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This paper aims to adopt a moderated mediation model to examine the mediation roles of employee engagement and hindrance time pressure; the moderation roles of personality in the relationship between strengths-based psychological climate and employee innovation performance.

Applying snowball sampling and a self-administered survey, the data were collected from employees and immediate supervisors working in Chinese small-medium-sized enterprises. The PROCESS macro for SPSS was applied to examine the moderated mediation model.

The results show that a strengths-based psychological climate significantly influences employee engagement and hindrance time pressure, which, in turn, affects employee innovation performance. Both extroversion and emotional stability moderate the relationship between strengths-based psychological climate, employee engagement and hindrance time pressure but also the indirect effect of strengths-based psychological climate on employee innovation performance through employee engagement and hindrance time pressure.

Drawing on job demands and resources models, this research focusses on maximizing employee strengths instead of weaknesses and includes both two intermediating mechanisms in-between strengths-based psychological climate and innovation performance. Personality variables are applied as moderators, as the study assumes the effectiveness of the strengths-based interventions may vary depends on individual differences.

This study proposes that a strengths-based psychological climate may shift focusses from employee weakness to strengths to maximise their talents. Also, personality variables are suggested to be considered in the related human resource practices (e.g. hiring and performance appraisal) to increase the fit between employees, their jobs and the organisations.

This study develops a moderated mediation model to investigate the possible mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions in relation to the impact of strengths-based psychological climate on employee innovation performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of graduate recruitment in the professional socialisation and subjectification of Big Four professionals.

The paper draws on documentary data and interviews conducted at one British university. It adopts an interpretive perspective and is informed by Foucault’s work on technologies of power and technologies of the self.

The paper argues that the graduate recruitment practices of Big Four firms represent a series of examinations which produce the category of ideal recruits. It moreover suggests that this category serves as the ultimate objective of an ethical process whereby aspiring accountants consciously and deliberately seek to transform themselves into the type of subjects they aspire to be – ideal recruits.

The findings of the paper are primarily based on interviews conducted at one university. Future research could explore if students at other universities experience graduate recruitment in similar or different ways.

The paper highlights the constitutive role of graduate recruitment practices and shows that they can construct ideal recruits as much as they select them. It also shows that graduate recruitment is an important anticipatory socialisation mechanism that can compel aspiring accountants to learn how to look, sound and behave like Big Four professionals long before they join such organisations. Finally, the paper discusses its implications for the future of the profession, social mobility and the use of Foucault’s work on technologies of power and the self in studying subjectivity at elite professional service firms.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuro-developmental condition that has frequently been pathologised in career research and broader society to date. The study seeks to reframe such assumptions through a qualitative positive-focused exploration of career stories of ADHD adults, elicited through a strength-focused technique with wide applicability for coaching and other career-based development activities.

Situated in a strength-focused coaching psychology paradigm, the authors undertook semi-structured interviews with 17 participants, using an adapted feedforward interview technique (FFI) rooted in positive psychology (PP), to investigate individuals' strengths and successful career experiences.

Narrative thematic analysis of the transcripts identified two core themes: “the paradoxical nature of strengths” and “career success as an evolving narrative”. The participants described how they have achieved career success both “in spite of” and “because of” ADHD. The use of the FFI demonstrated a helpful and easily taught method for eliciting personal narratives of success and strengths, an essential foundation to any coaching process.

This research provides a nuanced overview, and an associated conceptual model, of how adults with ADHD perceive their career-based strengths and experiences of success. Further, the research shows the value of using a positive psychological coaching approach when working with neurominority individuals, using a successful adaptation of the FFI. The authors hope that the documentation of this technique and the resulting insights will offer important guidance for managers as coaches and internal and external career coaches, as well as providing positive and relatable narrative resources for ADHD adults.