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Juliana Schroeder, .pop

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Elisa Villani, .pop

Agency is central to organizational sciences and heavily debated. Assumptions about who can act, what acting requires, and who is answerable for results underlie theories of motivation, leadership, decision making, control, value creation, careers, institutions, and technological change. These views largely developed before intelligent technologies began participating in organizational action. As analytic, generative, and agentic AI increasingly participate in organizational action, intention, execution, and consequence—traditionally assumed to reside in a single human actor—are coming apart, and with them our settled sense of who exercises agency.

This special issue seeks theoretically ambitious work, whether conceptual or empirically grounded, that takes the changing production of action as its starting point. The issue is organized around two complementary aims: to reconsider agency itself—what it is, where it resides, and how it operates when action is co-produced by people and machines—and to understand how the changing nature of agency reshapes the phenomena in organizational fields, from organizational behavior and careers to management and control, strategy, entrepreneurship, institutions, the sociology of work, information systems, and the governance of autonomous action.

Submissions are welcomed from across the organizational sciences and from neighboring disciplines in sociology, economics, psychology, and the philosophy of action. Given the rapid pace of change in agentic technologies, the issue will follow an accelerated review process.

Potential topics

• Agency in organizations and how it changes with AI participation
• Co-production of action by people and machines
• Reconceptualizing agency: what it is, where it resides, and how it operates
• Impact on organizational behavior and careers
• Management and control in the age of AI
• Strategy and entrepreneurship with agentic technologies
• Institutional implications of changing agency
• Sociology of work and AI
• Information systems and autonomous action
• Governance of autonomous action
• Motivation, leadership, and decision-making with AI
• Value creation with intelligent technologies

Timeline

• February 1, 2027: Submissions due

Muhammad Imran Rasheed, University of Surrey

Barbara Rita Barricelli, Università degli Studi di Brescia

Waseem Ul Hameed, Universiti Utara Malaysia

Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming an interactive workplace technology through which employees communicate, collaborate, make decisions, and perform everyday work tasks. From generative AI assistants and algorithmic decision-support systems to intelligent monitoring tools and conversational agents, workers are engaging with AI systems on a continuous basis. Consequently, understanding how employees interact with AI technologies, experience AI-mediated work processes, develop trust in intelligent systems, and adapt their behaviours in response to AI-generated outputs has emerged as a central challenge for Behaviour & Information Technology research.

While existing research has extensively examined technological adoption and performance outcomes, comparatively less attention has been devoted to the behavioral, cognitive, relational, and psychological implications of intelligent systems in workplace settings. Emerging technologies are redefining human-computer interaction in organizational contexts and raising important questions regarding trust in AI, algorithmic transparency, digital autonomy, technostress, cognitive overload, human-AI collaboration, and behavioral adaptation.

While different special issues have recently focused on artificial intelligence in organisations, information systems and the future of work, little has been done to understand workplace AI from the perspective of human–computer interaction and human-centered design. Existing special issues have primarily addressed topics such as technological adoption, organizational outcomes, digital transformation, and AI implementation. In contrast, this Special Issue focuses on the human-intelligent system interaction, covering employee experience, trust calibration, behavioral adaptation, user engagement, explainability, cognitive processes, and the design of psychologically sustainable AI-enabled workplaces.

The Special Issue proposed is well aligned with the mission of Behaviour & Information Technology and brings together research on human behaviour, user experience, interaction design, intelligent systems and digital work. The special issue aims to contribute to a better understanding of not only what AI does in organizations, but also how employees experience, interpret, interact with, and adapt to intelligent technologies in everyday work settings.

In addition to empirical and theoretical contributions, the Special Issue strongly encourages design-oriented and design science research that develops, evaluates, and validates human-centred AI systems, intelligent interfaces, explainability mechanisms, trust-enhancing design features, and interaction designs that promote positive employee experiences and responsible AI use.

