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This study aims to investigate the research question: how do women leaders in the professional business services (PBS) sector develop and approach workplace (in)authenticity?

Ten senior women leaders in the Midlands region of the UK were purposefully selected and interviewed. A semi-structured approach meant that the author adopted a social constructionist paradigm and feminist interpretation. Questions were designed to elicit rich descriptions from the participants. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted to address the study’s purpose.

Four themes were important to women when they developed and approached workplace (in)authenticity: (1) Power Structures, (2) Fit to Belong, (3) Influential Femininity and (4) Through Her Evolution. Women described masculine-majority organisations exerting power. They were pressured into altering their behaviours to “fit” into workplaces. When women had the latitude to be themselves, their leadership excelled. Women’s authenticity developed through increased self-knowledge, helping them to overcome workplace challenges. The study concluded that women face complexities when developing and approaching their constructions of authenticity, namely in the barriers and ramifications they face.

The study suggests several implications for practice and theory concerning enablers and barriers to women leaders' workplace authenticity. The link between authenticity and workplace gender equity needs to be investigated.

The study provides evidence that women are challenged when becoming authentic, therefore, altering their careers irrecoverably in some cases.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of graduate recruitment in the professional socialisation and subjectification of Big Four professionals.

The paper draws on documentary data and interviews conducted at one British university. It adopts an interpretive perspective and is informed by Foucault’s work on technologies of power and technologies of the self.

The paper argues that the graduate recruitment practices of Big Four firms represent a series of examinations which produce the category of ideal recruits. It moreover suggests that this category serves as the ultimate objective of an ethical process whereby aspiring accountants consciously and deliberately seek to transform themselves into the type of subjects they aspire to be – ideal recruits.

The findings of the paper are primarily based on interviews conducted at one university. Future research could explore if students at other universities experience graduate recruitment in similar or different ways.

The paper highlights the constitutive role of graduate recruitment practices and shows that they can construct ideal recruits as much as they select them. It also shows that graduate recruitment is an important anticipatory socialisation mechanism that can compel aspiring accountants to learn how to look, sound and behave like Big Four professionals long before they join such organisations. Finally, the paper discusses its implications for the future of the profession, social mobility and the use of Foucault’s work on technologies of power and the self in studying subjectivity at elite professional service firms.

This study aims to investigate the interplay between a proactive attitude towards disruptions – supply chain disruption orientation – and supply chain resilience, increasing our understanding of their influence on reducing the impact of supply chain disruptions within the B2B context.

As unexpected disruptions are closely related to a dynamic and changing perception of the environment, this research is framed under the dynamic capabilities lens, consistent with existing resilience literature. The authors used partial least squares-path modeling (PLS-PM) to empirically test the proposed research model using survey data from 216 firms.

Results show that a proactive approach to disruptions alone is insufficient in mitigating their negative impact. Instead, a firm’s disruption orientation plays a crucial role in boosting its resilience, which acts as a mediator, reducing the impact of disruptions.

This paper sheds light on the mechanisms by which firms can mitigate the effects of supply chain disruptions and offers insights into how certain capabilities are needed so that firms’ attitudes can effectively impact firm performance. This research thus suggests that dynamic capabilities, traditionally perceived as being enabled by other elements, act themselves as enablers. Consequently, they have the potential to translate strategic orientation or attitudes into tangible effects on performance, enriching our understanding of how firms combine their internal attitudes and capabilities to achieve sustained competitive advantage.