huh, huh? I never thought of it like that. And you're like, well. And so that's part of our training as academics is deep diving really peeling back the layers and understanding and knowing the theories to like delve into the why. A lot of times practitioners just want the quick fix and they want to immediately just kind of get it done, intervene and move on. And it's a patchwork. It's only going to be a band aid to the big problem. Whereas researchers come in and dive deep and kind of ask the why, what is going on? That helps with that intervention, that helps with that solution. That's going to go deeper and more long term than it is going to be a quick fix. So the main thing is, is that we're asking different sorts of questions. I think you kind of need both, like, specifically, as I'm a consultant. I need both of those things to happen. But I think that we ask from a different point of view and a different framework and a different world lens, sometimes from a researcher and a practitioner. Um, that's the one thing I think all of us probably got out of our doctoral program is like learning how to think and think really deep and ask those really quality and interesting questions and understanding of why this is all happening.

Speaker C: I also wonder, like, as, uh, our programs evolve and change. One of the things I do with my first doctoral class that I teach, I actually have them go out and try to, uh, create an intervention for a real problem. They have to go into industry, they got to go into an organization, but then they have to be able to, uh, provide logic and theory to, to their reasoning and what, what they're going to fix, what the problem is and how they're going to solve that and how they're going to measure it and evaluate it. Um, but then also learn how to explain what they're going to do, what should be done through a practitioner tone and not an academic tone and how do they show that Right. And I think that's a good lesson for our students to start to be able to build those skills. But I also wonder, as the Doctorate of Business Administration degree becomes more popular and people say the DBA is the new MBA, a lot of the DBAs that are out there right now are teaching you how to do research. Right. And how to do that in applied sense. I wonder if our field is going to evolve partially because of this transition, because more people are going out and looking for Maybe not a PhD, but a DBA that's still a terminal degree and uh, what implications that's going to have to this.

Speaker D: No, it's funny you say that because I have a colleague who is more a practitioner. So she teaches in our business school and we're developing this class along with psychology. And she basically said, I don't want to teach this class. It's too research based. And I said, well, but why? Because she's like, well, I teach from a very practitioner point of view and it's not translating like I would like it to. Which I think is part of the problem that we're having here, right? Is that if she, she's a practitioner teaching, she does have a PhD, but thinks that we're too heavy on the research focus and then on her on the opposite. Our psychology faculty doesn't think it's research based enough. There's this sweet spot, spot that we have to be comparable to each other to find that happy medium. Which I think is what you're saying, Matt, with the dba, right. It's like, so it's, it's more of practitioner focus. It may be why people are doing Doctors of Education too, more so than a PhD. So they have that sweet spot of both.

Speaker C: And often in the DBA courses that I've taught in the past, we teach them how to. We say your goal is to be able to read research, understand research, to make sure if it's quality or not. Right. And reproducible. Conduct research, but explain the research in a way that people can relate to that. And those are some of the key themes I'm hearing from Katie and Claire here too, is how do we get that message across? And I think for the connection to occur, I, um, think as Jerry Gilly would say, the practitioners, the scholar practitioners and the academics or the researchers have to figure out that we need this relationship to work. Um, I think Mother Teresa said it well, I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot. Together we can do great things. Right? And if I'm hearing from all the panel, our research should be there to make a difference in the world. And when I read a lot of the HRD journals, uh, you can really see the applied concepts to make it the difference. Maybe it's at the individual level, maybe it's at the team level, maybe it's at the organization level, maybe in some cases it's at the community level. Right. But we need each other and we need to be able to find a bridge to communicate, um, so that we can help each other out.

Speaker A: I like to think that somewhere in the ether, uh, Jerry, uh, Gilley right now is super happy that he got cited in the same sentence as Mother Teresa. If he's listening into this, then I think he would be chuffed at that. I think this is interesting, as in, like, I've been thinking about research and practice connections for about 30 years now, and something's happened in this conversation that's made me think differently about it, uh, which I want to share it and see whether it resonates with you. Listening to the three of you now makes me think it's far easier to connect researchers and practitioners than it is to connect research with practice. And, and, and the reason why I'm saying that is that if you put a researcher, uh, and a practitioner together, they can have a conversation, they can learn from each other, uh, one could educate the other, and that's probably a bi directional relationship. Um, they're able to see, um, that each other has a different perspective, maybe a slightly different set of priorities, but they're able to help each other through it, which is different from trying to connect research and practice. And for me, uh, one way of testing that is if I took this year's HRD journals and looked at the articles that we're publishing in research and then compared those with the top 20 concerns that practitioners have got, there's almost no relationship between the research we're publishing and what practitioners desperately need help with. Which makes me think it could be a little easier to bring the researcher and the practitioner together than it is to close what appears to be a massive dividend between published research and the realities of practice. I'm just throwing that out to see whether this resonates or whether in fact I'm just barking up completely the wrong tree.

