Rob F. Poell

• Ph.D.
• Human Resources at Tilburg University

Doctorate outcomes have evolved beyond traditional scholarly, original publications, fostering research-driven innovation. This study views a PhD as a ‘quest’ encompassing students’ aspirations, emotional responses, duration, pervasiveness, and unpredictability. We explored PhD candidates’ quests in connection with their engagements in research, ed...

Monica A. van Winkel et al. (2025). Identifying story types of PhD candidates lecturing in higher professional education: “ups and downs”, “turnaround”, “continuous growth”, and “scholarly recognition”. Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. Overview of included supplementary (original author's man...

The variety of learning opportunities that people can choose from in the workplace differs among organizations to a large extent. Although qualitative studies have suggested such differences in organizational-learning structures, no validated instrument is available to enable systematic comparisons among workplaces in this respect. In the present s...

This study examines the journeys of lecturers full-time employed at Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS), pursuing part-time, profession-focused PhDs with workload vouchers. Beyond academic publications, they are expected to generate professionally relevant, scholarly, and original knowledge to drive innovation (Griffioen, 2019; Lee & Bonga...

The full special issue on the topic of HRD transformation can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rhrd20/current

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple perspectives on managerial coaching: why and how managers engage, employees and human resource development (HRD) professionals’ perspectives on the use and how HRD and managers can better support each other with it. Design/methodology/approach This study used secondary analysis of empirical...

More collaboration between primary schools and childcare providers is increasingly considered a crucial factor to optimally support children's development. However, due to disparities between these two sectors, fostering collaboration proves problematic in practice. Inclusive leadership is seen as a promising approach in contexts with strong fault...

Purpose Whilst an urgent need for collaboration is increasingly seen in education to better respond to socio-educational challenges, in practice, collaboration between primary school teachers and their partners is hampered by barriers. The aim of this study is to shed light on these barriers from a human resource management (HRM) angle, using the a...

Van Winkel et al. (2023). The multifaceted quest of PhD candidates in connection with their work engagements and aspirations in research, education, and professional fields 1 The Higher Education with Impact conference, December 13 th-15th, 2023, Hasselt University. Track: Future-Proof Higher Education; Theme: Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinar...

Presentatie queeste van de hbo promovendi, ORD, 2023, Amsterdam.

Inspired by role conceptualisations and calls to rethink and reshape activities and competences of professionally qualified HRD practitioners, we examine HRD’s role and its associated activities through established versions of role theory. We ask: To what extent is there congruence in role expectations of HRD practitioners and other stakeholders? W...

PhD trajecten van docenten in het hoger beroepsonderwijs: Verhalen over ups en downs, ommekeer, groei, en erkenning

In this meta reaction paper, I reflect on the initial paper by Wang and Doty (2022a), the two responses (Russ-Eft, 2022; Yoon, 2022), and the final response-to-respondents (Wang & Doty, 2022b). I focus on two observations that stood out for me, encompassing: (1) how HRD is defined; (2) what HRD should contribute to and to what extent the initial au...

Various factors can hinder the competitive advantage of an organization, one of them being knowledge hiding. We draw on social exchange, norms of reciprocity, and contextual theories to propose that the negative relationship between perceived co-worker support and knowledge hiding happens in particular contexts. We expand previous studies in deline...

Human resource development (HRD) has traditionally been seen as the main driver behind people‐centered developmental activities such as learning and development, organization development, and career development. However, the role of HRD professionals as the main stakeholder has been questioned as more and more people‐centered development activities...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0222518.].

Contemporary labor markets are characterized by rapidly growing numbers of solo self-employed workers who have their own businesses without employing employees. However, research on solo self-employment has almost exclusively focused on the decision to move into self-employment, thereby failing to consider the long-term career consequences of being...

This study aimed to advance our understanding of inclusive human resource management (HRM) in freelance employment. We examined organizational needs and freelancers' psychological contracts with a qualitative interview study among eight dyads of HR managers and freelancers. Although the findings showed that organisations and freelancers have differ...

Given the influential role of organizational context for creativity, this study examines the cross-level effects of two prevalent contextual elements-HR systems and relational climates-on individual and team creativity. We have conducted a multi-level multi-source study through hierarchical linear modeling on a sample of 282 employees nested in 69...

