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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the career experiences of Turkish Cypriot women solicitors in Britain, by examining their choices of employment or self‐employment.

The study adopts a critical realist approach considering the macro‐contextual and micro‐agentic aspects of Turkish Cypriot women's career development. Applying “the instrumental case study” approach, it explores the career experiences of four Turkish Cypriot women solicitors. Case study material was collected through semi‐structured interviews.

The paper argues that one cannot talk of ethnic enclaves in positive or negative terms, without considering layered individual experience. Their life and career trajectory is marked by their ethnicity and migration that is characterised by dual processes of break with tradition and later return to tradition during which identities are tested and usually reaffirmed where Turkish Cypriots may rediscover their Turkish Cypriotness.

The study reveals that macro‐, meso‐ and micro‐effects are responsible for the polarisation of opportunities in the ethnic enclaves.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the self‐employment process of Turkish‐Cypriot restaurateurs and lawyers in the UK, in particular the way they mobilize resources as a strategic choice for their career transition.

The paper draws on a qualitative empirical research consisting of semi‐structured in‐depth interviews from two different sectors with 20 restaurateurs and lawyers in London.

Findings indicate that Turkish‐Cypriots in Britain deliberately draw on social, economic, cultural, and symbolic forms of capital in order to pursue their career projects. The impact of the interconnectedness and availability of one resource on the participants’ ability to acquire other resources is shown to have a key role in developing and transitioning into careers in self‐employment.

The number of participants interviewed (20) is limited for the purposes of making generalizations and the paper has a main focus on micro‐individual experiences of individuals.

The limited literature on self‐employment for ethnic minorities is often conceptualized as an option to avoid employment inequalities. This paper offers an understanding of self‐employment as a career strategy for Turkish‐Cypriots in Britain.

The aim of this article is to identify the reasons MBA students have for their career choices, and to explore the contextual and gender‐related aspects of career choice and development, based on a comparative study carried out with participants in six countries, i.e. Hungary, Israel, North Cyprus, Turkey, the UK and the USA. The paper seeks to investigate how cultural values and beliefs and gender differentially influence the career choices of MBA students towards managerial or entrepreneurial careers.

A quantitative research design was applied by using a survey instrument that draws on a cross‐national study.

Differences exist in influences on career choice and development between women and men in one of the research settings (Turkey). In all six countries, women have a more societal value orientation and tend to undertake more charity work. Men are more likely to believe that “competition is the law of nature” and men appear to opt more for an entrepreneurial career route in all six countries.

The study provides an understanding of the major gender‐related similarities and differences in the career development of MBA students in six countries, and paves the way for further research in the field.

The present paper seeks to focus on the processes involved in the knowledge transfer of CSR and sustainability programs and theorises about a conceptual framework that addresses three aspects of such a knowledge transfer process: the “thinking”, the “doing” and the “being”.

The paper is a theoretical interdisciplinary study, which combines insights from the theory of knowledge transfer within the application domain of CSR and sustainability, and looks into the ways the above impact aspects of diversity, career identity and career development of professionals in this field.

HRM issues such as new competencies and differing approaches to career development options, talent retention and management, and a change of the notion of employment contract need to develop to successfully support the transfer of knowledge in terms of professionals in the domain of CSR and sustainability.

Future directions and implications of this research include furthering the understanding of career identities and their development in the milieu of globally mobile knowledge workers in the field of CSR and sustainability knowledge transfer and identifying relevant and necessary tools for HR management and stakeholder engagement in this field.

The establishment of career pathways and new career identities is an increasingly significant challenge in the workplaces of the twenty‐first century, and CSR/sustainability knowledge transfer processes highlight that.

The paper contributes an innovative angle to the topic of knowledge transfer in the area of CSR and sustainability, whilst also highlighting the importance of the role of knowledge workers with global mobility in this process, including their perceptions of career identities and development.

In this study, the aim is to put emphasis on a specific discrimination area that is evaluated both as a disability and a diversity dimension. Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) disease should be considered beyond the scope of health as a social issue. However, the main purpose of the study is to determine the influence of information levels on HIV/AIDS on attitudes and views towards people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) in work life. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess this influence by means of a pilot study. Additionally, one of the basic assumptions of the study is that career and identity developments of PLHIV will be positive as a result of the increase in knowledge amongst human resource (HR) managers and career counselors about HIV and PLHIV.

Disinformation about HIV/AIDS may cause stigmatization and discrimination. Thus, this paper seeks to indicate the effects and results of the discrimination and tries to create awareness. Consequently, discrimination against PLHIV in work life is emphasized in the study in parallel with the information levels related to the disease. Additionally, survey technique is used on the sample of HR employees and managers who are members of The Association of HR Managers (PERYON).

