Gendered Organizational Cultures: Narratives of Women Travellers in a Male World

The paper will present various self-identity narratives of women pioneers in male occupations who ‘take their place’ in a male gendered organizational culture. These narratives belong to a single discourse of what may be called ‘travellers in a male world’. This discourse presumes the existence of a territory marked out as male which is trespassed upon by females who are formally members of the same occupational community, but who, in actual practice, must stake out their positions in the field. Social structures coerce discourse positions and set up a series of expectations and social obligations, although several subject positions can be taken up for oneself, and for the ‘other’. This process has been labelled ‘positioning gender relations within an organizational culture’ and has been described as liminal work, performed discursively and in transitional spaces. Gender relations can therefore be viewed as cultural performances learned and enacted on appropriate occasions both by men and women.     

Why Postmodern Theory may be a Problematic Basis for Therapeutic Practice: A Feminist Perspective

Both poststructural and social constructionist thinking are imbued with a masculine bias. First, I demonstrate that Foucault's theory of power and knowledge fails to take into account the female experience of power and the gendered nature of knowledge production. With the support of psychoanalytic theory I also claim that Foucault's theory of the ‘social’, ‘discursive’ production of ‘selves’ omits the contribution of the prelinguistic but no less ‘social’ mother–infant relationship, and in so doing obscures the prelinguistic foundations of emotionality. This poststructural reduction of ‘selves’ to, and subsequent subsuming of emotionality within, the instance of ‘language’, ‘discourse’ or ‘narrative’, is, I claim, replicated in the social constructionist thinking of Gergen and Bruner. Finally, I consider some of the consequences of a therapeutic practice which has its foundations in these two interrelated bodies of thought, suggesting, from a feminist perspective, that a major shortcoming of this narrative practice is its failure to attend to emotionality.     

Gender,Equality and the Culture of Organizational Assessment

In spite of years of equal opportunities legislation and guidelines, a marked gender imbalance at the apex of organizational career structures persists (Carrier 1995). The predominant liberal model of equal opportunities (EO) seeks to alleviate sex-discrimination through advocating gender-neutral or ‘same’ treatment (Meehan and Sevenhuisjen 1991; Gatens 1991; Bock and James 1992). However, the present study suggests that ostensibly gender-neutral organizational practices may exclude characteristics, values and concerns more typically associated with women. This paper draws on a study of gender in selection to corporate management and raises questions about whether and how characteristics, values, goals and concerns which have been perceived as ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ may be excluded from ostensibly gender-neutral equality practices. Findings suggest that EO theory and practice need to move beyond limited either/or debates around ‘equality’ and ‘difference’. In order to do so, it may also be necessary to challenge dichotomous thinking about gender which currently informs much of that debate. In order to facilitate the development and progress of women in organizations it is not enough for EO initiatives to treat gender as a category of difference that can be overcome through superficial changes, for example in interview procedures, which merely seek to exclude issues perceived as gendered. Instead, a longer agenda for equality must move beyond the debate about women’s ‘sameness’ or ‘difference’ from men to include a deeper understanding of the gendered nature of organizational positions, structures and practices.     

‘A Blinding Lack of Progress’: Management Rhetoric and Affirmative Action

In this study we explore how versions of organizational reality and gender are constructed in management discourse and whether such patterns change over time. Specifically, we examine management explanations and accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations through their commentaries on their affirmative action programmes. In Australia private sector organizations with 100 or more employees are required to report to government on their affirmative action programmes for women. In these documents, management representatives outline objectives for the coming year and report on their progress in reducing employment‐related barriers for women. In doing so they account for the ‘problem’ of gender‐based discrimination that affirmative action is designed to address, justify their actions (or lack of action) and reproduce versions of gendered identity. Thus we use affirmative action reporting as cases of management rhetoric to explore how aspects of gender and organization are constructed, taken for granted, challenged or problematized. Comparing reports from the hospitality sector over a 14‐year period, we explore whether there is any evidence of discursive change in management accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations.     

