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The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have engendered heterogeneous effects on individuals’ labour market prospects. This paper focuses on two possible sources of a heterogeneous exposition to labour market risks associated with the pandemic outbreak: the routine task content of the job and the teleworkability. To evaluate whether these dimensions played a crucial role in amplifying employment and wage gaps among workers, we focus on the case of Italy, the first EU country hit by Covid-19.

Investigating the actual effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of teleworkability and routinization, using real microdata, is currently unfeasible. This is because longitudinal datasets collecting annual earnings and the detailed information about occupations needed to capture a job’s routine task content and teleworkability are not presently available. To simulate changes in the wage distribution for the year 2020, we have employed a static microsimulation model. This model is built on data from the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (IT-SILC) survey, which has been enriched with administrative data and aligned with monthly observed labour market dynamics by industries and regions.

We measure the degree of job teleworkability and routinization with the teleworkability index (TWA) built by Sostero et al. (2020) and the routine-task-intensity index (RTI) developed by Cirillo et al. (2021), respectively. We find that RTI and TWA are negatively and positively associated with wages, respectively, and they are correlated with higher (respectively lower) risks of a large labour income drop due to the pandemic. Our evidence suggests that labour market risks related to the pandemic – and the associated new types of earnings inequality that may derive – are shaped by various factors (including TWA and RTI) instead of by a single dimension. However, differences in income drop risks for workers in jobs with varying degrees of teleworkability and routinization largely reduce when income support measures are considered, thus suggesting that the redistributive effect of the emergency measures implemented by the Italian government was rather effective.

No studies have so far investigated the effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of routinization and teleworkability in Italy. We thus investigate whether income drop risks in Italy in 2020 – before and after income support measures – differed among workers whose jobs are characterized by a different degree of RTI and TWA.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the gender wage gap (GWG) in Spain adopting a labour market segmentation approach. Once we obtain the different labour segments (or idiosyncratic labour markets), we are able to decompose the GWG into its observed and unobserved heterogeneity components.

We use the data from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives for the year 2021 (matched employer–employee [EE] data). Contingency tables and clustering techniques are applied to employment data to identify idiosyncratic labour markets where men and/or women of different ages tend to match/associate with different sectors of activity and occupation groups. Once this “heatmap” of labour associations is known, we can analyse its hottest areas (the idiosyncratic labour markets) from the perspective of wage discrimination by gender (Oaxaca-Blinder model).

In Spain, in general, men are paid more than women, and this is not always justified by their respective attributes. Among our results, the fact stands out that women tend to move to those idiosyncratic markets (biclusters) where the GWG (in favour of men) is smaller.

It has not been possible to obtain remuneration data by job-placement, but an annual EE relationship is used. Future research should attempt to analyse the GWG across the wage distribution in the different idiosyncratic markets.

Our combination of methodologies can be adapted to other economies and variables and provides detailed information on the labour-matching process and gender wage discrimination in segmented labour markets.

Our contribution is very important for labour market policies, trying to reduce unfair inequalities.

The study of the GWG from a novel labour segmentation perspective can be interesting for other researchers, institutions and policy makers.

The best workplaces have been left out from the literature of social sustainability. These companies may cause a significant impact on society given their excellent human resources practices and the employer brand reputation derived from them. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the social sustainability for the best organisations to work for in Spain.

Using data from an annual ranking for the best workplaces in Spain during 2013–2021, it is proposed to analyse critical social sustainability indicators, comparing organisations within and outside the ranking. Therefore, the authors ask whether companies from the ranking have greater female presence in CEO positions, generate more employment, pay higher salaries and contribute more to the public sector. Methodology comprehends descriptive, exploratory and inference techniques.

Although companies within the ranking achieve a higher score on it when the CEO is female, it does not translate into a greater female CEO presence with respect to companies outside the ranking. On the other hand, best workplaces achieve higher employment rates and pay higher salaries, almost all the time. Also, these excellent companies to work for generate more contributions to the public sector.

This research covers the relation between best human resources practices and social sustainability development, because the former is a great opportunity for pursuing the innovative and long-term policies necessary for the latter. Therefore, findings are valuable for managers and policymakers.

Working conditions, pay rates and the rights of workers to collectively negotiate have become important points of discussions in recent years, with support for unions and union applications rising to levels long unseen in America. In many instances, though, companies have responded aggressively. This is not the first time such a dynamic has played out in American business. This study aims to take a fresh look at one of America’s most prominent historical disputes between labor and ownership – the Homestead Massacre of 1892 – to glean lessons from that conflict that remain relevant to today’s business environment.