This special issue focuses on the intersection of intelligent technologies, workplace behavior, and information systems. Contributions examine how AI and digital systems influence individual, team, and organizational behavior in technology-mediated work environments. The issue is especially interested in studies investigating behavioral and cognitive responses to intelligent systems, human-AI interaction dynamics, digital work experiences, and the broader organizational implications of AI-enabled technologies. Contributions employing quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, longitudinal, experimental, computational, ethnographic, and design-science approaches are highly encouraged.

Potential topics

• Employee interaction with AI-enabled systems
• Human reliance, overreliance, and resistance toward AI
• Behavioral adaptation to intelligent technologies
• Human-AI collaboration and hybrid decision-making
• Trust formation in intelligent systems
• Algorithmic transparency and explainable AI
• Employee perceptions of AI fairness and accountability
• Behavioral responses to opaque decision systems
• Technostress, digital exhaustion, and AI fatigue
• Cognitive overload and information processing under AI systems
• AI dependency and employee wellbeing
• Digital distraction and attention fragmentation
• AI-supported autonomy and employee empowerment
• Algorithmic management and behavioral control
• Digital surveillance and monitoring technologies
• Behavioral consequences of automated performance systems
• Ethical design of workplace AI systems
• Human-centered intelligent systems
• Responsible AI implementation in organizations
• Designing psychologically sustainable digital work environments
• AI-enabled learning systems and digital upskilling
• Employee agility and adaptability in AI-enabled workplaces
• Behavioral implications of reskilling and task transformation
• Human learning behavior in technology-mediated contexts
• AI-supported teamwork and collaboration
• Virtual collaboration and intelligent communication systems
• Social interaction patterns in AI-mediated environments
• Team trust and coordination under intelligent systems
• AI in healthcare, hospitality, education, finance, and public services
• Gig work, platform labor, and digital employment systems
• Cross-cultural and cross-national comparisons
• Remote and hybrid work environments
• User experience (UX) of workplace AI systems
• Human-centered design of intelligent workplace technologies
• Conversational AI and intelligent assistants at work
• Adaptive and personalized workplace interfaces
• AI usability and user acceptance in organizational settings
• Interaction design for human-AI collaboration
• Human oversight and human-in-the-loop systems
• Trust calibration in intelligent systems
• Employee engagement with AI-enabled technologies
• Interface design for responsible and ethical AI use
• User perceptions of agency, control, and autonomy in AI-mediated work environments

Timeline

• July 31, 2027: Manuscript submission deadline

Iris K. Gauglitz, University of Bamberg

Peter Harms, University of Alabama's Culverhouse College of Business

Urszula Lagowska, NEOMA Business School

Birgit Schyns, NEOMA Business School

Kimberley Breevaart, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Leader behaviours and their perception across organisational levels are a critical and evolving area in leadership research. In particular, the distinction between leaders' behaviours and the ways in which these behaviours are perceived by others have been widely discussed in the field. While there have been recent calls among leadership scholars to focus more on leader behaviours rather than to rely on how they are perceived, understanding leadership requires an examination of how leader behaviours are enacted and interpreted across different levels of the organization.

The topic is relevant both for theory and practice as it relates to the ongoing debate on how leadership should be measured, developed, and defined. Research shows that to get a more complete picture of leadership effectiveness, there is a need to focus on both leader behaviours and how these behaviours are perceived and interpreted by different actors within the organization. Leadership research often splits behaviour and perception, sometimes even treating them as rival lenses. This special issue brings them together by asking how behaviour changes across settings and how different groups make sense of those changes.

By proposing such themes as a bilateral relationship between leader behaviours and their perception, as well as the dynamics of this relationship over time, this special issue hopes to showcase research demonstrating the value of studying both "sides of the coin". In addition, we hope to encourage submissions on many current and underexplored topics that would advance our understanding of leadership as a process in a complex, modern workplace.

