The Emperor has no clothes: toward more impactful HRD research

There have been recent calls for HRD research to boldly reimagine its evolving role. In this article, we propose a pathway forward toward more impactful HRD research. We highlight three tensions we observe within HRD that we believe are currently limiting its potential: research-practice, traditional-critical HRD, and organisation-society. We deliberately discuss these three tensions here because they represent the misleading practices of HRD research in terms of its purpose, process, and outcomes, respectively. The argument we intend to develop in this article is that HRD research can, and should, extend its horizon beyond organisations and to society at large by purposefully collaborating with practitioners dealing with real-world problems and by cultivating creative synergy across paradigms and worldviews. We conclude with recommendations for the field of HRD to consider so that it may continually expand its boundaries and impact in today’s ever-changing world.