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Human resource analytics (HRA) is an HR activity that companies and academics increasingly pay attention to. Existing literature conceptualises HRA mostly from an objectivist perspective, which limits understanding of actual HRA activities in the complex organisational environment. This paper therefore draws on the practice-based approach, using a novel framework to conceptualise HRA-as-practice.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 100 academic and practitioner-oriented publications to analyse existing HRA literature in relation to practice theory, using the “HRA-as-practice” frame.

The authors identify the main practices involved in HRA, by whom and how these practices are enacted, and reveal three topics in nomological network of HRA-as-practice: HRA technology, HRA outcomes and HRA hindrances and facilitators, which the authors suggest might actualize enactment of HRA practices.

The authors offer HR function and HR professionals a basic ground to evaluate HRA as a highly contextual activity that can potentially generate business value and increase HR impact when seen as a complex interaction between HRA practices, HRA practitioners and HRA praxis. The findings also help HR practitioners understand multiple factors that influence the practice of HRA.

This systematic review differs from the previous reviews in two ways. First, it analyses both academic and practitioner-oriented publications. Second, it provides a novel theoretical contribution by conceptualising HRA-as-practice and comprehensively compiling scattered topics and themes related to HRA.

Our research takes inspiration from stories of kindness in the context of the COVID-19 global pandemic and investigates what generational entrants, namely those entering the workforce in large numbers, dubbed emerging leaders (ages 19–39) think of the phenomenon of kindness and its potential role in organizations. Guiding the study is the question: “What can emerging leaders tell us about kindness and work?”

Adopting discourse analysis fused with kindness as research praxis, we conducted 66 qualitative interviews with young leaders (born between 1981 and 2001) across North America, Europe and Africa. Interviews were conducted in the summer and fall of 2020.

Our research sets out to expand theorizing related to kindness as a phenomenon, illustrates implications relevant to management and organizational studies and offers insights into the value of kindness as research praxis. This paper makes three related contributions and one methodological one: (1) it contributes to the literature on kindness and how it can be theorized in management and organizational studies, (2) it explores emerging leaders perceptions of kindness in a pandemic context, (3) it offers insights into how kindness might be leveraged as a model of moral and ethical behaviour valued in organizational environments, and (4) the paper promotes epistemic properties of kindness when fused with research praxis.

Authored during a rapidly unfolding scholarly conversation on the influences of the pandemic on organizational life, our research draws insights from experiences of kindness during COVID-19. This paper applies discourse analysis fused with kindness as research praxis to an understudied area of human behaviour (kindness) which has implications for management and organizational theory and practice. These implications include: (1) individual kindness capacity or inclination towards kindness behaviour that may be depleted by stressors such as the pandemic, (2) that kindness has socially contagious qualities, (3) and kindness as praxis has material benefits in the context of research methods, benefiting the research team and the research outputs.

The purpose of the article is to outline the insights provided by Alan Fox in Man Mismanagement in relation to the rise of the New Right political economy and the spread of unitarist managerialism. The article assesses the contemporary work and employment relations implications of mismanagement arising from a “second wave” of the New Right ideology from 2010 in the UK.

Responding to the Special Issue on Alan Fox, the article focuses on Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, considering industrial relations developments arising between the 1st (1974b) and 2nd (1985) editions relating to the political rise of the New Right. It reviews various literature that illustrates the contemporary IR relevance of the book and Fox's insights.

The New Right’s ideology has further fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collective industrial relations institutions, and macho mismanagement praxis is even more commonplace, compared to when Fox wrote Man Mismanagement. The stripping away of the institutional architecture of IR renders the renewal of pluralist praxis, like collective bargaining and other forms of joint regulation of work, a formidable task.

The value of the article relates to the identification of dramatic historical industrial relations events and change in the UK in Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, most notably relating to the rise to power of the Thatcherite New Right in 1979. Originality is evidenced by the authors’ drawing on Fox's ideas and assessing the implications of the “second wave” of the New Right in the contemporary industrial relations (IR) context of the 2020s under the conceptual themes of fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collectivism.

Following the lead of neighboring fields such as strategy and organization studies, entrepreneurship is gradually joining in the adoption of a practice perspective. Entrepreneurship as practice (EaP) is thus a nascent domain of investigation where the methodological debate is still unsettled and very fluid. In this paper, the authors contribute to this debate with a focus on family entrepreneurship.

The authors develop a conceptual paper to discuss what it entails to look at family entrepreneurship through a practice lens and why it is fruitful. Moreover, the authors propose a research strategy novel to the field through which such investigation can be pursued, namely process tracing, and examine its inferential logic.

