At 7:30p.m., December 3, 2022, the Business School of Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) held the 23rd Session of the Excellent Academic Forum Lecture Series and the 4th Session of the Data Science Lecture Series online through Tencent Meeting. Professor Zhang Yucheng from the Business School of Hebei University of Technology was invited as the keynote speaker, and more than 30 people (including teachers, master and doctoral students, and undergraduate students) attended this event.

    Professor Yu Guangtao, deputy dean of the Business School, presided over this meeting and introduced Professor Zhang Yucheng’s resume. Professor Zhang Yucheng is a doctoral supervisor at the School of Economics and Management of Hebei University of Technology, who has been successively selected into Tianjin's “131” Innovative Talents Program, Hebei Province’s 3-3-3 Talent Project, the “Top 100” Innovative Talents and Yuanguang Scholars. He serves as a member of the editorial boards of Business Ethics:  A European Review (JCR Zone 1, SSCI Impact Factor: 6.697), Journal of Business Ethics (FT50 Journal, JCR Zone 1, SSCI Impact Factor: 2.329), Journal of Vocational Behavior (JCR Zone 1, SSCI Impact Factor: 3.89) and journals, and as referees of some authoritative journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology and Journal of Management. Besides, he presided over many programs such as the General and Youth Programs of National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Humanities and Social Sciences Programs of the Ministry of Education, and the programs supported by Hebei Natural Science Foundation, and won the Social Science Outstanding Achievement Award of Hubei Province and the AOM Best Paper Award. His research areas include repetitive research in management, abusive supervision, family-friendly human resource practices, management big data, multi-level analysis models and meta-analysis methods and so on. He has published more than 40 papers in top domestic and international management journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics and Management World, including several papers among the top 1% highly cited papers in ESI. Due to his academic achievements, Professor Zhang is also employed as a senior consultant by many enterprises and public institutions such as the National Development and Reform Commission.

    The topic of the lecture delivered by Professor Zhang is “Big Data and Human Resource Management Research: An Integrative Review and New Directions for Future Research”. Although scholars have realized the importance of applying big data methods in human resource management research, there is a lack of clear guidance on how to effectively combine big data methods with human resource management research. First, Professor Zhang adopted a clustering algorithm based on the big data research paradigm to conduct bibliometric analysis, and quantitatively evaluated and scientifically depicted the evolution of the current literature in the field of big data human resource management. Based on this systematic review, he proposed a general theoretical framework, which as described as “induction (predictive paradigm: data mining/theory building) vs. deduction (explanatory paradigm: theory testing)”. In this framework, he discussed potential research questions, corresponding analysis levels, relevant methods, data sources and software. Then, he summarized the general process of conducting big data research in human resource management research. Finally, he proposed the future agenda of applying big data methods to human resource management research, and identified five promising human resource management research topics at micro, meso and macro levels, as well as the challenges and limitations that human resource management scholars may face in the era of big data.

    After the sharing, the attending teachers and students actively participated in the discussion, and professor Zhang answered their questions in an enthusiastic manner, further deepening their academic exchanges.

    The “Excellent Academic Forum” is an academic exchange platform established by the Business School to fulfill the mission of “contributing new management knowledge”, which focuses on cutting-edge theoretical issues and organizational development dilemmas in the discipline of business administration and the Chinese enterprise management practice, and brings together frontier ideas and innovative ideas in China and abroad, so as to explore Chinese solutions for China's social and economic development.