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Although the topic of inclusion has become a hot and unavoidable issue for organizations, research on how this topic is being addressed in companies is still almost nonexistent. How do HR managers promote workplace inclusion? The objective of this study is to answer this research question.

The results are based on evidence that emerged during in-depth interviews conducted with 16 human resources professionals from the world of large-scale retail trade, as well as from the analysis of documents and reports produced by the companies in which the interviewed professionals work.

The findings reveal that the promotion of corporate inclusion is not only aimed at satisfying the need for belongingness and uniqueness. It is also aimed at satisfying two other types of human needs, namely, the human need to share and the human need to be impactful. In addition, the results reveal that HR professionals promote workplace inclusion through six initiatives that can be traced to two main ways in which inclusion is conceived.

Even though there is an extensive number of studies aimed at defining and measuring the construct of workplace inclusion, progress has not been made in understanding how HR professionals promote inclusion. This study covers this literature gap by bringing to light the existence of two main meanings associated by HR professionals to workplace inclusion: extensive inclusiveness and narrow inclusiveness.

Skilled workers are crucial for an organization’s success, and managing, retaining and attracting them is vital in long-term. This study aims to explore talent management practices in the Finnish restaurant industry and to align workers' expectations with the real-world experiences of their work to reduce turnover and enhance job satisfaction.

The study adopts a mixed methods approach, including a survey and interviews with workers and managers to gain insights into their expectations and experiences of work. The study considers themes for designing and implementing effective talent management procedures.

This study highlights the importance of employees' experiences of their work conditions, leveraging positive emotions and fair utilization of temporary agency work (TAW). Understanding the different work preferences of generational cohorts and addressing the challenges associated with owner disengagement and TAW can also contribute to attracting and retaining talent in the restaurant industry.

Skilled workers have often been portrayed as targets that need to be managed, with insufficient consideration given to their preferences, needs and expectations. With the findings of this study, companies can establish mutual understanding with their employees and attract diverse talent.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of defensive biasing in work stress surveys, which occurs when employees trivialize potential stressors and strains due to fear of negative consequences from their supervisors or management. This study aims to better understand the factors that influence this behavior and to develop a scale to measure it.

The study used an online survey of 200 employees to investigate the factors influencing defensive biasing behavior. The researchers developed a scale for defensive biasing with the help of subject matter experts and derived possible factors from the literature. Participants were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they imagined a work stress survey in their organization and were asked to answer related items. The data were analyzed using regression analysis.

The study found that defensive biasing behavior was significantly predicted by perceived anonymity and neuroticism. Participants who felt less anonymous and had higher levels of neuroticism were more likely to engage in defensive biasing. Job insecurity and trust in supervisors were not found to be significant predictors of defensive biasing.

This study contributes to the literature on work stress surveys by developing a scale for defensive biasing and investigating the factors that influence this behavior. The study highlights the importance of making the survey process more transparent to reduce defensive biasing and obtain trustworthy results.

This study of job advertisements for internal communication practitioners aims to investigate the signals that organisations are sending the profession about what is required of these roles. The concept of corporate voice – the “voice” of the organisation – is problematised to explore tensions in vocality. The aim is to support communication practitioners to navigate multi-vocality in the evolving professional context of digital communication technologies and changes in the workplace.

This qualitative study considers the role of voice in corporate communication practices and offers insights into “digital disruption” and the discursive pressure of employers' priorities on the profession and its practices. Job advertisements for internal communication practitioners were examined during 6-month periods in 2018, 2020 and 2022, which was a significant time of change for the profession with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualitative content analysis of 514 internal communication job advertisements identifies that control and consistency are valorised, and continue to dominate descriptions of internal communication skills and responsibilities. The digital affordances that communication practitioners rely on has not changed significantly and a preference for “broadcasting” is evident.

This study provides insights into how Australian organisations shape and sustain univocal corporate communication practices, and the incompatibility of narrow configurations of voice with emerging organisational challenges such as social connectedness.

With the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.

The authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.

Creative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.

Starting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

Employer branding (EB) has become a powerful tool for organizations to attract employees. Recruitment communication ideally reveals the image that companies want to portray to potential employees to attract talents with the right skills and competences for the organization. This study explores the impact of EB on employer attractiveness by testing how pre-existing employee preferences interact with EB and how this interaction affects employer attractiveness.

A quasi-experiment among 289 final-year students was used to test the relationships between EB, perceived employer image, person-organization (P-O) fit and employer attractiveness, and the potential moderating variables of pre-existing preferences, in this case operationalized as locational preferences. Students are randomly assigned to four vacancies: one with and one without EB cues in two different locations: Groningen and Amsterdam. The authors used standard scales for attractiveness, perceptions of an employer and person-organization fit. The authors test the relationships using a regression analysis.

