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The purpose of this paper, a “thought piece”, is to consider the everyday realities of homebased working and the implications for work during a global pandemic and beyond.

The authors present a conceptual framework for considering the domestic sphere as a social space and apply this framework to consider the existing evidence base on homebased working. In particular, the authors consider the implications of homebased working during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of gender.

The authors identify key challenges in relation to flexibility, work intensification and socio-economic differences. Consideration of these areas highlights the potential pitfalls and challenges that are likely to persist as many organisations begin to plan for an increase in homebased working.

The authors argue that some commentators have been too quick to celebrate the apparent successes of the sudden, unplanned move to intensive homebased working. Important differences in occupation, gender and other socio-economic factors will have important implications for the experience of homebased working for many workers and their co-residents.

The purpose of this review is to understand whether “The Great Resignation” has emerged as a concept within the popular media and academic because it is based on fact or whether it has emerged because it broadly aligns with a dominant neoliberal ideology.

This paper critically reviews United Kingdom (UK) government data to establish evidence for “The Great Resignation”. Thus, the purpose is to understand whether there has been an increased propensity for workers to leave or change their jobs due to attitudinal changes emerging from the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Based on this review, there is limited evidence that “The Great Resignation” has been occurring within the UK. Nonetheless, there have been extensive commentries in both the popular press and academic outlets that have been attempting to evidence the phenomenon. Some of academic writing is drirven by narratives emerging from the press which should thus warrent consideration of the extent to which academics are losing control over conceptual and theoretical development.

The key contribution that is made by this piece is the questioning of concepts that have entered the common vernacular. Concepts such as “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting” have, for the most part, gained popularity through social media. This paper looks at “The Great Resignation” and warns of the possibility that social media maybe a significant threat to robust academic theorisation.

The purpose of this paper is to address a significant gap in the line manager, HRM and the diversity management literature, that of exploring the role and significance of emotional labour (EL) in relation to the lived experienced of line managing neurodiversity.

A qualitative approach was used to explore lived experiences of line managers responsible for managing neurodiverse employees. Interviews were conducted with line managers employed in the UK transport industry.

The findings provide rich insights into line managing neurodiversity. A key overall finding is reasonable adjustments deemed essential to support neurodiverse employees require a myriad of hidden, complex, time consuming and often emotionally draining interactions with disabled employees, the employee’s wider team, and HRM and occupational health (OH) practitioners.

This is an exploratory study and therefore limited by nature of the research design, industry focus, scope of study and sample size.

The findings have the potential to inform HRM and OH practitioner support for line managers responsible for managing neurodiverse employees.

The study contributes to wider societal attempts to make employment more inclusive to a range of historically disadvantaged groups.

The study fills an important gap in the HRM literature on line managing neurodiverse employees. The study makes a specific and unique contribution to extensive literatures on line management, disability and EL.

This editorial seeks to explore changes in both teamwork and developments in teamwork research over the last decade.

The editorial review importantly focuses on the key debates that emerge from the papers covered in this special issue.

A review of the papers in this special issue, as well as historical analysis of teamwork research, indicate that while traditionally, analysis of teamwork was embedded in a manufacturing archetype, much of the contemporary research on teamwork is centred on service sector work where issues of cultural diversity, customer service, and lack of normative integration or task interdependence are increasingly apparent. This editorial suggests that we need to take account of the expansion of the service sector when attempting to conceptualise teamwork and the challenges that collective forms of working in such an environment bring.

This editorial and the special issue more generally provide an important contribution to the development of understanding of how changes in the workplace have had an impact on organisational and academic interest in teamwork.

This paper aims to examine the impact of perceived cultural differences in forging identity in virtual teams. Whilst there has been a great deal of research on team identification, little has been written about the influences of the virtual context on this process.

The study reported in this paper was conducted in four companies and seven virtual teams operating across the UK, the USA, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia and Myanmar.

The results show that perceived differences in national cultures and the way people work within the cultures has a significant impact on identification in virtual teams. This can lead to unhealthy racial and national stereotypes, which cause conflict between team members. The findings of this study highlight the importance of encouraging team members to value and understand differences and that it is necessary to promote a common goal to foster identification in international virtual teams.

The research provides a critical analysis of virtual working across international boundaries, focusing on employees rather than the technology.

This paper aims to examine the practice of teamwork in an under‐researched, yet growing industrial setting.

Longitudinal ethnographic‐styled methods of data collection were used and data was examined using the Team Dimensions Model.

The findings suggest the Team Dimensions Model, with the addition of a customer service perspective, is of use for identifying managerial objectives and organisational outcomes of teamwork. However, this does not suggest that teamworking is easy to implement in the hospitality setting.

The findings were obtained using unobtrusive participatory and observational methods and based on a single company.

The paper allows management practitioners to reflect on realities of implementing teamworking under a corporate customer service initiative.

The paper takes an existing theory on teamworking and develops the theory in an under‐researched and growing industrial sector.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The paper focuses on the formation and implementation of new manufacturing strategies in two UK drinks conglomerates ‐ United Distillers (UD) and Allied Distillers (ADL). Traditionally both companies have been marketingled and relatively indifferent to the achievement of marginal gains in operating efficiencies. But recently each has launched major innovation programmes, ADL's ‘Project Star’, and ‘Towards World Class’ in the case of UD.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the notion of attractive workplaces in the specific context of creative professional employment.

Based on observations and interview data at knowledge‐based firms in the UK, the paper looks at the extent to which employees are “rewarded” with the offer of creative work and the degree to which this offer really involves greater benefits for employees in terms of professional prestige and the confirmation of their identities as professional workers in the creative industries.

The paper finds that creative needs remain important components of the attractive workplace, but increasingly also of importance are the extrinsic rewards of an acceptable work‐life balance as the age profile of the technology worker changes and technology stagnates.

This research focused on one group of workers within one specific country. Whilst it was found that work in the software sector is becoming less creative, this may not be the case across all contexts.

There is clearly a problem, of developing young technology specialists within Scotland. In order to maintain the “Smart, Successful Scotland” propounded by the Scottish Government, drastic steps need to be taken to educate the IT workers and indeed, entrepreneurs of the future.

This paper is new as there has been little recent research undertaken examining the IT sector in Scotland. More generally, there is a scarcity of work focusing on workplace attractiveness for IT specialists.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of the role of internships for IT students and for the IT sector. The contribution of internships for career-readiness, and for the development of existing IT organisations and the creation of new ones is explored.

Surveys of interns and managers from host firms were conduced, followed by in-depth interviews with six interns and five organisations.

Internships are useful for increasing enterprise and employability skills and commercial awareness for IT students. IT organisations also benefit in that internships are used to recruit fresh talent. Findings regarding entrepreneurship were disappointing, with little reportage of ambitions to create new firms, nor awareness of the high likelihood of self-employed contractual work in the sector.

Implications for research include that self-employment and business ownership are not always “successful” entrepreneurial outcomes born of agency. This requires further study.

Development of opportunities for experiential, real-world learning for IT students is implied, as is increased educational focus on employability and enterprise skills to best advantage students for the realities of employment in IT. There is a strong suggestion that much more needs to be done in terms of encouraging entrepreneurship.

The paper reports the potentials of internships to interns and to organisations, and through combining these perspectives, provides comment on the utility of internships for the IT sector as a competitive, opportunity-rich global industry.