Process tracing is a strategy of data analysis underpinned by an ontology of causal mechanisms. The authors argue that it complements other practice methods by inferring social mechanisms from empirical evidence and thereby establishing a connection between praxis, practices and practitioners.

Process tracing helps the articulation of an “integrated model” of practice that relates praxis, practices and practitioners to the outcome they jointly produce. By enabling the assessment of impact, process tracing helps providing prima facie evidentiary grounds for policy action and intervention.

Process tracing affinity with the practice perspective has been so far acknowledged only to a limited extent in the social sciences, and it is, in fact, a novel research strategy for the family entrepreneurship field.

Cross-cultural cognitive paradoxes have frequently broken the existing boundaries of knowledge and stimulated demands for knowledge creation (KC), and such paradoxes have triggered and will continue to trigger novel risks in the context of international business (IB). Given the nascency of relevant issues, this study aims to develop a more comprehensive understanding of KC across cultures by proposing a Yin-Yang dialectical systems theory of KC as micro-foundation to more systematically frame the risk/paradox-resolving mechanism elicited by cultural collisions.

This paper is conceptual in nature. The authors first critically review the literature to lay a broad theoretical foundation. Integrating the philosophy- and praxis-based views, the authors reposition knowledge as a Yin-Yang dialectical system of knowing, with yin representing the tacit while yang represents the explicit. Next, the authors justify the underling logic of realising KC through a contradiction-resolving process. On this basis, the authors draw upon the Yijing’s Later Heaven Sequence (LHS) as the source domain of a heuristic metaphor to reconceptualise KC as a dynamic capability in the IB context.

Using the LHS paradigm to metaphorically map the intricate patterns of interaction and interconnectivity among the involved individuals, organisations and all related stakeholders, this research identifies and theorises the overall dynamic capability of KC in the IB context, which comprises five sets of processes: contradiction, conflict, communication, compromise and conversion.

This research highlights that KC is simultaneously activated and constrained by human actions as well as by the socially constructed context in which it emerges, which helps individuals, organisations and policy makers more clearly frame the novel risks induced by cross-cultural cognitive conflicts in the IB context.

The authors synthesise Yin-Yang dialectics with the approach of collective phronesis, proposing a novel, praxis-oriented Yin-Yang dialectical systems theory of KC. It provides a deeper understanding of the epistemological paradox inherent in all knowledge, thus enabling KC to be rationalised by a sounder logical reasoning. By fusing the macro and micro perspectives on KC, the authors also enrich existing theory and future theory building in the domain of knowledge management.

The papers explores the emergence of an ideological consolidation amidst the theory of intersectionality put forth by Crenshaw and Mohanty's transnational feminist thought vis-à-vis the thematic concerns of Punjabi immigrant fiction.

The paper attempts to follow a qualitative approach in terms of uncovering the various facets of Punjabi Diasporic Fiction vis-à-vis reflecting how intersectionality defines the diasporic condition of third-world immigrant women through contextualizing Fauzia Rafique's text, Skeena.

The performed study depicts the intellectual consonance between Crenshaw and Mohanty's theories and how immigrant literature aids Crenshaw and Mohanty's hypothesis into praxis.

The research majorly focuses upon the works of the Punjabi diaspora and studies the diaspora's implications while analyzing how the diaspora contributes in rupturing contemporary hegemonic structures.

The paper has been originally drafted through the honest research performed by the author.

Within minutes, our group, who had no prior introduction, began to learn the value of emerging from a relational space of (re)presenting and (re)storying our experiences. “I” became “We”, which became “Us”

Recently, the seventh bi-annual conference of the World Federation for Teacher Education 2023 focused on the theme of “Re-imagining Teacher Education: From Words to Action.” During the session on métissage as methodology, participants from four different countries, three ethnic backgrounds and gender and sexual differences were invited into dialogue to explore the nuances of our identities, academic positions and life experiences.

Doing métissage as novices, our subsequent discussion problematized the perpetuation of procedural narratives that contested the Cartesian cuts of methodological normalcy.

Sharing our stories of self in our group we referenced how institutional frameworks had shaped and were reconstructing contexts for our being and belonging in the academy. In our narrating vulnerability we were once again located in telling relations to do with identity, power and social being. Jones (2015, p. 8) has asked. “Other than dry academic reports, how can we retell these stories in sensitive and ethical ways to wider audiences? How do the stories themselves inspire creativity in retelling them? How can we involve participants in the retelling of their stories?”