Results suggest that if respondents have previous predispositions, then their preference can be enhanced using an EB-targeted strategy. Based on these results, the authors can conclude that EB and related practices can be successful avenues for organizations in the war for talent, particularly if they reaffirm previous preferences of potential employees.

The research is original in the way it provides empirical evidence on the relationship between EB and attractiveness, particularly when previous employee preferences exist. This is of value to employers using EB as a tool to influence employer attractiveness.

Organizations have started using the metaverse to sell non-fungible tokens, execute engineering processes and conduct business meetings. A condition of creating value by moving business processes to the metaverse is acceptance of this technology. In business-to-business scenarios, internal employees and external partners may have different views on the topic but must agree upon new practices. Understanding common motivations and challenges associated with using the metaverse is crucial to its success.

The authors interviewed managers from a pharmaceutical company considering conducting meetings with clients in the metaverse. A series of 23 statements on reasons for (non)-use was generated. Twenty-five individuals (13 employees and 12 clients) then ranked these statements against each other, revealing what would drive or hinder their metaverse use. The authors compared these perspectives to identify common issues.

The authors identified four different views. Views 1 and 2 correspond to internal and external participants, while Views 3 and 4 correspond to external ones only. View 1 is skeptical and underlines the role of peers in acceptance. View 2 is a positive perspective centered on usefulness. View 3 is ambivalent and is centered on efforts required to use the metaverse. View 4 reveals a reversed perspective wherein using the metaverse is a low-effort activity.

This paper proposes a case study probing acceptance of a realistic business use of the metaverse. This paper identifies risks to mitigate and motivations to leverage when proposing metaverse usage in a business-to-business context.

This study aimed to evaluate the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for knowledge synthesis, the production of written content and the delivery of coaching conversations.

The research employed the use of experts to evaluate the outputs from ChatGPT's AI tool in blind tests to review the accuracy and value of outcomes for written content and for coaching conversations.

The results from these tasks indicate that there is a significant gap between comparative search tools such as Google Scholar, specialist online discovery tools (EBSCO and PsycNet) and GPT-4's performance. GPT-4 lacks the accuracy and detail which can be found through other tools, although the material produced has strong face validity. It argues organisations, academic institutions and training providers should put in place policies regarding the use of such tools, and professional bodies should amend ethical codes of practice to reduce the risks of false claims being used in published work.

This is the first research paper to evaluate the current potential of generative AI tools for research, knowledge curation and coaching conversations.

This paper aims to examine how and why consumers respond to chief executive officer (CEO) activism on social media. The authors developed a conceptual model that proposes impression management as a mechanism for consumer response to CEO activism.

In Study 1a, the authors examined 83,259 tweets from 90 CEOs and compared consumer responses between controversial and noncontroversial tweets. In Study 1b, the authors replicated the analysis, using a machine-learning topic modeling approach. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors used experimental designs to test the theoretical mechanism.

On average, consumers tend to respond more to CEO posts dealing with noncontroversial issues. Consumers’ relative reluctance to like and share controversial posts is motivated by fear of rejection. However, CEO fame reverses this effect. Consumers are more likely to engage in controversial activist threads by popular CEOs. This effect holds for consumers high (vs low) in public self-consciousness. CEO fame serves as a “shield” behind which consumers protect their online image.

The study focused on Twitter (aka “X”) in the USA. Future research may replicate the study in other social media platforms and countries. The authors introduce “shielding” – liking and sharing content authored by a recognizable source – as a tactic for impression management on social media.

Famous CEOs should speak up about controversial issues on social media because their voice helps consumers engage more in such conversations.

This paper offers a theoretical framework to understand consumer reactions to CEO activism.

Given the limited literature on depression as a contributing factor to compulsive social media use, the present research examines the role of perceived depressive mood (PDM) in developing compulsive social media use behavior. The authors also identify and hypothesize channels such as contingent self-esteem (CSE), social interaction anxiety (SIA) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE), which may explain how PDM affects compulsive social media use.

The research model was empirically tested with a survey of 367 Chinese university students using structural equation modeling by drawing on the escape and self-presentation lenses.

The findings indicate that PDM contributes to compulsive social media use behavior both directly and indirectly through CSE. Furthermore, the impact of CSE on compulsive social media use is mediated by the FNE, whereas SIA fails to mediate this effect.

The results can advance the authors’ knowledge of the role and process by which depressive mood impacts compulsive social media use. These findings may add insights into psychological treatment and help in, for example, developing counseling programs or coping strategies for depressed people to protect them from using social media excessively.

This research identifies the pathway mechanism between PDM and compulsive use of social media. It also increases the understanding of how CSE and social interaction deficiencies contribute to compulsive social media usage (CSMU).