The paper finds that 50 percent of the respondents stated that it was right to request a HIV test whereas 36 percent of them declared that it was not right. The respondents' information level about the transmission of HIV was evaluated as medium or high. Respondents mostly think that HIV is not a punishment to people for their misbehaviors, and that sufferers should not be ashamed of themselves; PLHIV are not guilty and do not have marginal life styles. They also showed sensitivity towards the right for treatment and protection of the human rights of PLHIV. The majority of respondents stated that they could work in the same workplace with PLHIV and also that they did not associate HIV with homosexuals.

As a limitation, there is a possibility that social desirability had an effect on some of the respondents' answers. Second, the respondents have never met PLHIV in their workplaces. Because of these limitations it was not possible to get answers regarding discriminative behaviors in the workplace towards PLHIV in terms of HR functions. Thus, it is suggested that a study on PLHIV or people who work with PLHIV should be conducted. Additionally, the study could be replicated with different and larger samples.

A contribution to increasing awareness and the cautions against discrimination towards HIV/AIDS is one of the values of this study. Another distinctive characteristic of this study is the investigation of this issue from the context of an emerging country, Turkey.

Attempts to modernise the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK involve promoting flexible approaches to work and training, restructuring postgraduate training and increasing control and scrutiny of doctors' work. However, the medical community has responded with expressed anxiety about the implications of these changes for medical professionalism and the quality of patient care. This paper aims to address these issues.

Drawing on literature on nostalgia, gender, identity and organisations, the paper explores the narratives of 20 senior NHS hospital doctors to identify ways in which doctors use nostalgia to react to organisational and professional challenges and resist modernisation and feminisation of medicine.

This paper illustrates how senior hospital doctors' nostalgic discourses of temporal commitment may be used to constitute a highly esteemed professional identity, creating a sense of personal and occupational uniqueness for senior hospital doctors, intertwined with gendered forms of othering and exclusionary practices.

Nostalgia at first sight appears to be an innocuous social construct. However, this study illustrates the significance of nostalgia as a subversive practice of resistance with implications for women's career and identity experiences. Change initiatives that seek to tackle resistance need also to address discourses of nostalgia in the medical profession.

The main contribution of this study is that we illustrate how supposedly neutral discourses of nostalgia may sometimes be mobilised as devices of resistance. This study questions simplistic focus on numerical representation, such as feminisation, as indicative of modernisation and highlights the significance of exploring discourses and head counts for understanding resistance to modernisation.

This paper aims to explore how gay men and lesbians draw upon workplace friendship for developing and sustaining managerial careers and identities.

The study adopts a qualitative design, using data collected from semi‐structured interviews with four lesbians and eight gay men, all employed in managerial roles in the UK.

Data reveal the importance of workplace friendship as a resource for mentoring, climbing managerial career ladders, fitting into existing work cultures and developing gay and lesbian managerial identities. A significant finding is that participants preferred to befriend heterosexual colleagues, to that end complicating previous research that suggests gay and lesbian friendship preferences tend to be marked by similarity in regard to sexual identity. Work friends enable and constrain the development and visibility of gay and lesbian managerial identities and careers.

Although the data are not generalisable, it is of concern that gay men and lesbians continue to be disadvantaged by heteronormative constructions of gender and sexuality. While gender and sexual norms can limit the visibility and embodiment of gay and lesbian managers in the workplace, the study reveals also how gay sexualities can be utilised as a resource for developing influential friendships.

This article provides insights into issues not previously covered or understudied in the organisation studies literature such as the agency of gay men and lesbians in constructing different types of workplace friendships as a resource for developing managerial identities and careers.

This paper seeks to explore the ways in which discrimination is exercised institutionally. The paper takes as its focus the UK institutional structures of accountancy.

The paper uses a conceptual framework which explores the connections between institutional structures of UK accountancy and the rich experiences of individuals.

The narrative themes clearly illustrate the intersection of gender, ethnicity and identity across the institutional structures. Varying degrees of inclusion and exclusion are visible in the accountancy workplace.

The oral history approach has its inherent limitations and many of the respondents were “snowball” contacts rather than drawn from a large randomly chosen selection.

This paper prioritises individual experience of unfair discrimination. Although research in this area of accountancy is emergent, it argues that the voice of the individual needs to be listened to by the institutions which form UK accountancy in order to facilitate equality and diversity.

The value of this study rests with the illumination of accountancy experiences which otherwise may have been silenced by the institutional structures of accountancy.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in this special issue and some issues surrounding choosing management as a career. A jointly developed questionnaire is also presented.

The paper is descriptive in nature.

It is crucial for researchers and practitioners to expand their perspectives to include other cultures and other theoretical perspectives beyond those offered by traditional vocational choice theories.

Understanding the antecedents, correlates and consequences of people's vocational choice to become managers will not only help researchers and practitioners and benefit managers, but will improve the understanding of career choice in general.