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The exchange approach in management has viewed employee and employer relationship as a mutual relation, and this notion offers a causal explanation for the exchanges that occur between employee and employer. The purpose of the paper is to use the notion of “mutual relations” in the employment context to reflect on similar conceptions from the Islamic perspective and to throw light on Muslim obligations in employee–employer mutual relations seeking for benefits and preventing harm.

This paper draws on observations of other scholars in exchange theories based on reciprocity norm, well-being (maslaha), Islamic spiritual bases (taqwa, seeking for halal), work ethics in Islam and other Islamic teachings play toward understanding the nature of employee–employer mutual relationship from Islamic perspective. Two main social exchange theories (SET) are discussed to give a comprehensive view to the paper’s issue along with the literature reviewed from early Muslim scholars’ works, sayings of Prophet Muhammad PBUM and Holy Qur’an.

The literature indicates that it is possible to identify common ethical and contractual obligations in the employer’s and employee’s mutual relations from Islamic ideology. Given the paucity of research on employment relations in Islam, the paper offers an original perspective on this topic.

The paper concludes that a Muslim work obligation has to be based on the understanding of the scope and nature of the contract between employee and employer. Allah (The All-Knowing) knows that even if all obligations in employee and employer mutual relations are clear, human error might occur.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the recommendation to replace identity-first language with person-first language on people who self-identify as recovering addicts as part of a recovery programme. Narcotics Anonymous (NA) will be used to illustrate the contextualised nature of the recovering addict identity.

To demonstrate the value of the recovering addict identity and social relations in NA, this paper draws on Axel Honneth’s theory of mutual recognition and self-formation.

Person-first language overlooks the significance of identity-first language to people in 12-step recovery. This oversight is linked to the logic of stigma reduction which excludes all identity-first language by association rather than assessing the impact of such terms on a case-by-case basis. Honneth’s theory is used to show how the recovering addict identity facilitates self-confidence and self-esteem through relations of mutual recognition in NA.

The argument excludes people who identify as recovering addicts, but do not attend 12-step groups. Further research would be needed to understand how the recommendation to use person-first language instead of identity-first language impacts upon other recovery communities and pathways.

The recommendation to replace identity-first language with person-first language might result in 12-step fellowships becoming marginalised within the broader academic and policy and practice arena. Language preferences can become a contentious issue when 12-step groups and their members enter the wider recovery arena where their preferred terminology is viewed as stigmatising and dehumanising.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first article to propose an alternative theoretical framework to stigma reduction for judging morally appropriate language in the alcohol and drugs field.

A new expression of the philosophy framework of pansystems theory is stated. Some generalized quantification formulae are developed. Concrete contents include: new forms of panderivative and pansymmetry, meta‐equation, eight‐counter methodology, pansystems relativity, dialectical logic, panbox principle, complex systems, systems engineering, analytic hierarchy process, general living systems, economy‐sociology, clustering, topology, morphology, master equation, approximation‐transforming theory, equivalence theory of dynamics of electromagnetic media, etc.

While land management can be a subject of conflict in places where the composition of landowners is socially and culturally diverse, it also holds the potential of bringing landowners together across social groups. This chapter uses the case of a peri-urban area near Copenhagen, Denmark, to examine the relations landowners have through their use and management of land within and across social groups. To elaborate the analysis and discussion of social groups, social coherence and fragmentation, this chapter introduces the concepts of homophily and self-categorisation. Interviews with 40 landowners from two parishes addressed four types of land-based relations: (1) exchange of help and services; (2) debate of farming/management; (3) shared interests and (4) friendship. While the pattern of relations overall supported the idea that people interact more with their own social group, the analysis also showed areas of interaction across groups as well. Three overall themes summarise important areas of cohesion/fragmentation: (1) Rented land and contracting, (2) Common interests between landowners including hunting, farming and horses, (3) Urgency and geographic proximity.

Since its conception, the community of practice (CoP) theory has become a popular framework in a plethora of disciplines and settings. In the field of higher education, this versatile social theory of learning and identity that is compatible with theories of language and discourse has been used for the exploration of a variety of topics such as quality assurance, language socialisation in study abroad, medical student workplace learning and the learning of science. This theoretical model offers a framework based on collectives attached by their practice and mutual relations, which suits a priori some institutionally recognised clusters within higher education, such as research groups (RGs). These groupings, composed of pre- and post-doctoral researchers, form a domain of sustained relations and interactions through which learning may occur, but the extent to which the RG constitutes a CoP remains uncertain. This chapter discusses the suitability of the CoP model for the study of RGs in the light of ethnographic data gathered from two RGs.

Demographic changes and consequent diversification of teams of employees in organisations require us to change one’s approach to managing human resources and to search for new methods adjusted to contemporary challenges. One of such methods is reverse mentoring. It is a new form of mentoring where the younger employee is the mentor sharing expertise with the older employee. The purpose of this article is to identify advantages that reverse mentoring offers individuals who participate in the mentoring relationship – the younger mentor and the older mentee, and the entire organisation, as well as to identify conditions conducive to revealing desired advantages.

The article presents results of empirical research conducted based on the qualitative method and semi-structured individual interviews. The research focussed on five pairs from five different organisations operating in Poland who applied reverse mentoring as well as managers or human resources managers of these enterprises.

