A special issue on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on work, worker, and workplace!? Implications for HRD research and practices in time of crisis

摘要

On 20 March 2020, grasping with the seriousness of the pandemic, we, the editorial team of HRDI, decided to write a joint editorial. Joint editorial only happens for special occasions; the last time was for the twenty's anniversary issue of the journal in 2017. While this time, it was not to celebrate a milestone of the Journal, but to respond to a pandemic that shocked the world. We felt strongly it was our responsibility to start a conversation with our readers, authors, reviewers, and peers so we could process and navigate a path forward together as a community. We were optimistic or tried to carry on an optimistic tone at the time (Li, Ghosh, and Nachmias 2020) by focusing on how to stay healthy and connected while be productive and keep learning at the same time. When we finished the editorial on April 1, the situation had become gloomier especially in the western world of most developed economies, Italy, US, and UK for examples. We had to continue this discussion as to how HRD could address some of the issues emerged by the pandemic. We decided to call for a special issue on Human Resource Development (HRD) and COVID 19 and publish it as the very next issue. This decision was ambitious and risky: the two issues are only two months apart and it is in the middle of the biggest pandemic of our lifetime, in addition to other normal humanly obstacles, such as conflicting priorities, time commitment and work and life balance.