Change In The Feminine : Women In Change 9781845448400, 9781845448394

Citation preview

jocm cover (i).qxd

28/10/2005

12:42

Page 1

ISBN 1-84544-839-1

ISSN 0953-4814

Volume 18 Number 6 2005

Journal of

Organizational Change Management Change in the feminine: women in change Guest Editor: Alison Linstead

www.emeraldinsight.com

Journal of

ISSN 0953-4814

Organizational Change Management

Volume 18 Number 6 2005

Change in the feminine: women in change Guest Editor Alison Linstead

Access this journal online __________________________ 535 Editorial advisory board ___________________________ 536 Guest editorial ____________________________________ 537 REVIEW PIECE Gender in change: gendering change Stephen Linstead, Joanna Brewis and Alison Linstead__________________

542

Women in change management: Simone De Beauvoir and the co-optation of women’s Otherness Melissa Tyler___________________________________________________

561

Marks and Spencer– waiting for the warrior: a case examination of the gendered nature of change management Ann Rippin ____________________________________________________

Access this journal electronically The current and past volumes of this journal are available at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm You can also search more than 100 additional Emerald journals in Emerald Fulltext (www.emeraldinsight.com/ft) and Emerald Management Xtra (www.emeraldinsight.com/emx) See page following contents for full details of what your access includes.

578

CONTENTS

CONTENTS continued

New meanings for entrepreneurs: from risk-taking heroes to safe-seeking professionals Ulla Hytti______________________________________________________

594

Men working differently: accessing their inner-feminine Sallyanne Miller ________________________________________________

612

Shifting forms of masculinity in changing organizations: the role of testicularity Lynne F. Baxter and Alasdair MacLeod _____________________________

627

Woman in the ivory tower: gendering feminised and masculinised identities Joan Eveline ___________________________________________________

641

The 1st Annual Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards 2005 ____________________________ 659 Note from the publisher ____________________________ 660 Call for papers ____________________________________ 662

www.emeraldinsight.com/jocm.htm As a subscriber to this journal, you can benefit from instant, electronic access to this title via Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Xtra. Your access includes a variety of features that increase the value of your journal subscription.

Additional complimentary services available

How to access this journal electronically

E-mail alert services These services allow you to be kept up to date with the latest additions to the journal via e-mail, as soon as new material enters the database. Further information about the services available can be found at www.emeraldinsight.com/alerts

To benefit from electronic access to this journal you first need to register via the internet. Registration is simple and full instructions are available online at www.emeraldinsight.com/admin Once registration is completed, your institution will have instant access to all articles through the journal’s Table of Contents page at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm More information about the journal is also available at www.emeraldinsight.com/ jocm.htm Our liberal institution-wide licence allows everyone within your institution to access your journal electronically, making your subscription more cost-effective. Our web site has been designed to provide you with a comprehensive, simple system that needs only minimum administration. Access is available via IP authentication or username and password.

Key features of Emerald electronic journals Automatic permission to make up to 25 copies of individual articles This facility can be used for training purposes, course notes, seminars etc. This only applies to articles of which Emerald owns copyright. For further details visit www.emeraldinsight.com/ copyright Online publishing and archiving As well as current volumes of the journal, you can also gain access to past volumes on the internet via Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Xtra. You can browse or search these databases for relevant articles. Key readings This feature provides abstracts of related articles chosen by the journal editor, selected to provide readers with current awareness of interesting articles from other publications in the field. Reference linking Direct links from the journal article references to abstracts of the most influential articles cited. Where possible, this link is to the full text of the article. E-mail an article Allows users to e-mail links to relevant and interesting articles to another computer for later use, reference or printing purposes. Emerald structured abstracts New for 2005, Emerald structured abstracts provide consistent, clear and informative summaries of the content of the articles, allowing faster evaluation of papers.

Your access includes a variety of features that add to the functionality and value of your journal subscription:

Connections An online meeting place for the research community where researchers present their own work and interests and seek other researchers for future projects. Register yourself or search our database of researchers at www.emeraldinsight.com/info/ researchers/Connections User services Comprehensive librarian and user toolkits have been created to help you get the most from your journal subscription. For further information about what is available visit www.emeraldinsight.com/usagetoolkit

Choice of access Electronic access to this journal is available via a number of channels. Our web site www.emeraldinsight.com is the recommended means of electronic access, as it provides fully searchable and value added access to the complete content of the journal. However, you can also access and search the article content of this journal through the following journal delivery services: EBSCOHost Electronic Journals Service ejournals.ebsco.com Informatics J-Gate www.j-gate.informindia.co.in Ingenta www.ingenta.com Minerva Electronic Online Services www.minerva.at OCLC FirstSearch www.oclc.org/firstsearch SilverLinker www.ovid.com SwetsWise www.swetswise.com

