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This manuscript explores the evolving roles of HR professionals amidst global megatrends and organizational transitions, focusing on the Italian context, which has experienced disruptive adoption of new forms of work such as remote and hybrid work. In this challenging scenario, our research aims to uncover if and how HR professionals are transforming their roles or maintaining the status quo in navigating organizational changes, dealing with the upcoming working scenario, and challenging conventional perceptions of HR practitioners.

The study employs the social-symbolic work lens, that contributes to a deeper understanding of how HR professionals work to construct organizational life, the identities of employees, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. This perspective highlights HR professionals’ personal efforts, consisting of the emotional labor entailed in steering organizational transformations and, eventually, maintenance in a context where remote work has become prevalent. Data was collected through 16 online focus groups involving 76 HR professionals from Italian organizations.

Our research offers two interrelated contributions to HR literature. First, we provide pieces of evidence on how HR practitioners act as agents of change in two emerging roles: the “Wannabe Hero” and the “Ordinary Hero”. This challenges the prevailing rhetorical discourse about the so-called HR business partner. Secondly, we delve into the persistent obstacles that hinder HR professionals from making a substantial impact in addressing radical changes. These findings will provide useful insights into effectively engaging HR practitioners as agents of change in organizational transformation, shedding light on praxis, structures, and their emotional work.

The paper analyzes HR professionals’ social-symbolic work, which offers an original contribution to the comprehension of the activities they carry on in practice and the emotions they have been experiencing. These influence both the way HR professionals play their role and the organizational and institutional environment.

This case study provides an account of eight mentor teachers’ mentoring approaches based on their reported feedback practices.

In an interpretative phenomenological design, the data were obtained through in-depth individual interviews with mentor teachers in different practicum schools in Istanbul, Türkiye. The study draws upon the mentoring approaches in the literature (Orland-Barak and Wang, 2020), and the mentor teachers’ reports on their feedback behaviors were analyzed accordingly.

During the interviews, the mentors’ emphasis on issues such as the use of positive language, encouraging reflection and the evaluative nature of feedback indicated that their feedback behaviors were mainly influenced by personal growth and situated learning mentoring approaches.

The results suggest that mentors’ awareness on mentoring approaches and how to give feedback should be enhanced. It also suggests that teacher education programs should pay more attention to providing accurate information about mentoring approaches. A more accurately structured evaluation process should be ensured, and mentors should be instructed on how to give constructive feedback through training.

This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a nuanced exploration of mentoring approaches in relation to teachers’ feedback practices.

In recent years, organizations have progressively adopted electronic performance monitoring (EPM) to obtain accurate employee performance data and improve management efficiency in response to the growing complexity of the work environment. However, existing research has primarily focused on examining the effect of EPM on employee behaviors within established job designs, neglecting the consequential role of EPM in shaping employees’ bottom-up job redesign (i.e. job crafting). This study aims to explore whether and how EPM affects employee job crafting.

To test proposed hypotheses, we conducted two time-lagged surveys across different cultural contexts and a scenario experiment on an online platform in China.

The results revealed the negative indirect relationship between EPM and employee job crafting via role breadth self-efficacy. This indirect relationship was moderated by constructive supervisor feedback and job complexity, with the above relationships being weak (versus strong) when constructive supervisor feedback was high (versus low) or job complexity was low (versus high).

The results have crucial implications for organizational practices, suggesting that managers should provide constructive feedback to break the trade-off between EPM and job crafting. Additionally, managers may need to give employees with high job complexity more autonomy rather than intense monitoring.

This study is the first to clarify the effect of EPM on employee job crafting. As job crafting captures the important value of employees in organizational job design, our effort helps to enrich the understanding of EPM effectiveness.

In this study, students’ perceptions of the effective practices of their research mentors were examined. The research mentors implemented the practices informed by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) mentorship competencies to mentor underrepresented students in engineering education research in a virtual environment.

This research experience for undergraduates (REU) program, situated in the United States of America, consisted of undergraduate students (i.e. mentees), graduate students and faculty mentors who all had at least one underrepresented identity in engineering (i.e. Black, Latiné/x, and/or women). Using qualitative methods, we used data from reflection surveys and follow-up interviews with REU mentees to understand the outcomes of the mentorship strategies employed by the mentors in the program. The data were analyzed thematically using CIMER model constructs and social capital theory as guiding frameworks.

