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The aim of this small‐scale focus group study is to explore the impact the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine has on attitudes towards HPV, cervical cancer and sexual risk taking amongst university students in the UK.

Participants were recruited through advertisements placed on notice boards throughout the campus of the University of Leeds. The study sampled purposively to obtain two groups of ten men and two groups of ten women. A total of 34 people attended the sessions. The missing participants gave no reason for the absence. Those who agreed to take part were aged 19‐24 and were from a range of academic courses. Ethical approval was sought and approved by the Medical School Ethics Committee at the University of Leeds.

Participants saw HPV as being distinct from genital warts. This led to a duality in their view of the vaccine, which they saw as a cancer vaccine for schoolgirls and as an STI vaccine in relation to people of their own age, and thus believed it would cause sexual complacency among young adults. There was a fear that the HPV vaccine would reinforce gender bias, reinforcing the idea that females are responsible for sexual health. They maintained that mass media campaigns were more effective than sex education for improving sexual health knowledge and practices.

With the exception of chlamydia screening, this age group tends to be ignored in sexual health promotion campaigns. This small‐scale study provides insights that can inform larger studies and help tailor future health education campaigns on HPV for this audience.

In this chapter Suzanne Ross draws on her experience previously as a talent manager and now as a leadership consultant, Executive Coach and Senior Lecturer in Executive Education, and applies her research on leadership derailment to talent management. As organizations continue to invest in leadership development, research suggests up to 50 per cent of leaders derail or fail in their role. The derailment literature is, to-date, disconnected from TM although central to the definition of leadership derailment is that derailed leaders were previously successful and had potential. The chapter explores the concept of derailment, how it is defined, its scale and scope and some of the causes of derailment including a lack of organizational support during leadership transitions. The notion of the ‘accidental manager’ is used to provide an example of where literature on TM and derailment converge as a key derailer characteristic is having an overly functional orientation. This maps to the accidental manager concept and to the challenges that TM practitioners face in developing career pathways for expert/specialists beyond managerial roles. Suzanne argues that talent identification should take more account of derailment characteristics and suggests there may be gender differences in how these are perceived and in the consequences that arise when they are present. The chapter contributes to a greater understanding of how the concept of derailment can be integrated within talent management research and practice.

Islamophobia is a growing social problem that leads to the discrimination of Muslims. Using Group Conflict Theory and the Integrated Threat Theory as the theoretical frameworks, this study aims to measure the presence of Islamophobia in the hiring practices of the most southern state of Switzerland.

An experimental formative research study was conducted with employees. Based on CVs for two positions, back-office and front-office, candidates were selected for interviews and reasons were provided. Two variables were manipulated to represent the “Muslim appearance” on the CVs: the picture and the name. A content analysis of reasons was conducted in addition to descriptive statistics of survey responses.

A negative perception of Muslim candidates emerged from the answers with a clear difference between the two scenarios: candidates perceived to be Muslim were not rejected from the back-office position, but they were from the front-office position.

Results demonstrate that hiring practices in Ticino Switzerland are, in some cases, based on a prejudicial attitude. As long as Muslims were “not seen as Muslims to the customers,” they were judged as acceptable for the job. This has implications for social marketing research and practice aimed to change this discrimination behavior. A next step could be to understand if it is fear of Muslims or fear of what the public might think of Muslims that cause the selection difference between the two jobs. Systems-wide and macro level social marketing research is well suited to investigate such problems and test solutions, in a local context, following the methodology used in this study.

A disturbing escalation of the phenomenon of Islamophobia has emerged across the globe. This paper examines a fundamental issue in equity and prosperity, which is equal opportunity for employment. Using experimental design, the authors find that discrimination exists in hiring practices, which is a problem that social marketing is well equipped to address.

This paper aims to explore the stages and processes of work identity reconstruction following a major health-related career shock.

In-depth case study and interpretive phenomenological methods are used to allow for deep reflective self-analysis of post-career shock stages. The paper explores the identity processes and stages a Chief of Human Resources of a multinational firm experienced after being deprived from his main working abilities as a result of a brain stroke.

Post-shock work identity stages and processes are identified, as long as the importance of identity threat, liminality, identity internalization and relational recognition in the reconstruction process. The findings propose new coping responses that may allow individuals to escape a diminished work identity: identity shedding and identity implanting.

