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The purpose of this study is to understand how a salesperson’s preset goals, customer satisfaction levels and past performance affect the extent of goal achievement, as well as how job-specific attitudes and emotions affect the relationship between preset goals and goal achievement.

This study uses a modeling framework with both main, moderating and mediating effects, using transaction data and survey results from a telecommunications firm.

The results indicate that preset goals and customer satisfaction, interestingly, have an inverted-U relationships with goal achievement. Further, attitudes and emotions regarding workplace conduciveness and workplace ethics and diversity, reduce the effect preset goals have on goal achievement. However, attitudes and emotions regarding workplace philosophy strengthens the effect preset goals have on goal achievement, whereas with disagreement, this relationship diminishes.

Two of the primary limitations of this study are: one, because of the cross-sectional nature of the study, there is limited opportunity to control for unobserved heterogeneity; and two, performance goal achievement, though is important for the firm, is one of many potential goals that affect a salesperson. For example, customer satisfaction goals or a one-time special event goals could play a role. Therefore, only using performance goal achievement could be a limitation of this study.

This study contributes to academic literature in three ways. First, it demonstrates the diminishing effect of customer satisfaction on goal achievement. Second, it identifies an inverse U-shaped relationship between preset goals and goal achievement. Finally, it examines how attitudes and emotions regarding workplace culture (conduciveness, ethics and diversity and philosophy) affect the relationship between preset goals and goal achievement.

In today's ever-evolving digital job market, soft skills are increasingly important for university students to succeed in their future careers. This study identifies the soft skills that universities should prioritize the most due to their significance in the digital employment market.

Using natural language processing (NLP) techniques, this study analyzed 226 student writings that described their experiences of failure in academic, personal and professional settings. Zero-shot classification was utilized to identify the presence of soft skills and sentiment analysis was used to determine the expressed sentiment toward these skills.

The findings suggest that students are most deficient in social intelligence, stress management and self-intelligence skills, which are essential soft skills for success in academic and professional environments and for the transition to the digital employment market.

The article acknowledges limitations related to the writing proficiency of resumes from a few non-English speaking students and the potential influence of students' emotional states on the content of their writings.

The study provides valuable insights into the soft skills that are mostly lacking among university students and their significance in the digital employment market.

The study highlights the importance of universities in promoting and practicing essential soft skills and sheds light on the issue of soft skill deficiency among university students. Educators can use these insights to develop strategic proposals aimed at promoting the acquisition of key soft skills among students. The study provides valuable insights into the soft skills that are mostly lacking among university students and their significance in the digital employment market.

Empirical evidence concerning the relationship between diversity and firm performance continues to produce mixed results that are context-dependent (Guillaume et al., 2017). Additionally, little is known about the relationship between workplace diversity management and corporate ethics and whether diversity management is a contextual factor to consider in ethics research. This study assesses whether diversity management's contributions to firm performance are maximized through its effects on the firm's ethical processes. This paper examines three manifestations of diversity management (diversity recruitment, diversity staffing, and valuing diversity) and their relationship with firm performance as mediated by internal and external ethics.

The study used a sample from the Fortune 500 list of companies. The variables were constructed using several relevant indicators and applied to archival data collected from corporations' websites. The hypotheses on the relationship among diversity management, corporate ethics, and firm performance were tested using regression from the data gathered on 109 firms.

The analysis indicated that diversity management relates to both aspects of corporate ethics (internal and external ethics) but that only external ethics relate to firm performance. Results also found that external ethics partially mediate the relationship between diversity management and firm performance.

There are limitations to using corporate websites as sources of data. Furthermore, the research design assumed that diversity is an antecedent of ethics. Nevertheless, the findings convincingly demonstrate that diversity management has a strong positive relationship with both aspects of corporate ethics. Recommendations for further research are offered.

The paper shows the value of diversity management and its impact on corporate ethics. Knowing that diversity management efforts contribute positively beyond their intended purpose may encourage managers to continue or implement such efforts, which could lead to more diverse and ethical workplaces and increased firm performance.