This study adopts game theory and the principles of repeated interaction to assess how differing discount factors led to differences in time orientations between the workers and the Carnegie company. These differing time orientations affected both the strategy each side deployed in the negotiations and the payoffs received by the parties. Letters, contemporary news reports and histories of the events leading up to and immediately following the 1892 Homestead Massacre are qualitatively analyzed with a genealogical pragmatic approach.

Differences in temporal orientation between management and workers exacerbated the conflict, with the workers adopting a more cooperative stance and distal time orientation, while the Carnegie company negotiated with a proximal time orientation and played to “win” a game that, in fact, could not be fully won or lost given its infinitely repeating nature. The result was a short-term victory for the Carnegie company but with long-term negative consequences that highlight the suboptimal outcome the company achieved by playing a proximal strategy in an infinite game.

Although the incident at Homestead is a well-studied labor dispute, many of the themes that preceded the incident have resurfaced in the modern work context. This work, by adopting game theory as an analytical framework, provides new insights into management mistakes that led to the labor conflict and lessons for what present-day managers can do to avoid exacerbating labor strife.

Research on work–family interface (WFI) is almost two decades old. It is widely believed that the archetype of work and family after COVID has changed. Post-COVID emphases and outcomes would be different. Accordingly, a bibliometric analysis of the research would help to understand the state of the research and positive WFI patterns that guide further investigations. The present study used measures such as journals, citations, etc. to determine the bibliometric patterns from 2003 to August 2023 using VOSviewer software.

Data were obtained from Scopus. 1,601 works were found in the first search. This figure was narrowed down to 525 based on a few conditions. The most commonly referenced journals, sources, authors, etc. were used for the analysis.

Research on positive WFI has increased in recent years. The total number of articles in positive WFI was 525 between 2003 and August 2023. Greenhaus, Powell and Carlson were the most cited authors in this field. Carlson had produced the highest number of documents in WFI. Most WFI authors focused on antecedents, treating positive WFI as the outcome variable.

This is the first bibliometric analysis conducted on a positive WFI, although there have been a few on work–family conflict. However, other sources such as the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) and Web of Science may throw different results on journals, citations, etc. Hence, future researchers might emphasize if the same results originate from data in other databases. Other analytical tools may be used in the place of VOSviewer.

This is the first article on bibliometric analysis of positive WFI. This paper’s primary objective is to understand the patterns of literature available on positive WFI and its significance comprehensively.

This paper aims to identify the critical project management success factors and analyze those factors to achieve a sustainable construction industry in Bangladesh.

This study identified 41 major problematic factors from the related literature. In this research, a detailed questionnaire survey was conducted among the experts and stakeholders of the construction industry of Bangladesh. The survey was carried out on a Likert scale and ranked the critical factors using the relative importance index (RII). The 41 problematic factors were divided into five group factors and ranked by the RII index to prioritize the factors. Finally, stakeholders' opinions were analyzed with the critical assessed factors, which was a very effective technique to eliminate the risks and uncertain occurrences in the construction industry of Bangladesh.

The factors analysis revealed that cost overrun, traffic jam, low wedges, slow payment for completed works and financial issues of the owner were leading critical factors in construction projects. Moreover, the critical factors are divided into five-factor groups, namely, financial management, monitoring and feedback, competency management, communication and coordination management, and risk management, which exhibit 0.767, 0.720, 0.711, 0.710 and 0.658 RII values. After all, the stakeholders' opinion suggested that implementing modern tools and techniques can help to avoid the critical situation in the construction industry of Bangladesh.

The construction industry of Bangladesh is moving away from stable construction work day by day. Previously, the potential CSFs were discussed unstructured way. Hence, detecting early warning signals in a structured way has become necessary for the building firm's survival.

Though some scattered critical issues are discussed in different literature, the critical issues of the Bangladeshi construction industry were not investigated extensively. Therefore, this study finds out the potential critical issues of the construction industry of Bangladesh to accumulate such harmful construction issues in a single platform so that the construction industry can have an overview of them with the help of innovative technologies.

This study aims to investigate sustainability practices in the banking industry, focusing on a developing economy. It uses the triple-bottom-line framework to answer the following research question: how do banks in Nigeria conceptualise sustainability, and what role does it play in their banking practices?

This study adopts a social constructivist approach in its exploration of banking sustainability practices in an emerging economy, and the research design is a purpose-based (exploratory) approach. The qualitative data was collected from 33 bank personnel from various bank units and departments through semi-structured interviews to achieve the research objective.

