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Anyone who has recently watched television or movies can tell you that transgender, gender nonbinary or gender expansive people are becoming more visible in these media. This trend reflects the reality that younger generations are increasingly identifying with more fluid and nonbinary gender and sexual identities and are progressively expressing those identities in a more flexible and changing manner (Herman et al., 2022; Wilson & Meyer, 2021). Unsurprisingly then, those individuals are also more visible at work, including in workplaces with employer-mandated dress codes. Indeed, in 2020 the US Supreme Court decided a case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who was fired because her employer, a funeral home, required her to conform to its gender-binary dress policy and wear clothing mandatory for people assigned male at birth, rather than appropriate for her female gender identity ( Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

However, as the description of Aimee Stephens's own experience illustrates, often these employer appearance codes are based on a binary and fixed conception of gender and gender identity and expression at odds with the increasing number of workers who do not identify within those rigid parameters. Moreover, even when an employee, like Aimee Stephens herself, could have fit within her employer's dress code, the improper application of that policy to her, or employer concerns about customer or co-worker discomfort with an employee's appearance under the policy may mean that a worker's identity and expression may still conflict with a workplace appearance code. For gender nonbinary or nonconforming individuals, these complications are magnified.

This chapter explores the practical problems and barriers that employer dress codes have on employees whose gender identity and/or presentation move beyond the traditional male/female binary. Using insights from queer theory, gender expansive employees serve to interrogate fundamental assumptions behind workplace dress policies and the formal and informal ways in which these policies are policed. The chapter will explore that discordance, examine possible employer resolutions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of those responses.

Companies are interested in engaging consumers in spreading the word about their products or brands. Although more and more studies are analysing word of mouth marketing (WOMM), the topic is still very recent, thus very little is known about how to develop a WOMM campaign effectively. This chapter develops a literature review on WOMM in social media for better understanding on how to manage WOMM.

The studies reviewed have allowed us to identify the main decisions that should be taken when planning a WOMM campaign: the selection of the seed, the type of message and the inclusion of incentives.

We identify the two types of objectives that companies can follow with WOMM: information diffusion or consumers’ persuasion. Depending on the campaign objectives, the strategy to be used in order to be successful is different.

This chapter can be useful to both, marketers, by showing them how to develop a WOMM campaign effectively; and researchers, by showing them the main gaps on WOMM that should be addressed in future studies.

This is one of the first attempts to review the literature and organize knowledge on WOMM. Concepts that have been treated as synonymous by many researchers such as opinion leaders, market mavens, innovative consumers, and hubs are clarified and distinguished one from the other which may help in improving previous knowledge on this field.

Workplace mavericks are often labeled as non-conformists. They are perceived to be the employees who disregard organizational policies and procedures, and who invite huge risks in the pursuit of goals that sit outside what the organization dictates as the core business or practice. While this may be accurate to a degree, it is not the complete story. Guided by recent conceptualizations of non-conformity and positive deviance, this qualitative study interviewed 27 observers of mavericks (observer-types) in the workplace, and 28 interviews with mavericks (maverick-types). Results highlight that while maverick individuals do challenge organizational norms, they do so for the benefit of others, including the organization. Additionally, they are not wildcard non-conformists as they do in fact conform. However, they are conforming positively to higher level hyper-norms or organizational goals, and therefore operate in what could be termed as bounded non-conformity. Understanding the form that this bounded non-conformity takes is key for organizations to mitigate perceptions of the risk posed by maverick individuals, while maximizing the rewards that maverick employees can offer to organizations, especially for informing ideas and plans around more radical change and innovation. In this way, organizations can benefit from the numerous and unique contributions of mavericks in the workplace, such as innovative, unorthodox, and out-of-the-box thinking, while at the same time still ensuring the effective governance and risk management of the organization.

At the time of its demise in 2001, the Enron Corporation could boast of its comprehensive, state-of-the-art management control and governance systems. Yet these controls were rendered ineffective in the company's last few years. This article identifies the radical change in Enron's corporate culture that took place from the Lay-Kinder era (1986–1996) to the Lay-Skilling era (1997–2001). It argues that this was a major cause of neutralizing these controls, which in turn proved to be a major factor in Enron's fall into bankruptcy. The article draws on Schein's (1993, Legitimating clinical research in the study of organizational culture, Journal of Counselling and Development, 71, 703–708; 1996, 2004) framework of cultural practice to develop our analysis. Thus, it supports Simon's (1990, 1995) urging to more meaningfully include corporate culture in management control research studies. The article contributes to the literature by drawing attention to the rich but untold story of Enron's governance and control and also extends the research linking corporate culture and control systems.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.