Chair: Darren Short
The awards are given for excellence in applying scholarly HRD theory and research to practice in a manner that brings measurable improvement to an organization and/or has the potential to advance the field of HRD.
The awards recognize HRD projects or interventions that exceed a total of 50 people days of work effort, and that have been completed within the last two calendar years or are still underway.
Submissions must come from named individuals (i.e. not a whole organization). A submission can name one or more people, but each must have had a substantial contribution to the project or intervention. In addition, a submission must contain the name of at least one AHRD Full Member with an active membership status at both the time of submission and at the time when the award winners are announced. No individual can be named in more than three submissions per calendar year.
Organizations described in the submission must be named (i.e. cannot be anonymous). However, those submitting control how much organizational information is shared outside of the review process by drafting an abstract that AHRD uses on its website if the submission is selected as an "Award Winner".
- Award Winners are recognized at the following year's AHRD International Research Conference in the Americas, receive a plaque, and are listed on the AHRD website together with an abstract of their submission.
- Award Finalists are recognized at the following year's AHRD International Research Conference in the Americas, receive a certificate, and are listed on the AHRD website
Award Criteria
Submissions are reviewed against four main criteria:
- The organization – this covers:
- Organizational setting
- Process used to determine the organizational need and appropriate HRD response
- Organizational need
- History of relevant past interventions
- Key stakeholders, and roles and responsibilities
- Evidence of the positive and sustained results, and impact on the organization
- Research – this covers:
- Organizational information used in determining the HRD response
- Extent of use of published research, theory and other scholarly HRD information
- Specific research and theory used, with details on how it influenced design, development and implementation
- Quality of the practice – this covers:
- Goals and objectives of the HRD project/intervention, and metrics used to track impact
- Design
- Implementation
- Outcome and results
- Implications – this covers:
- Lessons learned
- Implications for HRD research, theory and researchers
- Implications for HRD practice and practitioners
- How implications have been shared with HRD practitioners and researchers
Nomination Process
The Award has clearly defined criteria and a submission must contain information for each specific criterion. Each section of the submission form has a word count limit. Typically, complete submissions are in the 4000-8000 word range. Each of the four sections should contains 1000-2000 words, so the total for all four sections is 4000-8000.
Review Process
Submissions are blind-reviewed by a panel of leading AHRD scholars. All submissions are reviewed by at least two academics and at least two scholar-practitioners. All reviewers have been published in refereed HRD journals and have been a member of AHRD for at least three years. See below for a list of the reviewers.
The review process consists of two stages, both of which are blind (i.e. the reviewers are not given any information about the organization or the names of those who submitted):
- Stage 1 – every submission is assessed by four reviewers to identify those who meet or exceed the required standard. Those selected are "Award Finalists".
- Stage 2 – all "Award Finalists" are reviewed by a panel of six reviewers (three academics and three scholar-practitioners) to determine the top three, which become the "Award Winners."