Purpose As the current “one size fits all” research approach is likely to be ineffective in identifying the conditions that promote the entrepreneurial career of the solo self-employed, this paper advances the current understanding of the heterogeneity among the solo self-employed. Design/methodology/approach A person-centered approach is used to...

Purpose Understanding employee knowledge hiding behavior can serve organizations in better implementing knowledge management practices. The purpose of this study is to investigate how personality and work climate influence knowledge hiding, by examining the respective roles of openness to experience and relational (specifically, communal sharing an...

Editors: Tonette Rocco, Cecil Smith, Robert Mizzi, Lisa Merriweather, Joshua Hawley

The Problem Whereas critical reflection has been the hallmark of learning from experience in the workplace, performance has been the hallmark for productivity. In the face of complex, ongoing, disruptive change, failing safe is a necessary condition for learning from experience, and critical reflection the method of learning from safe to fail exper...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how psychological need satisfaction (PNS) relates to the display of servant leadership (SL) behavior through the motivation to serve (MTS) and noncalculative motivation to lead (MTL). Design/Methodology/Approach – Data were collected using an electronic online questionnaire completed by 125 individuals from vari...

This study examined whether remediation (providing another inducement to compensate for an undelivered obligation in the psychological contract) was perceived as a useful way to deal with the consequences of a psychological contract breach in the context of organizational change. Data was collected by means of semi-structured face-to-face focus-gro...

Hoewel het gebruik van persoonlijkheidstests als hulpmiddel in de praktijk op veel hrd-professionals een grote aantrekkingskracht heeft, worden deze tests door sommigen flink bekritiseerd. Ze zijn aantrekkelijk door hun optimistische beschrijvingen en gebruiksgemak voor individuele ontwikkeling en teamontwikkeling. De markt van persoonlijkheidstest...

Research in the field of work and organizational psychology more and more highlights the importance of employees’ experience of meaningful work. Adding to this area of research, the present study among teachers examined the relationship between meaningful work and resilience and tested whether this proposed relationship is mediated by teachers’ wor...

This exploratory study uses the learning‐network theory as a framework to investigate how managers and employees differ in their preference for the human resource development (HRD) activities of employees and in the functions they attribute to HRD. The research design was quantitative and cross‐sectional. Data collection took place in six countries...

Competence-based education (CBE) is an innovation in (vocational) education aimed at improving students’ competences. Little is known, however, about the processes leading to successful implementation of CBE and about its outcomes. This study investigates the effects that the level of CBE implementation has on student satisfaction (regarding the qu...

This study examines the impact of personal resources and job resources on employees’ perceived opportunities to craft and job crafting behavior. Based on research following the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) theory, we hypothesize that personal resources (i.e., resilience and self-efficacy) and job resources (i.e., developmental opportunities and...

Deze multidisciplinaire studie exploreert hoe docentonderzoekers op hogescholen leren over grenzen van praktijken heen met behoud van persoonlijke balans. De focus ligt op drie centrale praktijken: onderzoek, onderwijs en professionele praktijk. Data van semigestructureerde interviews met achttien docentonderzoekers van een Nederlandse hogeschool w...

This article explores the pragmatics of operationalizing reflection in experience-based workplace learning. It proposes a constructivist-situative framework – not typically considered feasible – based on balancing the complementary strengths of each individual framework. We distinguish among four empirically demonstrated approaches that operational...

An increasing number of universities around the world have adopted a learner-oriented approach to teaching. Collective learning is regarded as a way to support teachers to enhance this approach. Collective learning processes arise when the teachers collaborate and consciously strive for a shared vision, dialogue, collective action and evaluation. T...

Purpose While factors that influence test takers’ reactions to personality testing in selection contexts have been well researched, little empirical research evidence exists to determine whether these factors also apply to test takers’ reactions in the context of management development (MD). The purpose of this study is, therefore, to explore what...

Although human resource development (HRD) professionals enjoy the use of personality tests in their practice, the appeal of these tests to some is harshly criticized by others. Personality tests attract through optimistic descriptions and ease of use for individual and team development while often lacking predictive and discriminant validities. Des...

Research in the field of management, in particular human resource management (HRM), increasingly highlights the importance of person-organization value fit. Adding to this growing body of research, this study examines the complex relation between person-organization value fit, employees’ perceptions of work, employees’ behavior at work and their we...