The results indicated the identified strategies students perceived as the most impactful for mentorship throughout the program. Students in the REU gained knowledge on how to activate social capital in mentorship relationships and how to better mentor others.

The findings provide insight on how to operationalize the CIMER mentorship competencies to skillfully mentor underrepresented students in engineering. Given the size of the REU and the nature of qualitative research, the sample size was limited.

The results help inform mentorship practices for underrepresented individuals in engineering education and the workforce. Further, they add to the practical knowledge of implementing CIMER best practices virtually, at a time when the world has transitioned to more hybrid and virtual working and learning environments.

This study identifies impactful strategies for operationalizing mentorship strategies informed by theory- and evidence-based CIMER mentorship competencies. In addition, this study extends knowledge about how to implement mentoring best practices and engage mentorship in a virtual environment.

In today’s turbulent business environment, firms continually turn to technology as a panacea for supply chain resilience and performance problems. This article seeks to understand if information and communication technology (ICT) platforms, specifically cloud-based platforms, differ in their ability to enable supply chain resilience and operational performance.

Empirical survey data was gathered, and a partial least squares structural equation model was performed on responses from 174 logistics and supply chain operations managers. A multigroup analysis compared the structural model measures of cloud-based and non-cloud-based platforms.

This research provides evidence that supply chain resilience and performance are agnostic of the ICT platform type and deeply rooted in the relational antecedents of cooperation and coordination. Tangentially, this study confirms concepts of coordination and cooperation supported by ICT are antecedents to the robustness and agility of supply chains. Moreover, empirical evidence also reveals that supply chain robustness mediates the relationships between supply chain agility, coordination and cooperation.

While firms continually seek technological solutions to bolster the resilience of their supply chains, we show that they should focus on developing the social elements of supply chain partnerships.

This study’s examination of the influence of ICT on supply chain resilience and performance contributes to the growing body of empirical analysis in the literature. Through its theoretical lens, this article deepens the understanding of analyzing supply chain resilience and performance measures between firms utilizing different ICT platforms.

Policies intended to encourage gender equity in the film industry are ramifying and take many forms. This paper uses social network analysis to assess the effectiveness of one popular equity policy, shadowing, a form of mentoring. In shadowing programs, women and gender minorities (WGM) are connected to more experienced members of the industry through attachment to their productions.

We constructed real collaboration networks based on film releases from 2005 to 2020 in three countries and simulated the effects that hypothetical shadowing interventions would have on the distribution of social capital in these networks. We implement different versions of the intervention, including different eligibility criteria for shadows and shadowees as well as isolating the additive effects on participants’ project portfolios.

We find that shadowing is effective in enabling WGM to access the strongest network positions, which are currently disproportionately occupied by men. However, we show that the primary reason that shadowing is effective in doing this is because it provides a second project affiliation to WGM in an industry where it is difficult to get past one’s first project.

Our study contributes to the literature on how mentoring policies affect people’s professional networks as well as scholarship on mentoring as a gender equity policy. We contribute novel evidence to debates about the efficacy of shadowing programs for WGM in the film industry. We suggest that shadowing can be effective as a tool for not only helping individual WGM advance their careers but also for structurally reconfiguring the distribution of power in project-based collaboration networks.

This study utilizes Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus to investigate the networking strategies of Asian and Black knowledge workers in the London Insurance Market. It also examines the factors contributing to the success or failure of these strategies. The trading activities of the London Insurance Market are underpinned by interdependent relations among its participants. It provides an appropriate context for examining the networking strategies adopted by Asian and Black workers to accelerate their careers.

This research employed a qualitative methodology, gathering data from 24 participants through semi-structured interviews. Participants were selected using purposive, convenience, and snowball sampling methods. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data and develop aggregated concepts from the identified themes and subthemes.

The London Insurance Market accords great importance to networking. Interpersonal connections significantly influenced career progression, often overshadowing educational attainments. Asian and Black workers faced systemic nepotism and limited access to influential networks in this field. Participants strategically used their interactions to overcome these challenges and advance their careers. Many believed that their careers had a better chance of progressing through informal networks than through formal channels such as Human Resources. Some participants declined to engage in the commonly accepted networking practices, choosing alternative ways to further their careers.