Emerald Customer Support For customer support and technical help contact: E-mail [email protected] Web www.emeraldinsight.com/customercharter Tel +44 (0) 1274 785278 Fax +44 (0) 1274 785204

JOCM 18,6

536

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 p. 536 # Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD James Barker HQ USAFA/DFM Colorado Springs, USA David Barry University of Auckland, New Zealand Jean Bartunek Boston College, USA Dominique Besson IAE de Lille, France Steven Best University of Texas-El Paso, USA Michael Bokeno Murray State University, Kentucky, USA Mary Boyce University of Redlands, USA Warner Burke Columbia University, USA Adrian Carr University of Western Sydney-Nepean, Australia Stewart Clegg University of Technology (Sydney), Australia David Collins University of Essex, UK Cary Cooper Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, UK Ann L. Cunliffe University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Robert Dennehy Pace University, USA Eric Dent University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, USA Alexis Downs The Business School, Emporia State University, Kansas, USA Ken Ehrensal Kutztown University, USA Max Elden University of Houston, USA Andre´ M. Everett University of Otago, New Zealand Dale Fitzgibbons Illinois State University, USA Jeffrey Ford Ohio State University, USA Jeanie M. Forray Western New England College, USA Robert Gephart University of Alberta, Canada Clive Gilson University of Waikato, New Zealand Andy Grimes Lexington, Kentucky, USA Usha C.V. Haley School of Business, University of New Haven, USA Heather Ho¨pfl Professor of Management, University of Essex, UK

Maria Humphries University of Waikato, New Zealand Arzu Iseri Bogazici University, Turkey David Jamieson Pepperdine University, USA Campbell Jones Management Centre, University of Leicester, UK David Knights Keele University, UK Monika Kostera School of Management, Warsaw University, Poland Hugo Letiche University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands Benyamin Lichtenstein University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA Stephen A. Linstead Durham Business School, University of Durham, UK Slawek Magala Erasmus University, The Netherlands Rickie Moore E.M. Lyon, France Ken Murrell University of West Florida, USA Eric Nielsen Case Western Reserve University, USA Walter Nord University of South Florida, USA Ellen O’Connor Chronos Associates, Los Altos, California, USA Cliff Oswick King’s College, University of London, UK Ian Palmer University of Technology (Sydney), Australia Michael Peron The University of Paris, Sorbonne, France Gavin M. Schwarz University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Abraham Shani California Polytechnic State University, USA Ralph Stablein Massey University, New Zealand Carol Steiner Monash University, Australia David S. Steingard St Joseph’s University, USA Ram Tenkasi Benedictine University, USA Tojo Joseph Thatchenkery George Mason University, Fairfax, USA Christa Walck Michigan Technological University, USA Richard Woodman Graduate School of Business, Texas A&M University, USA

Guest editorial About the Guest Editor Dr Alison Linstead is Senior Lecturer in Critical Management at the Department of Management Studies, The University of York, UK. Having held posts at the Universities of Leicester, Essex and Durham, Alison is co-director of the Gender and Management Research Unit at York and Director of their Doctoral Programme. Alison is co-editor of Identity and Organization and Thinking Organization (with Stephen Linstead) both Routledge 2005 and author of Managing Identity (Palgrave 2005). She is Associate Editor of Gender, Work and Organization. Email: [email protected]

