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This chapter explores factors presented in romance novels that reify gendered assumptions of masculinity and femininity to present readers with narratives that serve as powerful agents of socialization.

We conducted directed content analyses of over 180 mass-market romance novels published by Harlequin and Silhouette over an approximate 30-year period to ascertain common themes regarding gender polarization and gender schematicity in the maintenance of family and work.

Our review of this literature illuminates the assumption of “naturalized” gender roles for men and women in the construction and maintenance of marriage and the family, calling attention to the ways in which we remain constrained to polarized gender roles in the depiction of romantic encounters.

This study is limited to romance novels published prior to 2006, although we see replications of gender schematic narrative in current romance narratives featuring paranormal encounters (Twilight) and erotica (Fifty Shades of Grey).

We conceptualized the novel phenomenon of COVID-induced virtual teams and its implications and provided researchers with the required information on how to conduct a phenomenon-based study for conceptualizing novel phenomena in relevant ways.

This article stems from phenomenon-based and, thus, theory-building and grounded qualitative research in the German industrial sector. We conducted 47 problem-centered interviews in two phases (February–July 2021 and February–July 2022) to understand how team members and team leaders experienced COVID-induced virtual teamwork and its subsequent developments.

Empirically, we found COVID-induced virtual teams to be characterized by a high relevance of shaping positive team dynamics via steering internal moderators; crisis is a novel external moderator and transformation becomes the key output factor to be leveraged. Work-from-home leads to specific configuration needs and interrelations between work-from-home and on-site introduce additional dynamics. Methodologically, the phenomenon-based approach is found to be highly suitable for studying the effects of such novel phenomena.

This article is explorative. Thus, we advocate further research on related novel phenomena, such as post-COVID-hybrid and work-from-home teams. A model of how to encourage positive dynamics in post-COVID-hybrid teams is developed and lays the groundwork for further studies on post-COVID teamwork. Concerning methodology, researchers are provided with information on how to conduct phenomenon-based research on novel phenomena, such as the COVID-induced virtual teams that we studied.

Companies receive advice on how to encourage positive dynamics in post-COVID teamwork, e.g. on identifying best practices and resilient individuals.

In a country such as Germany that faces labor shortages, our insights might facilitate better labor-market integration for those with care-work obligations and international workers.

We offer a first conceptualization of a relevant novel phenomenon, namely COVID-induced virtual teams. We exemplify the phenomenon-based approach as a suitable methodology that serves to build relevant theory using active categorization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of social networks and intermediares in recruitment and as instruments to control the workforce in lower end urban labour markets in developing countries. The existing literature favours explanations where networks and middlemen are vehicles to disburse information about vacant jobs or screening mechanisms that improve worker‐job matches. Intermediaries may also enable employers to evade labour regulations. This paper highlights instead their roles as incentive providers or mechanisms that alleviate behavioural risks in work relations. A novel aspect of this approach is that behavioural risks on both sides of the work relation are considered.

After reviewing the literature, a simple agency model is introduced to suggest new ways to identify whether networks and middlemen alleviate incentive problems in labour relations.

Studies of disparities in labour market access and outcomes are usually anchored in ideas of discrimination. A key insight is that the access to and performance of urban labour markets depend critically on the specific “services” networks and intermediaries extend to workers and employers. This adds an important complication to the evaluation of opportunities for income diversification through rural‐urban migration. Under some circumstances, both “institutions” may give rise to strong and persistent exclusion that is likely to vary systematically across sectors of the urban economy. In other circumstances, access restrictions can be remedied through simple policy interventions.

This paper introduces a new and important dimension to the study of urban labour markets as level playing fields.

Small business owners require objective solutions to deal with threats of labour unionisation. This study aims to centre on a novel exploration for improving the leadership acumen of small business owners to address labour unionisation. Specifically, small business owners need a theoretical framework that uses best practices from human resource management (HRM) and industrial relations to provide solutions.

The design, methodology and approach reflect post-modernist epistemological and ontological perspectives for conducting systematic literature reviews. A systematic literature review revealed the relationship between small business owners’ leadership, positive industrial relations and HRM policies and procedures. To identify relevant studies in the review, the utilisation of several databases (EBSCO Database, including PsycINFO and Psych studies; Web of Science) and a mix of ranked journals from entrepreneurship, human resources, leadership and organisational behaviour.

The findings and results in this paper reflect the purpose, methodology and literature analysis culminating in 162,132,000 peer-reviewed studies. A total of 142 peer-reviewed studies met criterion for review. For example, the purpose of this review focused on labour unionisation mitigation for small businesses and HRM solutions. In doing so, the methodology allowed for identification of a novel research topic (i.e. how small business owners mitigate labour unionisation) worthy of further investigation. The sparse findings on labour unionisation mitigation represent small business owners' reticence in creating HRM policies and procedures.

