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Based on literature providing evidence that Afrocentric hairstyles (e.g. afros, braids, dreadlocks) of Black women working in professional settings are often associated with negative stereotypes and biases regarding competency and professionalism, this chapter examines the extent to which these biases may be influencing the hairstyle choices of Black women employed in higher education. While academic workplaces tend to be more flexible and informal than non-academic settings, we found many Black women in higher education are, nonetheless, choosing to wear Eurocentric hairstyles. However, choice of hairstyle was influenced by academic discipline, type of institution and level in the university hierarchy.

Mohammad Azharuddin's arrival in professional cricket served, to quote Karl Marx, as a reform of consciousness that awakened the sport ‘from its dream about itself’. His expertise with the bat invoked the wide expanse of human sensorium, provoking reactions of shock and admiration among observers. In this chapter, I examine Azharuddin's life in cricket and public through a dialectical probing of the relationship between shock and aesthetics. Azhar and cricket appear as a productive terrain to carry out the analysis, as it pushes the possibility of what or who can be considered as a valid subject for theoretical scrutiny. Taking cues from Walter Benjamin and CLR James, I theorise the shock effects created by a cricketer most unusual. From his wristy wizardry with the bat to his appointment as captain of the Indian men's cricket team during the rise of Hindu nationalism in the country, Azharuddin's presence and popularity extended beyond the boundaries that are often imposed on a sportsperson. Through his involvement in the match-fixing scandal that was exposed at the turn of the 21st century, Azhar (the name by which he was popularly known) challenged the mores of a game that had emphasised Victorian notions of purity on and off the field. For the purposes of this chapter, I discuss how Azhar constructed a bodily discourse that pushes us to reassess our very notions of art and aesthetics.

This chapter investigates the issue of tattoos and examines whether the presence of visible tattoos still influences front line workers' employment chances. It finds that irrespective of a general societal shift towards greater tattoo acceptance and integration into modern society, negative stereotypes about tattoos still exist. Acceptance of tattoos in the workplace was dependent on the nature, size and location of the tattoo, as well as the occupation in question, and individual customer characteristics. Respondents were generally more accepting of tattoos on people nowadays. However, there was concern that employees with visible tattoos may still face stigma in the workplace. The findings revealed that most people will cover up a tattoo during an interview out of fear of negative discrimination by the interviewer.

This paper analyzes the ways in which accounting enables operations managers to enter and perform multiple roles in their interplay with organizational groups on the shop floor and in management, and the associated negotiations that operations managers have with “the self.”

Using field-based studies in a mining organization, the study draws on Goffman’s backstage–frontstage metaphor to analyze how operations managers enter and perform several roles with the aid of accounting.

The findings show that accounting legitimizes operations managers when they cross organizational boundaries, as accounting gives them an “entry ticket” that legitimizes their presence with the group. Accounting further allows operations managers to embrace more than one role by “putting on a mask” to become an outsider or insider in relation to a group. In performing their roles, operations managers exhibit varying attributes and knowledge. Accounting can thereby be withheld from, or shared with, organizational groups. The illusion of accounting as deterministic presented frontstage is not necessarily negotiated that way backstage. Rather, alternatives discussed backstage often become silenced in the frontstage performance. The study concludes that operations managers cross boundaries, embrace roles and exert agency as they navigate with accounting, enrolling it into their performance simultaneously as they backstage reflect upon accounting and its role for their everyday work.

This study relies on the frontstage/backstage metaphor to visualize the discrepancies in how accounting is enrolled into role performances and how seemingly categorical fronts do not necessarily share that dominant position backstage.

This chapter seeks to elucidate specific behavioral patterns that occur when people travel and consume luxury items using concepts drawn from sociocultural and economic theories. These concepts are Walter Benjamin's “aura,” Karl Marx's “commodity fetishism,” and Arnold Van Gennep's “liminality.” These concepts are deployed within the spheres of tourism and luxury in order to analyze how tourists on a shopping spree search for forms of authenticity, how this type of travel is similar in many respects to a religious quest, and, finally, how the design of luxury outlets in European capitals convey religious overtones.

This paper aims to contribute to this special issue on interpretivist research methodologies and the phygital consumerist landscape by exploring some underlying issues within the specific context of luxury consumption. The paper starts with a critique of current research, drawing particular attention to problems of reductionism, poor representativeness and weak contextualisation in research that adopts a positivist epistemology. The paper then highlights some of the contributions that interpretivist scholarship is making, and can potentially make, to our understanding of the experiential and humanistic aspects of luxury consumption, presented in a nuanced, discursive and deeply contextualised manner.

This commentary is informed by an in-depth examination of the methodology and approach adopted in the 327 most-recently published academic articles on luxury (from late-2021).

This opinion piece suggests the need for a sea-change in the way that scholars approach luxury research in online, offline and hybrid phygital settings to capture and convey its true complexity, diversity, contingency and contextuality and its emotional and symbolic character, and to help ensure that it delivers findings that are of relevance and value to luxury industry practitioners.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to look comprehensively and critically at the methodological approaches adopted by academics writing in the field of luxury consumption.

This study aims to investigate the effects of candidates' perceptions of cybervetting – the evaluation of social media profiles by employers – on the perceived attractiveness and prestige of organizations and the role of gender as a moderator in these relationships. Three perceptions – perceived injustice, privacy invasion and surface validity – are used to evaluate candidates' attitudes about cybervetting.

The sample is comprised of third- and fourth-year undergraduate students at a university in Ankara, Türkiye. A survey technique was used to collect research data. The survey form was prepared on an online platform.

Survey results revealed that negative perceptions of cybervetting significantly affected perceived organizational attractiveness, prestige and intention to pursue the organization. Still, no significant difference was found between the women and men groups in this effect. Men candidates are more concerned about the validity and fairness of cybervetting.

The research's findings are anticipated to shed significant light on how cybervetting is conceptualized, specifically whether feelings of injustice, privacy invasion and validity constitute core components of cybervetting. Besides, the findings are expected to reveal whether candidates' attitudes toward cybervetting affect their perceptions regarding the general attractiveness and prestige of the organizations.

This article demonstrates how psycho-sociological concepts have a place in disaster risk sciences. It draws attention to the relationship between risk perception and disaster management from Western and traditional viewpoints.

This paper is conceptual and draws from published works. The systematic literature review (SLR) methodology was adopted to analyse existing literature on the subject matter.

Risk perception evolved over centuries and disciplines until it found applicability in modern times. Despite the proliferation of western science-based approaches to risk perception, Indigenous knowledge systems still hold sway over communities’ understanding of risk. These perspectives are enshrined in religious and cultural convictions that become the lenses through which a society assigns cause, effect and remedy to risk events. A deeper understanding of these convictions enables disaster risk management strategies to be better accepted by those at risk and to align with their lived realities.

Risk perception becomes the lens through which we better understand the realities and complexities of populations at risk. Indigenous knowledge systems have a strong influence on society’s perception of risk and if they are not harnessed and studied, they will stand in conflict with Western approaches. Hence, the study of the nexus between risk perception and disaster management presents an opportunity for policymakers and practitioners to design risk management solutions that have a higher chance of acceptance and sustainability.