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The academic discourse around celebrity and iconicity has resulted in the same human brand as labeled as an inauthentic and illegitimate celebrity and as a culturally important symbol of legitimate achievement. We address the research question of how are contradictions between celebrity and iconicity resolved in creating and managing a human brand.

Using structuration theory, we analyzed David Bowie’s 50 year career, from 1964 to 2013, totaling 562 documents. Applying Langley’s (1999) stages of data collection of grounding, organizing, and replicating, we develop a process of model of celebrity and iconicity.

We identify three stages of human brand symbolic associations: forming, fixing, and transitioning associations. These represent alternate trajectories that Bowie and Ziggy Stardust followed to become icons. In resolving his trajectories across these stages, Bowie adapts and adopts commercial materials, business practices, and new technologies to converge his symbolic associations into a coherent iconic human brand.

Limitations of this paper lie in focusing on one human brand in a particular industry. Future research is suggested in three areas: (1) the relationship between the proposed model and other human brand activities; (2) to explore how the process is manipulated by other market agents; and (3) whether a human brand’s association shifts can precede culture.

This perspective challenges existing conceptualizations of celebrity and iconicity by framing them as inter-related processes, where celebrity associations are fixed in time, while iconic associations transition across time periods to reflect changing cultural values and concerns.

Diversity and inclusion initiatives are normally centred on legally protected traits such as race and gender. As the legal framework expands to ensure that underrepresented workers are protected, there exists a subset of the workforce who have diversity characteristics that are legally unprotected. For example, individuals who have visible tattoos can face employment discrimination when they are looking for work or looking to progress their careers. To add to the challenge, the perception of stigma is fluid and expectations related to the appearance of employees are determined by managers' perceptions of consumers' preferences. Drawing theoretically from self-categorisation theory and information processing theory, we discuss how the creation of a marketing and brand proposition framework can help to build an organisational identity that can benefit consumers and the organisation simultaneously. We also discuss the practical implications and strategies that organisations can consider to reduce such workplace discrimination.

This chapter of exploratory nature aims to provide an account of the reviewed literature and presents some empirical cases to come to conceptualize dogs as social actors with different legitimate roles in the working, social, private, economic, and family life of human beings.

This chapter is the product of a research inspired by the great interest of the authors on rising awareness of the importance of dogs in human working lives. For this, a purposive literature review took place; we consulted scientific studies databases, and also gathered information from market research agencies, and other general media resources. To have a more comprehensive view, and to respond to a specific question on dogs at the workplace, a selection of cases is used to illustrate. For the case studies, secondary data research was used, and individual, structured interviews were conducted and analyzed.

This chapter reviews the relationship between humans and animals. It identifies attitudes and perception toward animals, highlighting the evolution of the intimate bond and the deep relationship between dogs and humans. It describes some cases of dogs as working beings at the service of human functions and dimensions of the pet care markets. Finally, it presents some cases of pet-friendly work environments.

The novel contribution of this chapter is putting dogs in the management of diversity academic literature. In this study, we find that the role, meaning, and purpose of dogs in people’s lives (and in many cases in organizations) are being underestimated. Including and making visible the presence of dogs in the personal, work, and well-being of people represents challenges to be addressed by managers. Additionally, it represents challenges to think about and investigate the welfare of dogs that interact with human beings in productive environments.

The pace of transformation in the business landscape has made it mandatory for the human resource function within the organisation to evolve, adapt and adjust to the demands of the marketplace. This chapter focuses on HRM 4.0 and the change in employer branding strategies due to rapid increase in digitalisation, for example, through analytics and big data. A conceptual framework is provided that links HRM 4.0 with employer branding strategies.