A reflective provocation on generativity and human resource development

Abstract

Erikson (1963) developed a model of adult development in which he proposed that individuals experience and move through eight stages of life as they develop and mature. One of the later stages is depicted as a movement towards or striving for generativity, that is, a focus on the generations to follow after a person's life. We are four past editors of Human Resource Development Quarterly (HRDQ). Three of us have either retired, are newly retired, or are soon retiring, with one of us remaining as a faculty member in the human resource development (HRD) field. Therefore, we take the opportunity of the 35th anniversary of HRDQ to reflect on what generativity means to us as individuals at the present time, and also what generativity might mean for the field of HRD and the generations of scholars to come. We are hopeful that graduate students and early career HRD scholars, in particular, will benefit from our reflective commentary, and see this as a "letter to future HRD scholars and leaders."Drawing on Erikson's Stages of Development (Erikson, 1963), our collaborative aim in this contribution is for three of us to examine/consider/reflect on the growth and evolution of the HRD field, and HRDQ, through its inception and infancy, adolescence, young adulthood, and now middle adulthood. Specifically, three of us consider and speculate about generativity-as this relates to HRDQ, HRD, and to ourselves as scholars and former editors in the HRD field. Our provocations are both personal and professional, with the goal of addressing tendencies towards stagnation in both realms while realizing the importance of generativity. The one of us who remaining as a faculty member in the HRD field as a former editor, researcher, and quantitative methods expert considers generativity in the context of "where next" by empirically examining where the journal has been since its infancy. We collectively believe that "where now?" and "where next?" are vital life questions, which impact both the HRD person (the professional), and the HRD field (the profession), and also HRDQ (the journal). 2016) suggested that understanding the becoming of any professional field is only part of the story. Anteby et al. (The doing of HRD and the relating of the field to other stakeholders or interest groups are important features of our identity. As the leading empirical journal in the human resource development field, HRDQ is all about the doing of HRD. We are grateful for this opportunity to reflect on what we have learned through our engagement with HRDQ and on the doing of HRD.In his Invited Editorial, published in March, 2024, Richard Swanson, a pivotal figure in the "becoming" of our field, reviews the origins of the journal HRDQ. He concluded his 2024 editorial with these words: Well, HRDQ is a reality. My hope is that long after I am gone, this journal will be seen as a significant factor in the maturation of a profession that wanted to get better at what it purported to do, decided that experience alone was no longer enough, and committed itself to sc...