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While the career literature does acknowledge that personal strengths may function as protective factors that increase the likelihood of positive career outcomes, the topic of strengths has predominantly been studied in the context of career guidance for adolescents and young adults. However, the evolution of strengths persists throughout the entire career and individuals’ awareness and inclination to leverage their strengths change when aging. This paper aims to examine strengths over the (career) lifespan.

For this purpose, a conceptual analysis was made of the interplay between age and strengths application within the work environment, based on a narrative review of both empirical and conceptual literature on strengths and lifespan (career) development.

Based on lifespan development theory and results from studies that investigate the relationship between age and strengths, it can be expected that the prominence, awareness and use of strengths, as well as the active engagement in strengths development increase with age. Also, based on the corresponsive principle it is proposed that strengths prominence is reciprocally related to the awareness, use and development of strengths. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Whereas positive psychology has contributed to research on career development by its focus on healthy functioning, human potential and well-being the implications from theorizing and research on strengths for the career-lifespan are still relatively unclear. This paper develops testable propositions regarding the relationship between age and strengths and discusses implications for the types of organizational support for strengths that workers of different ages might need.

The current inquiry advances the public relations field and practice in several ways. First, this research addresses a clear gap in research on subjective well-being, specifically among PR professionals across career stages and generations. Second, the findings reveal important generational similarities and differences in how PR practitioners talk about well-being. This provides an empirical basis for developing tailored, multi-generational approaches to supporting well-being in PR workplaces. Lastly, this research provides practical implications for PR professionals to understand generational perspectives and to implement flexible policies to improve well-being.

The current study explored subjective well-being (SWB) across generations of public relations professionals. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 PR practitioners at various career levels – entry, mid-level and senior.

Analysis revealed several similarities but a key disparity among cohorts. Senior-level professionals specifically reported struggling with work–life balance and the perceived ability to be autonomous, while entry-level professionals expressed commitment to setting boundaries on their time. These findings highlight a need for the PR industry to establish flexible workplace standards that enable employees at different career stages to collaborate and support one another’s well-being.

Our findings will appeal to your readers who seek to cultivate employee subjective well-being and understand generational issues via qualitative methods. By conducting a qualitative study in an understudied area, PR industry leaders and managers can support employee well-being across generations and career stages.

Our study is the first to examine generational dispositions as it relates to SWB across the public relations industry.

Integrating person-job fit theory with the stressor-emotion model of counterproductive work behavior (CWB), the current study aims to examine which behavioral pattern (fight: CWB vs flight: withdrawal) employees are more likely to adopt when they experience perceived overqualification (POQ). We further investigate anger as the underlying emotional mechanism for these relations because anger can be expressed and thus reflected in CWB, or constrained and thus reflected in withdrawal behavior. Furthermore, different stressor-attenuating strategies including relaxation during work breaks and mastery experiences at work are examined as mitigating factors of these relations.

Time-lagged data were collected from 176 full-time employees in China using a field survey research design.

We found that employees who experience POQ are more likely to engage in withdrawal than in CWB. Anger mediated the relations of POQ with both CWB and withdrawal. Relaxation moderated the relation between POQ and anger, as well as the indirect relations of POQ with CWB and withdrawal through anger.

This study enhances understanding of employees’ affective and behavioral reactions to POQ. However, the survey design was not longitudinal and causality cannot be established.

POQ is associated with undesirable employee behaviors and should therefore be avoided by organizations. If POQ is unavoidable, organizations can use job design and offer training to foster relaxation in between tasks among employees.

In the framework of person-job fit theory, our study provides insight about employees’ “fight” or “flight” responses to POQ, and further illustrates the mechanism and the attenuating factors in this processes.

Talent management is conducted to maximize an organization's overall performance and efficiency which helps to serve as a competitive advantage. Human resource management is a concept which includes human-related activities, but talent management is a strategy which helps to get new talent, develop their skill sets and provide better employee engagement and experience to retain the top potential employees in an organization. Improvement in recruiting and retention of a workforce results from a well-executed talent acquisition approach. In the 21st century, employee retention has become a primary concern for the organizations specially with work from home and hybrid models.

The workforce for tomorrow is going to be very different from what it has been. Technology is transforming the way people work within organizations. The workplace is rapidly evolving in terms of people and processes and is going through a lot of technological changes. The terminologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and block chain technologies are slowly becoming part of the workplace and everyday activities of the organization.

The challenges are many and especially post-pandemic organizations are going through some major changes such as a mindset shift of employees to take up more remote working opportunities, building virtual teams, increase in the gig economy workers (contractual workers) and a diverse workforce which makes it even more challenging for the organization to manage and retain talent.