Guest editorial

537

Change in the feminine: women in change The feminine fascinates us. We are drawn to it and we retreat from it. We cherish it and we victimise it. From Jean Baudrillard who warns us of its playful seductiveness to Virginia Woolf who anxiously questioned the trappings of “what is a woman?” the debates surrounding changes in, and of, the feminine permeate all avenues of social and organizational existence. We are bound by its history and exited by its potential to rewrite history. We try to emancipate it, and yet, we continue to appropriate it as other. In management, the role and trends surrounding women’s employment, their working experiences and the significance of organizational culture have been long documented (Gherardi, 1995; Ledwith and Colgan, 1996; Maddock, 1999; Vinnicombe et al., 2004; Vinnicombe, 2003). Women’s apparent changing status and role in the city (Darke et al., 2000), transport (Grieco et al., 1989, 1996), health (Bolton, 2005), trade unions (Colgan and Ledwith, 2002, 2005), academia (Eveline, 2004), entrepreneurship (Bruni et al., 2005) and the sex industry (Nencel, 2001; Brewis and Linstead, 2000) have been richly documented. This issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management brings together contributors with an interest in gendering change management. There has been considerable interest in attempting to survey the impact, or lack of it, of often radical organizational changes – such as restructuring, downsizing, virtualisation, globalisation, managing diversity and equal opportunity legislation – on the “glass ceiling”. Findings seem to indicate that the representation of women in management positions has changed relatively little in most occupations. The “feminisation of management” has been said to challenge masculinist practices of organizational life by offering new possibilities for women as their “special” skills and qualities are recognised and rewarded. Postmodern critiques of paying heightened attention to women and the workplace processes of feminisation suggest that we merely reinforce the dominance of masculine representations of organization and management by recognising its “other” as subordinate. Changes in masculinities have been noted as men seek to acquire some of these essential feminine skills for themselves. Yet the feminine is itself not fixed and things clearly are not staying the same with femininity. Something is happening, but what is it? This special issue of the Journal of Organizational Change Management not only analyses the position of women involved in change but also in how our The author would like to thank all the contributors to the issue for their commitment to surfacing the continued neglect of gender in this area of management studies. His thanks goes to Dave Boje past editor of JOCM for his initial encouragement and to current editor Slavomir Magala and his editorial team for their continued support.

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 537-541 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814

JOCM 18,6

538

understanding of “the feminine” feeds into and is being changed by contemporary organizational experiences. Whilst we are interested in the position, experiences and accounts of women engaged in transformative processes, we wish to consider “the feminine” as a quality which may be possessed and expressed by those who are not necessarily biological women. With this dualistic focus, then, this issue Change in the Feminine: Women in Change offers some of the latest thinking around feminine managers managing change as in the case of Miller’s study of male managers managing change femininely; feminine change agents – internal or external consultants – facilitating change as Linstead et al. and Baxter and MacLeod contest; feminine entrepreneurs as in Hytti’s narrative study of Marge; work by feminine theorists theorising change as in Eveline and Tyler’s feminist philosophical treatment of change management; and feminist critiques of managing change as in Rippin’s autoethnographical study of Marks and Spencer. In each of their ways the contributors to the issue explore the feminine from different theoretically diverse fields from operations management to critical management studies; the ground breaking ideas of De Beauvoir to feminist treatments of Deleuze and Guattari; and methodologically from action learning to narrative research. Yet all the contributors recognise the feminine as abject. The issue begins with a review piece by Steve Linstead, Jo Brewis and myself to scope the arguments around the broad area of gender and change. This paper offers a critical review of existing contributions to gender and change management and in doing so highlights how organizational change needs to be read more readily from a gendered perspective. The paper acknowledges that gender has received little attention regarding the change management side of managerial practice and questions how men and women both cope with and drive change and whether the differences are more than superficial; the concept of gender is read into management theory to demonstrate how gender affects the way managers think and act; the gendering of management is discussed to critique traditional and dominant conceptions of masculine and feminine values which rely on static conceptions of gender to argue for more attention to be paid to the dynamic, the genderful. The paper concludes by outlining future research areas. Melissa Tyler’s paper “Women in change management: Simone De Beauvoir and the co-optation of Otherness” offers us a critical reflection of the sexually differentiated nature of organizational change management discourse. In doing so Melissa draws on what she argues has been largely under-theorised work of feminist Simone De Beauvoir’s analysis of woman as other developed in The Second Sex. Tyler argues that “the incorporation into organizational processes of what have come to be regarded as women’s tacit skills in people and change management relies upon a co-optation of women’s ascribed otherness, as outlined by De Beauvoir; one that reifies a hierarchical distortion of sexual difference rather than provides the basis for a genuine valorisation of femininity”. Tyler enables us to see the relational nature of the feminine – the feminine is both appropriated, repressed and oppressed and at the same time it has the potential to challenge, resist and subvert organizational norms by being wonderfully and powerfully seductive and transgressive. Taking the theme of woman as other further, Ann Rippin offers a novel and textured account of change in one of the UK’s most recognisable brands, Marks and Spencer as out third paper in the issue. In this paper Ann genders change by storying the history, development and fall of M&S to provide a gendered reading of the M&S story which