Perceptions of leader behaviour outside of the dyad of leader and follower are not well understood yet. Also, more research is needed on discrepancies between leader intentions and follower perception of intentions, especially in polarized social contexts and new forms of work.

The topic has key importance for practice and the elaboration of leadership training programs. The effectiveness of such programs depends on a strong foundation of scientific evidence, which can only be achieved by gaining a deep understanding of both enacted leader behaviours and how they are interpreted by perceivers at different levels in the organization.

Incorporating within- and between-person methods at various levels of analysis is essential to fully capture the complexity of leaders' actions and their interactions with followers. In this special issue, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of leadership dynamics and to the development of more effective leadership practices.

Potential topics

• Theoretical models proposing new or conceptually advanced configurations of leader behaviour and its perceptions, which consider the role of new working contexts in shaping leader behaviours and their perceptions
• Multi-level conceptualizations of the impact of leader behaviour at multiple levels of organizations with a view to understand how and why perceptions across levels differ
• Studies including models that explain why and under which conditions leader behaviour and its perceptions affect workplace outcomes, notably when leaders and others differ in their perceptions/(perceived) intentions or when behaviour is perceived as inconsistent or ambivalent
• Research that investigates polarisation in follower perceptions—why perceptions of the same behaviour may diverge significantly
• Studies looking at leader and follower behaviour and their interaction, such as how behaviours from one party trigger behavioural reactions of the other party and what that means for an effective collaboration
• Studies considering the role of organisational hierarchy in how leaders behave and how their behaviour is perceived
• Contributions considering interactions between personality traits (e.g., leader–follower trait congruence) in shaping behavioural expressions and perceptual accuracy; team outcomes of leader behaviour, for example, perception differences between team members and how this affects outcomes; and relative leader behaviour, that is, perceptions of how one follower is treated compared to others
• Studies that develop and validate new measures of leader behaviour (e.g., behavioural indicators)
• Studies that develop new measures that allow for the measurement of perceptual biases in leadership ratings and studies using advanced statistical approaches (e.g., polynomial regression analyses, multilevel modelling, pattern approaches)

Timeline

• February 1, 2026: Abstract deadline
• April 1, 2026: Decision on abstract
• December 1, 2026: Full paper submission deadline
• December 1, 2026: Review Round 1
• March 1, 2027: Decision on first revision communicated
• June 1, 2027: First revisions due
• June 1, 2027: Review Round 2
• September 1, 2027: Decision on second revision communicated
• November 1, 2027: Second revision due
• December 1, 2027: Final decision communicated
• February 1, 2028: Publication of special issue

Aneeqa Suhail, Tilburg University

Steven Kilroy, Trinity College Dublin

Robin Bauwens, Tilburg University

Sut I Wong, BI Norwegian Business School

Sasa Batistič, Tilburg University

Managing people in organizations requires a combination of Human Resource Management (HRM) and leadership, often referred to as 'people management'. While HRM provides formalized systems, practices, and architectures that structure employment relationships, leadership shapes how these systems are enacted, interpreted, and given meaning in everyday work. Therefore, the outcomes traditionally associated with people management do not emerge from HRM or leadership in isolation, but from their ongoing interrelationship across organizational levels.

Despite this inherent interdependence, research on HRM and leadership have largely developed as parallel research streams, with limited theoretical and empirical integration. Although a growing body of research has begun to examine HRM–leadership linkages, this fragmentation still persists and some original calls about 'leader-HRM fit' remain unanswered. On a practical level, it is important to understand not only what constitutes well-designed HRM systems or how leaders behave, but also how they interact and influence one another in organizations. For future HRM scholarship, disregarding the two components of people management risks overestimating leaders or overlooking leaders' agency in HRM system implementation, or even neglecting the boundary conditions under which HRM and leadership influence, undermine, or reinforce each other.

