Call for Papers: Sustainable HRM and Responsible Ways of Working

Guest Editors:

Sylvia Rohlfer, IMC Krems University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Simon Jebsen, University of Southern Denmark
Konstantina Tzini, CUNEF University Madrid, Spain
Abderrahman Hassi, Al Akhawayn University Ifrane, Morocco

Special Issue

Companies, employees, and scholars alike have shown a growing interest in sustainable HRM (Ehnert et al., 2016; Stahl et al., 2020), particularly in light of current workplace trends such as remote working and digitalisation in the post-COVID-19 era (McKinsey Global Institute, 2021). As HRM practices influence not only employees but also the broader human, social, and environmental context of firms (Rothenberg et al., 2017), developing sustainable HRM systems can significantly enhance social sustainability (Ehnert, 2009; Pfeffer, 2010). Such systems help organisations achieve corporate sustainability (Taylor et al., 2012) and traditional performance goals, thereby addressing some of the grand challenges of contemporary society (George et al., 2016).

To realise these organisational goals, the responses of employees, work teams, and managers to sustainable HRM practices are crucial, as they play a primary role in the success of these initiatives (Paulet et al., 2021). The prevailing view is that sustainable HRM has a positive impact on employees (Aust et al., 2020) and that innovative workplace practices are generally well-received, yielding favourable responses at the individual level and, consequently, positive outcomes at the organisational level.

The increasing adoption of sustainable HRM and innovative work practices in today's dynamic workplaces presents excellent research opportunities to explore its multifaceted and under-explored outcomes. This track aims to contribute to the theme of "Managing with Purpose" by examining the impact of sustainable HRM and workplace innovation on employee attitudes and behaviours, the interplay of sustainable and innovative practices with other corporate initiatives, and their ultimate link to organisation-level outcomes.

Possible themes include:

1. The impact of different sustainable HRM and innovative work practices on shaping employee attitudes and behaviours at the individual and group levels. Empirical evidence of positive (e.g., employee well-being, engagement, corporate citizenship behaviour) and negative outcomes for employees (e.g., burden requirements, unethical behaviours) is welcome.
2. Organisational value creation and outcomes of using innovative and sustainable HRM (e.g., innovation, performance, stakeholder acceptance).
3. Potential synergies or redundancies arising from combining sustainable and innovative work practices and other corporate sustainability initiatives and their effect on individual and organisational outcomes.
4. The interplay between sustainable work practices, workplace innovation, and current workplace trends, such as remote work and digitalisation, and their effect on individual employee attitudes, behaviour, and performance.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Sylvia Rohlfer, Simon Jebsen, Konstantina Tzini, Abderrahman Hassi

Special Issue of Management Revue (IF 1.7)

Management Revue (MRev) is a peer-reviewed, open-access, interdisciplinary social science journal publishing both qualitative and quantitative work, as well as purely theoretical papers that advance management and sociology research. MRev publishes articles that test and develop theories, explore relevant phenomena or research questions within the context of the new economic sociology, industrial network, and new work arrangement approaches.

All articles published in Management Revue (MRev) by IMR Press are fully open access. To provide readers with free access and to cover the costs of peer review, editing, formatting, long-term archiving, and journal management, an Article Processing Charge (APC) of $1500 is applied to papers accepted after peer review.

Full papers for this special issue must be submitted by 30 September 2025. All contributions will be subject to double-blind reviews. Papers invited to a ‘revise and resubmit’ are due 31 March 2026. The publication is scheduled for issue 1/2026. Please submit your papers electronically via the online submission system.

Manuscript length should be between 7,000 and 10,000 words, and the norm should be 30 pages. Manuscripts should be accompanied by an abstract of the article (max. 200 words) and a list of three to five keywords or descriptors. Also add three to five appropriate JEL-codes (example: JEL: J31, J33, J41, M52) under the keywords in brackets. You will find the list of JEL-codes at http://www.aeaweb.org/jel/jel_class_system.php. Further, please follow the guidelines on the journal’s homepage.