HRM research has historically either been focused on the way HRM directly contributes to company profit and short-term organizational goal achievement (so-called Hard HRM), or on how HRM could contribute to creating long-term collaborative regimes (so-called Soft HRM) that develop the quality of working life and the long-term viability of the organization. In other words, HRM practices have traditionally departed from a managerial perspective, which leaves out other stakeholder interests than the management or owners.

The continued interest in intersectionality can be seen as a positive sign that feminist-inspired scholarship still has something significant to offer, and that its political dimension lives on. In management and organization studies, Intersectionality has been seized either as a theoretical lens or methodological approach in a number of literature strands, in both conceptual and empirical work. Yet, it would be too hasty to conclude that intersectionality is the answer to all ills, or the panacea that can replace the use of the ‘f-word’ altogether.

The word ‘emerging’ is usually associated with countries that have opened their doors to growth-oriented capitalism but are yet to catch up with the supposedly developed world. This idea of emergence, however, reinforces hierarchical oppositions that deem some cultures less advanced than others and imposes an order that is already in crisis. This special issue, instead, draws on emergence to put into question the normative distinctions that inform our ways of being in the world and to (re-)imagine alternatives.

The purpose of the contemporary university is being radically transformed by the encroachment of corporate imperatives into higher education. This has inevitable consequences for managerial interventions, ​​​funding structures, and teaching and research audits. It also impacts on the working conditions of academic staff in university institutions in terms of teaching, research, administration and public engagement.

In a process that started decades ago, a multiplicity of forces is creating a slow, but steadily rising storm against anonymity. Discourses of transparency and accountability often describe anonymity as a threat. Technologies such as the IP-address-based Internet, sensory devices, and machine learning techniques further undermine anonymous encounters. In an age of near ubiquitous surveillance, anonymity is under attack. But what is at stake in such discourses and developments?

Perpetual economic growth is an underlying assumption of the contemporary organization of capitalist society. The idea of growth is embedded not only in the corpus of economic thought but also in economic institutions. Against this backdrop, this special issue opens up for critical and creative thinking around organizational issues related to growth, economy, sustainability, and ecology.

Affective capitalism is understood in this special issue as a mode of production where systems of organising production and distribution rely on the capacities of different bodies, human and non-human, to encounter each other. These encounters and different modes of capital that emerge are surrounded by a vast array of technologies of production, capture, valorisation, commodification and transformation. Affective capitalism appeals to our desires, it needs social relationships, and organises and establishes them.

Today, work and consumption are notably blurred. Consumption matters are found to make inroads into the realm of work, while consumption gains traction in the domain of production. This special issue of ephemera gets to the heart of this phenomenon. Covering a range of themes – genetic testing, self-quantification, migration, popular media and modern workplaces – the contributions to this issue call attention to the ethico-politics of productive and consumptive aspects of contemporary life.

The theme of ‘open secrets’ offers a pathway through the ten diverse contributions to this open issue, tracing the interplay of openness and closure, visibility and invisibility, transparency and secrecy, the superficial and the profound in contemporary organizational life. The issue includes contributions on technologies of invisibility in Danish care work; struggles for professional accreditation in Italian consultancy; the political and ‘sub-political’ in the Pirate Party movement; Swedish trades unions and workplace subjectivity; and the play of fashion and distinction in management sch

Corporate governance – as a functionalist approach to the promotion of efficiency and wealth creation and an antidote to stagnation and corporate scandals – has been much in vogue for a few decades now. Influential publications on corporate governance rank among the most cited in the social sciences.