While inclusion has become central to human resource management practices globally, its institutional foundations are becoming increasingly unstable. Political and economic shifts, organisational hesitation, and cultural challenges have weakened the norms and mechanisms supporting inclusive HRM. This special issue examines how inclusion becomes performative—publicly supported but weakly implemented—when its institutional backing erodes.
The issue calls for work that moves beyond static views of identity to examine how it is constructed and contested through HRM systems amid institutional uncertainty. Research grounded in intersectionality, social identity theory, and critical perspectives is particularly encouraged, as are comparative studies showing how inclusion operates differently across institutional and cultural contexts. The collection seeks to understand how HRM practices both regulate identity and potentially become sites of resistance and contestation.