The present study was designed to gain knowledge about the relationship between job characteristics in the workplace (job demands and job resources), employees’ perceived opportunities to craft, and subsequently their actual job crafting behavior. Specifically, the potential mediating role of perceived opportunities to craft could shed better light...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore how customer-facing professionals (CFPs) created learning paths to adapt to changing customer needs in a digital environment. Design/methodology/approach Two groups of CFPs were created from a previous single-case study to examine the learning paths of the two groups. Both groups were digitally co...

Purpose Employees are increasingly expected to organize their own human resource development activities. To what extent and how exactly employees in various organizational contexts manage to shape their individual learning paths however remains largely unclear. The purpose of this present study is to explore, leaning on the empirical Learning-Netw...

The present study uses Dialogical Self Theory to explore the extent to which a dialogue supports teachers' professional identity development. Using a narrative approach that includes interviews, observations of educational activities and collective meetings, insight is gained into teachers’ I-positions, meta-positions and promoter positions. The fi...

Despite the growing interest in and literature regarding practitioner research in human resources (HR), not much is known about the factors that play a role in the actual practice by HR practitioners. This article describes an explorative study to gain empirical insight into the use and quality of practitioner research in HR practice. We conducted...

The importance of work engagement for organizational success in a rapidly changing economy has been emphasized in literature for several decades. A possible strategy for organizations to strengthen employees’ work engagement may be related to their professional development. Based on the job crafting and job demands-resources literatures, we hypothe...

This study explores how academics who expanded their teaching-only positions to include research view their (re)constructed academic identity. Participants worked in a higher professional education institution of applied research and teaching, comparable with so-called new universities. The aim is to increase our understanding of variations in acad...

The aim of this study is to investigate whether it is possible for a manager to get a professional to become conscious of his or her thoughts during a complex new social experience. In all, 19 managers from organizations in the Netherlands were trained to use the Episodic Memory Interview (EMI), a method to retrieve thoughts intertwined with episod...

Participation in professional development activities is important for teachers to continuously improve their knowledge and skills. However, teachers differ in their attitude towards learning activities. This paper examined how different goal orientation profiles are related to participation in professional development activities (acquiring informat...

This study examines the impact of meaningful work on employees’ level of work engagement as mediated by perceived opportunities to craft and job crafting. Based on the literature on meaningful work and job crafting, we hypothesize that meaningful work has a positive relationship with an employee’s level of work engagement in two ways, directly and...

Research on biographical data suggests that recruiters draw inferences about candidates' abilities and attributes based on résumé information. However, few studies have explored students' attributions with regard to the experiences that are relevant in enhancing employment opportunities. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap by analyzing...

The present study was designed to gain knowledge of the relationship between employees’ perceived opportunities to craft, their actual job crafting behavior and, in line with JD-R theory, subsequently their work engagement and performance. Although scholars have suggested that employees’ perceived opportunities to craft their job may predict their...

Goal orientation is an important predictor of motivation at work. This study introduces goal orientation profiles in the work domain, evaluates their stability over time and assesses the impact of managerial coaching behavior on change in employees' goal orientation profiles. We hypothesize that coaching managers inspire, facilitate, and guide empl...

Purpose Human resource development (HRD) is an important field within management. Developing employees is often regarded as an instrument to improve the internal labor market and support organizational change. Organizing HRD to these ends, however, is frequently a problematic affair, in terms of training effectiveness, participant motivation and ad...

Purpose Human resource development (HRD) is an important field within management. Developing employees is often regarded as an instrument to improve the internal labor market and support organizational change. Organizing HRD to these ends, however, is frequently a problematic affair, in terms of training effectiveness, participant motivation and a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why personality tests are used in workplace training. This research paper is guided by three research questions that inquire about the role of external and internal stakeholders, the value of psychometric and practical considerations in test selection, and the purpose of personality test use i...

This paper seeks to understand key dimensions of reflection in experience-based workplace learning for research being collaboratively undertaken by scholars in Dutch and US research institutions. We systematically explore and compare Tara Fenwick’s analysis of five perspectives on cognition to distinguish among constructivist, psychoanalytic, situa...

The purpose of this study was to explore the discrepancy between teacher beliefs and behavior in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) environment. Using a survey and observations, this study demonstrated that tutors prefer learner-oriented beliefs, but in their teacher behavior they showed a more traditional approach to teaching. Analysis of semi-structu...

