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Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.

This study reports a recovery‐themed cognitive behavioural educational group for clients suffering from chronic positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, on a low secure inpatient unit. Nine participants completed baseline and post‐intervention measures of insight, self‐esteem and knowledge about schizophrenia. Additional post‐intervention measures included compliance with medication, feelings about schizophrenia, qualitative views and access to the community. Overall, the results were positive within the limits of this small‐scale study. Following the intervention, most participants reported that they were less frightened about psychosis, and felt more in control of their illness and more optimistic about their future. This study suggests that there may be clinical benefits of having CBT‐orientated educational groups in low secure settings with clients with longstanding co‐existing positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Recovery style should be evaluated systematically in future studies.

While scholarship has identified the bias that maternal women (Arena et al., 2023; Grandey et al., 2020) and racial minority employees (King et al., in press) endure, few have taken aim at understanding how these identity characteristics might combine to concomitantly shape work experiences. Drawing from stigma theory (Goffman, 1963), the primary purpose of our chapter is to examine how the stereotypes of maternity might interact with race-based stereotypes to shape the experiences of working women. In doing so, we will be able to identify which stereotypes of maternity (i.e., incompetence or disloyalty; Grandey et al., 2020) might be exacerbated or weakened when varying race-based stereotypes are considered. After reviewing the potential for intersecting stereotypes, we then argue that mothers might experience different work and health outcomes – both pre- and postpartum – based on their race. We close by providing insight for future scholars and identify additional identity characteristics that may shape mothers' workplace experiences.

The purpose of this study is to understand how consumers perceive corporate volunteering programs. In particular, the author examines the moderating role of information processing and customer relationship status on consumer attitudes towards two types of volunteering programs: employee vs customer.

Using a scenario method, the author manipulated customer relationship status and program type while information processing was measured.

The author's results demonstrate that elaborate processing has a positive impact on credibility of the program and altruistic motivation of the firm. Less involved processing led to lower favorable trait attributions with employee rather than customer-based volunteering programs. Finally, relationship type moderated the impact of program type on attitudes towards the company.

These findings contribute to the understanding of customer reactions to corporate volunteering programs by examining the ways in which processing level, loyalty status, and program type interact to influence the customer's perception of the company.

The purpose of this paper is to describe workplace disclosure dilemmas of individuals with hidden mental health conditions who have privately accepted their mental health condition (anxiety and/or depression), but have chosen not to disclose it in their respective workplaces.

Interviews were conducted with 15 individuals who experience anxiety and/or depression. These individuals work across diverse organizations and sectors in India (e.g. architecture and health care). Data were analyzed using qualitative methods.

Interviewees grappled with three dilemmas: professionalism versus authenticity (i.e. bringing only a partial professional self or the whole self to work), withdrawal versus participation (i.e. withdrawal from workplace interactions to conceal their condition or participation such that people could know of it) and personal privacy versus general advocacy (i.e. guarding one's privacy or engaging in advocacy for individuals who experience mental health conditions). Overall, findings suggest that the disclosure dilemma can stem from both one's internalized sense of a devalued self and by perceived contextual cues.

Findings imply that perceived contextual conditions that amplify threat of discovery and its anticipated consequences can lead to and reinforce the disclosure dilemma. As individuals internalize others' constructions of themselves, they self-police and do not interrogate assumed normality within their social contexts.

Employers can create inclusive environments. Present findings suggest some examples of inclusive practices such as the employment of dedicated resident counselors or counselors shared across organizations, training of stakeholders (including human resource personnel), allowing for selective disclosure (e.g. only to medical personnel) and cultivating informal support networks comprising similar others.

Such evidence-based research that can inform practices of inclusion for persons with a disability is especially important, considering that research on mental health conditions is conspicuous by its relative absence in mainstream management journals.

Organizational research on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is at times siloed; the experience of one minoritized or underrepresented group is treated as completely separate and different from the experience of another group and thus research separately. For example, there are terms that are studied only in the context of one group, and a different term is used to study a very similar (or identical) concept among a different group. Indeed, there are many unique experiences that specific minority groups encounter at work. Because of this end, minority groups should not be fully categorized together, and their individual should not be erased. However, there are shared experiences that many or all minorities experience at work, whether they are a gender minority, racial minority, or a member of any other minoritized group. Recognizing these shared experiences can help scholars develop a deeper understanding of what it's like to be minoritized or underrepresented at work, and therefore help to better serve these communities. To this end, our chapter highlights three such shared but unique minority experiences: three experiences that are common across all minority groups but operationalize slightly differently in different populations. The first experience we discuss is discrimination, as all minorities typically experience some form of negative differential treatment at work. The second experience we discuss is identity management, as many minorities need to actively think about how they present their minority identity to others (regardless of if their identity is “concealable” or not). Finally, we discuss strength through adversity, as many minorities argue that their minority identity is a source of strength and an area that benefits them at work. We conclude the chapter with a call toward intraminority solidarity, suggesting that recognizing shared experiences and working together can help build better workplaces for all minority employees.

