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The paper aims to focus on the activism of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people and their allies within work organisations. Specifically, it explores whether LGBT trade union groups and company employee network groups provide mechanisms for visibility, voice and activism for LGBT employees within UK organisations.

This paper is based on in‐depth interviews with 149 LGB employees within 14 UK case study organisations. These took place within four local authorities, three fire and emergency services, two national voluntary sector organisations and five private sector organisations between 2004‐2006. In addition, 55 in‐depth interviews with management, trade union and LGBT company employee network group representatives within the organisations plus analysis of company and trade union web sites and publications provided information on organisation policy and practice. Interviews were conducted using a semi‐structured interview schedule and the data collected were coded and analysed with the assistance of Nvivo software.

This paper outlines the history of LGBT trade union groups and company employee network groups within the UK. It found that both LGBT trade union groups and company employee network groups have provided important and at times complimentary mechanisms for visibility, community and voice for LGBT employees. However, the paper recognised that LGBT company network groups were relatively “new actors” within the case study organisations and suggests that some early gains may have been those which companies were willing to concede. It concludes that more research will be needed to see whether both LGBT trade union and company employee network groups can maintain their momentum during a time of economic recession as equality and diversity budgets are squeezed.

A decline in trade unions and increasing non‐unionisation despite labour movement revitalisation campaigns has meant that there is growing interest in whether employee network groups can provide meaningful avenues for “employee voice” in both unionised and non‐unionised workplaces. The paper addresses a gap in knowledge by focusing firstly on LGBT activism in the workplace and secondly on the rationale for and development of LGBT trade union and company employee network groups as mechanisms for “employee voice” for LGBT employees.

The paper aims to examine the effect of employees' perceived physical attractiveness on the extent to which their voices are “listened to” by management.

Using an experimental research design, the paper estimates main effects of employee attractiveness and possible moderating effects of employee race and gender as well as the gender of their “managers.”

The results suggest that, with few exceptions, more physically attractive employees are significantly more likely to have their suggestions acted upon by managers than less attractive employees, pointing to a powerful form of workplace discrimination. This finding holds across races, with more attractive white, black, and Asian employees exerting a more impactful voice than their less attractive counterparts, although the moderation appears to be stronger for whites than ethnic minorities.

The results have important implications for the extant literatures on employee voice, diversity and discrimination.

This is among the first studies to demonstrate that less attractive employees suffer from an “employee voice deficit” vis-à-vis their more attractive counterparts.

This paper refines the Digital Media–Arena (DMA) framework to address the diversity of stakeholders contributing to the production, (re)appropriation and (re)distribution of organisational messages in digital environments. It also presents a case analysis for the purpose of demonstrating the applicability of the revised conceptual framework to a critical situation.

Grounded in key public relations, corporate communication and strategic communication research, this study first extends the DMA framework by introducing six new forms of media-arenas. Next, the study takes a public sector perspective to analyse the revised framework against a critical situation involving the Finnish prime minister in summer 2022.

The application of the revised DMA framework to analyse the critical situation shows the importance of mapping and understanding diverse discourses across multi-arenas and their communication role in a rapidly unfolding scandal surrounding the prime minister of Finland. Findings also reveal the diversity of stakeholder voices forming their own versions of organisational messages and sometimes converging organisational messages within and across DMAs.

The DMA framework can offer practical suggestions to guide communicators to make strategic choices in what, where, how and with whom they can communicate.

The revised DMA framework contributes expanding the field's knowledge of the strategic communicative use of the digital environment in typically highly volatile and multi-vocal situations by offering instrumental understanding of the conflicting challenge between subjugating and liberating organisational messages across the digital spectrum.

This editorial introduces the papers within the special issue and outlines their contribution to the emerging and evolving study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisation and management studies.

A review of some key themes within the literature on sexuality and sexual orientation is provided prior to drawing out key points within the submitted papers and considering how they contribute to this literature.

These six papers make an important contribution to the fast‐changing and evolving study of sexuality and sexual orientation in organisations and the development and implementation of equality and diversity policy and practice.

The editorial refers to papers presented at the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Conference held in Istanbul, July 2009, which included a stream entitled: “Spirals of silence? Tackling the ‘invisibility’ of the sexual orientation strand and sexuality in academic research and in organisation equality and diversity policy and practice” which can lead to reflections on the processes of voice and silence as these pertain to the discussion of sexuality and sexual orientation issues in academic organisations and at academic and practitioner conferences.

The aim of this paper is to compare the audit and accountability arrangements of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) internationally.

