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The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of a dialogical approach, associated with the Russian literary critic and philosopher Bakhtin, in understanding the portrayal of managerial identity in management narratives. In particular, it applies these ideas critically to understand how managers' identities are partly shaped by the dominant discourse or idea about what a manager should “be.”

The paper draws on three written narratives of managers. It applies a dialogical approach to consider how they position themselves interactionally in the narratives in such a way as to highlight a managerial identity based on being “enterprising” and “for change,” while simultaneously voicing alternative identities negatively. The use of the written narratives of managers and the application of a dialogical approach is an important contribution to the literature.

The findings suggest that managers, when reflecting on organizational events through narrative, assume a managerial identity that reflects current dominant discourse about what a manager should “be.” In doing so they reject other possible discourses that offer alternatives, not only to managerial “being,” but also to what management and organizations might reflect and represent. The paper also, however, recognizes that some managers reject this identity and its implications for organizational activity.

The paper suggests that managerial identity is partly a product of a dominant discursive/ideological formation rather than individual choice. Although managers may reject this interpellation creating an alternative is constrained by the regime of truth that prevails about what management is at any given time. The approach might be considered overly deterministic in its view of managerial identity.

The paper extends the understanding of managerial identity and how it is portrayed through narrative by using a dialogical approach to interpretation.

This conversation presents the reflections from five prominent disaster scholars and practitioners on the purpose of Radix – the Radical Disaster Interpretations network – as the authors celebrate its 20th anniversary.

This paper is based on the conversations that took place on Disasters: Deconstructed Podcast livestream on the 13th October 2021.

The conversation reflects on personal and professional journeys in disaster studies over the past 20 years and on what needs changing in order to make disaster interpretations more radical.

The conversation contributes to the ongoing discussions around explorations of radical pathways for understanding and preventing disasters.

Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually constituted performance of the material and social. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The aim of the research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, the authors adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK Government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is the use of data released under a Freedom of Information request.

The authors present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. The authors draw on the literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. The authors also invoke the notion of “extended chains of intra-action” to theorize changes in the wider organization.

Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.

Although parity in workplace representation and leadership roles for women has improved, culturally embedded structural barriers, practices, and policies within organizations remain. Organizations can improve inclusivity by understanding the characteristics and impact of unconscious gender bias and implementing related leadership development programs.

This brief examines women’s progress in the workforce and in leadership roles, reviews the characteristics of unconscious bias and its impact on women’s workforce representation, and identifies strategies for addressing gender bias through leadership development.

Leadership research and theory suggest the benefits of organizational training that entails both women-only and mixed-gender training, self-knowledge of leadership styles, examination of assumptions about masculine and feminine ways to lead, and the value of authenticity.

The brief offers practical insights into unconscious gender bias for human resources teams, managers, and leadership trainers by examining assumptions about gender and gendered leadership beliefs.

When in‐plant and college‐based courses are run for supervisors and managers, it is conventional to use a U‐shaped seating arrangement in the training room to promote participation and discussion. However, at each class session, people will tend to sit with the same companions habitually, which may be more comfortable, but less productive than if they sat with different people each time.

Personality traits impact how leaders are perceived and how leaders perceive themselves. These views are subject to gender biases and stereotypes. This practitioner study aims to integrate leadership theories with research on agentic and communal personality qualities and the Big Five personality traits to establish how these impact perceptions of leader effectiveness.

Behavioral leadership theory and personality trait research offer insights into gender biases related to perceptions of leaders and leaders’ self-efficacy. This paper examines the literature in these areas to show how it informs the practice of leadership and the degree to which gender stereotypes are changing.

The review examines salient leadership qualities for women and men, finding that agentic qualities are still largely associated with men and communal qualities with women. It also illustrates that conscientiousness, openness to experience and extraversion are associated with leadership emergence for both genders but impact leader self-efficacy in different ways.

This paper integrates research to draw conclusions about how personality traits are gendered and how gender impacts perceptions of leader effectiveness.

Despite the extensive stimulus–organism–response (SOR) literature, little attention has been paid to the role of marketing activity as a key environmental stimulus, and there is a dearth of research examining the interplay between emotions and cognition on consumer behaviour, as well as the sequential effects of emotions on cognition. To address these gaps, this study aims to develop a revised SOR model by incorporating Kahneman’s fast and slow thinking theory to investigate the impulse buying of affordable luxury fashion (ALF).

The authors use outlet stores at Bicester village (BV) in England as the research context for ALF shopping. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse a survey sample of 633 consumers with a BV shopping experience.

The authors find that impulse buying of ALF arises from the interplay of emotional and cognitive factors, as well as a sequential and dual process involving in-store stimuli affecting on-site emotion and in-store browsing.

This study reveals that brand connection has a significant and negative influence on the relationship between on-site emotion and in-store browsing, advancing the SOR paradigm and reflecting the interactive effect of human emotion and reasoning on the impulse buying of ALF items.

Insights into consumers’ impulse buying offer practical implications for luxury brand management, specifically for ALF outlet retailers and store managers.

The results suggest a robust sequential effect of on-site emotion towards in-store browsing on impulse buying, providing updated empirical support for Kahneman’s theory of System 1 and System 2 thinking.

Leaders typically want to be effective and be remembered for their achievements and positive influence. This practitioner study aims to examine theory and research on servant leadership to provide insights into how leaders can address current employment conditions and gender inequities.

This paper examines the key characteristics of servant leadership, compares them to other leadership models, discusses common criticisms and applies the theory to women’s career advancement.

The review identifies the advantages of servant leadership in terms of encouraging leadership development within organizations, particularly for women, to address the broken rung or lack of early career promotion.

The paper shares key characteristics of servant leadership, explores its differences to other leadership models and focuses on practicalities for developing others in the workplace with a particular emphasis on women.

Maureen O'Connor examines industry's use of business graduates, and looks at the implications for students.