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The process of talent development (TD) is one of the current trends in HRM and human resource development (HRD). Although scientific literature addressing the topic emphasizes that through development of talents, organizations can increase their productivity, performance and competitiveness, little is known so far concerning the development of this research field as a whole and particularly concerning theories prevailing in the area. While research into the field has been ongoing for two decades, the area has not yet been systematized based on key theories used as starting points for the research. The purpose of this paper is to focus on which theories in HRD are used in TD.

Concerning the topicality of TD, the present article provides a systematic review of literature summarizing current theories in TD based on the currently used typology of theories in HRD, adding the fourth pillar to the existing three, i.e. theories concerning adult learning and education, to increase the stability of the typology.

The paper argues that the area of TD prevalently uses sociological, psychological and ethical theories, which may be attributed to trends in HRD. The insufficient representation of theories of learning in TD, particularly in view of the fact that adult learning and development is the essence of TD, is an important finding. This finding is particularly important for science concerning adult learning and education.

The benefit of the presented analysis lies in a systematization of the individual theories and a comprehensive overview of the current theoretical framework of TD, as well as suggestions for future research making use of adult learning and education theories.

Authenticity has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, leading to a rich but confused literature. This study, a review, aims to compare the psychology and sociology/tourism definitions of authenticity to clarify the concept. From a psychological perspective, authenticity is a mental appraisal of an object or experience as valued leading to feelings and summative judgements (such as satisfaction or perceived value). In objective authenticity, a person values the object due to belief in an expert’s opinion, constructive authenticity relies on socially constructed values, while existential authenticity is based on one’s self-identity. The resultant achievement of a valued goal, such as seeing a valued object, leads to feelings of pleasure. Sociological definitions are similar but based on different theoretical antecedent causes of constructed and existential authenticity. The paper further discusses the use of theory in tourism and the project to develop tourism as a discipline. This project is considered unlikely to be successful and in turn, as argued, it is more useful to apply theory from other disciplines in a multidisciplinary manner. The results emphasise that it is necessary for tourism researchers to understand the origins and development of the concepts they use and their various definitions.

Organizations are affected top-down by the overarching societies and bottom-up by foundational face-to-face encounters: societies provide norms, values, laws, institutions, beliefs, markets, political structures, and knowledge bases. What happens within organizations is done by people interacting with other people, arguing, discussing, convincing each other when preparing and making decisions. Organizations operate within social environments that leave their – however indirect – imprint on what is going on within organizations. This article argues that organizational sociology can benefit from an integrated theoretical framework that accounts for the embeddedness of organizations within the micro- and macro-levels of social order. The argument is developed in two main points: First, this article introduces the multilevel framework provided by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to demonstrate how organizations are shaped by the functionally differentiated macro-structure of society. Organizations follow and reproduce the operational logics of societal domains such as the political system, the economy, science, law, religion, etc. Second, this paper demonstrates how organizations are shaped by micro-level dynamics of face-to-face interactions. Face-to-face encounters form a social reality of its own kind that restricts and resists the formalization of organizational processes. Here, this article draws on Erving Goffman’s and Randall Collins’ work on interaction rituals, emotions, and solidarity, which is inspired by Durkheimian micro-sociology. At the end, this article brings together all the elements into one general account of organizations within the context of their macro- and micro-structural social environments. This account can yield a deeper and more sociological understanding of organizational behavior.

There is a growing worry about people possibly isolating themselves in online bubbles and avoiding contact with ideas that differ from their beliefs, creating a scenario of ideological polarization. To investigate into this matter, this work aims for a reflection about the contingency of communication in social media. Does social media make the experience of communication in the digital space more contingent (providing it with more possibilities, with people accessing different contents and ideas) or less contingent (reducing the available possibilities, making people isolate themselves)?

This is a theoretical work, constructed through bibliographical reviews. To reflect about the question that are posed, the author selected Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory to approach the concept of contingency. In addition to that, the author presented the main arguments of the debates about echo chambers and online bubbles. In the end, the author combined the two reviews together using elements of the Luhmannian theory and drew some conclusions about the initial question.

The study concluded that social media have an ambivalent potential regarding contingency in the digital space: it can both expand or reduce the available possibilities of communication, depending on criteria like topic, potential of diffusion and focus of attention. There is no one-side effect.

The approach at echo chambers does not reflect “the” form of contingency in social media, but “a” form. Therefore, the study cannot provide any general conclusions about the relation between contingency and social media. The digital space is a large one, and more studies are required to achieve more substantial propositions.

The research has an originality value both for systems theory and social media studies. First, because, as far as the author knows, no other system-theoretical argument has taken the connection between contingency and social media as a primary analysis object. Second, because of a theoretical interpretation effort, the studies of echo chambers indicate mixed results about the phenomenon of online isolation, but no attempt was made to make sense of these mixed results from a specific sociological theory. The author did that by using Luhmann's theoretical framework, which proved to be a good tool for explaining and unifying these different results on a more abstract level.

