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The thin feminine body ideal in Western society has persisted, despite becoming less representative of the female population, with obesity rates consistently rising since the 1980s. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated obesity rates, due to curtailed interventions, restricted mobility/enforced physical inactivity and increased reliance on processed food with a longer shelf life due to social isolation (World Obesity Foundation, n.d.). Individuals with obesity report weight discrimination in a broad range of settings, including employment, where researchers have documented weight discrimination in relation to hiring, job assignment, promotion, remuneration and work stability. Weight discrimination may be worse for jobs involving public interaction, particularly for women, because heavier women do not conform to societal body ideals, leading to weight stigmatisation such as anti-fat attitudes and beliefs (e.g. negative stereotypes) and prejudice. This chapter presents a systematic literature review of studies that have examined weight discrimination against women with obesity in jobs involving public interaction, i.e. ‘customer-facing roles’.

We examine how authorities' use of fair decision-making procedures and power benevolently shape workers' impressions of them as competent and warm, which serve as a mechanism whereby authorities' behaviors shape workers' emotional responses. We investigate how the role of these impressions differs depending on authority gender and consider whether emotional responses differ for male and female subordinates.

We conducted a between-subjects experimental vignette study in which we manipulate an authority's behaviors and gender. We use multigroup mediation analysis to test our predictions.

Authorities who employ procedural justice and benevolent power elicit reports of heightened positive emotion experiences and intended displays and reports of reduced negative emotion experiences and intended displays. These behaviors also enhance views of authorities as competent and warm. The mediating role of impressions differs by authority gender. Authority behaviors prompt reports of positive emotions through conveying impressions that align with authorities' gender stereotypes (competence for men, warmth for women). In contrast, warmth impressions mediate effects of behaviors on reported negative emotions when authorities are men, whereas when authorities are women, benevolent power use directly reduces reported negative experience, and procedural justice reduces negative display. Female respondents are more likely to report positive emotion experience and display toward male authorities and negative display toward female authorities.

By examining competence and warmth impressions as mechanisms, we gain insight into how the process by which authority behaviors affect worker emotions is gendered and shed light on micro-level dynamics contributing to gender inequality at work.

When it comes to discovering the leaders of the future, how can hiring organizations build a more sensitive talent radar to pick up signals of early-stage talent? What do upcoming leaders need to do to appear on that radar? What kind of search strategy is needed to find the exceptional candidate? Based on dozens of interviews with talent development specialists, we present 11 characteristics that emerge as keys to success. We present a case that illustrates why executive search is high stakes-game of responsible positions, and examine why talent alone is no guarantee of success.

An earlier form of this chapter by the author was published in Dutch in “Bestemming Boardroom: over zoeken en gevonden worden” (Boom, Amsterdam, 2018) and in English (online) by the Amrop Partnership (2021) as “Destination Boardroom 2: The Talent Radar.”

Knowledge management (KM) is an important topic in the age of big data, and this study adds to the existing body of literature by providing a novel KM perspective on the technological phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI). This study aims to discover how AI might facilitate knowledge-based business-to-business (B2B) marketing. In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the building blocks of AI and the relationships between them. Future research directions and also the effects of the various market information building components on B2B marketing are discussed. The study’s approach is theoretical; it tries to provide a framework for characterising the phenomenon of AI and its constituent parts. Additionally, this chapter provides a methodical analysis of the three categories of market information crucial to B2B marketing: knowledge of customers, knowledge of users, and knowledge of external markets. This research looks at AI through the lens of the conventional data processing framework, analysing the six pillars upon which AI systems are founded. It also explained how the framework’s components work together to transform data into actionable information. In this chapter, the authors will look at how AI works and how it can benefit B2B knowledge-based marketing. It’s not aimed at AI experts but rather at general marketing managers. In this chapter, the possible effects of AI on B2B marketing are discussed using examples from the real world.

How can we explain the unresponsiveness of Internal Audit (IA) amid signs that fraud is arising and spreading within an organization? Internal auditors are entrusted with the formal responsibility of sounding the alarm about the risk of fraud and organizational wrongdoing. However, internal auditors failed to respond as the cross-sell fraud at Wells Fargo’s Community Bank (CB) Division unfolded over more than a decade, growing into a massive, full-fledged scandal. We examine IA as a profession and explore how the interpretation of three classic tenets of auditing (scope, compliance and materiality) may enable organizational wrongdoing to fester unattended until it erupts into yet another scandal. We conclude with implications for the socialization and practice of internal auditors, emphasizing the need for reflexivity and moral judgment in the interpretation and application of tenets so deeply ingrained in the IA profession.

Systems thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity and interconnectedness. Systems thinking fosters a sensibility to see subtle connections between components and parts of reality, especially the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS). It enables us to see ourselves as active participants or partners of FECS and not mere induced factors of its production–distribution–consumption processes. Systems thinking seeks to identify the economic “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS that bring about high versus low leveraged changes. A system is strengthened and reinforced by feedback of reciprocal exchanges that makes the system alive, transparent, human, and humanizing.

In Part I, we explore basic laws or patterns of behaviors as understood by systems thinking; in Part II we examine the basic archetypes or structured behaviors of systems thinking; in both parts we strive to see reality through the lens of critical thinking to help us understand patterns and structures of behavior among systems and their component parts. In conclusion, we argue for compatibility and complementarity of critical thinking and systems thinking to identify and resolve management problems created by our flawed thinking, and sedimented by our wanton assumptions, presumptions, suppositions and presuppositions, biases, and prejudices. Such thinking will also identify unnecessary economic and political structures of the self-serving policies we create, which imprison us.

David Maines established himself as one of the premier symbolic interactionists who did not attach himself to any particular interactionist school of thought. In creating an extensive and intensive legacy via his publications, Maines looked into issues that other interactionists, bound to particular schools of thought, either took for granted or neglected to examine. In so doing, Maines resembled Simmel's Stranger not only as one who fits into a community but also as one who remains distant from the community. One of the key areas of investigation that defined Maines' work and that separated him from other interactionists pertained to his interest in social structure and specifically, how people become structurally situated as social-structural interactors. This chapter examines, in detail, Maines' interest in getting structurally situated and uses a television series, Dopesick, to discuss the relationships between institutional actors as a way to substantiate Maines' theoretical interest in social structure and the activities involved in the process of getting structurally situated.