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Purpose: Integrating signaling theory and networking literature, this article theorizes how science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) women may overcome barriers resulting from low-competence gender stereotypes to realize career achievements. Design/methodology/approach: The article develops a conceptual model delineating the process through which STEM women achieve objective career success by strategic networking according to how they evaluate their competence signal strength. Findings: When STEM women evaluate their competence signal strength to be weak (strong), they engage in more network-deepening (network-broadening) actions. This signal-based strategic networking tends to occur when STEM women experience an internal locus of control at work. Network-deepening strategies enhance STEM women’s performance when their networking contacts’ knowledge is deep or broad. Network-broadening strategies enhance STEM women’s performance when their networking contacts have an egalitarian gender-role attitude. Contexts with organizational merit-based reward practices further help translate STEM women’s high performance, resulting from signal-based strategic networking into objective career success. Originality/value: Our conceptual framing elaborates how signal-based strategic networking helps STEM women overcome structural barriers to achieve career success. Our theorizing provides a holistic three-stage view of signaling by unpacking how signalers, signal attributes, receivers and environmental factors jointly shape the occurrence and effectiveness of signaling actions.

Drawing on an exemplary case of strategic HRM in a nonprofit social care provider responding to a recruitment and retention crisis, this article offers evidence for a multi‐actor, recursive model of HRM implementation. We examine how multi‐actor engagement with strategic HRM reinforces or modifies intended HRM, and how this engagement is shaped by external and internal contextual pressures in nonprofit social care organizations. Through an in‐depth qualitative study, we shed light on the internal process dynamics that not only engender a shared understanding of intended HRM strategy and practice among key organizational actors ( convergence ) but also allow for local deviation ( divergence ) that forges a more adequate response to workforce challenges. Our study contributes to theory on the social dynamics of HRM implementation within wider institutional contexts while highlighting the limits of a business‐oriented HRM system for delivering a sustainable workforce within social care.

Industry 4 (I4) was a revolutionary new stage for technological progress in manufacturing which promised a new level of interconnectedness between a diverse range of technologies. Sensors, as a point technology, play an important role in these developments, facilitating human–machine interaction and enabling data collection for system-level technologies. Concerns for human labour working in I4 environments (e.g., health and safety, data generation and extraction) are acknowledged by Industry 5 (I5), an update of I4 which promises greater attention to human–machine relations through a values-driven approach to collaboration and co-design. This article explores how engineering experts integrate values promoted by policy-makers into both their thinking about the human in their work and in their writing. This paper demonstrates a novel interdisciplinary approach in which an awareness of different disciplinary epistemic values associated with humans and work guides a systematic literature review and interpretive coding of practice-focussed engineering papers. Findings demonstrate evidence of an I5 human-centric approach: a high value for employees as “end-users” of innovative systems in manufacturing; and an increase in output addressing human activity in modelling and the technologies available to address this concern. However, epistemic publishing practices show that efforts to increase the effectiveness of manufacturing systems often neglect worker voice.

This article analyses the well-being of migrants in the global South for whom employment precarity has become normalized, and working and living conditions are associated with poor health, isolation, limited voice and a general lack of protection. Well-being in such contexts may be considered as a multifaceted phenomenon which manifests itself across work and other life domains to include collective sources of well-being. We also recognize the politics of working life in how precarious workers construct well-being, presenting them as engaged in a struggle for meaning in the absence of objectively meaningful work. First, we explore the objective constraints on well-being at multiple sites (personal, relational, organizational, communal) and, second, we draw from a sociological perspective of meaningful work to explore worker agency in deriving subjective autonomy, recognition and dignity. Qualitative data from 41 Bangladeshi migrants in Mauritian construction, food and textile manufacturing firms showed that despite considerable challenges to personal well-being, workers engaged in informal and agentic strategies which shaped their efficacy, voice and relationships to create meaningful work. The findings reveal mechanisms underlying the construction of meaning in precarious work, showing the implications for gendered and culturally-derived agency, and broadening theory on holistic and contextualized perspectives of well-being.

Thoroughly revised and updated to include contemporary terms that have gained importance such as furlough, unconscious bias, platform work, and Great Resignation, this second edition of the Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management is an authoritative and comprehensive reference resource comprising almost 400 entries on core HR areas and concepts.

Thoroughly revised and updated to include contemporary terms that have gained importance such as furlough, unconscious bias, platform work, and Great Resignation, this second edition of the Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management is an authoritative and comprehensive reference resource comprising almost 400 entries on core HR areas and concepts.

The transition from higher education to employment is uncertain for most graduates. Yet, some navigate this process more effectively than others. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, graduate vacancies and work experience opportunities declined suddenly, with employers revising recruitment targets or reneging on job offers (Hooley, 2020a, b). All 2020 graduates will have experienced these events as a career shock (Akkermans et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the crisis is likely to exacerbate the impact of already known sources of early career disadvantage, such as social background, due ...

Status incongruence resulting from a supervisor who is younger than their subordinate potentially leads to age stereotyping of employees. This article investigates the relationship between age difference and supervisory ratings of five competence-based measures of subordinate employability (Occupational Expertise, Anticipation/Optimisation, Personal Flexibility, Corporate Sense, and Balance). In addition, we consider the buffering role of a supportive learning context which allows older workers access to learning resources. Learning context is represented by duration of the supervisory relationship, perceived organizational learning climate and participation in, and application of, training and development. Using 295 dyads of employees and their direct supervisors in a Dutch building company, findings show that age dissimilarity reflecting status incongruence was related to lower supervisory ratings of Occupational Expertise (job-related competence) and Corporate Sense (social/organizational competence) regardless of learning context. Longer duration relationships exacerbated, rather than buffered, the age difference effect on some types of supervisory ratings. The implications of these findings for age stereotyping with regard to employability are considered.

This article examines the role of student job search strategies that differ in goal-directedness (focused, exploratory, and haphazard) in achieving successful university-to-work transitions (i.e., employment in jobs with high skill use/development and qualification–job match). The relationship between job search and employment outcomes is considered in two labor market contexts—high or low ambiguity—which are represented by the comparison between arts, humanities, and social sciences (AHSS) and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates, respectively. Using two-wave survey data, we find that job search strategies during university do not explain, yet differentially impact, successful outcomes one year after graduation. Fully exploring opportunities was particularly beneficial for STEM graduates (low ambiguity context) and more focused job search was beneficial for AHSS graduates (high ambiguity context). Paradoxically, findings both question and reinforce the efficacy of career agency for overcoming barriers to labor market entry, depending on the job search context. The study contributes to the agency and context debates relevant for school-to-work transitions.