Research results show that reverse mentoring may offer numerous advantages to both individuals engaged in the relation (the mentor and the mentee) and the entire organisation. Thus, reverse mentoring seems to be an efficient tool for sharing knowledge, creating engagement, developing leadership and, first and foremost, building intergenerational relations based on mutual acceptance. Conclusions drawn from the research show that efficacy of reverse mentoring depends on the level of engagement in the mentor/mentee relation and the level of organisational support – engagement of the officers, supportive organisational culture and atmosphere conductive to cooperation.

One of the limitations of the research is the fact that reverse mentoring is not common in Polish organisations, thus the number of the interviews is limited. Furthermore, the data were collected from companies operating in Poland and they refer to one cultural circle. Another limitation is closely connected with the nature of qualitative research, as the research findings may be influenced by the personal perspective of participants.

The paper helps managers to build intergenerational relations. It encourages the use of reverse mentoring by emphasising its various benefits. It also specifies the conditions which need to be taken into consideration in order to increase the chances of enjoying the benefits, especially the necessity to prepare individual development plans adjusted to the needs and expectations of participants, proper selection of pairs for the mentoring relation and sufficient preparation of each party to the relation. This knowledge may be used by practitioners of managing human resources to develop organisational support for mentoring programmes.

The paper presents reverse mentoring as an opportunity for intergenerational knowledge sharing and developing intergenerational cooperation.

The results of the research extend the knowledge in the area of applying reverse mentoring to create intergenerational relationships. So far, this subject has received limited attention in the literature. Since reverse mentoring is not a widespread method, and research in this area is relatively rare, the value of the paper is to fill the gaps in this subject.

Purpose – Social relations play an important role in a real community. Interaction patterns reveal relations among actors (such as persons, groups, firms), which can be merged to produce valuable information such as a network structure. This paper aims to present a new approach to extract inter‐firm networks from the web for further analysis. Design/methodology/approach – In this study extraction of relations between a pair of firms is obtained by using a search engine and text processing. Because names of firms co‐appear coincidentally on the web, an advanced algorithm is proposed, which is characterised by the addition of keywords (“relation keywords”) to a query. The relation keywords are obtained from the web using a Jaccard coefficient. Findings – As an application, a network of 60 firms in Japan is extracted including IT, communication, broadcasting, and electronics firms from the web and comprehensive evaluations of this approach are shown. The alliance and lawsuit relations are easily obtainable from the web using the algorithm. By adding relation keywords to named pairs of firms as a query, It is possible to collect target pages from the top of web pages more precisely than by only using the named pairs as a query. Practical implications – This study proposes a new approach for extracting inter‐firm networks from the web. The obtained network is useful in several ways. It is possible to find a cluster of firms and characterise a firm by its cluster. Business experts often make such inferences based on firm relations and firm groups. For that reason the firm network might enhance inferential abilities on the business domain. Also we might use obtained networks to recommend business partners based on structural advantages. The authors' intuition is that extracting a social network might provide information that is only recognisable from the network point of view. For example, the centrality of each firm is identified only after generating a social network. Originality/value – This study is a first attempt to extract inter‐firm networks from the web using a search engine. The approach is also applicable to other actors, such as famous persons, organisations or other multiple relational entities.

Contemporary emphasis on language and communication in mental health research and practice establishes the need for a communication model that addresses the variety of contexts – institutional, social, and cultural – in which attribution of mental disorders, treatment, and recovery occur. A ‘triadic’ approach to communication considers sufferers’: (1) transactions with environmental circumstances; (2) interpretive engagement with symbolic/discursive resources; and (3) relational interactions with others. Foundations for the model derive from pragmatism, systems theory, and theories of dialogue. A brief case study of depressive illness illustrates the value of the model. Implications for the organization of professional expertise in mental health fields are discussed.

Based on organizational task decomposition, an extensive role‐based access control (ERBAC) model is proposed in this paper. In ERBAC, the abstract concept of “permission” in RBAC96 is substituted by a set of “tasks”, mutual exclusion of basic business actions and mutual exclusion of roles are presented, and separation of duty (SoD) policy is defined formally. Furthermore, a method of identifying mutual exclusion of roles is described, and static SoD and dynamic SoD algorithms are discussed. This paper is significant for modeling and implementing business‐oriented SoD policy for information systems.

The purpose of this paper is to fill the research and cognitive gap by comparative analyzing of the cluster supply chain (CSC) and supply chains not belonging to the clusters to examine the relational embeddedness as the differentiator of supply chains operating in the clusters.

The conceptual model was tested with data collected from 475 industrial companies cooperating with their partners within supply chains, including 135 CSC. To identify the livraisons between different indicators, the correspondence analysis was applied.

The division of enterprises participating in this study into groups allows for the determination of relatively clear boundaries between enterprises belonging to the cluster and those that do not declare such affiliation. The obtained results confirmed that the relational embeddedness is the differentiator of the CSC collaboration.

The main limitations are referred to as the static character of the data.

The paper contains implications for cluster facilitators, as well as for cluster policy decision makers, to better design support for cluster organizations.

This research is a contribution to the literature on inter-organizational structures, such as clusters and supply chains, and in particular, contributes to the creation of the scientific ground of SCS theory. The research allowed to better understand the nature of collaboration taking into consideration the fact of the relational embeddedness of the companies operating within supply chains located in clusters. It proves the existence of a new type of inter-organizational form that is CSC.