The objective of this paper is to synthesize and extend the existing understanding of social health accounting (SHA) literature within the perspectives of social health disclosures (SHAD) and the effect of social health problems on public and private sector accounting.

This study provides a comprehensive and up-to-date systematic literature review (SLR) of past studies on social health within the accounting literature. This is done by employing a three-step SLR research design to investigate a sample of papers, made up of 62 mixed, qualitative and quantitative studies conducted in over 23 countries, drawn predominantly from the extant accounting literature from 2013 to 2023 and published in 25 peer-reviewed journals.

Our SLR offers several findings. First, we find that existing SHA studies apply theories in SHAD studies, but hardly apply them to explain the impact of health problems on business outcomes. Second, we show that the extant studies have focused predominantly on rigorous empirical studies on SHAD, while this is scarce for studies examining the impact of diseases/health problems on both public and private sector accounting. Third, we identify several research design weaknesses, including a lack of primary data analysis, mixed-methods approach and rigorous qualitative studies. Finally, we present directions for future SHA research.

In contrast to the ever-increasing general social and environmental accounting (SEA) research, existing studies examining global health issues and challenges (e.g. diseases, epidemics and pandemics), especially from an accounting perspective are rare. Nonetheless, the past decade has witnessed a steady increase in research on corporate accounting for, and reporting of, health issues; although the emerging literature remains fragmented thereby impeding the generation of useful empirical and theoretical insights for policymakers, practitioners and researchers. Consequently, this paper offers extensive and timely SLR of the existing studies on SHA; critically reviewing past findings published in a wide range of peer-reviewed international journals that discuss the current state of global SHA research, their weaknesses and set future research agenda.

This paper aims to outline the role that serendipity can play in providing a complementary and previously unrepresented vector in deliberate and emergent strategies within organizations.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon the serendipity pattern in sociological theory and serendipitous relations in developmental sciences to provide a framework for executives to consider when examining the process of strategy formation. Two case vignettes are used to illustrate the difference between luck and serendipity and the paper also traces key micro foundations of serendipity by returning to the original serendipity fable and a famed science experiment producing “floppy-eared” rabbits.

The notion of chance favoring the “prepared firm” is espoused where the prepared organizational mind is positioned as an antecedent of serendipitous strategy formation. This is based on Louis Pasteur’s famous aphorism, “chance favors the prepared mind.” Components of the prepared firm include deep domain knowledge, anticipatory mindset, noticing, abductive reasoning, elaboration and relations development.

The paper is a conceptual articulation of a novel concept that now requires deeper empirical case development and ultimately statistical validation. The paper suggests linkages between serendipity and theories of absorptive capacity and the attention-based view of the firm.

Several mindsets, capabilities and relations for architecting organizational serendipity are suggested for executives using a stylized framework.

From a strategy process perspective, the Mintzberg and Waters seminal article “Of strategies deliberate and emergent” is complemented by considering “floppy-eared” strategy characterized by unexpected, anomalous and strategic datum.

The purpose of this study is to analyze state-of-the-art knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) research in hospitality.

This study adopts the theory-context-methods framework to systematically review 100 AI-related articles recently published (i.e. from 2021 to April 2023) in three top-tier hospitality journals, namely, the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management.

Findings suggest that studies of AI applications in hospitality are mostly theory-driven, whereas most AI methods research adopts a data-driven approach. State-of-the-art AI applications research exhibits the most interest in service robots. In AI methods research, little attention was paid to the amid-service/experience.

This study reveals inadequacies in theory, context and methods in contemporary AI research. More research from hospitality suppliers’ perspectives and research on generative AI applications are advocated in response to the unveiled research gaps and recent AI developments.

This study classifies the most recent AI research in hospitality into two main streams – AI applications research and AI methods research – and discusses the gaps in each research stream and latest AI developments. The paper then suggests future research directions to guide researchers in advancing AI research in hospitality.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the current discourse on researcher positionality in disaster research and it aims to enhance disaster researchers’ reflexivity, using Bourdieu’s capital, field and habitus theories.

This conceptual paper relies on secondary literature from empirical and theoretical works and incorporates critical self-reflection from author’s own research experience.

As Bourdieu would argue, one’s habitus is interactive and responsive to contexts (field and other agents’ habitus and capital), thus reflexivity requires more than the acknowledgement of one’s ascribed and achieved social characteristics. Bourdieu’s theories help disaster researchers enhance their reflexivity and better understand the nature of researcher positionality: contextual, dynamic and negotiated.

This research provides a critical and theoretical discussion of researcher positionality in disaster research. Drawing from Bourdieu’s theories, researcher positionality can be framed in relation to not only researcher’s structurally differentiated insider–outsider status but also how interactions with the research participants and contexts in which the research is conducted influence that positionality.