Speaker B: Well, I didn't, uh, I didn't think about it that way, Darren, so, uh, thank you. You have put something into my head, and I think it's a very good point. And I think there are contextual reasons why this happens. So to publish an article can take two to eternity years. So it's a slow machine. Doing the research isn't necessarily that slow, as in practitioners would accept the speed at which we can produce research once it's explained, but to get it published so that it's out there for everybody to absorb is a completely different ball game. So, so that slower moving machine means that some of the work that's being published, let's for example, take work being published on hybrid, the whole Covid and everybody working remotely. And research then started during lockdown on Covid on the basis of that. And that's still coming out now, and we're years past, because the publication machine moves slower. Um, so on that basis, I, I can see your train of thought and then equally the challenges coming at the world of work. A few years back, it was working remotely because we're hit with a pandemic. And now it's AI and digitalization and robotics and war and many other things hitting society, none of which we would necessarily have predicted to happen or come as fast as they have come. So there is now research projects starting focused on, for example, the impact of AI on learning, the impact of AI on cognition, on human AI collaboration. Those projects are starting, but industry is already embedding, starting to embed AI. So the results of those research projects might come out, but at a point in time when the technology has already moved on, and especially with technology, the speed at which it Goes. So, Darren, I think you raise a very valid point which makes it even more important for researchers and practitioners to talk to each other and to collaborate and to get that those research projects going in houses, in universities, in organizations, so that the research is happening, the organizations are getting insights, and then the publication process happens later.

Speaker D: Is there an avenue, though? This is a question for you guys. Is there an avenue that we could speed that up, like as academics, why does our research take two to five years to get out? Could we have an avenue that is more that innovative, creative, you know, changing spirit that would get it out quicker?

Speaker C: I think that's a good question. I, When, Darren, when you were bringing this up, my, my brain went to where did the roots of the current HRD world start? And I think a lot of people can tie it back to World War II. Right, the current HRD discussion. Right. And, and during World War II, yeah, there was research coming out, but we had to produce it so quick that we weren't so worried about the journal articles. We were worried about how do we improve learning and improve process workflow. Right. Because there was an outcome that the countries were trying to get to. And Claire jumped right on that. When I was thinking about this is. I almost wonder if our tenure system in the university system impacts this discussion and kind of what you brought up, um, why does it take two to three years to get, to get our articles out, um, and research done, but on the other side is we need to publish, um, or to sustain ourselves in the academic world. Right. So there might be, there'd be an interesting discussion to say is the tenure system, as is impacting your question that you asked?

Speaker D: It's absolutely, because I actually just had this. I'm not tenured anymore. I, I went to a contract position and my tenured colleague basically said, I can't publish on those because it's not going to help me. And then she goes, but you could publish in anything and get it out quicker and you, it'll be a value to you. So I, uh, do think our system is probably blocking us a little bit as well.

Speaker B: And I'm going to speak with a European hat on, um, which is we have a different process, um, to the U.S. however, yes, getting published in top journals and, um, publishing frequently is very important for the equivalent of your processes in the U.S. so that certainly does impact where we, where we invest our time and what we invest our time on. In this case, conducting research for the purposes of getting it published. However, there is a change this side of the pond. Um, The UK and Ireland and across Europe, where there is an entire new movement now towards recognizing the quality of the research as opposed to how many citations. The ranking of the journal. It's looking at the quality of the research and the insights that it gives, not just for organizations, but for society and for goals like sustainability, the environment, poverty. Looking beyond basically organizations and ourselves as individuals. Does our research matter beyond that? So there is a big movement. It's. It's still early days, so the, I guess the mental frame of reference is still very much based on publish level of the journal, citations, rankings, uh, etc. All of those metrics still matter a lot. But there is a movement towards does your research matter? Does it have quality in terms of its usefulness? Yes, to organizations, but beyond. So you will see now in the UK in particular, it's part of their university systems. And obviously, because we're so close, um, it's coming into the Irish systems where you'll see academics trying to get their research out there in practitioner conferences, in professional magazines, podcasts, webinars, writing it up in briefs and blogs. So they are dedicating a little bit of time to showcase my work matters beyond me, the university and the organizations that I study. And they're dedicating a portion of their time to showcase that.

