Dear colleagues,
We are delighted to announce the Call for Papers for a forthcoming special issue entitled Chronic Illness at Work: Advancing Theory and Practice in Organizational Behavior in Journal of Organizational Behaviour.
Conditions like diabetes, MS, IBD, migraine, and cardiovascular disease affect millions of workers worldwide. Yet research on chronic illness at work remains fragmented across disciplines. This special issue aims to advance both theory and practice by examining chronic illness as a distinctive organisational phenomenon.
Why chronic illness specifically? Unlike broader disability, chronic illnesses often involve fluctuating symptoms that create episodic work patterns, invisible or concealable conditions that raise ongoing disclosure dilemmas, progressive trajectories requiring continuous renegotiation, and substantial self-management demands that must be integrated with work responsibilities.
We welcome papers examining chronic illness at individual, interpersonal, organisational, and institutional levels. Potential themes include disclosure and identity management across career stages, organisational responses including accommodation policies and return-to-work processes, the implications of changing work arrangements and technology (remote work, algorithmic management, AI, platform work), managerial responses and training needs, career trajectories and sustainability, intersectionality with gender, race, class and age, psychological dynamics including psychological contracts and trust, and institutional perspectives such as legal frameworks and cross-national comparisons.
Whether you're working on empirical research (quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods) or conceptual papers, we'd love to hear from you. We particularly encourage longitudinal studies, diary research, and work that draws clear links between findings and organisational practice.
Submission window: 1-30 June 2027
Any questions can be directed to the Guest Editors:
Ronan Carbery, University College Cork (Ireland): Ronan.Carbery@ucc.ie
Ultan Sherman, University College Cork (Ireland), Ultan.Sherman@ucc.ie
Deirdre O'Shea, University of Limerick (Ireland) Deirdre.oshea@ul.ie
Details:
Call for papers
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Ronan Carbery
Senior Lecturer
Ronan Carbery Person
Model Farm Road
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