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Despite being conjointly stronger in their synergies in the past, there is still a significant gap between management and organization studies and sociology. The temporal lag is also, on occasion, a substantive lag. The emergent sociological concept of emotional reflexivity has recently been used in organizational studies. The question that animates this contribution concerns the nature of this translation, reception, and extension; thus, we ask how organization studies have been using the sociological concept of emotional reflexivity? We will examine recent seminal sociological studies on emotional reflexivity to answer this inquiry and consider some organizational studies citing these. We describe the reception of sociological ideas of emotional reflexivity in management and organization studies literature. By analyzing the differences and disconnections produced within this discourse, it will be possible to understand that emotional reflexivity is rarely addressed in emotional encounters between people and other modes of being in modern organizations. We introduce narrative fiction as a method; the narrative focuses on the relationships between humans and other beings in the workplace dynamics of a vocational school. The story tells how Charlie, a deaf student, changed his life after entering the vocational school and becoming involved with different pedagogical teaching-learning strategies. Adopting two deaf dogs, which had both suffered from past unsuccessful adoption experiences, produced life-enhancing emotional reflexivity. We conclude with a research agenda scoping further directions.

Since its introduction by Anthony Giddens in the early 1980s, the use of the concept of “agency” as a way to accommodate an irreducible element of voluntarism into sociological explanations has grown exponentially in the literature. In this chapter, we examine the most prominent theoretical justifications for adopting the notion of “agency” as an integral part of such explanations. We distinguish three broad sets of justifications: the meaningfulness/intentionality of social action, the need for “agency” to explain change in social structures, and the link between agency, social accountability, and human dignity. We find that none of these provides a convincing rationale for the analytical utility of agency. This raises the question of what work it actually does perform in the sociological literature.

This chapter advances understandings of emotion work by examining how “doing gender” and “doing health” are implicated in the pursuit of emotional tranquility. The study examines the role of hair loss in women’s illness narratives of cancer using in-depth interviews with 16 white women in the US Northwest who vary in age, marital status, diagnoses, and treatments. The absence of women’s hair presents an appearance of illness that prevents them from doing femininity, which calls into question their health status because of Western beauty standards. To overcome this barrier, the women use emotion work to manage the effects of their appearance through necessarily co-occurring bodily, cognitive, and expressive strategies (Hochschild, 1979). The required emotion work during women’s hair loss makes explicit the symbolic linking of the healthy body with the feminine body through women’s head hair. Pursuing treatment for cancer is often seen as a “fight” or a “battle” against the disease and the bodily assaults of such treatments, including unwanted visible bodily changes. A substantial body of empirical work has established the complex web of social psychological problems associated with breasts and breast cancer, but less attention has been given to the side effect of hair loss that is common across cancer types and treatments.

People experiencing homelessness often have multiple health and other support needs, requiring complex, coordinated support. Admission to hospital is potentially an opportunity to address these needs and begin integrating care, but so often it is a missed one. Our purpose in this research was to evaluate an ongoing, roll-out programme that offered government funding to 17 “test sites” across England to develop integrated care as part of post-discharge “step-down” support. In this paper, we examine senior stakeholder experiences of seeking to implement integrated care as part of specialist step-down care.

In this paper, we focus on data collected in interviews with key stakeholders (N = 10) who managed the mobilisation of local out of hospital care models for people experiencing homelessness. Interviews were conducted and analysed from a relational perspective, that is focusing on relationships between interactants, through which, for example, identities, understanding and integrating practice emerge.

A relational perspective on the data provides insights to better understand the complexity of integrating care at the point of hospital discharge for people experiencing homelessness.

Although in depth, the data were limited to certain perspectives on the issues. Other perspectives and data collection from in-depth study of case sites would be invaluable in developing the empirical evidence base for a relational understanding of integrating care.

A relational perspective highlights the emergent and ongoing nature of integrating care in this context of support for people experiencing homelessness. The need for different system agents to work to be constantly enacting the desired support is crucial to understanding future system changes for integrating care.

This is the first paper developing a relational analysis of integrating care. It highlights a different theoretical perspective on the issues and important insights.

The global economy is experiencing an expansion in knowledge-based businesses, which has compelled organizations to search for mechanisms of raising knowledge worker productivity. This study utilizes multiple theories to explain lessons learned from a positive story on how to raise the productivity of knowledge workers.

The study used a qualitative methodology of storytelling, a form of narrative inquiry about a phenomenon. In-depth interviews were carried out with information and communication technology (ICT) workers in Uganda.

Findings reveal that knowledge workers who communicate and mutually support each other are inclined to share knowledge and best practices that promote cost-effective utilization of resources. Additionally, knowledge workers with a behavior oriented toward the continuous exploration of innovative ideas are proactive in creating knowledge on how to render quality services.

The study was carried out in one country, which may limit generalization of results.

The study underscores the importance of continuously developing the human capital base and fostering a collaborative environment for knowledge workers. This nurtures the capacity and a shared responsibility to generate innovative ideas directed toward the effective utilization of resources. Moreover, the study advocates for the inclusion of social competencies, such as interpersonal skills, in the selection process of knowledge workers.

This study stands out from the existing literature since it uses a success story to document the real-life experiences of a knowledge worker who had to overcome numerous challenges to raise productivity in knowledge work.

This qualitative study aims to identify key intervention areas for today’s leaders and the leadership skills necessary to enhance employee motivation in this digitized, post-COVID era.

An inductive qualitative approach with a semi-structured interview-based design has been adopted, inspired by previous studies that aimed to explore and shed light on the object of this study.

First, findings refer to actual main areas of intervention and challenges for leaders to drive organizations in the new post-Covid digitalized era. Second, the study also identifies new skills needed to lead businesses and drive employees’ motivation. Third, this work proposes a framework to explain the leadership role in the actual complex reality.

Despite the extensive body of research on leadership, current theories fall short in the complex, post-COVID environment marked by instability, constant change and pervasive technology. Thus this research strives to develop an integrated framework to better elucidate the challenges and skills essential for leading businesses in today’s complex reality, with a comprehensive perspective.