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This study aims to examine the potential adaptability and resilience of rural micro-businesses within a business environment affected by successive crises, specifically drawing conclusions on crisis management, while simultaneously highlighting enterprises’ capabilities in managing the current energy crisis, basis the experiences and best practices that they themselves have gained previously.

Convenience sampling was applied, effectively identifying 18 micro-entrepreneurs in rural Greece. Subsequently, qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured in-depth interviews.

Rural micro-businesses have shown adaptability and resilience to both economic and health crises through financial support received and interventions implemented. However, different crises’ types carry different business risks. The energy crisis has led to business operation’s energy costs and raw material prices multiplying exponentially. Additionally, they received limited financial support causing them to respond to the energy crisis though concrete defensive strategies and innovative interventions.

Future research should examine local bodies and trade unions’ perception on the energy crisis’ impact towards rural entrepreneurship.

The findings are useful to Greek and European policy-makers and rural micro-entrepreneurs as the experience of dealing with several previous crises can be a useful tool when dealing with current and future crises.

This paper adds to international literature on rural micro-businesses resilience, operating in crisis mode. Additionally, it constitutes novel research exclusively focused on the new challenges faced by rural micro-businesses during the recent energy crisis.

This study aims to identify the enablers of supply chain resilience (SCR) through a literature review and expert panel input in the context of Pakistan and the post-pandemic era. This study also aims to categorize and rank the identified enablers using expert panel input.

A review of the extant literature was conducted to investigate and identify the factors that contribute to SCR. The relative ranking of the enablers was carried out by a group of industry and academic experts. The expert panel was convened to compare the main categories and each enabler in pairs and to score the enablers using triangular fuzzy numbers.

This study identified 16 critical SCR enablers. Using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), these enablers were divided into three groups and analyzed. The results show that financial enablers, technology enablers and then social enablers are prioritized when it comes to SCR in emerging markets. The robustness of the ranking of enablers is tested through sensitivity analysis.

The results shall be helpful for policymakers and managers to understand the important enablers and also help allocate resources to important enablers. Managers will be able to formulate strategies to achieve SCR in an uncertain environment.

This is one of the first attempts to identify and rank the enablers of SCR in an emerging economy context.

This paper examines the relationship between flexicurity and employment inflows in the EU28 countries over the 2007–2019 period. Flexicurity is defined as the mix of flexible contractual arrangements, social security systems, active labor market policies and lifelong learning strategies.

Using two-way fixed effects two-stage least squares, we estimate the employment inflows as a function of an equal-weighted flexicurity composite indicator and other labor market, economic and business environment characteristics. To ensure the robustness of results, in additional specifications, we test the sensitivity of the flexicurity’s coefficient to: (1) the change of instruments; (2) the removal of different non-core variables and (3) the consideration of recessionary periods European regions. In addition, we estimate regressions with separate flexicurity components and with differently constructed flexicurity indices.

In all the estimations, increased flexicurity efforts are positively related to employment inflows. Increased flexicurity efforts benefit Eastern European countries more than the Northern and Anglo-Saxon groups. Not only a synergistic policy action that uses an equal combination of the four pillars of flexicurity has a positive impact on the employment inflow rate. Strategies that give more weight to the formation of skills seem to favor the labor market reinsertion most.

To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study in the flexicurity–employment inflows literature since it: (1) follows all the European Union countries over more than a decade; (2) brings some tentative findings on the socio-cultural moderation of flexicurity’s impact on employment inflows and (3) explores different country-level flexicurity indices.

This study investigates how organizational control systems induce emotional labor in frontline service employees (FLEs). Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) theory, we hypothesized that two control systems, an outcome-based control system (OBCS) and a behavior-based control system (BBCS), trigger work engagement rather than organizational dehumanization in FLEs, leading them to choose deep acting rather than surface acting as an emotional labor strategy.

This study employed three-wave online surveys conducted 3–4 months apart to assess the time-lagged effects of S-O-R. We measured OBCS, BBCS (stimuli) and control variables at Time 1 (T1); work engagement and organizational dehumanization (organisms) at Time 2 (T2) and emotional labor strategies (responses) at Time 3 (T3). A total of 218 employees completed the T1, T2 and T3 surveys.

OBCS increased work engagement, leading to increased deep acting. BBCS enhanced organizational dehumanization, leading to increased surface acting. Post-hoc analysis confirmed that the indirect effect of OBCS on deep acting through work engagement and the mediation effect of BBCS on surface acting through organizational dehumanization were statistically significant.

