The ‘Feminization’ of Management? Issues of ‘Sameness’ and ‘Difference’ in the Roles and Experiences of Female and Male Retail Managers

Explanations of women’s poor representation in senior management usually emphasize differences between women and men managers’ experiences, circumstances and aspirations, and the gendered character of organizational structures and processes. Whilst these may all disadvantage women, some writers have suggested recently that women managers may differ in style and orientation in ways particularly appropriate for today’s developing organizations. This paper explores issues of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ between women and men managers in retailing. Whilst both male and female store managers wanted to downplay gender differences and adopt a ‘gender neutral’ approach, they also associated a number of advantages and disadvantages with being a woman manager in certain contexts. Rapid sectoral change had caused companies to reassess the desired attributes and competences of managers; associated both with an enhanced valuing of ‘feminine’ qualities and with a more ‘objective’ and ‘clinical’ approach to assessment. Despite their equal numbers at entry points women remained poorly represented at senior levels, suggesting that subjective and informal processes were important determinants of women and men’s progress. Given management is inherently a process enacted by individual managers within a social context the extent to which it can be conceived in gender neutral terms is questioned since individuals are inevitably discussed and identified in terms of their gender.     

‘Next Steps’ for Equality?: The Impact of Organizational Change on Opportunities for Women in the Civil Service

The ‘Next Steps’ restructuring programme (1988) has had a fundamental impact on the management and organization of the Civil Service, and on the practice of equal opportunities. The fragmentation of the service into semi-autonomous agencies has resulted in greater managerial autonomy in relation to staffing issues. Equality initiatives such as part-time and flexible working patterns, ‘family friendly’ policies, women-only training programmes and the provision of nurseries are coming under threat due to increased discretion over decision-making in these areas. Other aspects of restructuring — such as ‘downsizing’— have resulted in a reduction of the middle management layer, making it more difficult for women to breach the ‘glass ceiling’ and access senior posts. The persistence of a hostile managerial sub-culture to equal opportunities has been instrumental in pushing equality issues to the bottom of the agenda in the current climate of change because of ‘more important’ organizational pressures. Within this context, equality of opportunity for women in the Civil Service has reached a critical stage.     

Woman as Manager: A Seductive Ontology

Much of the women in management literature has, quite rightly, problematized women's relationship to dominant masculinist organizational practices and cultures, these debates being underpinned by extensive data revealing women's extreme numerical marginalization at senior management level across both public and private sectors. One such site where women have long been under‐represented is education management. Recent research, however, indicates some significant shifts in this regard, specifically in the UK further education sector where the number of women principals has increased sixfold in the past six years. In one sense then, equal opportunity as a political objective might be seen as ‘working’ in one public sector site, with education management no longer a ‘gender exclusive zone’. Drawing on poststructuralist understandings of identity, this article examines this phenomenon with respect to the seductive aspects of management and the issues of ontological security which surround women and men's investment in ‘frantic organizational cultures’. The article discusses some of the tensions, ambiguities and opportunities which might exist for many women managers as they ontologically invest in the ‘secure systems’ of a masculinist organizational culture.     

Changing Equality Cultures to Move Beyond ‘Women’s Problems’

Conventional equality measures have made a limited impact on women’s position in the workforce. This is not simply the result of measures being inadequately pursued. Instead, this paper argues, there is a more fundamental difficulty with the policy approach: that it focuses on women as having problems which need to be redressed rather than on changing organizations. As a result women are seen as inadequate and men become resentful of the ‘special treatment’ that follows. Changing these perceptions requires cultural change which cannot be achieved via conventional personnel-based equality initiatives. Many organizations are looking for new ways to present and pursue equality programmes such as a stress on providing a ‘business case’ or through a consideration of the value of workforce diversity. The paper assesses the ability of these initiatives to change the culture for equality. It argues that many organizations are merely pursuing a defensive approach which centres on language change and modified initiatives rather than new approaches to winning consent. In contrast it argues that culture change will only be achieved through a more pro-active approach. Various initiatives such as skills audits and training for men are discussed which indicate what can be done in practice.     

