Gender Embodiment And Fluidity In Organization And Management

This third volume in the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series challenges us to think again about the implications of gender, embodiment and fluidity for organizing and managing. The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind / body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history, thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis; each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization as they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge has tended to privilege rather than problematize masculinity, fixity, control, normativity, violence and discrimination. The themes and authors (Acker, de Beauvoir, Halberstam, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kristeva, Yourcenar) covered in this book are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, acknowledging that lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice. Each Woman Writer is introduced and analyzed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

Discussions of feminism and gender in organizations and management studies, have, with some notable exceptions, become stuck in something of a time-warp. This lies in stark contrast to the developments in the fields of feminism and gender theory more generally. Management and organization studies needs new applied topical gender theories that challenge the limits on what can be said about working lives in organizations. Gender and the Organization: Women at Work in the 21st Century looks to update management organizational studies with the recent developments in gender theory, including theories of embodiment, affect, materiality, identity, subjectification, recognition, and the intertwining of political, social and the psyche. As well as looking backwards at existing feminist and gender theory, this exciting book also looks forward, developing an organizational feminist theory for the twenty-first century. Exploring what feminist ethics of an organization would look like, this volume shows what a revivified feminist organization studies could offer to gender theorists more generally. This book will be of interest not only to management and organization theorists, but also more generally to feminist and gender theorists working across the social sciences, arts and humanities. It will appeal to postgraduate and research students and also to established organization and management scholars working in business schools across the world.

Affect in Organization and Management asks how affect theory understands everyday working lives through embodied, social and political practice. Discussing a range of dimensions and perspectives on affect, the book considers how subjects are formed through their connections with others, both human and non- or more-than-human. The six women writers on affect presented in this series (Sara Ahmed, Kathleen Stewart, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad and Rosalyn Diprose) all speak to important themes in organization studies, including power, politics and ethics. Each chapter explores how these thinkers have already influenced organization scholars, as well as how their work can extend our understanding of pressing organizational issues around gender, race, the environment, leadership and ethics. Feminism is a core feature of this collection, highlighting feminist writing with affective, connected and intersubjective possibilities. Each woman writer is introduced by experts on affect and organization studies. The chapters also suggest further reading and accessible resources. The book is suitable for students, academics and practitioners in business and management, organization studies and critical management studies who want to think differently about organizations.

The purpose of this book is to reimagine the concept of culture, both as an analytical category and disciplinary practice of dominance, marginalization and exclusion. For decades culture has been perceived as a ‘hot topic’. It has been written about and deployed as part of ‘a search for excellence’; as a tool through which to categorise, rank, motivate and mould individuals; as a part of an attempt to align individual and corporate goals; as a driver of organizational change, and; as a servant of profit maximisation. The women writers presented in this book offer a different take on culture: they offer useful disruptions to mainstream conceptions of culture. Joanne Martin and Mary Douglas provide multi-dimensional holistic accounts of social relations that point up similarity and difference. Rather than offering totalising or prescriptive models, each author considers the complex, polyphonic and processual nature of culture(s) while challenging us to acknowledge and work with ambiguity, fluidity and disruption. In this spirit writings of Judi Marshall, Arlie Hochschild, Kathy Ferguson, Luce Irigaray and Donna Haraway are employed to disrupt extant management cultures that lionise the masculine and marginalise the concerns, perspectives and contributions of women and the diversity of women. These writers bring bodies, emotions, difference, resistance and politics back to the centre stage of organizational theory and practice. They open us up to the possibility of cultures suffused with multifarious potentiality rather than homogeneity and faux certainty. As such, they offer new ways of understanding and performing culture in management and organization. This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, and regular corporate scandals, there has been a growing concern with the moral and ethical foundations of business. Often these concerns are limited to narrow accounts of governance codes, regulatory procedures or behaviour incentives, which are often characterized by neoliberal bias underpinned by western masculine logics. This book challenges these limited accounts of ethics and responsibility. It looks at the writing of Gayatri C. Spivak who takes globally networked markets, people and ideas and provides tools to rethink subjectivity, ethics and corporate governance. Eschewing strict hierarchical notions of authority and identity, Spivak’s work invites us to consider who speaks for whom and for what in organizational contexts. Relationality is also to be found in the radical politics and feminist ethics of Judith Butler who continues to draw on and develop her account of performativity to interpret contemporary organizations, management and work. While popular accounts of corporate ethics often concern themselves with the aims and actions of those at the top of organizations, Lauren Berlant focuses on the struggles of those at the bottom of the new social structures created by contemporary forms of capital. Finally, the book also considers ecological challenges through the work of Val Plumwood, who spent a lifetime considering the threats and responsibilities we face in environmental terms, and developed a feminist ecological philosophy for understanding social and species differences. This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.

