Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-07-18DOI: 10.1177/00187267251355394
Elif Nur Duman-Cogen
{"title":"Agency of silence: Female Syrian refugee workers and the reconstitution of the post-war self","authors":"Elif Nur Duman-Cogen","doi":"10.1177/00187267251355394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251355394","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores the working lives of female refugees who, living in the backstreets of major cities in the Global South, are often inaccessible to research. Most were housewives before their exile but must now find paid work to support their children. This ethnographic study shows that the only employment available to these women is domestic work and cleaning – occupations that are doubly stigmatised in their tradition and threaten their desire to rebuild honourable selves destroyed by war and displacement. Drawing on the work of the poststructuralist anthropologist Saba Mahmood, I argue that these refugee women reconstitute honourable selves through the <jats:italic>agency of silence</jats:italic> . I illustrate how, through agentive practices of silence – such as invisibility, concealment, renaming and refusal to speak – these female refugees protect their deeply desired valorised status while performing stigmatised work. In exploring the reconstitution of the honourable post-war self through the agency of silence, this study (i) makes a feminist contribution to the emerging field of refugee studies within management thought by extending understanding of female refugee agency in the Global South and (ii) develops the theory of the agency of silence that enables the reconstitution of the self, thereby advancing scholarship on organisational silence.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144677256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-07-02DOI: 10.1177/00187267251344775
William Milton Foster, Diego M Coraiola, Francois Bastien
{"title":"Repairing ontological security: The collective sensemaking of affective stakeholders in online communities","authors":"William Milton Foster, Diego M Coraiola, Francois Bastien","doi":"10.1177/00187267251344775","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251344775","url":null,"abstract":"Our study investigates how affective stakeholders – emotionally invested but organizationally powerless individuals – collectively make sense of unexpected organizational events in online environments. Drawing on a netnographic analysis of a National Hockey League fan forum, we examine how Edmonton Oilers supporters responded to the unexpected trade request of star player Chris Pronger. We find that the disruption of fans’ ideal, expected future triggered intense ontological insecurity, which they attempted to repair through collective temporal sensemaking. Fans cycled through three phases – rumour, confirmation and trade – each marked by distinctive uses of past, present and future narratives to reconstruct meaning and regain a sense of control. Our findings contribute to stakeholder theory by theorizing affective stakeholders as unique actors in organizational life. We also expand temporal sensemaking theory by showing how multitemporal narratives function as coping mechanisms in virtual communities. Finally, we emphasize the empirical value of studying collective sensemaking in digital spaces, where discursive interactions unfold in real time.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144534066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-06-25DOI: 10.1177/00187267251336113
{"title":"Rethinking Humanness: Human Relations in the age of AI and Technological Transformation","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/00187267251336113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251336113","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"26 1","pages":"640-647"},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1177/00187267251340602
Payal N Sharma, Rachel E Sturm, Brett H Neely, Danielle V Tussing, Bradley L Kirkman
{"title":"Too womanly or not manly enough? A review of work consequences experienced by counter-normative men","authors":"Payal N Sharma, Rachel E Sturm, Brett H Neely, Danielle V Tussing, Bradley L Kirkman","doi":"10.1177/00187267251340602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251340602","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, precarious manhood theory has suggested that men are expected to prove their masculinity, given that it is a hard-won, tenuous state requiring continual social proof and constant validation. However, there is an emergent body of research that challenges these tenets and indicates that some men do not adhere to gendered expectations of their biological sex at work—which we refer to as counter-normativity. We conducted a systematic review to organize and synthesize this literature, thereby extending precarious manhood theory. Our review suggests the hegemonically masculine roots of precarious manhood theory are not uniformly idealized or revered as previously theorized, because counter-normative men do not necessarily value enacting the associated norms. In addition, women are often the punitive party, which is of note given that men’s counter-normativity is typically described as their acting like a woman, and is purportedly one of the worst things a man can do. Finally, although counter-normative men are largely punished in their organizations for breaking gender stereotypes, there are instances where they experience positive or neutral outcomes. We conclude by guiding forthcoming scholarship on masculinity at work, suggesting important implications for managing gender complexities in today’s work settings.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144311297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-05-06DOI: 10.1177/00187267251331480
Devi Vijay, Abrar Saiyed
{"title":"Killing us with slow poison: Organizing infrastructural violence and work at an internal frontier","authors":"Devi Vijay, Abrar Saiyed","doi":"10.1177/00187267251331480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251331480","url":null,"abstract":"This study focuses on the people inhabiting an internal frontier of global capital marked by the zone of a waste landfill and its surrounding industrial belt. While the external frontiers of capitalist accumulation are traceable to identifiable corporations, internal frontiers involve ambiguous work and organizational relations. We draw on fieldwork at a settlement near a waste landfill in Ahmedabad, India. We weave research on infrastructures with organizational studies of violence to examine the (re-) production of these internal frontiers. We show how the state and private actors inflict socio-economic ruination and govern through infrastructural violence – such as exclusions from public infrastructures, proliferating private infrastructures and exposure to toxic infrastructures – to produce the internal frontier. Residents endure life through the <jats:italic>reparative infrastructural work</jats:italic> of salvaging and patching infrastructures. We contribute to organizational research on violence by highlighting the under-theorized internal frontiers of global capital that comprise large swathes of the population. Furthermore, using infrastructure as an analytic lens, we open new terrains of inquiry into work and organizing in the capitalist mode of production. We show how reparative infrastructural work at the internal frontier transgresses Global North-centric formulations of work. We advance nascent organization studies on majoritarian political formations.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"116 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143915967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-05-05DOI: 10.1177/00187267251335859