Gender and Sexuality in Discourses of Managerial Control: The Case of Women Miners

Mining scholarship has focused chiefly on capital developments, labour relations, changing technology, and global markets, ignoring the equally critical aspects of gendered organizations and their role in shaping the subjectivities of workers and managers. This article probes how gender and sexuality organize a mine site through organizational design and productivity management. It looks behind the rhetoric of equal opportunity, glamour mining and human resource techniques to explore the sexual politics of employing women as miners. In particular it scrutinizes the discourses of masculinity that produce ‘the woman miner’ in a context where the barriers between work and personal life are particularly mobile and highly contested. Equally crucially, it recounts some of the ways in which women have mobilized against systemic male dominance and privilege. The workplace in question is the world’s largest gem mine of its kind, a state–of–the–art computerized operation set in the remote Australian outback.     

Play the white man: the social construction of fairness and competition in equal opportunity policies

This paper discusses the impact of equal opportunity projects on women's employment in two public sector organisations. It examines the limitations of the emerging liberal model and assesses the likely effectiveness of alternative approaches. An Affirmative Action Program in a North American university was examined five years after its initiation. Despite standardised procedures for access to jobs and systematic monitoring, there was very little change in the degree of occupational segregation between men and women. A women's committee project in a UK university examined the present situations of women staff, with the aim of producing a strategy for change which would benefit women currently employed. This resulted in the identification of training provision, flexible working arrangements and the restructuring of job requirements as the central aspects of an alternative approach to equal opportunity policy. It is argued that, particularly in a recessionary economic climate, policies requiring employers to rethink job requirements in ways that do not exclude competent women should provide a more effective challenge to occupational segregation than liberal policies which concentrate on assessing the ‘suitability’ of individual job applicants in terms of conventional criteria.     

Emerging Systemic-Structural Threats to Workforce Diversity: Beyond Inadequate Agency

Abstract

Certain equal employment opportunity and workforce diversity gains may be constrained or reversed unexpectedly in the coming years by long-standing systemic, structural forces, which are beyond the control even of employers who may diligently promote such social change opportunities for women and minorities. Such economic and social forces have independently advanced other important agendas, but now are predicted to interact to create a ‘perfect calm’ of diversity management opportunities. Propositions for examination, as well as research suggestions and implications for managers, policy makers, and affected parties, are suggested.     

Air canada vs. canadi>n: competition and merger in the framing of airline culture ∗

This paper is concerned with airlines, metaphors and organizational cultures. Specifically the paper seeks to answer the question, ‘why, when so many political and economic commentators are agreed that Canada has only room for one viable airline, has it proven impossible to merge the country's two main commercial airlines?’ To answer the question we draw upon Jenkin's (1994) critical historiographic approach, focusing on the development of the organizational cultures and associated discourses of each airline over time. In the process the paper traces the metaphorical use of the concept of competition in the development of the commercial airline business in Canada. We conclude that the culture of an organization may not, of itself, be enough to explain certain organizational outcomes (e.g., a failure to form a merger or alliance) - particularly organizations that are, in large part, dependent on broad policy concerns, but that broader social discourses (e.g., government policy), mediated by specific organizational cultures, may be the major influence.     

‘Family Friendly’ Employment Policies: A Route to Changing Organizational Culture or Playing About at the Margins?

Formal ‘family friendly’ policies, including flexible or reduced hours of work and periods of leave, designed to help employees to balance work and family demands have the potential to challenge traditional models of work and organizational values. However, while these policies can reduce stress for individual employees, it is argued that there is less evidence of widespread organizational culture change. This paper draws on case studies of organizations at various stages of developing ‘family friendly’ policies to identify two barriers to fundamental shifts in organizational culture; low sense of entitlement to consideration of family needs, and organizational discourses of time as representing productivity, commitment and value. Some conditions under which broader culture change may be achieved are explored.     

Pushed or Pulled? Women's Entry into Self‐Employment and Small Business Ownership

Over the past two decades the economies of Canada and many other industrialized countries have seen significant restructuring, bringing with it steadily rising levels of self‐employment and small business ownership. Women have been at the forefront of this change. Of the many questions raised by women's entrance into self‐employment, a central one concerns the factors fuelling its growth. While some argue that women have been pulled into self‐employment by the promise of independence, flexibility and the opportunity to escape barriers in paid employment, others argue that women have been pushed into it as restructuring and downsizing has eroded the availability of once secure jobs in the public and private sector. To date, existing research on the ‘push–pull’ debate has not fully answered; these questions, with survey and labour force data suggesting only general and sometimes contradictory, trends. This article examines this issue in greater detail, drawing on in‐depth interviews with 61 self‐employed women in Canada. Overall their experiences shed further light on the expansion of women's self‐employment in the 1990s, suggesting push factors have been underestimated and challenging the current contours of the ‘push–pull’ debate.     