Managerial discourse and the restructuring of a district authority

This paper arises out of continuing debates on the class position of managers and professionals in the context of public sector restructuring. Recently, attention has been focused on the self-sustaining and autonomous character of ‘professionalism’ in organisational dynamics. Such an approach underplays the cultural significance of managerial discourse as this is active in the reconstitution of professional work. In a case study of a district authority it is possible to highlight the complex nature of managerial discourse in its relations to both central and local government. This relation is above all mediated by shifting conceptions of public service on the part of managers and those in non-managerial positions. The paper concludes that due to the structural constraints under which local authorities operate directly managerial discourse is becoming increasingly significant in the reconstitution of professional and semi-professional identities.     

Naming Men as Men: Implications for Work,Organization and Management

This paper seeks to contribute to the growing interest in naming men as men as part of a critical analysis of gendered power relations in organizations. The paper highlights the way in which men and masculinities are frequently central to organizational analysis, yet rarely the focus of interrogation. They remain taken for granted and hidden. Examining recent studies that contribute to a critical analysis of gendered power relations, we consider the growing interest in multiplicity, diversity and difference. In particular, we explore the issue of ‘multiple masculinities’ as well as some of the conceptual difficulties that surround it. Arguing for an approach which addresses the unities, differences and interrelations between men and masculinities, we suggest that critical studies of gendered power need to examine the management of organizations in much more detail. Highlighting five masculinities that seem to be routinely embedded in managerial discourses and practices, we conclude by advocating further research in this previously neglected area.     

Re-casting shakespeare: gendered performances and performativity of leadership

The executive development courses offered jointly by the Praxis Centre of Cranfield University's School of Management and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in the summer of 1999 and 2000 were the impulse for this article. I respond to the gendered implications of re-presenting and performing Shakespearean roles as a training guide to leadership and business success. My critical analysis adapts Lyotard's (1984) market performativity and Butler's (1990) gender performativity to pose the promise and perils of performing leadership roles based on Shakespeare's characters. This paper re-presents a performative instance of resistance to the dominant masculine metaphors that management education draws out of Shakespeare. I interrupt the play and re-cast the organizational leader and performance consultant as a moral agent who performs the service discourse of the feminine-in-management based on ‘the Other’ in Shakespeare.     

Going Against the Historical Grain: Perspectives on Gendered Occupational Identity and Resistance to the Breakdown of Occupational Segregation in Two Manufacturing Firms

This article discusses a process of restructuring of working practices within two manufacturing firms with respect to its implications for gendered occupational segregation. A contextualized, historically situated analysis is presented, which is cast within debates on the nature of gendered occupational identity, equality initiatives and arenas of power and influence for women and men, within what were traditionally male‐dominated organizational contexts. Such an analysis serves to highlight the significance of the new restructuring in sweeping away 150 years of practice and embedded ‘ways of doing things’ and offers explanations for the actions of contemporary men and women in opposing what were seen by management and the trade union as emancipatory changes.     

Broadening the Intersectional Path: Revealing Organizational Practices through ‘Working Mothers’ Narratives about Time

This article is concerned with the complex inequality experienced by mothers in employment, and applies ‘strong intersectionality’ to women's narratives about time to reveal the intersecting inequalities women experience and gendered organizational practices. Drawing on empirical research with 30 Irish ‘working mothers’, this article explores the way time is ordered and managed to create gendered inequalities for women at the intersection of maternity with paid work. By conceptualizing gender, maternity and class as simultaneous processes of identity practice, institutional practice and social practice, following Holvino, women's narratives reveal that organizations manage and order time to fit with notions of ‘ideal workers’, which perpetrate older hierarchies and gendered inequalities, and which create regimes of inequality for women at the intersection of maternity with paid work.     

The missing and needed male nurse: Discursive hybridization in professional nursing texts

The role of men in nursing has been of ongoing interest to gender and work scholars who examine the processes that maintain or challenge occupational gender segregation. Drawing on professional nursing texts, the current study moves beyond individual men to investigate organizational practices within nursing that discursively construct the male nurse. Using the rhetoric of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’, texts frame men in nursing as a missing and needed antidote to projected worker shortages and a homogenous workforce. Taking a critical lens to these arguments, analysis of professional discourse reveals an appropriated disenfranchisement that masks men's gendered privilege. Professional leaders frame men in nursing as equivalent to women in traditionally male occupations with little attention to the ways in which US men, particularly white and heterosexual men, are advantaged currently and historically. The findings trace a process of discursive hybridization through which organizational leaders appropriate rhetoric from historically disenfranchised groups to benefit predominantly white, middle‐class men.     

