ABSTRACT This research investigates how inclusion‐focused generative AI (GAI), designed with diversity, fairness, and inclusion principles, mitigates disability bias in hiring—particularly under complex, cognitively demanding conditions. Drawing on Construal Level Theory, two experiments with HR professionals ( N = 117; 238) compared standard, inclusion‐focused, and control conditions. Inclusion‐focused GAI significantly reduced bias by emphasizing job‐relevant competencies and lowering psychological distance. The study introduces a fairness‐oriented AI design that advances accountability and inclusion in HR systems, offering implications for equitable hiring, bias auditing, and the strategic use of ethical AI in talent acquisition.

ABSTRACT Attempts to remedy sustained workforce challenges facing healthcare organizations globally have been largely ineffective, despite increased political attention. In this paper we draw on contextually based human resource theory to explain why these challenges remain intractable. We demonstrate that professional healthcare workers' employment relationships are embedded within systems as well as organizations, and that system‐level constraints limit organizational capacity to address workforce issues. Informed by UK and US examples of issue‐oriented, place‐based and system approaches to stakeholder convening we argue that progress requires both stakeholder coordination at the system level (premised on “deviant innovation”, Legge, 1978) and strategic HR innovation (“conformist innovation”, Legge, 1978) within organizations. We develop a framework identifying three potential HR roles in system‐level engagement: systems partner (actively convening stakeholders), participant (contributing to system‐level initiatives), and bystander (remaining organizationally focused). While acknowledging barriers to HR adopting a systems partner role, we advocate for enhanced HR engagement as a systems participant, combined with strengthened within‐organization “conformist innovation” as a business partner to support health workforce recruitment, retention and reform. We identify corporate HR managers and OD specialists as particularly well‐positioned to pioneer system‐level engagement, whether as participants in existing initiatives, as collaborators through intermediaries or, where feasible, as systems partners driving stakeholder coordination.

ABSTRACT As digital technologies continue to reshape the nature of work, their impact on workers' experience of the meaning of work has attracted growing scholarly interest. However, the existing body of findings remains largely fragmented and conceptually inconsistent. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review and develop a process‐oriented theoretical framework that explains how digital technologies influence the meaning of work. We show that digital technologies first trigger changes in work characteristics, such as autonomy, skill use, feedback, and the relational aspects. These changes then influence key meaning‐making processes, including skill mastery and growth, personal value alignment, impact recognition, and the integration of societal values. We also highlight the active role of workers in navigating these changes through different coping strategies. Importantly, we identify a set of contextual factors, spanning societal, organizational, technological, and individual domains, that condition these dynamics. This integrative approach advances theoretical understanding of the meaning of work in the digital era and offers practical insights for human resource management by underscoring the importance of supporting worker adaptation and sustaining the meaning of work amid technological change.

ABSTRACT For many organizations, developing workforce capabilities is central as it involves refining critical human resource processes such as upskilling or the acquisition of new profiles. These processes are becoming increasingly complex to manage as organizations collaborate within larger work ecosystems. Surprisingly, little research has addressed how multiple organizations collaborate to support the development of workforce capabilities, potentially leading to ecosystem‐level learning of HR patterns. Using a multi‐respondent qualitative research design, we examine how various stakeholders in a workforce ecosystem—including freelance workers, organizations, and public entities—elaborate HR patterns for cross‐boundary workers. HR pattern development by multiple actors is achieved through coordination among them, supported by top‐ and middle‐level managers from within organizations. HR ecosystem learning is energized by centrifugal and centripetal forces depending on pivotal actors, either distancing themselves from or keeping close to usual organizational patterns, which requires an intricate balance. We highlight the specific theoretical and practical implications for HR ecosystem learning.

ABSTRACT Technological advancements and, more recently, the COVID‐19 pandemic have accelerated the transition toward hybrid workplaces. Even though the design of appropriate HRM practices is recognized as an important factor in ensuring an effective transition toward hybrid work environments, existing research has offered limited insights into how companies might strategically integrate hybrid work in a coherent HRM system of HRM to attain a competitive advantage. Indeed, extant empirical studies mainly focus on the individual level of analysis, while the discussion on hybrid work practices at the organizational level remains conceptual. This paper aims to advance this debate by relying on the theoretical perspective of strategic human resource management (SHRM). Most extant models in the field of SHRM either focus on the vertical linkages of HRM practices with corporate strategy or on the horizontal alignment of the HRM system, missing the opportunity to adopt a comprehensive approach to SHRM to explain the current transition to hybrid workplaces. In addressing these gaps, the study uses a longitudinal case study of an Italian company over 4 years of implementation of a hybrid work environment and explores HR's interventions through the lenses of the Harvard model and the ability‐motivation‐opportunity (AMO) framework. Specifically, the study examines how vertical and horizontal alignment of strategic hybrid work HR practices are achieved and influence employee, organizational, and societal outcomes, providing valuable insights for companies approaching this new way of working and for HR managers and professionals.

