Introduction: Acker's description of the ideal worker as “unencumbered with caring responsibilities and ready to devote his life to his
job” (Acker, 2006a, p. 69) becomes haunting when considered in the context of a global health crisis. When, on a
global scale, human life became more vulnerable, care needs increased exponentially, and organizations demanded
intense effort in their clamor for survival. Acker's (1990, 1998) ideal worker concept has captured the intellectual
imagination of contributors to Gender, Work and Organization (GWO) for decades (Adkins, 2019; Pocock, 2005;
Pullen et al., 2019). In this Special Issue of GWO we apply the ideal worker concept to the context of the COVID-19
pandemic to expose how implicit ideals about who workers are and what workers do interact with unprecedented
organizational crisis management and other large-scale changes in practices and processes