This paper revolves around the central question: is it possible to do “proper ethnography” without complete participant observation? The authors draw upon a student's experiences of negotiating National Health Service (NHS) ethical approval requirements and access into the student's research field, a British NHS hospital and having to adapt data collection methods for the student's doctoral research. The authors examine some of the positional (insider/outsider, native gone academic), methodological (long-term/interrupted, overt/covert) and contextual challenges that threatened the student's ethnographic study.

The paper draws on reflexive vignettes written during the student's doctorate, capturing significant moments and issues within the student's research.

The authors highlight the temporal, practical, ethical and emotional challenges faced in attempting an ethnography of nursing culture within a highly regulated research environment. Having revealed the student's experience of researching this specific culture and finding ways to overcome these challenges, the authors conclude that the contemporary ethnographer needs to be increasingly flexible, opportunistic and somewhat covert.

The authors argue that it is possible to do “proper” and “good” ethnography without complete participant observation – it is not the method, the observation, that is the essence of ethnography, but whether the researcher achieves real understanding through thick descriptions of the culture that explain “what is really going on here”.

The authors hope to assist doctoral students engage in “good” ethnographic research within (potentially) risk-averse host organisations, such as the NHS, whilst being located in neo-liberal performative academic organisations (Foster, 2017; McCann et al., 2020). The authors wish to contribute to the journal to ensure good ethnography is accessible and achievable to (particularly) doctoral researchers who have to navigate complex challenges exacerbated by pressures in both the host and home cultures. The authors wish to see doctoral researchers survive and thrive in producing good organisational ethnographies to ensure such research is published (Watson 2012), cognisant of the pressures and targets to publish in top-ranked journals (Jones et al. 2020).

Having identified key challenges, the authors demonstrate how these can be addressed to ensure ethnography remains accessible to and achievable for, doctoral researchers, particularly in healthcare organisations. The authors conclude that understanding can be attained in what they propose as a hybrid form of “propportune” ethnography that blends the aim of the essence of “proper” anthropological approaches with the “opportunism” of contemporary data collection solutions.

The following classified, descriptive list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” The prevailing policy of including all reference books received has temporarily allowed the listing of titles with imprints older than two years; with increased receipt of more current titles from a longer list of publishers, this policy will soon be discontinued (with the exception of older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). An additional copy of any title specifically requested by Mrs. Cheney should be sent to her for review. A decision to review titles appearing in the present column will then be made by Mrs. Cheney at her own discretion.

Employee engagement (EE) is a highly popular topic within workplace research, but has been studied almost exclusively from a quantitative, survey based approach, both in academic and consultancy led research. Yet, employee engagement is essentially an individual concept, concerning self, and this highly personal dimension fails to be captured in positivistic surveys. This paper offers a novel methodology in an attempt to address this deficit.

This complex concept needs to be studied from a more interpretivist and ethnographic angle, acknowledging that EE exists within a cultural context. The paper proposes the use of a contemporary, and somewhat contentious, form of ethnography, autoethnography (AE) that weaves together the researcher's personal and participants' experiences to illuminate the phenomenon.

This paper briefly reviews extant literature on employee engagement, explains autoethnography and argues that AE is a highly suitable method to capture both the individual and social nature of self in employee engagement.

To understand how employee engagement works, we need to get at the depth of the concept, and the paper offers an innovative methodological contribution to achieve this. To date, this approach has received limited attention and only minimal anecdotal evidence is presented to support the argument for AE. However, there is substantial scope for further research adopting this novel, collaborative approach.

An autoethnographic approach provides both emic (insider) and etic (outsider) perspectives on the phenomenon, thus harnessing both the experiences of those involved in AE initiatives (e.g. HR practitioners managing EE and employees being engaged) but also the researcher's experiences and interpretations of being engaged in their work, to elicit more rich, layered insights. Such nuanced understanding can help facilitate more appropriate, authentic and realistic interventions to harness employees' whole self and engagement.

Autoethnography provides an innovative approach to studying employee engagement, offering an appropriate alternative to quantitative, snap-shot studies and is more in keeping with the founding scholar's intentions for research on this topic.