The paper addresses critical gaps in research and responds to repeated calls for studies integrating the business case for workplace diversity with its moral imperative (Alder and Gilbert, 2006; van Dijk et al., 2012; Yang and Konrad, 2011). The paper also provides evidence of a link from diversity management to firm performance through external ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to propose reflexivity as a means to managing diversity practice in organizations. Reflexivity enables taken for granted assumptions about identities, roles, perspectives, language, meanings and understandings between managers and employees to be explored and redefined in ways that matter to the people in the workplace. It provides insights and examples from a practitioner perspective while engaged in designing and implementing a managing diversity initiative. In addition, it positions the development of relationships between managers and employees as a key ingredient in managing diversity.

This paper is based on a post hoc qualitative reflexive study of a managing diversity project undertaken by the author as a diversity practitioner.

The study suggested that reflexivity can allow both managers and employees to critically examine the conventional ways in which diversity and differences are understood, as this awareness can enable more relational approaches to diversity to be developed.

Because of the chosen qualitative research approach, the specific findings cannot be generalized; rather, an example of the potential of reflexivity as practice in organizations is proffered and insights are offered to enable further academic enquiry and practical considerations.

Reflexivity stimulates both independent and shared action-learning sense-making processes which support equal participation. This challenges and expands the diversity agendas prevalent in the applied field of managing diversity. For example, by positioning organizational diversity as an inter-subjective and contextual process, meaningful dialogue between employees and managers becomes possible. Moreover, as reflexivity allows for a range of narrative accounts to emerge from such embedded activities, this approach can serve as a model for similar dialogical processes to occur within the wider organization. In addition, this paper provides insight into how reflexivity as practice for both practitioners and researchers can offer a means for more collaborative relationships to develop at the practitioner/researcher nexus.

The paper endeavors to make a contribution to both the academic and the practitioner managing diversity fields by demonstrating that reflexive practice can add significant value to managing diversity processes in organizations and research.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the elaboration of a comprehensive moral framework for designing and implementing diversity practices. In so doing, it employs distinct ethical theories that not only elevate respect for differences to an end, but also provide a set of principles, virtues or values conducive to the formation of an inclusive work environment.

A literature review, in particular contributions critical to current implementations of diversity management, may provide the basis of a non-instrumental approach to diversity issues, allowing for an inclusive and participative workplace. The paper suggests that such an endeavor can be founded on the concepts of organizational virtue, care or human dignity alternatively. In this respect, a theoretical context demonstrating the very way these concepts influence and inform diversity issues, is elaborated, analyzed and properly discussed.

Three distinct theoretical frameworks capturing the importance of major ethical traditions based on dignity, organizational virtue and care, for reconceptualizing diversity issues, are introduced. It is proposed that non-utilitarian philosophical ethics (and more specifically, Kantian deontology, Aristotelian virtue ethics or ethics of care) is in a position to provide a rationale for diversity policies that affirm the diverse other as a valued end.

The authors argue that a corporation is in a position to develop ethically-informed diversity initiatives that may effectively combine performance with an affirmation of the value of the diverse other.

The authors argue that a corporation is in a position to develop ethically-informed diversity initiatives that may effectively combine performance with an affirmation of the value of the diverse other.

The paper offers certain insights into the particular conditions that may help organizations design and implement a diversity strategy facilitating thriving and fulfillment of diverse others, grounded on the priority of dignity, virtue or care respectively. Such a perspective, permeating vision, culture and leadership, is invested with a potential that overcomes the managerial instrumentality, so strongly denounced by the majority of critical diversity scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to engage the ecological model as a conceptual tool to examine the ethics of conducting research on LGBTQ+ individuals in the workplace. In particular, it focuses on outness and the act of outing in research.

Established methodologies for studying LGBTQ+ persons in the workplace are examined using a critical outness lens. The ecological model is used to identify a critical path forward for researchers working with LGBTQ+ participants and to improve LGBTQ+ workplace experiences more broadly.

The tension between the ethics of coming out of the closet and the ethics of outing someone for the greater good is problematized. It suggests that organizational and diversity scholars approach research methods with an understanding of the role played by the body and sexuality in LGBTQ+ workplace research.

Researchers should recognize that workers may have varying degrees of outness within their organization and/or across their private and public lives.

Research on LGBTQ+ persons in the workplace is limited, and research examining the ethics of relevant methods is scarcer still. This paper begins a discussion on how researchers can trouble current hegemonic approaches to LGBTQ+-centered research in organizations.