A particularly underdeveloped issue concerns the alignment and misalignment between HRM systems and leader behaviors. Alignment between HRM and leadership can be conceptualized as the degree of fit between these two systems of people management, such that their underlying values, modes of influence, and enacted signals converge, complement, or filter one another in shaping employee and organizational outcomes. While alignment is often implicitly assumed to be beneficial, emerging work indicates that alignment may take different forms with distinct consequences for employee attitudes, well-being, and performance. Additionally, HRM systems may partially or fully substitute for leadership by structuring work, clarifying expectations, and shaping employee behavior independently of leaders' actions. Understanding how HRM systems and leader behaviors align, misalign, or substitute for one another is essential for a comprehensive understanding of people management. The limited empirical research on HRM and leadership combinations has largely focused on employee well-being outcomes only and has largely focused on a select few leadership behaviors. As such, there is a need to explore a wider range of leadership behaviors and extend the range of outcomes studied to performance and the interrelationship between well-being and performance.

Existing research has documented the dark sides of HRM systems such as work intensification, employee strain, and performance–well-being trade-offs and leadership forms such as destructive or dysfunctional leadership behaviors. However, studies that examine a critical perspective on HRM or look at destructive forms of leader behaviors have largely evolved in isolation. We know remarkably little about how negative outcomes emerge at the intersection of HRM and leadership, such as when well-intended HRM systems are enacted through coercive leadership, or when empowering leadership operates within controlling or compliance-oriented HRM systems and architectures. The joint pathways through which HRM and leadership generate unintended, ambivalent, or harmful consequences remain largely unexplored.

These gaps in our understanding are particularly consequential given the rapidly evolving context of digitalization and organizational change. Digitization should not be understood merely as the adoption of new technologies, but as a broader transformation of how work is organized, coordinated, and controlled, most visibly reflected in the rise of remote, hybrid, and digitally mediated work arrangements. In such contexts, HRM systems increasingly structure work in the absence of physical proximity, while leadership is enacted through mediated interactions rather than direct, co-located supervision. Understanding which configurations of HRM systems and leadership behaviors strengthen or weaken remote and hybrid work is therefore central to advancing theory on contemporary people management.

Beyond transforming work arrangements, digitization also reshapes the way HRM systems and leadership interact in guiding employee behavior and interpretations. In contemporary organizations, the integration of digitalized HRM systems and leadership behavior creates a complex, multilayered influence on both employee outcomes and organizational effectiveness. As HRM systems become increasingly digitalized, they often manifest through real-time performance tracking, data-driven evaluation, and algorithmic management practices. While such systems can enhance coordination and transparency, they may also heighten employee awareness of surveillance and intensify concerns about monitoring and control. Within this digital framework, leadership becomes a critical interpretive layer through which employees make sense of these systems.

A multilayered perspective suggests that leadership does not merely supplement HRM systems; rather, it can amplify, reinterpret, or even contradict the signals embedded within them. At the same time, leaders may also have to balance consistent HR implementation with responsiveness to individual needs. When leadership behaviors and HRM systems are aligned, they can create a strong organizational climate that provides consistent cues to employees about valued behaviors and expectations. However, tensions may arise when these signals diverge. For example, a digital HRM system that emphasizes rigid, data-driven performance indicators may conflict with leadership behaviors that encourage flexibility, experimentation, or developmental learning. Such contradictions can create cognitive dissonance, role ambiguity, and uncertainty among employees. In these situations, employees may perceive the organization as sending mixed messages, where the formal system communicates one set of expectations while leaders communicate another.

Despite the increasing prevalence of digitalized HR architectures, we still know remarkably little about how employees interpret and respond to these potentially conflicting signals. Misalignment between digital HRM systems and leadership behaviors may weaken the clarity and credibility of organizational signals, thereby undermining trust, psychological safety, and the effectiveness of people management systems. At the same time, alignment between HRM and leadership in digitally mediated contexts may amplify both positive and negative consequences, shaping employee well-being and performance in ways that remain insufficiently understood.