While career shocks play a significant role in career development, there is currently little understanding of how career shocks may affect individuals' work identity or sense of self, particularly over time. The paper provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon, through process data collected at several points in time over a period of 14 years.

This paper investigates whether career capital (CC) development abroad, expatriate type, career type and career stage affect expatriates' career success in terms of perceived marketability and the number of promotions.

The study presents findings from a 2020 follow-up study among 327 expatriates, including assigned expatriates (AEs) (n = 117) and self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) (n = 220), who worked abroad in 2015 and 2016. Among that group, 186 had continued their international career, while 141 had repatriated. Structural equation modeling with robust maximum likelihood estimation was used to test this study's hypotheses. MPlus 8.6 software supported the analysis.

The study outlines that CC developed abroad positively impacts perceived marketability and the number of promotions. Second, repatriates reported a greater degree of perceived marketability than those continuing an international career. Career type did not predict the number of promotions. The expatriate type did not influence any of the career success measures. Finally, expatriates in their late-career stage did not achieve a similar level of career success as those in other career stages.

All the expatriates were university-educated Finnish engineers and business professionals, and the career benefits of expatriation could differ for different sample groups. The study calls for more context-sensitive global careers research. The findings have positive implications for self-guided career actors considering working abroad. Organizations could focus more of their global talent attraction, management and career efforts on SIEs.

To analyze the impacts of these four antecedents on the career success of expatriates, the authors cooperated with two Finnish labor unions in 2020 to explore the careers of 327 expatriates, having surveyed the same group in 2015/2016. Such follow-up studies are not very common in expatriation research since it is difficult to keep track of expatriates who change locations and employers.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the employment relations context in South Eastern Europe from a variety of capitalism perspectives. Particular attention is accorded to the uneven nature of change at both the levels of institutions and practice. This is followed by a review of the individual papers that make up this special issue.

This paper is primarily a theoretical one, providing a review of the papers that make up this special issue and giving an overview of the foundation being provided.

While the term “transitional” has often been deployed to describe employment relations across the region, the process has been an extremely protracted one. There is little doubt that the nature and form of employment relations in the countries encompassed in this review is still coalescing, with further ruptures likely as a result of the 2009 depression. At the same time, the papers in this special issue point to long‐standing continuities with employment.

While the papers that make up this special issue may present the most recent research in the region, they also point to future areas for research. First, there is particularly little research that has been undertaken on peripheral areas of a generally peripheral region. Not only do we know very little about, say, Albanian employment relations, but we know little about employment relations in peripheral areas of large countries such as Turkey. Second, the 2009 depression is likely to accelerate trends to downsizing and insecure work, in the short term at least. Finally, there is a growing consensus that a sustainable economic recovery from the current crisis will depend, at least in part, on new social compromises both globally and regionally.

Employment relations in the region are undergoing an extended transition. In the short term, the most likely trend will be towards a further weakening of the bargaining position of employees, and towards more insecure working. However, a sustained recovery is likely to see a reversal of this, with employers being more likely to be forced to contemplate new social compromises.

This study applies the comparative capitalism literature to the South Eastern European region context. It also introduces some of the most recent applied research in the region.

This study aims to highlight the system-wide potential relationships between forms of human bias, selected Lean tools and types of waste in a manufacturing process.

A longitudinal single-site ethnographic case study using digital processing to make a material receiving process Lean was adopted. An inherent knowledge process with internal stakeholders in a stimulated situation alongside process requirements was performed to achieve quality data collection. The results of the narrative analysis and process observation, combined with a literature review identified widely used Lean tools, wastes and biases that produced a model for the relationships.

The study established the relationships between bias, Lean tools and wastes which enabled 97.6% error reduction, improved on-time accounting and eliminated three working hours per day. These savings resulted in seven employees being redeployed to new areas with delivery time for products reduced by seven days.

The single site case study with a supporting literature survey underpinning the model would benefit from testing the model in application to different industries and locations.

Application of the model can identify potential relationships between a group of human biases, 25 Lean tools and 10 types of wastes in Lean manufacturing processes that support decision makers and line managers in productivity improvement. The model can be used to identify potential relationships between forms of human biases, Lean tools and types of wastes in Lean manufacturing processes and take suitable remedial actions. The influence of biases and the model could be used as a basis to counter implementation barriers and reduce system-wide wastes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that connects the cognitive perspectives of Lean business processes with waste production and human biases. As part of the process, a relationship model is derived.