Daniel Fisher, Daisy Chung
{"title":"“The eyes and ears of the railway”: How frontline workers uphold safety through their occupational expertise and embodied epistemic authority","authors":"Daniel Fisher, Daisy Chung","doi":"10.1177/00187267251335859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251335859","url":null,"abstract":"Frontline workers who occupy public-facing, non-managerial roles are critical to the ongoing sociotechnical accomplishment of safety in complex systems, yet their role is often overlooked in relation to organizational safety programs, protocols, and training. In this paper, we examine how frontline workers make judgments about potential hazards during routine work and how they respond to organizational directives that contravene their expertise. Drawing on interviews with train drivers working for private franchises in the United Kingdom, our findings show how frontline workers’ safety culture and unique embodied knowledge constitute their epistemic authority which ultimately supports robust safety voice and listening in a complex sociotechnical system. We show how train drivers are subject to extensive organizational controls that are meant to realize safety, but that in practice these controls are insufficient for responding to the incidents that occur on the tracks. These findings offer insight into how frontline workers draw on occupational authority to uphold a societal mandate for safety.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143909814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-04-22DOI: 10.1177/00187267251332465
Lusi Wu, Matthew B Perrigino, Hongzhi Chen
{"title":"A balanced view of supervisory family support: Effects on gratitude, indebtedness, and job crafting behaviors","authors":"Lusi Wu, Matthew B Perrigino, Hongzhi Chen","doi":"10.1177/00187267251332465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251332465","url":null,"abstract":"Despite resource-based theories espousing the virtues of supervisory family support (SFS), we question the definitiveness of an oversimplified assumption that receiving SFS is a beneficial, positive experience. We develop a model based on appraisal theories of emotion, with results from two experimental studies and a multi-wave survey study supporting our notion of the need for a more balanced view. First, SFS is positively linked to employees’ feelings of gratitude (a positive emotion) and indebtedness (a negative emotion). Second, gratitude mediates the link between SFS and approach job crafting. Yet—arguing that a key feature of SFS is that it empowers employees to temporarily disengage or withdraw from some work-related tasks—we also find that indebtedness mediates the link between SFS and avoidance job crafting. Third, considering employees’ work-family conflict (WFC) as a contextual factor that moderates the effects of SFS, we find that WFC conditions the indirect effect of SFS on avoidance job crafting via indebtedness. With these insights, our balanced view of SFS offers a more comprehensive assessment of employees’ lived experiences associated with the receipt of SFS.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"108 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143862878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-04-19DOI: 10.1177/00187267251327955
Mariano LM Heyden, Heidi M Wechtler, Sebastiaan van Doorn
{"title":"Wrinkle of change? The reproduction of executive age profiles across CEO succession episodes","authors":"Mariano LM Heyden, Heidi M Wechtler, Sebastiaan van Doorn","doi":"10.1177/00187267251327955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251327955","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the reproduction of executive age profiles across chief executive officer (CEO) succession episodes. Counter to the trend of the general workforce becoming more age-diverse, executives appear to have become more age homogenous and increasingly older at appointment. This is despite increasing frequency of CEO succession episodes, which represent opportunities for demographic change at the top. Combining insights from upper echelons theory, homosocial reproduction theory, and executive succession research, we examine age homophily as an underexamined response to appease some of the disruptiveness surrounding CEO succession episodes. Exploiting CEO succession as a theoretical context for change and an empirical identification strategy, we construct a sample of 391 successions in 297 Standard and Poor’s 500 index companies from 2000 to 2020 and apply a hierarchical linear modeling specification to test hypotheses. We find general support for the notion that age profiles of departing CEOs and incumbent top management teams (TMTs) tend to be reproduced across succession episodes. However, some intriguing patterns emerge when accounting for the origin of the incoming CEO. Notably, some of these general tendencies may be reinforced under outsider CEO successors—counter to the usual expectation for upheaval prompted by outside CEO appointments. We discuss implications for theory and practice.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"68 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143851020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Human RelationsPub Date : 2025-04-12DOI: 10.1177/00187267251332075
Jakob Stollberger, Smriti Anand, Penny Dick
{"title":"Capturing a moving target: Developing research on and with AI for Human Relations","authors":"Jakob Stollberger, Smriti Anand, Penny Dick","doi":"10.1177/00187267251332075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00187267251332075","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial intelligence (AI) has become part and parcel of scientific knowledge production since the latest iterations of generative AI models (e.g., ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Claude, or Gemini) became widely available. Given AI has rapidly evolved since the initial release of ChatGPT in 2022, researching how AI’s capabilities impact organizations and how researchers make use of AI tools can be likened to a moving target. In this editorial essay, we explore the implications of the introduction of AI in the context of academic research, both as the subject of investigation (i.e., research <jats:italic>on</jats:italic> AI) and as a research tool to facilitate academic writing, data generation, or the peer review process (i.e., research <jats:italic>with</jats:italic> AI). Specifically, concerning research <jats:italic>on</jats:italic> AI, we consider issues around clarity regarding both existing definitions and concepts in the AI literature and how these are influenced by the rapid technological evolution of AI’s capabilities. In regard to research <jats:italic>with</jats:italic> AI, we reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of the use of AI as a research tool and discuss the <jats:italic>Human Relations AI Usage Policy</jats:italic> . Overall, our aim is not to be overly prescriptive on how to conduct research on and with AI but to encourage authors to reflect on how to best capture AI as a moving target in the context of their research endeavors.","PeriodicalId":48433,"journal":{"name":"Human Relations","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.7,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143822653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}