How is human resource management research (not) helping practice? In defence of practical implications

Abstract

This article provokes that human resource management (HRM) research is a long way from helping practice. Following a review of HRM empirical articles published in 2018, we show the limited focus academic journals place on practical implications. We provoke that HRM journals are failing to ‘do the right thing’ by not requiring authors to pay enough attention to communicating the practical implications of their research. In half of the articles that we reviewed (n = 324) less than 2% of the text focuses on practical implications. We also found that where practical implications were offered, they were often obscure, implicit, and used unintelligible terms. We argue for extensive practical implications to be included in publications that provide an impetus to research relevant topics and close the knowledge-translation gap.