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.     

The Crafting of Community: Recoupling Discourses of Management and Womanhood

The construction of organizations around images of masculinity makes the position of ‘women managers’ a problematic one which calls for ‘remedial work’ (Gherardi 1995). Women managers have sought to reconcile their dualistic positions by deploying various individual and collective coping strategies typically articulated within the boundaries of their organizations. In contrast, we research a group of senior women from a British city in the Midlands who attempt to renegotiate their conflicting identities as ‘female’ and ‘senior managers’ by creating a collective forum outside their organizations. Through the construction of a ‘learning set’, they created a space where members could explore their terms of participation, as women and as managers, in their respective work organizations and in the local community. This space was articulated implicitly and explicitly around values typically associated with ‘community’ (e.g. sharing, support, trust, loyalty), a controversial concept in feminist politics. The article documents the (fragile and contested) processes by which these women mobilize the imagery of community in order to create a safe space where ‘remedial work’ could be performed. The conclusion stresses the ambivalent effects of the learning set in both reproducing and transgressing gendered positions.     

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.     

Building Strategies: Equal Opportunity in the Construction Industry

The building industry, as one of the last male bastions, has seen a significant degree of resistance to concepts such as ‘gender equity’ and ‘affirmative action’ and resentment at what is seen as the ‘big brother’ approach of the government's ‘social justice’ agenda. There is a widespread misinterpretation of ‘equal opportunity’, with men either taking the stand that women are not equal physically or that if they want equal opportunity they must demonstrate that they can do everything in the very same way that a man does on the building site. Recent work suggests that organizations which are proactive on equality issues have usually extended the equal treatment model to incorporate difference initiatives such as mentoring, fast-tracking into promotion positions or going out of their way to recruit from minority groups. It is argued here that, in an area such as the building industry, it is crucial to combine both strategies if the issue of women's disadvantage is to be adequately addressed. This paper explores girls' experience of entry-level and trade training, the attitudes of male workers and contractors to female apprentices, and the issue of support from teachers, vocational guidance officers and parents. Queensland has been chosen as the site for this study because, after a long period of conservative rule, it had become the most ‘backward’ of all the Australian states in matters of gender equality. The advent of the Goss Labour Government (1989–96) provided opportunities both to ‘catch up’ and to learn from the limitations of earlier equal opportunity initiatives.     

Childlessness and Women Managers: ‘Choice’, Context and Discourses

Childlessness is increasing and might reflect acceptance of diversity, scope for individual choice and a creative ‘social imaginary’ about being feminine without being a mother. Childlessness also appears to have a contextual manifestation arising from the recognition that the long‐hours work culture in many organizations does not support appropriate parenting. A qualitative study of Australian managers reveals the contradictory discourses of childlessness around enlightened equality, maternalism, an elusive, ideal ‘work–life balance’ and individualism. The article explores a contextually nuanced, dynamic, generative theory of agency which does not hinge on the mother–child dyad, in explaining women managers’ choices to remain childless.     

Gendered,Invisible Work in Non‐profit Social Service Organizations: Implications for Worker Health and Safety

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) play an important role in the provision of health and social services. In Canada the nonprofit sector includes 7.5 million volunteers and employs over 1.6 million paid workers. The sector is overwhelmingly female‐dominated — women make up over 80 per cent of workers in these nonprofit services. Work performed by women has traditionally been undervalued and invisible. It has often been considered safe by researchers, employers, policymakers and sometimes even workers themselves. Although there is some indication that jobs in the restructuring social services sector can be characterized by constant demand, high stress and violence, research into the working conditions and health hazards of these types of jobs has not been a priority. Using data from a qualitative study examining work in NPOs, we trace the ways that work performed in these workplaces is both gendered and invisible. We identify three types of invisible labour. ‘Background work’ facilitates and supports more visible and recognized organizational activities. Certain organizational language obscures the full spectrum of work that takes place in the organizations and the risks it may involve. ‘Empathy work’ includes the relationship building, counselling and crisis intervention that comprise key components of social service delivery. ‘Emotional labour’ involves the management of client emotions and workers' own emotions in the process of working with clients and delivering care under conditions of scarcity and contraction. The invisibility of these activities means that much of the day‐to‐day work done in the organizations, while particularly important in the context of social service restructuring, is taken‐for‐granted and undervalued by organizational outsiders. As a result, many of the hazards present in the jobs are hidden from view and workers' health may be compromised. We argue that the invisibility and taken‐for‐grantedness of certain types of work in NPOs is reflected in, and constitutive of, particular exclusions and shortcomings of current occupational health and safety systems designed to protect the health of workers.     