Speaker A: It kind of suggests that, uh, certainly in certain countries, what matters at the moment is the impact of research, and that's typically measured in which journal, the impact of that journal and number of citations. Um, and it kind of starts to spin it towards what really matters is the impact that the research has on practice. And if we can find a way of, of essentially measuring how research can

Speaker B: impact practice, there is elements of that system you're talking about have been set up to. So now some institutions ask for a narrative cv, not a CV that lists all your achievements, education experience, uh, work experience and publications. They're looking for a narrative cv, which is where you get to talk about all of your work as a story and its contribution.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I'm conscious that we're running out of time. I had so many more questions that I wanted to ask, but there is one question that I did want to make sure that we talked a bit about in the time that we have, which is around the professional associations, because I'm aware of, uh, increasing attention within the academy and within UFHRD around this. And so, um, there could be listeners who are not aware of those initiatives. So I'd love to hear a little bit from you about how you see professional associations kind of supporting this initiative to improve the connection of research and practice.

Speaker C: Maybe I could start from the standpoint of the Academy of Human Resource Development. And Katie and Claire, feel free to add into this, but last year we took on as a board as a, uh, strategic directive to say, what is our, what's a member value proposition? What do we offer to the members? And through research and through dialogue, um, both in surveys and interviews, we came up with a member value proposition plan or at least a statement. And it says m advancing the science and practice of human resource development. And I think that's important to think about is, you know, we're here to advance the science and practice of human resource development. And we're going to be the premier global community dedicated to advancing HRD research and practice. We unite leading scholars, scholar practitioners, faculty and professionals with emerging research and students to shape the future of work and improve organizational performance worldwide. I think that statement is insightful from the standpoint, um, the board is starting to take a hard look at how do we make these connections? How does the board evolve? So as a board member, many of us have been on many different boards, right? Boards evolve. The reason why the organization was formed is going to evolve over time and it's going to have to meet different needs. And I think for our board to stay relevant, we need to really have discussions like this stuff. If we go back to why HRD was developed originally, it was developed to help practitioners. It was developed to have communication back and forth to help the field. I don't know if we got away from that. I'm not here to say that, but I'm excited that we're starting to have this discussion again and further these connections. So what you're going to see at the upcoming hrd, uh, conference in Dallas, you're going to actually see Claire and I are working on this. You're going to actually see a practitioner focused, uh, section that's going to happen there. And we're going to bring, uh, practitioners in and we're going to have dialogue and we're going to talk about research to practice type topics. Everyone starts this, this partnership to start to form and I'm excited about it. Uh, we'll see where it goes. Like you said, I think therein there's tension there. But I also believe that to, and I always tell my students this through constructive criticism, innovation occurs. Right? Something better is going to come out of this, this tension. Something better is going to come out of this constructive dialogue we're having within the academy.

