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Research on racial inequality in organizations typically (1) assumes constraining effects of bureaucratic structure on the capacity of powerful actors to discriminate or (2) reverts to individualistic interpretations emphasizing implicit biases or self-expressed motivations of gatekeepers. Such orientations are theoretically problematic because they ignore how bureaucratic structures and practices are immersed within and permeated by culturally normative racial meanings and hierarchies. This decoupling ultimately provides a protective, legitimating umbrella for organizational practices and gatekeeping actors – an umbrella under which differential treatment is enabled and discursively portrayed as meritocratic or even organizationally good. In this chapter, we develop a race-centered conception of organizational practices by drawing from a sample of over 100 content-coded workplace discrimination cases and analyzing both discriminatory encounters and employer justifications for inequality-generating conduct. Results show three non-mutually exclusive patterns that highlight the fundamentally racial character of organizations: (1) the racialization of bureaucracies themselves via the organizational valuation and pursuit of “ideal workers,” (2) the ostensibly bureaucratic and neutral, yet inequitable, policing of minority worker performance, and; (3) the everyday enforcement of racial status boundaries through harassment on the job, protection afforded to perpetrators, and bureaucratically enforced retaliation aimed at victims. The permeation of race-laden presumptions into organizations, their activation relative to oversight and bureaucratic policing, and the invoking of colorblind bureaucratic discourses and policies to legitimate discriminatory conduct are crucial to understanding the organizational dimensions of racial inequality production. We end by discussing the implications of our argument and results for future theory and research.

We investigate outcomes associated with the turnover of unskilled workers, isolating its effects on revenue, cost, and profit. Little attention from researchers has been given to unskilled workers, a significant portion of the workforce.

This study investigates the relation between turnover among unskilled workers and financial performance using data from 527 hotels owned by the same lodging chain. The workers in our sample are full-time housekeepers and front desk attendants.

We find that the relation between turnover and performance differs by turnover type (voluntary vs. involuntary) and category of unskilled worker, reiterating the need to differentiate between turnover type and the importance of context in studying turnover. We challenge the assumption that voluntary turnover is categorically harmful and our results for front desk attendants support the view that organizations choose turnover levels that maximize performance. We also provide new evidence on the effects of involuntary turnover. Contrary to the established notion that dismissing less able employees should improve performance, we find that involuntary turnover has negative consequences.

Our results demonstrate the importance of distinguishing voluntary turnover from involuntary turnover and the need to include both in models predicting turnover’s performance effects.

The authors review the German voluntary turnover literature and examine how it reflects and extends the overall knowledge of employee turnover. First, the authors describe legal, institutional, and cultural influences specific to Germany that may affect voluntary turnover and its relationships with antecedents and outcomes. The authors then explain how research paradigms, which in German turnover research are primarily embedded in sociology and labor economics and to a lesser degree psychology and management, affect the lens by which voluntary turnover is examined. For instance, the variety of research perspectives leads to a variety of research questions, theories, data, and methodological approaches. Using these diverse perspectives, the authors explain how measurement and data quality concerns may hamper the understanding of turnover in cross-country/cross-cultural comparisons. This review further reveals many similarities with US-based turnover research, regarding the theories, methods, and results. The authors also find that turnover levels are, on average, considerably lower in Germany than in Anglo-Saxon labor markets. The authors suggest that the industry structure in Germany, coined by its strong and traditionally organized “Mittelstand” companies, may partly drive these findings. The authors close by identifying several research opportunities, available through advances in technology to improve the matching process, nonstandard work arrangements (such as in the gig economy), and a broader perspective on institutional peculiarities.

A multimodal perspective highlights the importance of attending to the different modes, mostly verbal and visual, which organizations use when conveying messages. We complement this perspective by adding an additional layer, namely the medium through which messages appear. We suggest that organizations can fine-tune messages not only by playing with possible interactions across modes, but also across media. We build our reasoning around the communication of identity claims. Specifically, we are interested in how identity elements are referenced in verbal and visual modes of meaning making, and how these modes interrelate both with one another and with the respective channels of communication on which they appear. We propose that organizations differentially select identity elements across diverse media and draw on specific identity elements modally in their quest for legitimate distinctiveness. We propose three ways in which multimodal identity claims interact: intensifying, in which messages draw from the same theme to reinforce claims; complementing, in which messages complement each other to enhance meaning; and transposing, in which a dominant theme in one message is transposed into another theme elsewhere. We provide an illustration with identity claims made by single-malt Scotch whisky distilleries.

As advocates and scholars dedicated to advancing equality for women and girls, we believe that sport can empower all people – and to change the world. Exclusion and restrictions for transgender athletes undermine this cause. Transgender athletes are not and have never been a threat to women's sport. There are, however, serious and well-documented threats to women's sport that warrant attention, including unequal opportunities in participation and leadership, inequitable funding and pay, uneven media coverage, a lack of sponsorship opportunities, sexual harassment and abuse and incomplete implementation of gender equality policies (Bisgaard & Støckel, 2019; Cooky et al., 2021; Hindman & Walker, 2020; Lough & Greenhalgh, 2019; Novkov, 2019; Pape, 2020; Raso, 2019; Schultz, 2018; Staurowsky et al., 2020; Yanus & O'Connor, 2016; Zerunyan, 2017).

A close reading of peer-reviewed, researched-based and credible sources allow us to better understand the experiences of trans athletes, to dispel the dangerous misinformation peddled in recent media accounts and political debates, to outline critical legal and policy discussions about trans athletes, and to highlight why access to sport matters for everyone. There is a clear consensus across multiple disciplines: the future of sport includes transgender women and girls.

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.

Work environments, which are widely acknowledged to exert strong influences on employee attitudes and behavior, have been studied since the initiation of formal work entities. Over this time, scholars have identified myriad impactful internal and external factors. Absent though are investigations examining economic downturns despite their acknowledged pervasiveness and destructive effects on worker performance and well-being. To address this theoretical gap, a multistage model acknowledging the impact of recessions on workplace responses, response effects, and environmental considerations is proposed. Inherent in this discussion is the role of economic decline on reactive change processes, the nature of work, and the structure and design of organizations. These significant changes affect employee attitudes and behaviors in ways that increase the political nature of these work environments. Organizational factors and employee responses to heightened recession-driven politics are discussed. Additionally, theoretically relevant intervening variables capable of influencing work outcomes are described. The chapter is concluded by discussing the implications of this theoretical framework as well as directions for future research.

Decision-making in human resources management is done at both the micro and macro level of organizations. Unfortunately, the decisions at each level are often executed without consideration of the other, and current theory reflects this issue. In response to a call for integration of micro- and macro-level processes by Huselid and Becker (2011), we review the extant literature on strategic human resources and high-performance work systems to provide recommendations for both research and practice. We aimed to contribute to the literature by proposing the incorporation of the situation awareness literature into the high-performance work systems framework to encourage the alignment of human resources efforts. In addition, we provide practical recommendations for integrating situation awareness and strategic decision-making. We discuss a process for the employment of situation awareness in organizations that might not only streamline human resources management but also result in more effective decisions. Additional considerations include implications for teams, boundary conditions (e.g., individual differences), and measurement.