This study collected three-wave data to reveal how organizational control systems affect FLEs’ emotional labor in the S-O-R framework. It illustrated how organizations induce FLEs to perform effective emotional strategies by investigating the effects of organizational control systems on their internal states.

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.

Corporate site visits increase labor investment efficiency.

Our empirical model for the baseline analysis follows those of Jung et al. (2014) and Ghaly et al. (2020).

We show that corporate site visits are associated with significantly higher labor investment efficiency; more specifically, site visits reduce both over-hiring and under-hiring of employees. The effect of site visits on labor investment efficiency is more pronounced for firms with higher labor adjustment costs, greater financial constraints, weaker corporate governance and lower financial reporting quality. We also find that site visits mitigate labor cost stickiness.

First, while the literature has suggested how the presence of institutional investors and analysts may affect labor investment decisions, we focus on institutional investors and analysts’ activities and interactions with firm executives. We provide direct evidence that institutional investors and analysts may use corporate site visits to improve labor investment efficiency. Second, our study adds to a line of recent studies on how corporate site visits reduce information asymmetry and agency conflicts. We show that corporate site visits allow institutional investors and analysts to influence labor investment efficiency. We also provide new evidence that corporate site visits reduce labor cost stickiness.

The purpose of this literature review is, first, to understand how employees with disabilities in the context of COVID-19 have been studied under the talent management (TM) approach; second, to explore what we know about the predictors and outcomes that have been linked to TM practices in that area; and third, to identify gaps in our understanding and provide insights for future research.

This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) based on 38 academic sources published in high-impact indexes from 2020 to 2023.

The existing research shows COVID-19 as a crucial context that led organizations to more precarious and segmented TM practices, which had negative consequences for employees with disabilities, both at the individual level (reduced satisfaction and income, and increased health issues) and the organizational level (increased unemployment, turnover and discrimination as well as declining performance and productivity).

This paper provides essential contributions to the field of TM in the relatively unexplored context of employees with disabilities since the emergence of COVID-19. Our literature review suggests there is significant room for developing and implementing adjusted TM strategies and practices to foster effective inclusiveness, accommodations and supportive work environments for employees with disabilities. From this evidence, a number of key avenues for future research and key implications for academics and practitioners are provided.

With the rise of the gig economy, management positions are increasingly staffed with flexible labor, so-called interim managers. They plunge into organizations for a limited period, operating in a liminal position as partly insider, partly outsider. Although several contributions to their client organizations are acknowledged, it is unknown how the interim manager’s knowledge from previous assignments is made useful in the new context under these particular working conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the interim manager’s knowledge is transferred to the client organization while operating from a liminal position.

This paper presents an interview-based multiple case study of six interim assignments where knowledge transfer is considered a social and context-dependent process.

The findings unveil the multifaceted nature of the liminal position, which consists of task orientation, time limitation, political detachment and cultural distance. These facets contribute to knowledge transfer in terms of new shared understandings and joint interests, which in turn might create new practices that augment continuous knowledge-sharing patterns.

The results contribute to the research on flexible work arrangements by shedding light on how the liminal position, predominantly depicted as an obstacle for the individual, might facilitate knowledge transfer. Through the process of knowledge generation, it is shown how a short-term engagement might enable the organization to increase its knowledge over time.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

This research highlights age-specific barriers to employment for older workers and the gap between activation policy design and implementation, focusing on difficulties in extending working life under employment support services.

This research employed a qualitative approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews to gather perspectives on extending the working lives of older adults. Eighteen experienced social workers who worked in employment support services for older workers who aged fifty-five and above participated in the study.

This study underscores the importance of comprehensively understanding the heterogeneity of individuals' circumstances and emphasizes the impact of intersectionality on the development of extending working life. It incorporates individual and familial difficulties, including considering caregiving responsibilities, health issues and housing challenges before exploring employment-related concerns. The study also highlights external factors influencing older workers' employment prospects, including employer perspectives, government support levels and public recognition of the necessity to extend working life.

This research sheds light on the impact of welfare-related stigma, which imposes obstacles and inflexibility on older workers seeking employment. It ultimately contributes to the sustainability and dynamism of the Asia–Pacific workforce while also informing regional discussions on social security and welfare services.

It uniquely employs the perspectives of social workers providing employment support services to highlight challenges and policy gaps in extending the working lives of older workers in Hong Kong. It also provides practical insights into strategies and mechanisms for extending working life across diverse social contexts.