Speaker B: The university forum for HRD which is the European arm, I guess, of the Academy of hrd. They have had for a few years now a track in their conference which is broadly titled Practitioner Research. Um, so the objective was to encourage either practitioners to bring research to the conference, which is typically academic, um, attendees, or for academics to present research that was very fundamentally grounded in practice. So that has been going on for a few years and I obviously think it's a great initiative. And as Matt said, the Academy of hrd, having an entire day dedicated to a practitioner perspective on HRD at the UH Academy of HRD conference coming up is, is another fantastic initiative. And just to be clear, it's not just for practitioners. It's very much about practitioners and academics being in that room for that conversation, collaboration and to bridge research and practice. The Chartered Institute of Personal Development, which is an institute over here, it's a HRM professional, UH, institute, somewhat equivalent, I guess, to atd. They did for a period of time their conference would be predominantly practitioner attended, but they did for a period of time have a kind of a conference that was research for practice alongside their practitioner conference. And then the UH Learning and Development Institute, which is an Irish UH institute for learning and development. HRD practitioners, they run an annual conference, but they always include a mix of academics and researchers, um, sorry, academics and practitioners speaking at their events. So I think the movement has happened and it is happening and it will progress. I'll also say about the Academy of hrd, in addition to what Matt was saying there, we're also on the. We're going to launch on the webpage, back to your point, Katie. We are going to, um, start to try and take pieces of research and translate them into briefs, if you want to call it that, short, snappy pieces so that they're more easily readable, uh, for a practitioner in a short amount of time. So the AHRD web page is working towards hosting those briefs on research. And equally we're inviting practitioners to write briefs on what they're up against so that academic members of AHRD can get some insights as to what is happening in practice and to continue that conversation through the website, through the website and through the platforms on the website, as well as through annual conferences. We also had the AHRD had a webinar, which again will be housed on the webpage, to start again that conversation about bridging research and practice. And the ambition is that we will host other webinars to continue conversations. And those conversations could include presenting best available research so that everybody can listen in and hear what the Recommendations for practice are or equally, um, conversations from practitioners talking about, here's what I'm at, here's what I'm being hit with. What do we know? What can we do? What research do we have? What research do we need to do in order to help address that challenge? So there's a few initiatives now happening across the AHRD to bridge research and practice and as I said, I see initiatives in other disciplines. Katie, you mentioned psychology, organisation, behavior. There is initiatives in many of those organizations attached to those disciplines that are working harder to bridge research and practice.

Speaker C: Another nice thing, just kind of in closing from my standpoint that Claire and I didn't hit on is we've also formed a ad hoc committee, I'll call it an ad hoc committee that brings practitioners and academics together and we're having this dialogue, um, with each other and hopefully that will model future discussions for the future.

Speaker D: One thing I would love to see like these organizations do is wherever we have a conference to actually do consulting projects in those cities and in those territories and bring the two together to solve some problems. I've had this conversation with a lot of different members, board members and from different initiatives. It takes some long, it takes some effort. But I think that would be an interesting thing if you had a year long project and you culminate at a conference with the results of the research and bringing those practitioners. And now with our virtual platforms it's like, you know, you don't have to be in the city to do it, but you could do it on a virtual platform and help answer some of these questions. But because we're so conference based, a lot of our associations, why not use that conference plat, you know, location as a platform to help solve some of the problems in that society that we're actually, you know, meeting in, um, on a yearly basis.

Speaker A: I love that we're wrapping up with so many great ideas and such a great sense of energy around this as, as well. Um, and um, I am super excited by all the, all of the initiatives underway and the thought of what's coming up at the next, next Academy conference, for example. Um, I'm conscious we're running out of time now, but boy am I looking forward to us getting back together and continuing the conversation in a, uh, future episode. But for now I wanted to say a, uh, massive thank you to all three of you. I know how beautiful busy you all are, so thank you so much for taking time out of your busy days to, to join me and be part of the episode. Thank you so much indeed.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. It was wonderful spending time with Claire Gubbins, Katie Rosenborg, and Matt Hurtney. If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other 53, which contain conversations with over 100 leading scholars from around the world. To learn more about the series, check out hrdmasterclass.com and to learn about the Academy of Human Resource development, check out ahrd ah.org As a reminder, today's episode was brought to you thanks to the generous sponsorship of Dr. Thomas Garavan of the Department of Management and Marketing, Cork University Business School, University College, Cork in Ireland. I'll be back next week with an episode focused on how to respond to the challenges to HRD academic programs, when I'll be joined by Khalil Dharrani, Laura Bierma, Joshua Collins, and Sungwon Yoon. Until then, stay safe. This is Darren Short signing off from the HRD Masterclass. HRD Masterclass Podcast is brought to you by the Academy of Human Resource Development and is a production of all by podcast.com. Thank you for listening to HRD Masterclass. It's a unique resource featuring over 130 HRD experts across 55 episodes. As a fan of the series, you can help make season six happen. AHRD is crowdsourcing funding for the season and you can donate today@uhgivebutter.com HRD-Masterclass 6. With your help, the season can bring you 11 new episodes focused on major HRD AH research articles, their practical implications, the need for further research, and how researchers and practitioners can help each other to advance research and practice on the topics. It would be amazing to continue the series and I hope you'll consider donating today@ahgivebutter.com HRD Masterclass Hyphen 6.