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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

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

• [ ] The question is about social relationships at/around work, not a firm-performance lever
• [ ] A theoretical stake is stated, not just an empirical gap or a timely topic
• [ ] The target conversation and the prior it could overturn are named
• [ ] You can say why it is HR and not OS / JMS / AMJ / WES / Organization
• [ ] At least one HR reader segment would find it non-obvious and important
• [ ] Process facts cited (length, review model, portal) trace to resources/official-source-map.md or are marked 待核实

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