The study reveals a lack of sustainability policies and programmes, as banks focus mainly on profitability. It uncovers unfair treatments of bank workers through casualisation, low wages and work overload. It indicates that most banks in developing countries ignore environmental considerations, as they still carry out paper-based transactions and use diesel-powered generators, which cause various negative environmental impacts. It also confirms that governments and banks in the country are not doing enough to propagate sustainable practices and banks have also not taken advantage of the sustainability concept to promote their brands; instead, they consider it as requiring additional operational costs.

The findings demonstrate the need for banks to see sustainability from a marketing point of view and adopt sustainable practices to create additional value that will improve their brand image and enhance their competitiveness.

The importance of sustainability in the banking industry in emerging economies is considered a viable means of contributing to the overall development goals of the United Nations as the world tries to preserve the environment. It also highlights the consequences of inaction or unsustainable banking practices.

This study analyses the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on government accountability regarding the employment of both national and migrant workforces by bringing evidence from an emerging market. In doing so, this study addresses if/how the government discharged its accountability to the public during this recent global health crisis, which started in late 2019, with its effects still being felt today.

This study is based on a close reading of the relevant news media (local and international), published research and official reports, as well as ten conversations with business managers to analyse the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 on government accountability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This study draws on insights from public choice theory in trying to understand why some governments take an economic perspective while exercising accountability to their population during the pandemic.

It was found that COVID-19 led the government to pursue plans for the localization of the professions and increase employment rates among nationals vs. foreigners or migrant workers. The crisis was exploited by the government to achieve macro socio-political and economic goals, demonstrating its accountability to citizens, rather than foreign workers. This shift shows that difficult and exceptional circumstances can present opportunities for policymakers in emerging markets to achieve national policy and political aims.

This study enhances the author’s understanding of accountability during crises (i.e. crises-induced accountability) in emerging markets. The analyses presented enrich the crisis management literature by highlighting the implicit actions of national leaders that affect the lives and well-being of their constituents, especially vulnerable groups.

Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing forced labour are influenced by institutional logics. The emerging supply chain efforts of social enterprises offer particularly intriguing approaches, as their social mission can spur creative new approaches and reshape widely adopted management practices.

The authors study supplier relationships in the smartphone industry and compare the evolving practices of two cases: the first, a growing novel social enterprise; and the second, a high-profile commercial firm that has adopted a progressive role in combating forced labour.

The underlying institutional logic influenced each firm's willingness to act beyond its direct suppliers and to collaborate in flexible ways that create systematic change. Moreover, while both focal firms had clear, well-documented procedures related to forced labour, the integration, rather than decoupling, of forced labour and general supply chain policies provided a more effective way to reduce the risks of forced labour in social enterprises.

As authors’ comparative case study approach may lack generalizability, future research is needed to broadly test their propositions.

The paper identifies preconditions in terms of institutional logics to successfully reduce the risk of forced labour in supply chains.

This paper discusses how social enterprises can provide a learning laboratory that enables commercial firms to identify options for supplier relationship improvement.

The qualitative study was conducted to examine work-family (W-F) balance practices in the collectivist culture of Pakistan. Keeping in view the context of Pakistan, three W-F practices, flexibility, childcare arrangement and social support, were studied by applying the theory of W-F balance.

In total, 16 In-depth interviews from the bank operating in three different cities in Sindh, Pakistan.

Data analysis showed that providing economic benefits and short working hours can achieve W-F balance. Nevertheless, the provision of flexibility in terms of short working hours is more important than economic benefits in balancing both domains of life. Secondly, the provision of childcare arrangements helps to balance work and home life. This practice favors females more compared to males. Thirdly, supervisor and co-worker support is most important in creating W-F balance than family support.

It is crucial to understand the W-F balance practices in developing countries; the bank should encourage policies related to flexibility, childcare arrangement and social support in Pakistan. In addition, banks should take the initiative to develop a way that facilitates the employees' social support, which should consequently help to achieve the W-F balance.

It is crucial to understand the W-F balance practices in developing countries; the bank should encourage policies related to flexibility, childcare arrangement and social support in Pakistan. Banks should take an initiative to develop a way that facilitates the employees' social support which should consequently help to achieve the W-F balance.

This research has a tremendous impact on society due to current changes in South Asian countries including Pakistan constitute a socio-cultural transition that directly affects working and family life.

Given the importance of W-F balance in recent times, the authors identified and extended the W-F balance practices in the collectivist culture of Pakistan. This study is novel and contributes to the W-F balance literature by considering most primary W-F balance practices that employees require.