Human Resource Development International

Advancing Human Resource Development Through Rigorous and Innovative Qualitative Research

Background and Rationale

Human Resource Development (HRD) seeks to address some of the most pressing challenges facing contemporary organisations and societies: developing individuals and leaders, fostering workplace learning, enabling career development, supporting organisational transformation, promoting inclusion and wellbeing, and building sustainable capabilities in an increasingly digital and global world. Addressing these complex, context-dependent, and dynamic phenomena requires methodological approaches capable of capturing meaning, experience, relationships, and processes of change.

Qualitative inquiry has therefore been central to many of HRD's most influential theoretical and practice-oriented contributions. It has enabled researchers to examine how developmental interventions create change, how individuals and groups learn, how professional identities evolve, how organisations navigate transformation, and how HRD practices are experienced within diverse organisational and societal contexts. By generating rich, contextualised, and theoretically grounded insights, qualitative research continues to play a vital role in advancing HRD scholarship and informing practice.

As expectations regarding research quality continue to evolve across the social sciences, however, HRD faces an important opportunity. Discussions surrounding research transparency, methodological rigour, reflexivity, research integrity, and open science are reshaping scholarly expectations across disciplines. At the same time, qualitative researchers have long developed their own traditions of evaluating research quality through concepts such as trustworthiness, authenticity, coherence, resonance, ethical integrity, and methodological reflexivity. More recently, advances in digital methods, AI-assisted analysis, multimodal data, and participatory approaches have further expanded the possibilities and complexities of qualitative inquiry.

For HRD, these developments raise important questions. How can qualitative research continue to generate the rich, contextually grounded knowledge needed to advance HRD theory and practice while also demonstrating methodological rigour, transparency, and credibility? How can methodological innovation strengthen, rather than constrain, qualitative inquiry? And how should excellence in qualitative HRD research be evaluated across diverse epistemological traditions?

This Special Issue starts from the premise that methodological excellence is not an end in itself. Rather, rigorous, transparent, reflexive, and innovative qualitative inquiry enables stronger HRD scholarship. We therefore seek contributions that substantially advance understanding of important HRD phenomena while simultaneously demonstrating exemplary qualitative research practice. We are interested in studies that make meaningful contributions to HRD theory, practice, and policy, and that also illustrate how methodological choices enhance the credibility, richness, and impact of those contributions.

Rather than revisiting longstanding debates over the legitimacy of qualitative research, this Special Issue aims to move the conversation forward by showcasing how qualitative inquiry can address the grand challenges of HRD while advancing standards of methodological excellence. Our ambition is to stimulate research that is theoretically significant, practically relevant, methodologically innovative, and internationally impactful.

Importantly, this Special Issue does not advocate applying quantitative notions of reproducibility to qualitative inquiry or promoting a single model of methodological quality. Instead, we welcome contributions from interpretivist, critical, constructivist, participatory, ethnographic, narrative, phenomenological, discourse analytic, post-qualitative, and other qualitative traditions. What unites these approaches is a commitment to producing robust, insightful, and trustworthy knowledge that advances the HRD field.

Scope of the Special Issue

We welcome submissions that make substantial contributions to HRD through high-quality qualitative inquiry. Papers should place the HRD phenomenon at the centre of the contribution, with methodological rigour and innovation serving to strengthen the theoretical, empirical, and practical significance of the research.

Illustrative HRD topics include, but are not limited to:

• Learning and development interventions
• Leadership and leadership development
• Coaching and mentoring
• Talent and capability development
• Career development and employability
• Workplace and organisational learning
• Organisational development and change
• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
• Employee wellbeing and thriving
• Sustainable and green HRD
• Digital learning and AI in HRD
• Professional identity and expertise development
• Knowledge creation and sharing
• Cross-cultural and global HRD
• Informal learning and communities of practice
• Skills development for the future of work

Across these and other HRD topics, we particularly encourage papers that demonstrate methodological excellence through:

• Innovative qualitative research designs
• Transparent and well-justified analytical processes
• Strong reflexive practice
• Creative approaches to theory development and theorising
• Longitudinal qualitative inquiry
• Digital, visual, sensory, and multimodal qualitative methods
• Participatory and action-oriented research
• Responsible and transparent use of AI-assisted qualitative analysis
• Novel approaches to demonstrating rigour, transparency, and methodological coherence

Conceptual and methodological papers are also welcome, where they make a clear and substantial contribution to advancing qualitative HRD research rather than discussing methodology in isolation.

Illustrative Questions

Examples of questions that align with the aims of this Special Issue include:

• How can qualitative inquiry deepen understanding of critical HRD challenges while advancing theory and informing practice?
• What methodological innovations enable richer investigation of learning, development, leadership, careers, and organisational change?
• How can qualitative researchers demonstrate methodological rigour while preserving contextual richness and interpretive depth?
• What does transparency mean across different qualitative paradigms in HRD research?
• How can AI and emerging digital technologies be used responsibly to strengthen qualitative HRD research?
• How should qualitative HRD research be evaluated across diverse epistemological traditions?
• What implications do methodological innovations have for reviewing, publishing, and evaluating qualitative HRD scholarship?

All contributions are asked to describe in their method along the Qualitative Review Value Proposition Canvas by Diller et al. (2026) (see Figure 1), designed to guide developmental, coherence‑oriented reviewing for self-evaluation, on how they took care of these aspects.

Figure 1

Qualitative Review Value Proposition Canvas by Diller et al. (2026)