Caroline Gatrell’s research while affiliated with University of Liverpool and other places

This review proposes a new concept, the ‘Paternal body’, to illuminate the corporeal impact, on employed men, of new fatherhood. It explores literatures on fatherhood, employment and health to reveal how fathers experience pregnancy, birth and infant‐care (infancy defined, here, as up to age two). In contrast to well‐established notions regarding Maternal (pregnant and post‐birth) bodies, there exists within management studies no similar concept to facilitate understanding of recent fatherhood, the body and employment. The proposed concept ‘Paternal body’ addresses this lack, offering a strategic platform for theorizing how fatherhood impacts men's lived, bodily experience of balancing paternity with paid work. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology and health literatures, the paper reviews research on paternal corporeality in the context of employment in neo‐liberal (market‐oriented) economies (typified by the USA and UK). It identifies related and important health symptoms (such as sleep deprivation) that pose risks to paternal health and employment. Yet the review shows how expectant/recent fathers are pressured, at work, to live up to a mythical image of hegemonic masculinity that requires them to display strong work‐orientation, denying ill‐health and working long hours away from home. The paper coins the term: ‘Absent warrior’ to represent this illusion of a ‘manly’ father (warrior) who is absent from infant‐care and from his home, but bodily present at work: a father who is supposed to deny the materiality of inhabiting a Paternal body. Recommendations are made for further exploration of fathers’ embodied health needs through the concept of the lived ‘Paternal body’.

The author teams in this Point‐Counterpoint (PCP) put forward contrasting views regarding the benefits – or otherwise – of using commercially generated corporate ‘big data’ algorithms to inform scholarly research. In this editorial, I reflect on the lines of reasoning for, and against, whether such data offers a reliable means of building new theory. Are academics who refuse to mine and analyse corporately owned big data taking sensible steps to manage scholarly integrity? Or are they Luddites? I invite readers to consider these timely and provocative PCP articles and to consider the implications, for management studies, of the key arguments presented.

Building on the rich array of literatures that explore women's ageing and employment, we conduct a comprehensive review of research on middle‐ and older‐age women and work (including menopause and post‐menopause). In reviewing these studies, we blend our interdisciplinary discussions across several domains. We reflect on the question: How are employed, middle‐ and older‐age women treated in organizations, and what are employers’ perceptions of these workers? Through our analysis, we identify and critique two predominant, conflicting yet inter‐related themes. These are, namely, notions of constraint (and women's supposed/perceived reduced competencies as they age) versus ideas of flexibility (foregrounding assumptions that employed women experience fewer limitations as they age). As a theoretical lens for theorizing the constraints theme, we draw upon the concept of abjection, highlighting how employer perceptions of women's health as supposedly diminishing can lead to discriminatory treatment at work. In analysing theoretical assumptions regarding apparently enhanced flexibility among middle‐ and older‐age women, we note how women's differing circumstances and requirements might go unrecognized. We argue the need to deepen theoretical understandings about ideas of flexibility during women's middle and older age. Reflecting on the limitations of both themes, we consider the implications for future research agendas.

This editorial introduces and explains the Journal of Management Studies’ (JMS) new policy on artificial intelligence (AI) . We reflect on the use of AI in conducting research and generating journal submissions and what this means for the wider JMS community, including our authors, reviewers, editors, and readers. Specifically, we consider how AI‐generated research and text could both assist and augment the publication process, as well as harm it. Consequentially, our policy acknowledges the need for careful oversight regarding the use of AI to assist in the authoring of texts and in data analyses, while also noting the importance of requiring authors to be transparent about how, when and where they have utilized AI in their submissions or underlying research. Additionally, we examine how and in what ways AI's use may be antithetical to the spirit of a quality journal like JMS that values both human voice and research transparency. Our editorial explains why we require author teams to oversee all aspects of AI use within their projects, and to take personal responsibility for accuracy in all aspects of their research. We also explain our prohibition of AI's use in peer‐reviewers’ evaluations of submissions, and regarding editors’ handling of manuscripts.