This study contributes research implications for theory and practice by offering small business owners a theoretical framework to address labour unionisation. The framework, centring on HRM solutions, is grounded in social exchange theory to address the novel topic of labour unionisation mitigation in small businesses. This study results suggest that HRM solutions for small business owners provide competitive advantages for employee job satisfaction through a holistic industrial relations approach. In future research, examining other issues discussed in this study can influence the understanding of the relationship between small business owners and industrial relations to increase employee job satisfaction.

This paper aims to identify both the traditional and novel forms of marketing behind New Zealand Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern’s landslide victory in the 2020 New Zealand General Election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research analysed both qualitative and quantitative data, including over 70 primary sources, the perspectives of practitioners, polling and data from surveys with over 450,000 respondents. The qualitative data was analysed interpretively against established theoretical concepts, whereas the quantitative data was analysed through descriptive statistics.

This research found that COVID-19 drastically changed what the public prioritised, allowing Ardern and Labour to position themselves as guardians of government stability, while camouflaging previous delivery failures. Labour also used a more emergent market-oriented and “polite” populist political marketing strategy.

While the survey data used is not a perfect sample of the population, it is the largest public opinion survey in New Zealand and, given its convergence with other sources, provides valuable insights into political marketing during a crisis more broadly.

This research reinforces marketing’s most important aspect; the market should drive action. How decision makers respond to the market should depend on the environment. Thus, up-to-date market research becomes even more important during a crisis, as the environment changes rapidly. This leaves prior assumptions obsolete and implies strategy needs to be adaptive. Additionally, greater public attention provides governing leaders with the opportunity to present a more well-rounded leadership image.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to look at marketing while in government and election campaigning in the context of successful management of a global pandemic.

The introduction of robots as value-adding “workers” on the shop floor triggers complex changes to manufacturing work. Such changes involve highly entangled relationships between technology, organisation and people. Understanding such entanglements requires a holistic assessment of contemporary robotised manufacturing work, to anticipate the dynamically emerging opportunities and risks of robotised work.

A systematic literature review of 87 papers was conducted to capture relevant themes of change in robotised manufacturing work. The literature was analysed using a thematic analysis approach, with Checkland’s soft systems thinking as an analytical framework.

Based on the literature analysis, the authors present a systemic conceptualisation of robotised manufacturing work. Specifically, the conceptualisation highlights four entangled themes of change: work, organisation of labour, workers’ (experiences) and the firm’s environment. Moreover, the authors discuss the complex patterns of interactions between these objects as relationships that defy straightforward cause–effect models.

The findings draw attention to complex interactions between robotisation and manufacturing work. It can, therefore, inform strategic decisions and support projects for robotisation from a holistic perspective.

The authors present a novel approach to studying and designing robotised manufacturing work as a conceptual system. In particular, the paper shifts the focus towards crucial properties of the system, which are subject to complex changes alongside the introduction of robot technology in manufacturing. Soft systems thinking enables new research avenues to explain complex phenomena at the intersection of robotisation and manufacturing work.

Rabbit chase (RC) is used as one of the most effective techniques in manufacturing systems, as such systems have high level of adaptability and increased productivity in addition to providing uniform workload balancing and skill improving environment. In assembly systems, RC inspires the development of walking worker assembly line (WWAL). On the other hand, U-type assembly lines (UALs) may provide higher worker utilization, lower space requirement and more convenient internal logistics when compared to straight assembly lines. In this context, this study aims to improve assembly line performance by generating RC cycles on WWAL with respect to task assignment characteristics of UAL within reasonable walking distance and space requirement. Therefore, a novel line configuration, namely, segmented rabbit chase-oriented U-type assembly line (SRCUAL), emerges.

The mathematical programming approach treats SRCUAL balancing problem in a hierarchical manner to decrease computational burden. Firstly, segments are generated via the first linear programming model in the solution approach for balancing SRCUALs to minimize total number of workers. Then, stations are determined within each segment for forward and backward sections separately using two different pre-emptive goal programming models. Moreover, three heuristics are developed to provide solution quality with computational efficiency.

The proposed mathematical programming approach is applied to the light-emitting diode (LED) luminaire assembly section of a manufacturing company. The adaptation of SRCUAL decreased the number of workers by 15.4% and the space requirement by 17.7% for LED luminaire assembly system when compared to UAL. Moreover, satisfactory results for the proposed heuristics were obtained in terms of deviation from lower bound, especially for SRCUAL heuristics I and II. Moreover, the results indicate that the integration of RC not only decreased the number of workers in 40.28% (29 instances) of test problems in U-lines, but also yielded less number of buffer points (48.48%) with lower workload deviation (75%) among workers in terms of coefficient of variation.