Understanding these dynamics is crucial for advancing theory on people management in contemporary organizations. In particular, HRM and leadership are now understood as dynamic, temporally unfolding processes that evolve during periods of change rather than being static inputs. However, research to date rarely examines how their interplay and associated consequences for employee well-being and organizational performance develop over time.

This Special Issue seeks to advance scholarly understanding of how HRM systems and leadership behaviors jointly shape employee and organizational outcomes in contemporary organizations. Rather than treating HRM and leadership as parallel or additive influences, this issue foregrounds their interdependence by addressing their alignment, misalignment, and cross-level interaction. Specifically, it invites new theoretical perspectives that explain how HRM and leadership can reinforce, substitute for, or contradict one another. Knowledge on this topic will allow organizations to ensure that the intended aims of both their HRM systems and leadership materialize.

The Special Issue encourages scholarship that shifts attention from static to temporal and context-embedded understandings of HRM–leadership relationships, particularly within evolving work arrangements such as remote and hybrid settings. By integrating diverse epistemological perspectives, theoretical traditions, and methodological approaches, contributions can illuminate how people management systems develop, adapt, and co-evolve over time, generating a more nuanced understanding of people management as a dynamic, multi-level phenomenon rather than a collection of isolated practices or behaviors.

From a practical perspective, this Special Issue aims to generate actionable insights for organizations, HR professionals, and leaders seeking to design coherent and effective people management systems. By clarifying when HRM practices and leadership behaviors align, misalign, or substitute for one another, the contributions can inform more consistent implementation of HR strategies, improve employee experiences, and support sustainable organizational performance. By adopting temporal and context-sensitive perspectives, such as in remote and hybrid work settings, the Special Issue can guide practitioners in adapting people management approaches over time, responding to shifting work arrangements, and navigating emerging tensions between flexibility and control, autonomy and coordination, well-being, and performance.

This Special Issue welcomes diverse methodological approaches to advance theory on the interplay between HRM and leadership and for ensuring a strong alignment between research designs and the complexity of real-world people management challenges. In particular, contributions are encouraged that leverage longitudinal, qualitative, experimental, and computational methods to capture the multilevel, relational, and dynamic nature of people management systems. Only studies that consider both leadership behaviors/approaches and HRM practices/systems instead of examining them in isolation will be considered.

The proposed Special Issue has the potential to reinvigorate HRM scholarship by moving beyond static and isolated conceptualizations of HRM systems or leadership behaviors toward a more integrated, multilevel, and dynamic understanding of people management. By encouraging contextualized research across digitalized, remote, hybrid, and changing work environments, the Special Issue responds directly to contemporary transformations in the world of work while reinforcing IJHRM's commitment to methodological pluralism and international relevance. Additionally, the Special Issue will generate actionable insights for organizations seeking to design coherent people management systems that balance employee well-being, performance, flexibility, and sustainable organizational effectiveness.

Potential topics

• How HRM systems and leadership behaviors interact in shaping employee and organizational outcomes across organizational levels
• How different forms of alignment between HRM and leadership (e.g., supplementary fit, complementary fit, perceptual filtering) produce distinct employee and organizational outcomes
• When and how HRM systems function as substitutes for leadership, and what are the resulting consequences for employee and organizational outcomes
• How misalignment between HRM systems and leadership behaviors emerge, persist, or become institutionalized within organizations
• When alignment between HRM systems and leadership amplifies negative outcomes such as work intensification, role overload, or employee strain
• How employees interpret and respond to situations in which HRM systems substitute for, constrain, or contradict leadership behaviors
• Which configurations of HRM systems and leadership forms strengthen the effectiveness and sustainability of remote and hybrid work arrangements
• How leaders enact, adapt, or resist HRM systems when leading employees at a distance, and how does this shape employees' sensemaking and experiences of people management
• How employees experience alignment, misalignment, or substitution between HRM systems and leadership in remote and hybrid work settings, and how do these experiences affect employee and organizational outcomes
• How HRM–leadership configurations evolve over time and how do these experiences affect pertinent employee and organizational outcomes
• How alignment, misalignment, and substitution between HRM and leadership shape employee well-being and performance over time
• How temporal shifts in leadership behaviors or HRM systems alter the balance between substitution and complementarity