The chapter underscores the urgency of creating an inclusive global society by comprehensively accommodating the intricate interplay among LGBTQ+ rights, territorial identity, and political dynamics. By recognizing the inherent connection between social acceptance and territorial profile, societies can build resilience by reducing inequality and creating environments where every individual’s identity is respected. Comparative analysis reveals a sharp contrast between regions embracing diversity and those imposing discriminatory policies. While Pride Parades symbolize the celebration of identity and the integration of LGBTQ+ narratives into a place’s essence, “LGBT-free zones” and restrictive legislations in certain countries starkly oppose this inclusive trajectory. The juxtaposition of these strategies highlights the fragile nature of equal rights and underscores the imperative of a global commitment to fostering an accepting society, emphasizing the significance of raising awareness and promoting understanding to foster a more inclusive environment.

The purpose of the study was to assess how the well-being and loneliness of public relations and communication professionals are impacted by the post-pandemic characteristics of the work environment: flexible work schemes, non-territorial office arrangements and video communication technologies. It was hypothesised that the post-pandemic workplace landscape poses several new challenges to the practice of PR – an industry which invariably relies on working with other people and demands a good level of social resilience. Loneliness and well-being both depend on the experience of having good and efficient social relationships, but the pandemic has directly and indirectly led to their deterioration.

The project employed a correlational design and used an online survey system to collect responses from Gen Z professionals employed in the public relations and communications industry in the UK and the US via the Prolific platform. Demographical and workplace-related characteristics were assessed to investigate links with loneliness (measured using a three-item scale adopted from Russell et al., 1980 in Hughes, 2004) and well-being (using a short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale scale). Causal relationships between data were tested using regression analysis for continuous variables and analysis of covariance for categorical factors. Bootstrapping was used to test mediated relationships that explain loneliness, job satisfaction and the well-being of Gen Z PR professionals.

Several types of flexible working schemes, defined as the ability to work from home on any number of weeks, showed an impact on loneliness and job satisfaction but not on well-being. However, all remaining aspects of the post-pandemic office did manifest as important predictors. In the sample, 30% of Gen Z PR professionals showed signs of mild to clinical levels of depression, and the best protection from this state was the presence of a significant other. Lower levels of loneliness were related to non-territorial office arrangements and job satisfaction. The use of hot desks and open-plan arrangements led to a significantly lower level of job satisfaction than a traditional, cellular office. Both excessive online meetings and face-to-face only interactions led to marginally lower levels of loneliness and job satisfaction.

The present research is limited in several aspects. Firstly, while the project evaluated loneliness, job satisfaction and mental well-being (with each of these elements including a component of the requirement for building effective relationships), the quality of relationships built by PR professionals was not measured. Secondly, the project focused only on post-pandemic aspects of the workplace and did not cover other important components of job satisfaction. Lastly, the measure of online meetings was declarative rather than behavioural, and greater control of the number of online meetings held would be required to show more reliable links between variables.

This study calls for proposing recommendations for employers to develop organisational-level measures and programmes to counteract loneliness. While traditionally intimate relationships of employees were not a direct focus of HR programmes, employers should develop elements of organisational culture that would support employees in building effective intimate relationships. Separately from this, despite immediate financial benefits, employers should avoid using open-space and hot desk policies, as they contribute negatively to job satisfaction (and indirectly to well-being). The sample of UK and US professionals was chosen for analysis because in these countries employers have more capacity to introduce changes to tangible characteristics of the workplace and work culture, which may positively impact the well-being of their employees.

It is expected that both employers and employees will revisit their approach to post-pandemic financial and logistic challenges related to the workplace. A lower level of job satisfaction and well-being is linked to the lack of assigned office space, but the ability to work exclusively from home leads to loneliness. Employees – when offered this possibility – should work in offices they are provided. Employers must appreciate the negative link between open and hot-desking policies and job satisfaction and well-being of their employees.

This study is the first to examine the post-pandemic workplace and personal characteristics of public relations and communications professionals in the UK and US and show how they impact job satisfaction and well-being. The study shows that 30% of employed in the PR industry are at risk of depression or anxiety. The connecting factor between personal and work-related characteristics that explains this problem is loneliness.

The construction industry has more propensity to negatively affect employees’ physical–mental well-being due to the inherently intense and demanding nature of the work involved. Digitalization can streamline the construction processes, and reduce stress, overtime and overall job-related pressure generated due to the nature of employment, contributing to the well-being of employees. Hence, the authors examined how digitalization, technostress and individual resilience could contribute to construction professionals’ physical–mental well-being using the transaction model of stress, self-determination theory and job-demand resources theory.

