Clotilde Coron, Université Paris-Saclay

Data is increasingly recognized as a crucial resource for organizational innovation, with extensive and organized data exploitation considered a key driver of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution. HRM is not exempt from this trend, and the methodological challenges of leveraging increasingly diverse and massive datasets present significant stakes for both practitioners and academic researchers.

Recent reflections on applicable methods for extracting value from data often emphasize the disruptive potential of big data, presenting it as the foundation for a renewal of empiricism based on intensive exploration of data masses through exploratory methods, aimed at generating new knowledge through purely inductive logic. However, inductive, data-driven approaches remain rare in quantitative HRM studies, despite their capacity to transcend the classical dichotomy between qualitative/inductive and quantitative/deductive approaches in management sciences. Data-driven methodologies also help address criticisms leveled at hypothetico-deductive approaches, such as their strong standardization and difficulty in generating truly innovative theories.

This special issue aims to provide an updated overview of the challenges and opportunities of data-driven HRM, as well as inductive quantitative methods applicable in empirical research. Expected contributions may address these themes from methodological perspectives (such as presenting an innovative method with illustration in HRM), empirical perspectives (conducting a quantitative study on a subject by adopting an inductive approach), or conceptual perspectives (analyzing the stakes for HRM of data-driven management). Proposals presenting emerging or underutilized methods in francophone quantitative HRM studies will be particularly appreciated, including supervised learning, data mining, textual statistics, and longitudinal approaches.

Potential topics

• Data-driven approaches in HRM
• Inductive quantitative research methods
• Big data exploitation and analysis
• Supervised learning applications in HRM
• Data mining techniques
• Textual statistics
• Longitudinal approaches
• Innovative quantitative methods in HRM research
• Theory building from data
• Emerging methodologies in francophone HRM studies

Timeline

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• March 25, 2023: Submission deadline for articles

Benjamin Laker, Henley Business School, University of Reading

Sven Horak, St. John's University

Toyin Ajibade Adisa, Royal Docks School of Business and Law, University of East London

Fulya Acikgoz, University of Sussex Business School

Inclusion has become a defining aspiration in modern human resource management. It is embedded in recruitment policies, leadership development strategies, employee engagement programmes, and organisational values. Yet, the institutional standing of inclusion is increasingly precarious. Across sectors and geographies, political retrenchment, economic turbulence, organisational ambivalence, and cultural contestation have converged to destabilise the norms and mechanisms that once sustained inclusive HRM.

This special issue examines the institutional fragility of inclusion—a condition in which inclusion is publicly endorsed but inconsistently enacted, weakly governed, or symbolically maintained in the absence of substantive commitment. In this context, we ask: What becomes of workplace inclusion when its institutional scaffolding weakens, but identity difference endures—embodied, politicised, and inescapable?

We invite theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that investigate how identity is constructed, contested, and regulated through HRM systems under conditions of institutional uncertainty. We encourage authors to move beyond static, categorical approaches to identity and instead theorise inclusion as a dynamic process shaped by power, legitimacy, and resistance. This includes examining how HRM practices—such as recruitment, development, performance management, and reward—reify dominant norms, marginalise difference, or function as sites of identity negotiation and contestation.

Contributions grounded in intersectionality and social identity theory are especially welcome, as are those drawing on critical race, feminist, or postcolonial perspectives. We particularly encourage comparative and globally informed studies that examine how inclusion is refracted through diverse institutional logics, legal regimes, and cultural contexts.

Potential topics

• Organisational responses to the erosion or contestation of inclusion mandates
• Identity construction, negotiation, and resistance within HRM systems
• Symbolic inclusion vs substantive change in HRM practice and policy
• How performance systems, leadership pipelines, or 'culture fit' criteria embed normative assumptions about who belongs
• Comparative and global analyses of inclusion across varied institutional, legal, and cultural settings
• HRM as a mechanism of voice suppression, identity masking, or strategic silence
• The effects of intersectional identity configurations (e.g. gender × race × class) on access to opportunity, recognition, and legitimacy in HRM
• How informal networks and shadow structures sustain or subvert inclusion efforts
• Experiences of inclusion and exclusion when organisations retreat from formal DEI commitments
• Institutional logics, power asymmetries, and the politics of belonging in HRM systems
• Decolonial or Indigenous critiques of Western-centric inclusion frameworks in global HRM

Timeline

• November 30, 2026: Manuscript deadline