Empowering HRM Professionals: Advancing Research Culture with ETDs in The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM), Sri Lanka.

Abstract

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Management (CIPM) plays a key role in advancing the professional development of Human Resource Management (HRM) practitioners. Being nations leader in HRM, CIPM has already taken initiatives to build up solid research culture among HRM community in Sri Lanka and beyond. At this juncture, CIPM has realized the importance of ETDs and therefore, action has taken to upload existing ETDs of CIPM graduands to its institutional repository called ‘CIPM Research Nexus’. This growing ETD repository has become one of the major components among other research components such as journal articles, research monographs, research symposium articles etc. The main purpose of this ETD repository is to share novel findings and encourage the HRM scholarly community to conduct more research and find out solutions for the burning problems of the HRM community. A mixed-methods style was adopted for this study, beginning with a full literature review. A survey was then circulated among a sample of HRM professionals within CIPM to gather insights on their awareness, usage, and perceptions of ETDs. This quantitative data was added by qualitative interviews with HRM leaders to discover deeper challenges and opportunities related to ETD integration. The findings indicate varied application of ETDs among HRM professionals in CIPM. Although there is a general awareness of ETDs, their full potential in enhancing research skills and knowledge dissemination has not been fully realized. Identified challenges include limited access to ETD repositories and inadequate training opportunities. However, respondents showed interest for incorporating ETDs into their professional development, identifying their value in expanding research capabilities and staying current with HRM trends.