This paper intervenes in existing literature on entrepreneurship and inequalities by proposing a novel reframing of intersectionality as a threshold concept, an important idea that enables us to deepen and progress the understanding of complex subjectivities.

Drawing from education studies, intersectionality is explored through the five key features of threshold concepts: (1) transformative, (2) irreversible, (3) integrative, (4) bounded and (5) troublesome. We offer a set of reflection questions for what we call “doing intersectionality.”

We develop a metacritique of the way in which the concept of intersectionality has thus far been treated in feminist theory and applied in entrepreneurship studies – namely, as the culmination of thinking about difference and inequality, decoupled from its roots in collectivist analysis and Black and anti-racist feminism. The paper invites scholars of entrepreneurial inequalities to both engage and look beyond an intersectional lens to better elucidate the range of historically emergent social hierarchies and systems of power that shape their phenomena of interest.

Through reframing intersectionality as a threshold concept, this paper challenges entrepreneurship researchers to view intersectionality as a foundational starting point for the conceptualisation of complex interactions of social structures, and the structural inequality and power relationships present within their research, rather than a destination.

International investment law governs matters related to transnational investments. The extensive reach of transnational corporations (TNCs) has granted them substantial economic, political and social influence, often intertwining them with public interest issues and implications in human rights violations. This paper aims to explore the profound influence exerted by TNCs in today’s globalized world and its implications for human rights and social responsibility within the framework of international investment law. Particularly, it acknowledges the vulnerability of economically weak South Asian states and cites past instances such as the Bhopal gas tragedy in India and the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh as egregious violations of human rights. Focusing on South Asian bilateral investment treaties (BITs), this paper aims to examine the scope of investors’ social accountability.

This research engages with doctrinal and analytical methods in traversing through primary and secondary sources. It would parse the arbitral tribunals’ jurisprudence for their discussion on the inclusion of social accountability obligations within international investment agreements (IIAs). Further, it engages in a quantitative analysis related to the nature of the social accountability-related obligation of the corporation within South Asian BITs.

The findings reveal a glaring absence of the law on investors’ social accountability and the need for enhanced regulatory mechanisms to address the escalating influence of TNCs on human and social rights. The absence of a robust legal framework, coupled with the asymmetric nature of international investment law, granting investors greater rights and leverage compared to states, exacerbates this challenge. The phenomenon of “regulatory chill” inhibits states from effectively enforcing regulatory measures aimed at protecting human rights and the environment. Furthermore, the broad interpretation of clauses such as “fair and equitable treatment” by investment tribunals often undermines states’ ability to implement measures in the public interest. While international organizations such as the UNCTAD and the UNCITRAL Working Group III are actively discussing reforms to IIAs, the existing guidelines addressing investors’ social accountability are woefully lacking in the content as well as the method of their integration with international human rights law. The findings underscore the imperative for South Asian nations, the subject of this research’s empirical analysis, to adopt a comprehensive approach involving both domestic law reforms to promote corporate social accountability and active pursuit of negotiations for the inclusion of binding social obligations for investors within IIAs.

This research, drawing upon international law developments, offers suggestions for incorporation of social accountability provisions via relevant domestic law reform. The research could be viewed as a prelude for mapping the legal developments in the area of investors’ social accountability within investment agreements, as well as investment contracts, drawing guidance from international law instruments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study analysed the scope of investors’ social accountability in South Asian BITs.

Silences in qualitative social science research present a unique and sometimes ambiguous challenge for researchers. When working with transcription artefacts, considering not only what has been said but also what has been silenced, omitted, overlooked or brushed over allows new ways of examining a phenomenon. This paper explores a new methodological approach to exploring these silences.

This article explores “embossed” poetry as a methodological process to consider what has not been said. Via an empirical study that examined the experience of six teachers of a year nine programme in Victoria, Australia, we explore how embossed poems within a larger research project allowed the interrogating of silences. Through a polyvocal performance of text and poetry, this paper argues that embossed poetry offers significant methodological possibilities through which previously silenced ideas and analytical processes can become visible within poetic research praxis.

The findings of this paper are that by using embossed concrete poems, researchers can explore new territories within qualitative work. By putting down the keyboard and picking up a hand-embossing tool, new space for thought emerges and other parts of an assemblage can be explored.

This paper presents a unique methodological contribution to poetic inquiry. Furthermore, it explores the path trodden to develop this new approach through a reflexive-diffractive polyvocal text.