This study provides convenience for capacity management (assessing capacity and adjusting capacity by changing the number of workers) for industrial SRCUAL applications. Meanwhile, SRCUAL applications give the opportunity to increase the capacity for a product or transfer the saved capacity to the assembly of other products. As it is possible to provide one-piece flow with equal workloads via walking workers, SRCUAL has the potential for quick realization of defects and better lead time performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, forward–backward task assignments in U-type lines have not been adapted to WWALs. Moreover, as workers travel overall the line in WWALs, walking time increases drastically. Addressing this research gap and limitation, the main innovative aspect of this study can be considered as the proposal of a new line design (i.e. SRCUAL) which is sourced from the hybridization of UALs and WWAL as well as the segmentation of the line with RC cycles. The superiority of SRCUAL over WWAL and UAL was also discussed. Moreover, operating systematic for SRCUAL was devised. As for methodical aspect, this study is the first attempt to solve the balancing problem for SRCUAL design.

While digital labour platforms are being increasingly studied across the Global South, the existing literature does not conceptualise the theoretical link between such platforms and socio-economic development. This paper theorises such a link drawing on the notion of institutional voids defined, as in Khanna and Palepu (2010), as “the absence of intermediaries to efficiently connect buyers and sellers” in an economy. We frame digital labour platforms as means to fill institutional voids, seeking to create “development” in the form of earning opportunities in contexts of deprivation.

We draw on an interpretive case study of an online work training project in a deprived region of Pakistan, where members of marginalised communities were trained to become freelancers for global digital labour platforms. We use the notion of market-enabling institutions aimed at filling institutional voids as a lens to study the project's declared goals, examining the extent to which these were met in practice for the workers who participated in the training.

Our analysis reveals three types of market-enabling institutions–credibility enhancers, aggregators and distributors, and transaction facilitators–through which digital labour platforms seek to fill institutional voids. However, workers' narratives reveal that institutional voids are only partially filled by these platforms, and their perpetuation results in diverse forms of power asymmetries leveraged by clients and owners of the platforms. We also observe the formation of solidarity networks among workers, networks that are intra-familial and societal rather than characterised by formal unionisation.

The paper offers a novel perspective to theorise the link between digital labour and socio-economic development. Applying such a perspective in a Global South context, it also finds the limits of the digital platforms' institutional void-filling potential, highlighting the emergence of power asymmetries and the emerging formation of worker solidarity networks.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the consequences of globalization, in particular the increasing disparity between the wealth of nations and individuals in society. It discusses mechanisms which lead to perpetuation and reinforcement of the situation in which, despite being characterized by inequalities and fragmentation, societies remain by and large cohesive and stable.

This article engages with the so‐called “Polanyi problem” and with Polanyi's and other authors’ responses to it. In the discussion, the analytical approach is adopted by reference to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in particular his concept of soma.

Using the metaphor of soma, developed into four interrelated dimensions, illustrations of social and organizational processes, which ensure sustainability of, and cohesion within, a society based on inequality and fragmentation, are indicated. It is argued that the existence of stratified societies, and inequalities of wealth within and between them, is accompanied by phenomena which support and sustain them.

Drawing upon literary fiction can offer valuable insights into issues pertinent to contemporary academic debate.

Engagement with Huxley's work provides an alternative way of contributing to the globalization debate and, in particular, to the literature addressing the so‐called “Polanyi problem”.

The purpose of this paper is to present a hybrid simulation approach for predicting the value of labor productivity taking account of various continuous influencing factors and the interactions between different agents involved in the project.

The various continuous factors affecting labor productivity are simulated using system dynamics (SD). The heterogeneity of different agents involved in the project and their interactions is accounted using agent-based modelling (ABM). The developed ABM and SD models are finally integrated to simulate the value of labor productivity taking account of all the influencing factors.

The proposed hybrid simulation tool is implemented in a real project to evaluate its perfomance. The value of labor productivity is simulated by taking account of all the influencing factors. The most appropriate execution strategy is then selected using the developed hybrid SD-ABM approach to improve productivity. It is shown that the number of working groups and their movement patterns affect the severity of the groups’ interferences which will in turn affect the value of labor productivity.

This research helps project managers to predict and improve the value of labor productivity taking account of all the influencing factors.

It is believed that the proposed hybrid SD-ABM simulation approach offers a novel and robust tool for modeling labor productivity because the effects of various continuous influencing factors and the interactions between different agents are taken into account through the combination of SD and ABM. Many complex problems faced in construction projects involve interacting elements of a different nature, and the integration of SD with ideas from ABM offers potential to combine the strengths of the two methodologies to solve the problem.