ABSTRACT Employee engagement has gained significant attention in human resource development (HRD) globally over the past decades. The discourse has evolved into an interdisciplinary and international concept, leading scholars to advocate for a pluralistic perspective on understanding the conditions that foster an engaging workforce. However, knowledge of how employee engagement is shaped in indigenous work environments within non-Western cultures remains underexplored. Taking a cultural perspective, this study aims to explore the effects of common Chinese work values on employee engagement, considering the moderating role of HRD. We first identified five indigenous work values in the Chinese context related to employee engagement. We then recruited 677 participants from 16 Chinese organisations across various sectors and collected data on employees’ belief in these work values, perceived organisational support for HRD, and employee engagement at two time points. Results indicated positive relationships between hard work, tolerance, loyalty, and jingye, with employee engagement. HRD culture positively moderated the relationships between these values and employee engagement. These findings underscore the significance of incorporating both universal aspects and culturally specific dynamics of employee engagement into theory and practice. The study concludes with implications and recommendations for HRD scholars and practitioners.

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship ecosystems facilitate knowledge sharing and exchange. However, this view eschews how, in a developing world entrepreneurship ecosystem, returnee entrepreneurs develop and acquire resources for their entrepreneurial endeavours. Accordingly, this study develops returnee entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship ecosystems theorisations based on the actions and behaviours of Ghana’s returnee entrepreneurs. An analysis of 15 returnee entrepreneurs indicated that they exploited informal social ties and underfunded national service schemes for human resources acquisition. Moreover, they nurtured individuals exhibiting traits that reflected their understanding of local cultural and social systems. Thus contributing to a new understanding of how self-organised and managed entrepreneurship ecosystems are a source for human resources in a developing world setup. Thus, despite the returnee entrepreneurs’ exposure to conventional entrepreneurship ecosystems in the West, situational factors supercede their strategy for developing and acquiring human resources in varied contexts. That has implications for research, practice, and policy development in entrepreneurship.

ABSTRACT This study examines the interplay between Organizational Socialisation Tactics (OSTs), Proactive Socialisation Behaviours (PSBs), and Social Capital Resources (SCRs) in influencing newcomers’ work engagement, framed by self-determination theory (SDT). Using a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 619 newcomers in various sectors in Punjab, Pakistan, who joined their organisations within the past 3 years. The results reveal that SCRs, particularly prior relationships and horizontal ties, mediate the relationship between PSBs and work engagement. Information-seeking notably enhances these social ties, leading to greater work engagement, while feedback-seeking and networking also contribute positively. Networking, in particular, further strengthens social connections. Although OSTs support the development of horizontal ties and engagement, their impact is less pronounced compared to PSBs. The study notes the limitation of its cross-sectional design and suggests that future research adopt a longitudinal approach to track changes in work engagement over time. The findings highlight the importance of strong social ties in organisationalorganisationalorganisational socialisation, showing that encouraging PSBs can significantly enhance newcomers’ engagement, retention, and performance. Overall, this research underscores the critical role of social connections in improving employee well-being, offering valuable insights for organisations to enhance integration, retention, and work-life quality.

ABSTRACT The complexities of diversity management are highlighted by recent events. As the traditional approach that relies on categorising individuals into groups perpetuates stereotypes and overlooks individual uniqueness, I offer a human-centred approach to diversity management. This is because diversity, to my understanding, is a fundamental aspect of human existence. By advocating for effective communication, bias awareness, and leadership sensegiving, I believe this approach helps create inclusive environments where individuals feel valued and empowered. This paper holds crucial significance for those who seek to cultivate truly inclusive and equitable environments. Furthermore, it is of paramount importance to higher education institutions that play crucial role in advancing DEI.

ABSTRACT While most studies advocate a business case for diversity, recent works have highlighted some negative consequences of diversity. Thus, the present study aims to examine the impact of employees’ perception of surface and knowledge diversity on their turnover intentions. Further, we examine the sequential mediating effect of perceived inclusion and job satisfaction to elucidate the diversity-turnover intention link. We employed structural equation modelling and PROCESS macro to analyse the hypothesised connexion. The survey was completed by 328 employees working in Indian IT organisations. While surface diversity perceptions did not impact turnover intentions, knowledge diversity perceptions had a positive impact. Further, we found a significant sequential mediation effect of perceived inclusion and job satisfaction in the knowledge diversity and turnover intentions link. Organisations should implement comprehensive diversity and inclusion programmes to foster positive attitudes and behaviours towards leveraging knowledge diversity among employees. Policymakers must cultivate a sense of value and culture of belongingness so that it reduces turnover intentions and fosters gratitude towards the organisation. We advance research on workplace diversity in the Indian context by propounding a serial mediation model, which provides evidence of the influence of multiple mechanisms in a single integrated causal process.