The Second Edition of The SAGE Handbook of Leadership provides not only an in-depth overview the current field of leadership studies, but also a map into the future debates, innovations and priorities of where the field will move to. Featuring all new chapters from a global community of leading and emerging scholars, each chapter offers a comprehensive, critical overview of an aspect of leadership, a discussion of key debates and research, and a review of the emerging issues in its area. Featuring an innovative structure divided by prepositions, this brand-new edition moves away from essentializing boundaries, and instead seeks to create synergies between different schools of leadership. A key feature of the second edition, is the attention to sensemaking (exploring the current themes, structures and ideas that comprise each topic) and sensebreaking (disrupting, critiquing and refreshing each topic). Suitable for students and researchers alike, this second edition is a critical site of reference for the study of leadership. PART 1: Between: Leadership as a Social, Socio-cognitive and Practical Phenomenon PART 2: About: Exploring the Individual and Interpersonal Facets of Leadership PART 3: Through: Leadership Seen Through Contemporary Frames PART 4: Within: Leadership as a Contextually Bound Phenomenon PART 5: But: A Critical Examination of Leadership

This work of reference represents a remarkably complete, detailed and extensive review of the field of gender, work and organization in the second decade of the 21st century. Its authors represent eight countries and many disciplines including management, sociology, political science, and gender studies. The chapters, by top scholars in their areas of expertise, offer both reviews and empirical findings, and insights and challenges for further work. The chapters are organized in five sections: Histories and Philosophies; Organizing Work and the Gendered Organization; Embodiment; Globalization; and Diversity. Theoretical and conceptual developments at the cutting edge of the field are explicated and illustrated by the handbook’s authors. Methods for conducting research into gender, work and organization are reviewed and assessed as well as illustrated in the work of several chapters. Efforts to produce greater gender equality in the workplace are covered in nearly every chapter, in terms of past successes and failures. Military organizations are presented as one of the difficult to change in regards to gender (with the result that women are marginalized in practice even when official policies and goals require their full inclusion). The role of the body/embodiment is emphasized in several chapters, with attention both to how organizations discipline bodies and how organizational members use their bodies to gain advantage. Particular attention is paid to sexuality in/and organizations, including sexual harassment, policies to alleviate bias, and the likelihood that future work will pay more attention to the body’s presence and role in work and organizations. Many chapters also address “change efforts” that have been employed by individuals, groups, and organizations, including transnational ones such as the European Union, the United Nations, and so on. In addition to its value for teachers and students within this field, it also offers insights that would be of value to policy makers and practitioners who need to reflect on the latest thinking relating to gender at work and in organizations.

In a neoliberal academia dominated by masculine ideals of measurement and performance, it is becoming more important than ever to develop alternative ways of researching and writing. This powerful new book gives voice to non-conforming narratives, suggesting innovative, messy and nuanced ways of organizing the reading and writing of scholarship in management and organization studies. In doing so it spotlights how different methods and approaches can represent voices of inequality and reveal previously silenced topics. Informed by feminist and critical perspectives, this will be an invaluable resource for current and future scholars in management and organization studies and other social sciences.