This paper explores how pregnancy discrimination at work is perceived by both employers and pregnant employees. Using a public, qualitative dataset collected by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission that offers perspectives from both employers and pregnant employees, we explore the unfair and unethical treatment of pregnant employees at work. Our findings show how pregnant workers are expected to conform with workplace systems that are treated as sacred. We suggest that employer valorization of the mythical figure of ‘ideal worker’ disadvantages pregnant workers. We observe how, even if this contravenes maternity protection laws, some employers self-justify discrimination against pregnant employees who they perceive to have transgressed ‘appropriate’ workplace behaviors as ethical and reasonable. To illuminate and conceptualize the notion of transgression, our analysis has led us to the ideas of philosopher Georges Bataille, specifically his reflections on how individuals who ‘transgress’ social norms are treated as taboo, as well as his metaphorical descriptions of people and practices as either sacred or profane. We theorize that pregnant workers who are treated as profane should be reclassified as sacred, opening up this idea for debate so as to disrupt long-standing patterns of discrimination.

Using an ethnographic case study based in a UK state school for 11- to 18-year-olds, this paper explores the tensions that arose when the senior leadership team (SLT) introduced a justice-based ethic-of-care that prioritized good grades and equal treatment for all pupils over a feminist ethic-of-care (preferred by most teachers in non-leadership roles) that accentuated individual pupil need and placed greater emphasis on a broader social education. Through highlighting the tensions between a feminist ethic-of-care and a more ‘masculine’ style, justice-based approach to care-ethics, the paper extends the organisational care-ethics literature. We emphasise that such tensions occurred whether the different ethics were enacted by men, women, or non-binary individuals. In order to better understand the tensions between these two ethical approaches, we draw upon the theoretical work of Donald Winnicott, which highlights the importance both of maternal and paternal roles during infancy. We update Winnicott’s ideas, noting how maternal and paternal caring roles can be undertaken by people of varied gender identities. Building on Winnicott’s theory, we propose a new ‘Parentalist’ ethic-of-care, which has the potential to balance and hold together ideas of both a feminist ethic-of-care, and a justice-based ethic. A Parentalist ethic-of-care could support teachers yet recognize the context of the contemporary neo-liberal environment, where most children need to attain formal qualifications in a marketized world, and where such measures of success are highly valued.

This paper explores the impact of the ‘mobilization’ of employed mothers by the UK government to home‐school and care for children while performing paid work at home, in order to limit Covid‐19 transmission. Drawing upon actor network theory (ANT), we extend John Law's (1994) concept ‘modes of ordering’ (or strategic shifts in response to change when power relations are unequal) to illuminate how employed mothers’ networks were re‐ordered. In this netnography, we observe how they re‐ordered personal and local networks to combine home‐working, home‐schooling and childcare. We learn how, when mothers’ usual networks broke down, they employed three novel modes of re‐ordering: retentive, retrogressive and reformative. These modes capture the complex relationships between work and family – an area of concern that has previously received limited attention in relation to actor networks. Our findings reveal the gendered nature of the mandatory imposition of home‐working during the pandemic. Through developing Law's modes of ordering, we demonstrate the potential of ANT to understand the impact on mothers of home‐working and highlight important practical contributions for organizations and governments.

In this review, we synthesise the growing body of interdisciplinary research on fatherhood and employment for the purpose of guiding future management studies research on the topic. We argue that shifts in research approaches and assumptions are required to fully understand the situation of contemporary employed fathers. Our review draws attention to four distinct but related lenses: work, family, and fatherhood; masculine hegemony and fatherhood; involved fathering; and diversity and fatherhood. Extant research on fatherhood and employment reflects often static notions about the ‘nuclear family,’ with expectations about paternal work orientation failing to reflect contemporary paternal experience. We introduce the sociological concept of ‘family practices’ as a means of shifting from traditional (wherein fathers are positioned as breadwinners and mothers as child‐carers within heterosexual couples) to more fluid family forms that characterise 21st century ways of ‘doing fatherhood.’ Implications and avenues for future management studies research are discussed.

While literature reviews play an increasingly important role in theory development, understanding how they contribute to the process of theorizing is lacking. This article develops the metaphor of a miner-prospector continuum, which allows review scholars to identify approaches taken in literature reviews to develop theory. We identify eight strategies located on a continuum ranging from miners—who position their contributions within a bounded and established domain of study alongside other researchers—to prospectors, who are more likely to step outside disciplinary boundaries, introducing novel perspectives and venture beyond knowledge silos. We explore the pathways between miner and prospector in terms of strategies followed, choices made, risks borne, and benefits gained. We identify the roles to be played by different stakeholders in balancing the mix between miners and prospectors. While respecting the need for both miner and prospector approaches, we suggest that collective efforts toward encouraging prospector reviews could assist management research in tackling, through reviews, the complex challenges facing organizations and society today.