Gendering the Eye of the Norm: Exploring Gendered Concertive Control Processes in Two Self‐Managing Teams

This article is the result of an ethnographic research project exploring the workplace interactions of two self‐managed teams of recruitment consultants. I use data from participant observation and recorded interviews to show the gendered nature of what Barker terms concertive control: the social processes by which team members regulate each others' conduct in line with negotiated team values. My analysis examines how team members negotiate core team values, translate these into specific actions and regulate these actions through concertive control interactions. I then set out three ways in which gender acts as a resource for these concertive control processes. These are: team members' assumptions about men's and women's relative skills and capacities, the ‘tough’ masculinity of the haulage industry in which one of the teams operates and the regulation of performances of heterosexuality during customer interactions. Building on research by others, I show gender to be not only embedded in the values and managerial style associated with teamwork but also integrated into the collaborative process of team‐working itself. I emphasize that social categories like gender become resources in the regulation of conduct at work and can reify hierarchies even in so‐called participative practices like self‐managed teamwork.     

The cosmopolitan organization — an essay on corporate accountability

Abstract Transnational corporations increasingly seek to present a vision of social responsibility alongside the business vision. This reflects greater awareness of ‘the world as one single place’, of global risk scenarios, and the politics of doing business. There are also demands for greater transparency and accountability in corporate actions by state representatives, grassroots movements and organized consumers. Transnational corporations now aim to be socially responsible and to engage in ‘corporate citizenship’ by adhering to voluntary codes of conduct, social accountability standards, etc. This discourse of corporate accountability is part of a discourse of globality, or ‘globe talk’, a vital component of contemporary world culture, largely produced, diffused, and sustained by organizations with expansive ambitions of regulating global business; transnational corporations, business associations, international organizations, NGOs and INGOs. Awareness of the global nature of trade and capitalism, the associated risk scenarios, and the attempts at approaching something like a humane globalization by the setting up of ethics standards and codes of conduct, may be understood as a particular case of ‘worldism’. This ‘worldism’ is foundational, with universalizing and homogenizing claims. ‘Corporate citizenship’ and ‘accountability’ are therefore treated as a form of organizational culture that involves a particular kind of moral cosmopolitanism.     

‘Taking it Like a Man’: Masculinity,Subjection and Resistance in the Selling of Life Assurance

This article examines the operation of mechanisms of control and modes of resistance within work organizations and interrogates the role of subjectivity in such mechanisms. Specifically, I mean to examine how forms of resistance are influenced by the masculine ‘mystique’ ( Collinson, 1988 ) of given occupations, focusing on that which pervades the field of Sales. Theoretically, the work of Foucault on ‘the self’ is adopeted (1985, 1986) to examine how control at work is attempted and occasionally effected through the construction of a specifically gendered identity of ‘the salesman’. With material from an 18‐month study of a UK life assurance institution, Lifelong Assurance ( Hodgson, 2000 ), I describe the operation of a bureaucratic technology of surveillance within the Sales division. In particular, I focus on the way in which employees’ responses to this system were structured by the specific masculine identities promoted and reproduced within sales, centring on an ideal of autonomy and self‐reliance. While the masculine discourse of autonomy frequently resulted in resistance to technocratic systems of surveillance, it was also clear that such discourses left employees isolated and vulnerable to more profound mechanisms of control through their engineered dependence upon their managers for security and the affirmation of their identity.     

Giving Meaning to Sport Involvement in Managerial Work

I use a discursive analytical approach to explore ways in which senior managerial men working in nonprofit organizations understand the contribution, if any, of their own sport history to their work skills, how this may vary by organizational contexts and how the subtexts of these discourses may strengthen the dominance of managerial men in a specific context. I used semi‐structured interviews to ask 67 senior managerial men about the role they perceive their sport history plays in their managerial skills. Two overlapping topics emerged from the data: team and leadership skills and perseverance and toughness. I explore the meaning these topics had for the managers and the possible gendered subtexts of these meanings. The findings are situated in the critical feminist management and sport literature.     