The purpose of this case study was to investigate to what extent tutor interventions in a problem-based learning environment are in line with a learner-oriented approach to teaching. Using extensive observations, this study demonstrated that the seven tutors in our sample apply predominantly teacher-oriented interventions. There was limited evidenc...

The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the development of a theory of organizing HRD that can help to analyse and support organisational practices around professional development, by showing that employees can operate strategically in several ways when it comes to organising HRD. The chapter first describes two major changes that are to be exp...

Competence-based education (CBE) is the leading paradigm for education reform of Vocational Education and Training in European countries. This study addresses the association of collective team identification, task interdependence, team learning, and team size, with the implementation of CBE (N ¼ 1008 teachers, 93 teams). Information processing in...

Background: Professionals are individually responsible for planning and carrying out continuing professional development (CPD) activities, ensuring their relevance to current practice and career development. The key factors that encourage nurses to undertake CPD activities are not yet clear. Several studies have investigated motives of nurses to p...

Background: To effectively enhance professional development, it is important to understand the motivational factors behind nurses' engagement in particular types of learning activities. Nurses have various motives for professional development and utilise different learning activities. Not much is known about how these relate. Objectives: The aim...

In this article, we review empirical studies that research critical reflection based on Mezirow’s definition. The concepts of content, process, and premise reflection have often been cited, and operationalizing Mezirow’s high-level transformative learning theory and its components has been the endeavor of adult education and human resource developm...

Samenvatting In hoger onderwijs is sprake van diversificatie van kernactiviteiten en uitbreiding van academische rollen. Het doel van deze studie is om docentonderzoekers in hoger professioneel onderwijs te ondersteunen bij hun loopbaan in een verbreed rollenportfolio, onderzoeksrollen naast onderwijsrollen. De onderzoeksvraag is, wat zijn de opvat...

The Problem There is hardly any information in English available on human resource development (HRD) education in the Netherlands, although the practice of HRD in this country is flourishing and HRD education is growing, especially within the private sector. Almost all relevant information is in Dutch, which makes it difficult for non-Dutch-speakin...

A nursing career can last for more than 40 years, during which continuing professional development is essential. Nurses participate in a variety of learning activities that correspond with their developmental motives. Lifespan psychology shows that work-related motives change with age, leading to the expectation that motives for continuing professi...

In this article, we examined whether career writing—creative, expressive, and reflective writing—can increase luck readiness, which is the ability to respond and make use of (career) opportunities. Two 2-day writing courses were taught to third-year bachelor students, one before and one after work placements. In this exploratory study, results show...

The Problem Critical perspectives on human resource development (HRD) have emerged, across Europe and America, hailed as the future of the field. However, we note the paucity of critical perspectives globally, the problematic dominance of critical HRD activities in Western sites of theory and practice, and the apparent dearth in non-Western sites....

Background Although separate studies among nurses have been conducted into their continuing professional development (CPD) motives, importance attached to CPD, conditions deemed needed for CPD, and actual CPD activities undertaken, these variables have not yet been investigated at the same time, on the same sample. Objectives To report on the deve...

The field of Human Resource Development (HRD) has grown in prominence as an independent discipline from its roots in both management and education since the 1980s. There has been continual debate about the boundaries of HRD ever since. Drawing on a wide and respected international contributor base and with a focus on international markets,this boo...

An exploratory field study was conducted among 30 project teams in the sectors of building and utilities, engineering and construction, infrastructure, and area decontamination and development in the Netherlands. It examined the influence of leadership on team learning behaviors and included team stability as a potential mediator, all analyzed at t...

From all over the world there have been calls from governmental institutions to address a shortage of high quality teachers. As changing jobs generates new experiences, job mobility could be a way for teachers to adhere to the government’s call to develop themselves into the teaching force needed. The research question of this study was: How do the...

The aim of this chapter is to present, and provide empirical evidence for, a theory that gives central stage to actors operating strategically in the context of professional development. The learning-network theory (based on the seminal work of Ferd van der Krogt) deals with the organization of HRD taking into account the various ways in which diff...

The field of Human Resource Development (HRD) has grown in prominence as an independent discipline from its roots in both management and education since the 1980s. There has been continual debate about the boundaries of HRD ever since. Drawing on a wide and respected international contributor base and with a focus on international markets, this boo...