With three new books in recent months, Claretha Hughes continues to combine her 25 years of corporate experience, her work as a University of Arkansas associate professor teaching and conducting research with students in the human resource and workforce development program and her Master of Business Administration degree from the U of A.

The most recent is a collaboration with Matthew W. Gosney, one of her doctoral students who graduated in 2014. They worked together on a book published in March by IGI Global. Hughes and Gosney co-edited Bridging the Scholar-Practitioner Gap in Human Resources Development.

It provides a source for professionals, practitioners, academics and researchers interested in the impact human resource specialists have in organizational settings.

They also wrote The History of Human Resource Development: Understanding the Unexplored Philosophies, Theories, and Methodologies, recently published by Palgrave Macmillan. Gosney is director of organizational development for Hillcrest Healthcare System, USA based in Tulsa. The book grew from Gosney's doctoral dissertation, which was titled "Theory and Practice: A Historical Examination of the Assumptions and Philosophy of Human Resource Development."

Hughes also wrote Managing Human Resource Development Programs with Marilyn Byrd, an assistant professor of human relations at the University of Oklahoma. The book was published last year, also by Palgrave Macmillan. 

These are Hughes' fourth, fifth, and sixth book in five years; one was published in 2012, three in 2015 and the last two earlier this year. She has one more book in production also with Palgrave Macmillan.

The history book with Gosney describes the evolution of humankind's investment in one another's skills, knowledge and abilities. The book provides a close look at the history of human resource development, showing the constant interaction between the philosophies of the time, theories and methods of people management. The field is now transitioning into a more mature discipline.

The book goes back to ancient Greece and traces the development and management of human resources through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, World War II and to the rise of organization development in the 1950s through 1970s before giving a perspective on the field in the modern era.

The "Gosney Model of Modern Era Theory and Practice Generation in HRD" rests on pillars of scientific management, human relations and systems theory. Among challenges for the future are the need to improve the quality of critical thinking in human resource development, according to the book.

Managing Human Resource Development Programs makes the critical connection between developing human resources of a company and the larger system of human resource management within it. The book offers a framework for developing human resource programs that are customizable to the needs of the organization, such as technology development, diversity training and customer service, while at the same time remaining cost-effective, Hughes said. The book explores current issues and theories as well as implications for future research and practice.

The book's 10 chapters cover topics that begin with the basic concept of how human resources professionals must build credibility with other employees of an organization in order for human resource development programs to be successful. Others cover topics such as how the content human resource professionals provide meets the specific organization's business needs, how a culture of learning enhances human resource program managers' ability to meet those business needs, how human resource development aligns itself with all stakeholders within organizations to help achieve an organization's goals and how to use human resource development as a quality management system.

Managing Human Resource Development Programs includes a chapter that focuses on managing diversity training programs and explains how diversity training aligns with business needs. It also tells how diversity training can be used to develop a culture of diversity excellence and describes diversity intelligence.

The book includes the "Hughes Value Creation Model for Organizational Competitive Advantage" that Hughes developed while working in industry and described in her 2012 book, Valuing People and Technology in the Workplace. The model is based on five values: location, use, maintenance, modification and time, as well as three organizational perspectives: cognitive, behavioral and cultural. Hughes won the R. Wayne Pace Academy of Human Resource Development Book of the Year Award for the book.

The two books co-authored by Hughes with Gosney and Byrd are being reviewed by authors for article publication in the journal New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development.

Hughes' other books are American Black Women and Interpersonal Leadership Styles published by Sense Publishers and Impact of Diversity on Organization and Career Development published by IGI Global.