Literature Positioning (hrm-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• The intro reviews "everything on the topic" instead of the specific HRM conversation the paper joins
• A reviewer asks "what do we now know that we didn't?" and the answer is fuzzy
• The paper could plausibly be read as a Personnel Psychology, JAP, or HRMJ paper
• You are citing the dependent-variable literature but not the HR-practice literature (or vice versa)
• The contribution is "first study in [country/sector]" with no theoretical or systemic advance

Position against the conversation, not the topic

HRM contributions are judged relative to a specific scholarly conversation — e.g., the HR–performance black box, HR-system strength and climate, the implementation gap, line-manager enactment, talent differentiation, HR and well-being, HR analytics. Identify the 2–4 anchor works that own your conversation and state precisely how your paper extends, qualifies, reconciles, or overturns them. Vague positioning ("little is known about X in Y") is a desk-screen risk because the EIC gates on fit and contribution before review.

The sibling map (this is where HRM papers get mis-positioned)