Rajashi Ghosh

Reverse Mentoring: A Social Exchange Tool for Keeping the Boomers Engaged and Millennials Committed

The aging of the workforce and the concurrent advent of the Millennials represent a major demographic and sociological phenomenon that can have dominant implications for organizations, as a whole. This presents a situation, where the Boomers and Millennials will be working together for the next decade or so. In the wake of mass scale retrenchments and economic upheaval, this is creating a greater urgency for HRD professionals to focus more attention on not only retaining this amalgamated workforce but also on keeping them actively engaged. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to propose reverse mentoring as a social exchange tool, which will leverage the expertise of both generations, that is, Boomers and Millennials, respectively, by being perceptive of their different needs, value systems, and work demands. We conclude by emphasizing different outcomes of reverse mentoring program for Boomers and Millennials and identify areas for future research.

The Jingle Jangle of Employee Engagement: Further Exploration of the Emerging Construct and Implications for Workplace Learning and Performance

While research is emerging around the employee engagement construct, evolution is in early stages of development. Presently, some questions remain about how employee engagement differs from other well-researched and documented constructs such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and job commitment. Although such inquiry is seemingly academic in nature, the use of engagement in practice is gaining momentum, and debate remains healthy as to the utility and statistical validity of the engagement construct. To respond, developing clear lines of interpretation and coordination across varied disciplines seems prudent, but an essential first step is a context-specific, conceptual exploration of the construct of employee engagement in relation to other well-researched job attitude and organizational constructs in the literature. This article explores literature on employee engagement, job satisfaction, commitment, and involvement. Implications for organizational learning and workplace performance are examined in a human resource development (HRD) specific context.

Executive and Organizational Coaching: A Review of Insights Drawn From Literature to Inform HRD Practice

The Problem Differing perceptions of what constitutes executive coaching core competencies by academic and coach preparation programs, credentialing associations, and practitioners obfuscates clarity of definition, roles, and implementation. This lack of clarity and agreement can confuse practitioners and slow progress in theory-building, research, and executive coach development. The Solution This article examines diverse ways that executive coaching is defined and distinguished. Professional associations have shaped membership, credentialing, and accreditation based on different competencies. The article describes four executive coaching roles and six enabling core coaching competencies, and it draws implications for navigating, researching, and practicing in the diverse terrain of executive coaching, in and for, organizations. The Stakeholders Practitioners might be interested in a map of the coaching terrain that Enables them to better choose among possible avenues toward coach preparation and professionalization. Researchers and theory builders might be interested in definitions and competency models to guide further investigation into coaching.

Emotional intelligence and organizational learning in work teams

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation between emotional intelligence (EI), team learning and team psychological safety, using a context sensitive approach.Design/methodology/approach – Using an internet survey‐research design, employees embedded inside work teams were asked to respond to an anonymous survey battery. Careful attention was paid to the collection of data from members of ad hoc teams currently engaged in projects within their respective organizations.Findings – Post analysis, evidence suggested EI was significantly and positively related with team psychological safety and team learning. Likewise, team psychological safety was significantly associated with team learning. Q‐Sorting technique was used to establish discriminant validity between the three scales. Bootstrapping revealed that team psychological safety mediated the relation between EI and team learning.Research limitations/implications – The paper’s results extend current theoretical bounds of organization le...

Developmental networks at work: holding environments for leader development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to elaborate how an adult development perspective can further the understanding of developmental networks as holding environments for developing leaders confronted with challenging experiences.Design/methodology/approach – The article utilizes constructive developmental theory (C‐D theory) to explore and address the implications of an adult development lens for leader development, especially as they confront complex leadership challenges that trigger anxiety.Findings – Theoretical propositions suggest different kinds of holding behaviors (e.g. confirmation, contradiction, and continuity) necessary for enabling growth and effectiveness for leaders located in different developmental orders.Research limitations/implications – Propositions offered can guide future researchers to explore how leaders confronted with different kinds of leadership challenges sustain responsive developmental networks over time and how the developers in the leaders network coordinate to provi...