Findings underscore the need for implementing specific organizational policies to address systemic biases and nepotism, particularly in front-office recruitment. Such policies could include prioritizing merit-based hiring practices and developing targeted initiatives to reduce the underrepresentation of minority ethnic workers in front-office positions. By adopting these measures, organizations can create more equitable career advancement opportunities and leverage the full potential of their diverse workforce.

This study contributes to the existing literature on minority ethnic workers' careers, networking theory and workplace diversity. It provides insights into the networking strategies of Asian and Black workers within the London Insurance Market, revealing that these strategies are dependent on contextual factors. The study also highlights the pervasive practice of nepotism deeply ingrained in the habitus of the London Insurance Market and which acts as a barrier for gaining access to influential networks.

The vaccine supply chain (VSC) performance remains under stress during pandemic outbreaks than conventional vaccination drives due to desired vaccination coverage. Therefore, it is essential to identify the crucial performance objectives (POs) and their interrelationship structure and prioritize them to improve performance in a pandemic VSC.

This study combines the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory based analytic network process (DANP) method with spherical fuzzy sets (SFS) to explore critical POs of the pandemic VSC in the balanced scorecard framework. The SFS theory tackles the uncertainty of POs and DANP interlaced causal relationships among crucial POs to the pandemic VSC while ranking them for prioritization.

This work identifies 32 issues associated with pandemic VSC and maps them against 13 POs. Effective communication, adequate health financing and operating cost optimization are the most critical POs, and operational issues listed under them must be prioritized to improve the overall VSC performance for future pandemics. The relationship structure among these POs is also summarized using the balanced scorecard framework in a strategy map.

The strategy map proposed in this study can help practitioners to address the causality among different POs and underlying issues for the sudden expansion of vaccination programs during pandemics from an economic, social and operational perspective.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to suggest improving the VSC performance during the pandemic by focusing on the causative relationship and priority of different detected POs.

A vaccination strategy to cover the susceptible population is key to containing the spread of any virus during a healthcare emergency. This study quantifies the susceptibility of a region based on initial infection rates to prioritize optimal vaccine distribution strategies. The authors propose a metric, the regional vulnerability index (RVI), that identifies the degree of susceptibility/vulnerability of a region to virus infections for strategically locating hubs for vaccine storage and distribution.

A two-phase methodology is used to address this problem. Phase 1 uses a modified Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model, ModSIR, to estimate the RVI. Phase 2 leverages this index to model a P-Center problem, prioritizing vulnerable regions through a Mixed Integer Quadratically Constrained Programming model, along with three variations that incorporate the RVI.

Results indicate a weighting scheme based on the population-to-RVI ratio fosters fair distribution and equitable coverage of vulnerable regions. Comparisons with the public distribution strategy outlined by the Government of India reveal similar zonal segregations. Additionally, the network generated by our model outperforms the actual distribution network, corroborated by network metrics such as degree centrality, weighted degree centrality and closeness centrality.

This research presents a novel approach to prioritizing vaccine distribution during pandemics by applying epidemiological predictions to an integer-programming framework, optimizing COVID-19 vaccine allocation based on historical infection data. The study highlights the importance of strategic planning in public health response to effectively manage resources in emergencies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the prejudice and discrimination constructs through the lens of a transcendent knowledge concept.

The paper seeks to demonstrate that Spiritism or Spiritist Doctrine (SD) – regarded here as a source of transcendent knowledge – offers compelling arguments and provides suitable explanations (i.e. transcendent ontology) in relation to the issue of discrimination

Overall, this paper contributes to a better understanding of diversity and inclusive perspectives by examining the antecedents and consequences of discrimination through the insightful lens of SD tenets. In this sense, the findings suggest that the discriminators and prejudiced people may ironically pass through – as a result of the law of cause and effect – the same hard situations (i.e. ordeals or nightmares) – even though in their future lives – that they impose in their current victims to forcefully open their minds, support universal values, enhance their own feelings and spiritual intelligence.

Evidence presented here (although conceptually in nature) could be somewhat integrated into training sections of diversity management. At a minimum, it may encourage the shift of attitudes, revision of embedded values and reflections about the spiritual consequences to the perpetrators of discrimination against minorities.

Taken as a whole, the SD tenets prompt us to understand that the acts of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination engender suffering for their perpetrators, even in their future lives (i.e. reincarnations). Broadly speaking, the SD principles compel us to consider transcendent knowledge even in the context of organizational life.