| name | humrel-topic-selection |
| description | Use when deciding whether a question belongs in Human Relations (HR) and how to frame it for the journal's interdisciplinary work-and-society audience. Tests fit and sharpens the question; it does not develop the theory or invent evidence. |
Topic Selection (humrel-topic-selection)
When to trigger
- You have a workplace/organizational phenomenon but are unsure it is an HR question rather than a sibling-journal question
- The puzzle is interesting empirically but you cannot yet say what social-theoretical understanding it would advance
- A coauthor asks "is this Human Relations, Organization Studies, JMS, or Work, Employment and Society?"
- The topic is timely (AI at work, platform labour, hybrid work, inequality) and you need it to be more than topical
What makes a question an HR question
HR is the interdisciplinary social-science journal of relationships at and around work. Its self-description is the test: research that advances "our understanding of social relationships at and around work through theoretical development and empirical investigation." Three things travel together for a strong HR topic:
- The relational/social core. The phenomenon is about people in relation — power, identity, meaning, conflict, control, solidarity, emotion, institutions — not a firm-level performance lever or an isolated individual trait. If the question could be answered without reference to social relations, it is probably not HR.
- A theoretical stake, declared early. HR runs an editorial scoping screen and demands "a unique and substantive theoretical contribution"; "suitable data are a necessary but not sufficient feature to get to full peer review." A topic that is only descriptive or only managerial-prescriptive will not clear the screen.
- Interdisciplinary reach. HR draws on sociology, psychology, organization studies, and critical theory. The best topics speak to a conversation readers from more than one tradition recognize.
Sibling boundaries — where the topic should and should not go
| If the centre of gravity is… | The natural home is… | HR's distinct angle |
|---|
| US-style hypothesis test of an OB effect | AMJ | HR wants theory + social context, methods plural, not a moderated-mediation template |
| A debate internal to organization theory / paradigms | Organization Studies (EGOS) | HR is broader social science of work, less paradigm-internal |
| Managerial relevance / strategy / the firm | JMS | HR foregrounds the social relation, not managerial payoff |
| Employment, labour markets, class, work sociology | Work, Employment and Society | HR pulls the case up to organizational/relational theory, not labour-market description |
| A purely critical/deconstructive intervention | Organization | HR welcomes critique but rewards a constructive, generative theoretical contribution |
How to sharpen the question
- State the phenomenon as a puzzle or tension ("workers say X yet do Y"), not a topic label.
- Name the conversation it joins and the prior it could unsettle (feeds
humrel-literature-positioning).
- Identify which HR readers would care (organizational sociologists? critical scholars? work psychologists?) and which would desk-screen it as out of scope.
- Decide the likely archetype (ethnographic, critical, quantitative, mixed, theory) early — it sets the chain entry point in
humrel-workflow.
Checklist
Anti-patterns
- A "hot topic" (AI, hybrid work) with no relational mechanism or theoretical stake
- A managerial how-to or performance-optimization question dressed as organizational research
- A descriptive case that never rises above its setting to organizational theory
- Framing so generic the journal name could be swapped without changing a word
- Treating the editorial scoping screen as a formality rather than the first real gate
Output format
【Journal】Human Relations
【Skill】humrel-topic-selection
【Verdict】fit / sharpen / reroute to sibling
【Puzzle (one sentence)】the tension, not the topic
【Relational core】how it is about relationships at/around work
【Theoretical stake】what understanding it could advance
【Sibling boundary】why HR and not OS / JMS / AMJ / WES / Organization
【Source status】verified / 待核实 / not asserted
【Next skill】humrel-theory-development