Data were collected from 86 young professionals using a structured survey. The professionals were working in Indian construction organizations where digitalization is implemented extensively. The survey consists of 21 items to measure four latent variables namely digitalization, technostress, physical–mental well-being and individual resilience. The study employs a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach to examine the theoretical model empirically.

The results revealed that digitalization was positively associated with physical–mental well-being and negatively associated with technostress. Further, individual resilience was a moderating variable in the relationship between digitalization and technostress. Finally, technostress partially mediated the relationship between digitalization and physical–mental well-being.

Digitalization has emerged as a valuable tool to tackle these challenges and improve the overall well-being of construction personnel. In the present study, digitalization is found to augment the physical–mental well-being of young construction professionals. Also, digitalization helps to significantly reduce technostress, thereby improving the physical–mental well-being of young professionals.

This paper contributes to the broad aim of this special issue, reflecting on the relevance of the writing of Alan Fox to the contemporary industrial relations field. It offers an original reflection from a feminist perspective on Fox’s classic insights around frames of reference.

We concentrate on Beyond Contract, Work, Power and Trust Relations (1974a) and Man Mismanagement (1974b, 1985) as the texts setting out Fox’s influential frames of reference theory, before moving on to subsequent literature in the field making use of Fox’s frames. In undertaking this review from a feminist perspective, we specifically look at the extent to which work considers standpoint, gender relations and political engagement. We draw further on wider feminist scholarship within industrial relations, critical race theory and intersectionality perspectives.

Despite the concept of inequality forming the core of Fox’s analyses, there is a lack of attention to gender or to other diversity strands in his work and, notwithstanding the weight of feminist scholarship within the industrial relations field since, this neglect has been carried forward into subsequent use of Fox’s work. We argue there is space for the frames to be interpreted and used in ways that leave space for attention to feminist concerns and call on academics to approach their use of Fox from a more critically-informed perspective.

The paper’s argument has implications for the field of industrial relations in terms of conceptual understanding and methodological approaches. With space, it would have been useful to apply our revised understanding of Fox’s key concepts to empirical cases.

Greater clarity in what constitutes “unitary” and “pluralist” perspectives and categories will help employment relations actors.

We present a novel feminist re-framing of Fox’s work, providing new understandings of the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of the frames of reference within contemporary industrial relations research and practice. We advocate for methodological and scholarly approaches which advance theoretical and empirical justice in the field, moving beyond gender to draw on critical race theory and intersectionality frameworks.

Organisational responses to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals depend on the competency and mindset of business leaders to lead responsibly. This study is informed and underpinned by the Principles of Responsible Management Education. This study aims to examine how embedding the “sustainability mindset principles” within a university programme can contribute to responsible management education and, by extension, leadership development.

An illustrative case study using 84 students was applied, including undergraduate, postgraduate and executive Master of Business Administration students. An exploratory, qualitative design was followed, primarily adopting focus groups.

Evidenced learning gains in connecting sustainability knowledge with personal beliefs and behaviours, provide a compelling basis for educational and business practitioners to focus on the sustainability mindset principles (SMPs). Mapping of mindset against leading global competency frameworks provides important theoretical insight. Learning is illustrated through multiple dimensions (i.e. cognitive, behavioural and affective) to inform leadership development approaches.

The mapping of sustainability competency frameworks against the SMP, alongside qualitative research insights, provides a compelling basis for further research into the learning gains from embedding the mindset principles. The situated nature of the study and the lack of longitudinal measurement of what students take forward into their lives and workplaces is a limiting factor to be considered.

This study evidences the value of “whole-person” learning for responsible management, which can helpfully inform the design of both educational and workplace leadership development programmes.

This study is original in the pedagogic examination of the learning dimensions of the SMPs in a Business and Management programme. It also offers new insights in terms of the implications for leadership development.

This study evaluated the bundled impact of high performance work practices (HPWPs) on Generation Y (Gen Y) employee engagement (EE) while considering empowering leadership (EL) as a mediator.

The data for the study are received from 404 Gen Y frontline service employees from three to five star Indian hotels and examined using structural equation modeling.

Gen Y employees' perception of HPWPs directly explains their engagement, and EL partially mediates the link between HPWPs and Gen Y EE.

This study suggests managers to gain from implementing HPWPs and their impact on Gen Y engagement to boost their organizational performance.

This study suggests managers to gain from implementing HPWPs and their impact on Gen Y EE to boost their employee and hotel's performance.

The present research is one of the few attempts to study how HPWPs can engage the Gen Y cohort in the workplace, especially in developing countries (i.e. India).