ABSTRACT Employee voice has long attracted interest from academics, policymakers, and practitioners in light of its myriad benefits. To date, employee voice researchers have identified a wide array of voice practices that are organized and understood through a core set of dimensions. However, there are growing calls for more interdisciplinary research to ensure the field's repertoire of practices is effective in terms of addressing employees' and firms' needs while also being attuned to the contemporary nature of work, which includes increasing concerns about inclusion and employee polarization. In this conceptual paper, we seek to expand the field's understanding of existing and potential voice practices by considering whether and how core dimensions and families of practices from democratic innovations scholarship have been applied in employee voice research. We identify four understudied dimensions and three understudied families of practices, illustrate how they could be applied in the context of employee voice, and articulate contributions to research and practice.

ABSTRACT Against the dominant view in HRM concerning the value‐creating use of large language models (LLMs) in relation to Human Capital, our provocation asks whether LLMs will enhance or compromise Human Capital at work in the long‐run. We feel compelled to ask this question because Human Capital represents employees' accumulated learning experiences, which provide the knowledge and skills needed to perform effectively at work. However, knowledge is a multifaceted rather than monolithic phenomenon, requiring a more differentiated treatment when considering the use of LLMs at work, its effects on different types of knowledge and, eventually, the formation of Human Capital. We mobilise digitally mediated learning—where synthetic inputs replace first‐hand experience—to theorise mechanisms for explaining how LLMs (as one Gen‐AI application producing synthetic content) shape different types of knowledge, and the formation of Human Capital. We identify two mechanisms, namely, (i) multiple degrees of abstraction from the concrete real‐world to the digital world and (ii) the conflation of ‘word form’ and ‘meaning’ in outputs of LLMs. We consider the theoretical and practical ramifications of our provocation for the development of Human Capital in the age of LLMs.

ABSTRACT Recent research has underlined the growing importance of sustainability in HRM policy and practice, taking into account long‐term multi‐stakeholder goals. However, few studies have specified the drivers and outcomes of sustainable HRM practices, nor the contradictions that arise when managers attempt to satisfy the demands of both internal and external stakeholders. Drawing on in‐depth case studies of the UK public sector, we distinguish between the institutional sustainability logics of (i) viability (concerned with necessary resources and capacities to deliver) and (ii) legitimacy (concerned with satisfying social and moral demands for fair and consistent HR practices) and explore how these two logics interact through positive and negative feedback loops. Our findings show that across an increasingly complex HRM eco‐system, the tensions between viability and legitimacy are increasingly addressed through a focus on building individual human capital and personal wellbeing rather than protecting job security and the collective ‘common good’.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how healthcare professionals navigate relational dynamics within a frontline healthcare team in a time of crisis and with limited HRM support. Drawing on scholarship about work teams, HRM and bricolage, the paper analyzes research data from interviews with kinesiologists at an Accidents & Emergency (A&E) hospital in Chile to advance understanding of teamwork dynamics in times of crisis. The paper theorizes teamwork bricolage as a worker framework that enables action and agency in relation to the management and coordination of work in the absence of formalized HRM systems, enriching the HRM literature by adding further insight into a new way of teamwork that re‐thinks integration, adaptability and multifunctionality to build trust and a sense of belonging. It also shows how workers claim spaces of performance outside of what is regulated by HRM systems to gain professional status and legitimacy. Finally, the paper also brings evidence of the working practices of healthcare professionals in a developing country, adding to discussions that remain largely under‐studied and under‐theorized in HRM scholarship. The paper outlines directions for a research agenda to advance knowledge about work teams and HRM.

ABSTRACT Although collective turnover has garnered growing scholarly attention within strategic human resource management (SHRM), prior research has predominantly focused on its organizational consequences while overlooking its compositional nuances (i.e., the distinction between voluntary and involuntary turnover) and dynamic interdependencies, an oversight with far‐reaching implications for workforce strategy. Drawing on a decade of monthly employee turnover data from a large distribution center in Hong Kong, we find a positive relationship in voluntary turnover rates across consecutive months, providing novel empirical evidence for turnover contagion in labor‐intensive logistics settings. Additionally, high involuntary turnover exerts a lagged negative effect on subsequent voluntary turnover, while elevated voluntary turnover predicts higher involuntary turnover in later months, uncovering bidirectional dynamics previously underexplored in SHRM literature. Building on these findings, we develop a stylized SHRM‐focused behavioral model that illustrates how turnover dynamics shape contextually tailored optimal dismissal policies and firm profitability, offering actionable theoretical contributions and managerial implications for workforce stability.