Building on a theorisation of regulatory space, extended by new audit spaces of public audit, the scope of the research is the 196 SAIs that are full members of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). The study is based on documentation review, workshops with a steering panel, a survey of all SAIs (response rate of 64%, being 125 of 196 members), workshops with the seven regions of INTOSAI and discussion at Congress.

The paper suggests that the audit and accountability arrangements for SAIs is underpinned by INTOSAI's global voice, a country's regulatory space and a SAIs organization, capacity and scope that are themes used to structure the comparison. The results show there is diversity in the organization, capacities and scope of SAIs, but also an opportunity for recognising the positive potential of INTOSAI in fulfilling its global voice leveraged from the results of its work with its regions and members.

This is the most comprehensive research study of SAIs and the research underpinning this study enables SAIs to compare themselves regionally and internationally.

This chapter provides practical research-based advice on implementing service-learning in inclusive classrooms to maximize academic, social-emotional, and civic outcomes. The K-12 standards for service-learning quality are explained in detail, and the relationship to inclusive learning is described. Guidance and examples for how to improve meaningfulness of service, connect service-learning to curriculum, develop strong reflection processes, engage in progress monitoring, ensure appropriate duration and intensity of the experience, provide students’ with voice and choice, promote diversity, and develop strong community partnerships are provided. The chapter also includes information on improving student engagement and retention of information.

Disasters continue to be most prevalent and severe for marginalised communities. To reach those furthest behind first, as the global community pledges in the 2030 Agenda, a critical assessment of equity in disaster risk governance is necessary. Yet, the understanding of factors that mediate the capacity of the governance processes to achieve equity ambitions is limited. This paper addresses this gap by proposing and testing a conceptual framework to assess equity in disaster risk governance.

The framework analyses the extent to which institutional relationships and data in risk governance support inclusion and diversity of voice and enable the equitable engagement of communities. The study applied the framework to key risk policies across governance levels in Brazil and Colombia.

The study finds that institutional awareness of cross-sectoral and -scalar coordination clearly exists. Yet, the engagement of actors further down the governance scale is framed reactively at all scales in both countries. The analysis of the risk data practices indicates that although data integration and sharing are key policy priorities, the policies frame the relations of disaster risk data actors as hierarchical, with data needs determined from the top down.

A key contribution of this framework is that its equity view results in a nuanced analysis, thus pointing to the differences between the two countries concerning the factors that mediate these challenges and providing specific entry points for strengthening equity in risk governance policies.

Despite the documented benefits of voice behavior for projects, little is known about antecedents of voice behavior in the project context, especially construction projects. Against this background, adopting a multi-team system perspective, this study attempts to investigate antecedents of team voice behavior from a contextual view.

This study identifies and examines six factors that influence team voice behavior. Specifically, project urgency, project temporality, and project complexity are identified from the project nature perspective. Satisfaction, trust, and commitment are generated from the relationship quality approach. Then, data from completed construction projects in China was collected to verify the effectiveness of these factors. Besides, the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was used in this study.

All six factors are found to be significant predictors of promotive team voice behavior. For prohibitive team voice behavior, only project complexity and project commitment make significant effects. Further, the differential effects of these factors on two types of voice behavior are revealed.

This study contributes to the literature on voice behavior in the project context, especially construction projects consisting of multiple teams. Also, this research enriches our knowledge on antecedents of team voice behavior in construction projects and thus affords practical implications to foster voice behavior.

This study aims to examine the effect of board gender diversity on corporate litigation in China’s listed firms. The key questions this study addresses are: what are the effect of board gender diversity on corporate litigation in terms of both the frequency and severity of consequence, is there any heterogeneous effects of the relationships across firm performance?

A sample consists of 25,668 firm-year observations from over 3,340 firms is examined using logistic regression analysis and negative binomial regression analysis. The authors also use event study method and ordinary least square (OLS) regression to explore female directors’ effects on reducing the negative consequences of litigation. The logistic regression and OLS regression are reestimated with interaction terms when examining the firm performance heterogeneity.

The authors document that firms with greater female representation on their boards experience fewer and less severe corporate litigations. Moreover, in high-performing firms, board gender diversity plays a more potent role in reducing the frequency and consequences of corporate litigation than low-performing firms.

This study is among the first to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and the comprehensive corporate litigations under Chinese context. It sheds new light on China’s boardroom dynamics, offering valuable empirical implication to Chinese corporate policymakers on the role of female directors.

The author uses poetry to describe feelings regarding racial identity, spirituality, and sexuality. The author uses expressive narrative to convey this emotional message.