Dialogues in Sustainable HRM: Examining and Positioning Intended and Continuous Dialogue in Sustainable HRM Using a Complexity Thinking Approach

In the emerging sustainable Human Resource Management (HRM) literature, advocating to ‘rehumanize’ and pluralize HRM, dialogue is put forward as a silver bullet to cope with paradoxical tensions and pluralist workforces. This conceptual paper aims to add to the sustainable HRM literature by examining the position and application of dialogue within sustainable HRM, using ideas and concepts from dialogue literature and complexity thinking. We applied core concepts of complexity thinking (i.e., self-organization, nonlinearity, attractors, and emergence) to deepen our understanding of the positioning of dialogue, the position of power, and the emergence of intended and unintended outcomes. Moreover, through the distinction between intentional and continuous dialogue, the intentional, dynamic, and emergent nature of dialogue was explored. Connecting, sensing, grasping, and influencing the local patterning of continuous dialogue is important for positioning dialogue within sustainable HRM, and intentional dialogical practices can support this. More specifically, based on our literature review, we present a conceptual model that furthers our understanding of (1) conceptualizations of dialogue as both intended and continuous; (2) the role of power in dialogue; (3) how stability and novelty emerge from dialogue. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the developed perspectives on dialogue for future research as well as management practices.

Societal fragilities and resilience: The emergence of peoplehood in Belarus

The article examines societal fragilities and local resilience strategies in Belarus with a particular focus on the notion of peoplehood. Premised on the idea of evolving forms of agency under the Anthropocene, and the emergent complexity-thinking in International Relations, the article draws on these approaches to societal fragilities and community resilience to understand and explain the unprecedented levels of mobilization occurring in Belarus since the disputed presidential election in August 2020. To this end, the article zooms onto the local communities to provide an analytical perspective on the study of resilience as self-organization. In line with complexity-thinking, it argues in favor of history-specific processual identities, shaped by the aspirations of a “good life,” and realized via local support infrastructures which lie at the heart of societal resilience in Belarus. Yet, the potential of all these elements to actualize into a sweeping transformative force, referred to as “peoplehood” in this article, is rare, and comes at a time of unprecedented crises and existential threats to the life of a community. The Belarusian society seems to be undergoing such a moment that not only makes it more resilient and adaptive to change; it also transforms it into a new form of societal being, self-aware of its worth, self-organized, and self-reliant on its inner capabilities to fight for a life of excellence. The article traces these moments of becoming with, and societal being, via a critical discussion of fragilities and the elements of resilience, actualized into peoplehood.

Emergence in School Systems: Lessons from Complexity and Pedagogical Leadership

The theoretical framework for this study draws on conceptual advances from two bodies of scholarship: 1) complexity thinking in education, which has recently focused on school system change and, 2) school leadership research, which has recently attended to the effects of leadership interventions to school improvement. Using a complexity-thinking framework, the purpose of this study was to understand how leadership practices contribute to shaping change in school systems and how change occurred across the system. Our study was conducted in an urban centre in Alberta within a public-school jurisdiction and in an area of the city that had a high population of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds from low-income households compared to other areas across the school jurisdiction. Students in this area typically scored in the lowest quartile on provincial standardized examinations. Our findings are significant because complexity thinking in the context of school leadership has not received sufficient empirical attention. In our study we identified and described pedagogical leadership practices that play a central role in redressing disparities currently found in schools.

Thinking with complexity in evaluation: A case study review

Adopting complexity thinking in the design, implementation and evaluation of health and social development programmes is of increasing interest. Understanding institutional contexts in which these programmes are located directly influences shaping and eventual uptake of evaluations and relevant findings. A nuanced appreciation of the relationship between complexity, institutional arrangements and evaluation theory and practice provides an opportunity to optimise both programme design and eventual success. However, the application of complexity and systems thinking within programme design and evaluation is variously understood. Some understand complexity as the multiple constituent aspects within a system, while others take a more sociological approach, understanding interactions between beliefs, ideas and systems as mechanisms of change. This article adopts an exploratory approach to examine complexity thinking in the relational, recursive interactions between context and project design, implementation and evaluation. In doing so, common terms will be used to demonstrate the nature of shared aspects of complexity across apparently different projects.