ABSTRACT Human resource development (HRD) is a cornerstone of contemporary organisations, but it is also inherently dual serving both individual (employee well-being) and organisational interests (outputs, efficiency, etc.). Consequently, a major HRD challenge is to navigate a landscape of contradictory commitments and responsibilities. Seeking to untangle this field, the current paper strives to distinguish between in- and extra-role stressors and explores their differential impacts on employees’ functioning and wellbeing. Based on Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory, we propose a model that aims to uncover how citizenship pressure (CP, extra-role pressure) and role overload (in-role pressure) impact work interference with family (WIF) through the mediation effect of employee creativity. Our analysis encompassed 150 employee-supervisor dyads from 56 organisations. We found that role overload and CP have differential implications for WIF and employee creativity: While role overload induces WIF and decreases creativity, CP has no statistically significant impact on WIF but does increase creativity. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that creativity’s influence on work–family relations depends on whether it mediates role overload or CP: When mediating role overload, creativity reduces WIF, and when mediating CP, it increases it. Limitations and implications our insights have for HRD are discussed.

ABSTRACT With nearly one-third of all workers in the United States now being remote, there is a need to use technology to meet organisational and personal goals. The potential of job crafting behaviours to influence technology acceptance in remote work settings has yet to be thoroughly investigated. Understanding how these behaviours affect technology perception can guide tailored interventions for diverse personality types. Anchored in the Job Characteristics Model and the Technology Acceptance Model, this study examines how job crafting behaviours influence perceptions of new technology among remote workers in the U.S. (N = 291). Our analysis reveals cognitive and relational crafting behaviours have varying impacts on the perceived ease of use and usefulness of technology. Cognitive crafting introduces complexities, reducing perceived effectiveness, while relational crafting enhances perceived usefulness. Task crafting positively impacts both ease of use and usefulness. These results underscore the importance of considering job crafting behaviours to enhance technology acceptance in remote work environments.

ABSTRACT Through the lens of a global perspective, this article examines the concept of manipulative leadership within human resources development, highlighting the challenges posed by evolving leadership styles and generational differences in the post-pandemic workplace. While leadership is traditionally viewed as a means of influencing collaboration towards shared goals, manipulative practices shift the dynamics, often undermining long-term motivation and organisational performance. Our article emphasises that effective leaders cultivate reciprocal relationships, while less effective leaders utilise manipulative tactics that are primarily self-beneficial in nature, which can have detrimental effects on workplace culture and employee engagement. We also examine the unique challenges that are associated with generational differences that exist in the modern workplace, and raises questions about how organisations can balance short-term pressures with the need to build sustainable, trust-based leadership models, especially in a world still grappling with the aftermath of COVID-19. We conclude with critical strategies for proactive steps that organisations can take in order to mitigate leadership practices that are detrimental.

ABSTRACT Human Resource Development (HRD) is first and foremost a field of practice, and efforts to transform the field must arise and prove themselves out in actual practice. Practice is always in motion and, thus, its transformation is not static or ever finished, but open-ended, searching, and evolving. This article in the special issue on transforming HRD is written in a personal and narrative style, offering wide-ranging accounts of specific transformation initiatives taken from our professional practice as two white, western HRD people, senior in experience and age. The goal is to tell the stories of particular transformation efforts in different contexts, cultures, and times and to draw out insights for the dynamics of transformation. We suggest that the value of the tales in this article, even in the limited space of a journal article, lies in offering the reader glimpses of the intricacies and dynamics of HRD transformation as it actually unfolds. We invite the readers to reflect on their own projects and draw their own conclusions on the fit between our portrayals of the matter at hand and their own experiences as calls for the need to transform HRD arise loud and clear in many different parts of the HRD ecosystem.

ABSTRACT This article imagines the future of HRD using a complexity lens. Complexity calls for rethinking the industrial-era framing of work, learning, and change. We discuss foundational concepts and terminology that inform our work and consider links with HRD. We adopt the idea of ‘ready-ing’, introduced by Nora Bateson, who challenges strongly held theories of top-down, step-by-step change that do not work well in complex adaptive systems. She instead suggests we should ready people and organisations for change they might not imagine and cannot predict. We then draw from earlier thinking on sculpting the learning organisation that seems relevant to complexity. To illustrate what ready-ing might look like in practice, we elaborate four examples, or sightings, of how organisations ready for change. We discuss the resulting implications for HRD practice in leadership development and organisational change. We also examine ways that university preparation has pivoted towards a future of ready-ing HRD scholars and researchers for ‘what if’ thinking and complex adaptive change. We conclude with reflections on developing new mindsets and skill sets for HRD’s ready-ing for complexity.