‘Pure milk’: dairy production and the discourse of purity in Mongolia

In this article I explore some of the ways in which consumer discourse related to factory-produced tarag (drinkable yogurt) reflects concerns about food safety and cultural identity in Mongolia. Providing examples of how Mongolian industrial dairy producers position products made from imported milk powder as ‘local’, ‘pure’, and ‘natural’, I contrast consumers’ views of ‘artificial’ or ‘poisonous’ milk from Inner Mongolia (China), uncertainty over the nature of Mongolian milk products, and the increasing terminological confusion brought about by dairy process standardization. This paper draws on an analysis of comments posted to Mongolian-language online news sites, in response to rumours that ‘Goyo Tarag’ – a popular yogurt beverage manufactured by Orgil Foods – might in fact be Chinese in origin.     

The ‘Feminine Advantage’: A Discursive Analysis of the Invisibility of Older Women Workers

This article discusses the overlap of gender and age identity and its implications in a specific political context — a public inquiry into the problems facing the older unemployed. Using discourse analysis, it examines how ‘older worker’ identity is socially constructed in this setting. At the beginning of the inquiry, fundamentally gendered versions of ‘older worker’ identity were initially constructed, yet by its conclusion, female versions had disappeared. The analysis shows that this ‘invisibility’ of female ‘older worker’ identity is the outcome of a central discursive struggle for recognition of older male workers as a disadvantaged group in the labour market. This ‘disadvantaged’ status is achieved by constructing a companion version of ‘feminine advantage’ in the search for employment. The article discusses the complexity of discursive processes through which this invisibility is accomplished and its implications for those targeted by female and male older worker identity.     

‘Girls Who Do Boys Like They're Girls’? Exploring the Role of Gender in the Junior Management of Contemporary Service Work

This article attempts to explain the clustering of women managers at junior managerial grades in the service sector by focusing on the structuring and organization of work in a call centre. The article is based on an ethnography of an organization and seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate in gender research by exploring and documenting the requirement for the enactment of masculinities at work for successful managers. Central to our account is the role of team leader which, as a junior management position, occupies a key role in understanding and accounting for the gendered hierarchical terrain of contemporary service‐based organizations. In exploring the role of team leader, a position that tends overwhelmingly to be held by female staff, we draw attention to the perception of the gendered nature of the role by subordinate members of the organization, the team‐leaders themselves and more senior managers. The position is also brought into sharp relief in comparison with the subordinate role of the ‘problem manager’, a position overwhelmingly held by men.     

Evidence‐loving rock star chief medical officers: Female leadership amidst COVID‐19 in Canada

This article presents a feminist poststructuralist inquiry perspective on how news and social media discourse around the COVID‐19 pandemic is presenting a potential shift in hegemonic representations of masculine leadership. I am informed by organizational rules and sensemaking theories, and consider how Canadian and international female leaders are showing resilience, emotion and vulnerability as they help lead their countries through these uncertain times. I reflexively ground my observations in my own sensemaking and personal experiences. Despite reservations, I am hopeful. There are indications that the ‘rules of the game’ are starting to be challenged, and feminine frameworks that question traditional gender roles are disrupting conceptions around ‘business as usual’.     

Leadership,Gender and Sense‐making

This article examines the nature of sense‐making processes in teams and considers the extent to which leadership as a sense‐making process is impacted by gender. We conducted an in‐depth inquiry into the decision‐making behaviour of two single‐gender teams and a third, mixed gender team, as they worked together to produce gender‐specific leadership schema in an experimental setting. Our research question was, ‘To what extent is leadership as a sense‐making process impacted by gender?’ The article reports on the design, conduct and outcomes of this research project. We found that using a meeting as part of the research method created a specific instance of a gendered organizational context exerting a dominant and directive influence on individual and collective behaviour. The current trend toward team‐based leadership is likely to involve more meetings with increasing numbers of women in senior positions. This suggests to us that men and women need to be alert to the possibility that the gendered nature of meetings may be acting as a barrier to the expression of feminine forms of leadership.