Mentors Providing Challenge and Support: Integrating Concepts From Teacher Mentoring in Education and Organizational Mentoring in Business

This article reviews and critiques the literature on mentoring functions and roles in education and business to inform the use of mentoring as a developmental tool in both fields. Specifically, in an effort to expand the current notions of the different mentor roles, this review synthesizes studies exploring teacher mentoring in schools and organizational mentoring in business settings to identify the varied ways in which mentors provide challenge and support to protégés. As the fields of education and business explore mentoring from different lenses, an integrative perspective as offered by this article is required to allow both fields learn from each other and to make mentoring research more inclusive of the diverse perspectives originating from multiple disciplines.

The Toxic Continuum From Incivility to Violence: What Can HRD Do?

The frequency, intensity, and duration of uncivil behavior should be a concern to leaders in any organization.All too often seemingly isolated, subtle uncivil incidents (e.g., instigating a joke) can lead to patterns of uncivil behavior (e.g., bullying) and even physical violence. Each is a form of aggressive behavior. Inasmuch as uncivil behavior is linked to poorer individual- (e.g., job performance) and organizational-level (e.g., costs) outcomes, human resource development (HRD) is increasingly being called to implement useful strategies for dealing effectively with this vital workplace issue. The article traces the more subtle forms of uncivil behavior that tend to be ambiguous in intent to more intentional forms of uncivil behavior, that is, bullying and physical violence.The article suggests that HRD can make a strong, positive contribution to reducing the likelihood of uncivil behaviors, which in turn can play a meaningful role in increasing the success of the organization. Finally, a summary of the eight articles are presented that comprise this issue.

Examining the dominant, emerging, and waning themes featured in select HRD publications

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify how themes and contributions featured in the four scholarly journals sponsored by the largest human resource development (HRD) research association (the Academy of Human Resource Development, AHRD) reflect the changing identity of the HRD field. Design/methodology/approach – A frequency and content analysis of articles published during the period 2002-2011 was conducted to identify the dominant themes and research trend. Further, comments were made on the aims and scope and editorial discretion for each journal to understand how the journals influence the direction of scholarship in HRD. Findings – It was found that the boundaries of the field are constantly expanding with some of the older and mature themes losing momentum and new themes coming to the forefront of scholarly interest. The journals were found to play a critical role in setting the future direction for the field. Research limitations/implications – Future researchers can examine if the waxi...

Gender and Diversity in India Contested Territories for HRD

The Problem Diversity and gender are contested topics in India. Although diversity means many things to many people, the meanings associated with diversity and the approaches to diversity management in India influence and are influenced by power structures and sociocultural values. Similarly, the intersection of gender with other diversity factors, such as caste, religion, or age, makes gender inequality a complex challenge in India. In the wake of globalization and changing nature of work, human resource development (HRD) professionals are faced with an ambitious task of unraveling these complexities and identifying effective ways to manage diversity and promote gender equality in organizations and in the Indian society at large. The Solution This issue is a significant step forward toward advancing gender and diversity theories and conceptual models and frameworks within the underlying sociocultural assumptions and beliefs in India. In doing so, the articles in this issue guide HRD professionals to undertake a multipronged (i.e., organizational, societal, national) and a critical inquiry into the challenges posed by gender and diversity in India. The Stakeholders HRD scholars and practitioners interested in research on global or international HRD would benefit from the theoretical and empirical work presented in this issue. Particularly, those who are interested in understanding the complex challenges posed by gender and diversity in India would learn how HRD models and theories apply to the unique sociocultural context of India. Also, the scholars from other social science disciplines who work on topics of diversity and gender would get a glimpse of how these topics manifest in an emerging economy like India.

A Place at the Window Theorizing Organizational Change for Advocacy of the Marginalized

Using Giddens’s Structuration Theory as a lens, this article theorizes an organizational change perspective that emphasizes the role of the marginalized. The context for this work is the current changes within the Roman Catholic Church, with respect to its teaching and norms around homosexuality. The change perspective proposes the emergence of “Legitimate Alternative Structural Configurations” (LASC) from which organizational actors find guidance for enacting behaviors that promote greater inclusion of the marginalized in a global organization. Six propositions are offered for considering the ways in which marginal actors facilitate the emergence of LASC. This conceptualization of change provides a useful lens for recognizing, understanding, and promoting the transformation of oppressive organizational structures (in this case, the Roman Catholic Church), while emphasizing the role of marginal actors in the process of change.