CfP for Special Issue GHRM: Achieving Sustainable Development Goals through a Common-Good HRM: Context, approach and practice

This Special Issue invites empirical and conceptual papers that examine and theorize the relationship between the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN,
2015) and Human Resource Management (HRM). We welcome perspectives from HRM and
cognate fields such as employment relations and organizational psychology in dealing with
issues around people management, work and employment. There is growing interest in
management literature in exploring how HRM can reframe policies and practices in a more
sustainable way and thus contribute to achieving the UN’s SDG (c.f. Ghauri and Cooke, 2022),
as they contend with the consequences of past organizational actions, most notably global
heating. However, there is considerable variation in how organizations operating in different
parts of the world are confronting these challenges and how HRM can contribute to achieving
SDGs, which remains relatively under-investigated. The special issue seeks to bring together
new work in this area.

[…for more please view the complete CfP here…]

This Special Issue of the GHRM aims to spotlight the growing influence of the SDGs on HRM,
leadership and employment relations topics especially with regard to the challenge of how to
implement change for sustainable development in organisations. We welcome papers that will
challenge current mainstream business and HRM models and expect that new research will
cover and go beyond issues of the SDG-HRM relationship relating to congruence and
diversion, paradox and tensions and the strategic implications for HRM role, leadership and
workplace policies and practices (employment relations). For example, by asking demanding
questions not just about the emerging “Sustainable HRM” debate and the three main (CSR,
Green, Triple-Bottom-line) approaches developed, but which also more critically reflect on the
underlying concepts of Sustainability and Common-Good and the resulting broader role of
HRM in facilitating societal change as suggested, for example, in the new “Common-Good
HRM” model. Finally, we hope to enrich our knowledge of the influence of the SDGs as a
benchmark more generally, by discussing the implications for HRM concerning, for example,
HR role and purpose, strategic decision making, stakeholder engagement, talent
management, workplace participation, employee engagement, and workforce health and wellbeing. The journal’s tradition of theoretical pragmatism allows more space for novel theorizing than is typically associated with endeavours of this nature, and accordingly, we would welcome work that introduces, applies and extends new theoretical advances from other areas of the social sciences, and, indeed, across the broad domain of business and management studies.

Contributions could focus on one or more of the following questions – but are not limited to
these:

  • What are the strategic implications of the SDGs for HRM?
  • How do the SDGs enable or hinder the ability of HRM to address grand challenges?
  • To what extent can HRM policies and practices be redesigned to reduce social inequalities?
  • How do the SDGs as a benchmark change the role and purpose of HRM?
  • How do HR managers deal with the paradoxical tensions of sustainable change?
  • How do employees react to sustainability agendas at the workplace?
  • What are the implications for specific HR functions such as employee training, learning and
    knowledge transfer or performance assessment?
  • How can the SDGs be balanced with organizational performance goals?
  • What is the role of HRM leadership in the implementation of sustainability agendas?
  • What role does support from HR managers play in the acceptance of organisational transition and contribution to the SDGs?
  • How can the SDGs contribute to issues of workplace democracy and employee agency?
  • Are the concepts of Sustainability and the Common-Good still too theoretically vague?
  • What impact do investor agendas have on HRM and sustainability?
  • Building and applying new theory to better understand the links between HRM and sustainability.

Special Issue Editors:

  • Ina Aust, Université Catholique de Louvain LSM, Belgium.
  • Fang Lee Cooke, Monash University, Australia.
  • Michael Muller-Camen, WU-Vienna, Austria.
  • Geoffrey Wood, Western University, Canada.

View the compete CfP here.
Submission deadline (full papers): 30 November 2022.
Expected date of publication: 2023.