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Expected publication date of special issue
• March 31, 2027: Full paper submission deadline

Business tournament rituals (BTRs) are ritualistic ceremonies or events organised to serve solidarity and confer social prestige and endorsements on firms in which participating firms and winners receive accolades and prestigious non-monetary prizes. They offer opportunities for firms to showcase their capabilities and hard market power. Beyond approving and reinforcing status hierarchies and the solidarity purpose they serve across industries, BTR awards as nonmarket-oriented artifacts have been promoted as strategic third-party honours and marketplace endorsements that spur productivity and performance, facilitate innovation, and stimulate the adoption of good business practices.

BTRs and their awards are proliferating, with the number of ceremonies rising by about 5% annually. They have come to dominate the attention economy with at least 2,000 such ceremonies or events held in a year in Britain alone. Managers are gambling up to £7000 as entry fees for these award competitions, translating into tens of thousands of cost, and also titles, industry awards, and trophies being presented each year, which get strewn on corporate letterheads, business cards, email signatures, websites, and advertising banners.

While BTRs and their awards do hold some strategic value for competing firms, emerging evidence suggests that many BTRs and their awards have lost their relevance in today's highly competitive market. The quality of some BTRs and their awards have also come to vary substantially, with some being characterised as 'vanity awards' representing cases of scamming and borderline corruption where recipients of these awards are forced to pay for attendance, trophies, or certificates. Of particular salience is the intractable challenge in accounting for the economic value of these ceremonies and their awards in terms of the balance sheet.

The scale and proliferation of BTRs, the unabated surge of interest in winning awards, the value of resources expended to competing in BTRs, and the general managerial preoccupation with BTR continue to confound commentators and the viewing public. Understanding how managers construe, understand, or make sense of BTRs and awards is essential to improving our understanding of convergent firm behaviour towards BTRs, the conditions required for firms to consider entering BTRs, and their tendency to compete in them, even when they cannot quantitatively justify the potential value they could create and capture from these awards.

This special issue aims to attract multi-disciplinary research drawing on qualitative and quantitative methodologies and methods, including mixed methods, and conceptual pieces, to explicate an expanded view on managerial preoccupation with BTRs. The special issue will provide a forum for collective scholarly discussions that would push the frontiers of research on how managers make sense of BTRs in organizing. Exploring the contexts within which BTRs could shape the values, identities, and careers of managers could yield important perspectives to build theoretical explanations for stimulating and structuring managerial and organisational field behaviour and evolution. Scholars are encouraged to address existing challenges of BTR for managers, define new pathways and identify possibilities and potentialities to rethinking BTRs, and provide fresh insights that would set the roadmap for further enquiries.

Potential topics

• Managerial mentalities and motivations to competing in BTRs year in year out
• Managerial discursive framing of awards within the contingencies of competitive interactions and stakeholders' engagement
• Roles played by managers and internal and external audiences in navigating tacit norms of organizational display of business awards
• Unpacking managerial extravagance through the context of business tournament rituals
• How managers justify and rationalise their ideational investments in business awards
• How managers consume and account for their BTR entries and experiences
• How managers craft and communicate information about themselves and their organizations business awards
• Multi-industry and national cross-industry context dynamics of BTRs
• Narratives of award-winning managers participating in business awards
• How managers deploy business awards to attract favourable audience attention
• Is it possible that different managers and their firms benefit from different forms of BTRs or that diversity reflects incomplete diffusion?
• When and how may BTRs be perceived differently by managers in other regions or industries?
• The cognitive processes of managers in (not) recognising the possibilities, potentialities, and limits of BTRs

Timeline

• January 10, 2026: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• January 31, 2027: Closing date for manuscripts submission