Translating Inclusion into Influence in New Zealand: The Conundrum of Engaging Gender Organizations in Public Policy

ABSTRACT

Women’s and gender organizations in New Zealand, like the rest of the community sector, capitalized on opportunities to engage with government as part of an inclusive turn in policymaking in the last decade. For the local women’s movement, inclusion offered the promise of strategic policy involvement at a time when the women’s movement was in “abeyance.” While governmental rhetoric emphasizes trusting and open relationships, the reality of engagement for organizations is complex, and the lasting influence they have on policy processes and outcomes is questionable. This article, based on the qualitative empirical analyses of interviews with over 30 representatives of community organizations, activists, scholars, and policymakers, identifies the opportunity structures of influence in the inclusive policy relationship. Emergent themes from the interviews showed that influence was tied to three key characteristics: fiscal autonomy, organizational legitimacy, and discursive alignment with the state’s discourses. Overall, the analysis points to new opportunities of influence created by the inclusive agenda, yet they are strained by the need to maintain ongoing collaborative relationships between the women’s sector and the state.     

From Organizational Sexuality to Queer Organizations: Research on Homosexuality and the Workplace

Organization scholars historically ignored the crucial importance of sexuality in the workplace. But in the last 20 years, scholars influenced by the ‘sexuality in organizations’ perspective have documented the ways that the management and deployment of workers’ sexuality are key elements in organizational life. While most of these studies have documented persistent privileging of heterosexuality in work organizations, a recent trend is to investigate a new organizational form: the gay‐friendly workplace. We review legal and policy changes in US workplaces that have made them more accepting of gay and lesbian employees. Then we examine ethnographic studies of gay‐friendly organizations. Although they are certainly an advance over previous homophobic workplaces, the literature suggests that they may reproduce inequalities of race, class, and gender. Few studies have investigated ‘queer organizations’, which we identify as a rich area for future scholarship.     

Leaning Out: Exploring Organizational Advocacy Activities From an Open Systems Perspective

This article explores the effect of organizational culture on engagement with advocacy activities, both traditional and electronic. The Competing Values Framework offers a model for understanding how organizations’ culture influences behavior. Using a sample of nonprofit providers from across the country, the author hypothesized that organizations that use electronic advocacy tools are more involved with advocacy activities of all types. A paper and pencil survey was used to collect data on organizational culture, advocacy tools and techniques, perceived effectiveness of the advocacy tools, policy goals, organizational sustainability goals as well as barriers and facilitators of electronic advocacy. The study used path modeling to describe the connections between organizational culture and engagement in advocacy activities. The article examines the barriers and facilitators of electronic advocacy, the penetration of electronic advocacy use in this sample of agencies and the perceptions of effectiveness associated with using these strategies; lastly, the implications of these findings for managers and organizational leaders are discussed.     

Studying the Gendering of Organizational Culture Over Time: Concerns,Issues and Strategies

Beginning with the premise that ‘organizational culture’ is a useful heuristic for the study of gender at work, this article focuses on the problem of studying the culture of organizations over time, setting out to demonstrate how the social construction of corporate history has, until now, lent itself to gendered notions of business practices. Arguing that history itself is but one of a series of discourses about the world, the article outlines a feminist strategy for the study of organizational culture over time that includes: (i) feminist historiography as history written from a feminist point of view; (ii) a commitment to the notion of history as discourse rooted in the present; (iii) a view of women’s rights development as a paradoxical process of progress and regress; (iv) a gender focus approach that studies the impact of discrimination on the social construction of masculinity/femininity and sexual preference; and (v) an approach that is sensitive to the contextualization of gender. British Airways is used as a case study to illustrate some of the problems of historic re/construction and feminist historiography.