she uses for her managing change teaching. This paper explores the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself. Two extant stories: Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War are taken, along with the cultural archetype of the American West gunslinger to explore the gender aspects of change. The Marks and Spencer case is analysed using the corollary patriarchal narrative of Sleeping Beauty, a story whose organising logic is revealed as one of concern for patriarchal lineage, and legitimate succession. Ann’s analysis highlights how this narrative is saturated in misogyny, aggression and violence. This violence, which is shown to characterise the Marks and Spencer case, is amplified in the second narrative, the Trojan War, in the highly personalised battles of the u¨ber-warriors of The Iliad. The paper, which draws on the Marks and Spencer principals’ memoirs and biographies and employing a combination of autoethnographical approaches and narrative analysis, concludes that violent, hyper-masculine behaviour creates and maintains a destructive cycle of leadership lionisation and failure at the company which precludes a more feminine and possibly more effective construction of change management. The fourth paper in the issue “New Meanings for Entrepreneurs: from risk-taking heroes to safe-seeking professionals” offers us a narrative study of a female entrepreneur which is a very under represented area in the change literature. Ulla Hytti argues that “viewing entrepreneurship in the context of shifting career roles and professional identities, gendered organizational life and in the current societal context regarding working life (ageing, gender discrimination) provides us with new lenses and enables us to perceive entrepreneurial identity as fluid and emergent. In this paper identities, organizations and societies in change form the basis for entrepreneurship in our current lives”. Ulla’s treatment of entrepreneurship as a social process constrained by time and place allows it to gain new meanings and understandings of security, reliability, risk-moderation that it has not previously seen to possess. The paper presents the connections of time and place for entrepreneurship; first, by demonstrating how entrepreneurship as a phenomenon reflects the time and place of investigation; second, how time and place are applied as important elements in the individual story presented in the paper, and, third, how readings of time and narrative are applied to make sense of entrepreneurship in the story. As a result, the paper refuses the research of entrepreneurs as a general overriding category and the quest for the “Theory of Entrepreneurship”. The fifth contribution by Sallyanne Miller entitled “Men working differently: accessing their inner-feminine” presents an account of the development of groups engaged in an action learning project focussing on improving service quality and leadership development. The groups comprised male managers working in a large Australian bank whose values and norms were dominated by discourses of traditional hegemonic masculinity. Analysis of the groups’ processes reveals the connection between the development of the groups in relation to authority, and the changes in the managers’ behaviour over a period of 12 months during which they began to behave in ways typically characterised as feminine. The paper concludes that a significant factor in developing men’s management and leadership capabilities is peer learning, and engagement with authority in ways that are not dissimilar to the experiences of the adolescent and young adult in relation to peers and parents. In this way, this paper offers a further development of Reid’s concept of the “Authority Cycle”.

Guest editorial

539

JOCM 18,6

540

Recognising the gender-blind nature of the field of operations, the sixth paper brings gender to the forefront of managing change in operations environments. Lynne Baxter and Alasdair McLeod paper “Shifting forms of masculinity in changing organizations: the role of testicularity” employs an under-utilised concept of testicularity put forward by Flannigan-Saint-Aubin (1994) to explain a shift in hegemonic masculinities in two organizations which were unusual in being successful in realizing their aims for quality improvement. Their two case studies instigated change processes, which created opportunities for women employees, sometimes at the expense of men. Lynne and Alasdair’s paper contrasts findings from previous studies that has discussed whether organization change can represent a feminising of the workplace to argue that organizational masculinity remained unchallenged. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin’s concept argues for positive aspects of masculinities in a growing literature which has a tendency to focus on the negative. Lynne and Alasdair, drawing extensively on Flannigan-Saint-Aubin concept of masculinity, argues that “masculinity is experienced as constant insecurity in the face of feminine absorption” (Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, 1994, p. 245). Lynne and Alistair argue that shifts in gender performance are a useful way of exploring organization change. To conclude this issue the final paper by Joan Eveline “Woman in the ivory tower: gendering feminised and masculinised identities” investigates “the forces, intensities and desires shaping and reshaping what the feminised leader can represent in a restructuring organization” – namely a university akin to Eveline’s extensive empirical work on women in academia in Australia. Eveline is concerned in this piece to explore the gendering that a woman vice-chancellor which in itself a rare sample undertakes as a feminist and masculinist leader and change agent. In this paper Eveline not only explores the gendering of change through presenting rich narrative of a female Vice Chancellor, she draws on Gatens and Deleuze and Guatarri, to empirically explore gender as change. This paper makes an important contribution to gendering the change management literature at the level of female change agents. Eveline reminds each of us how society at large and the experiences of the everyday not only shapes our experiences as gendered subjects which produces and reproduces discrimination, she reminds us that resistance, however subtle and disguised, has the potential to challenge gender inequality even when it is in our own backyard. All we need is a politics of care, a deep concern for the other, the other within. The feminine. Alison Linstead References Bolton, S. (2005), “Women’s work, dirty work: the gynaecology nurse as ‘Other’”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 169-86. Brewis, J. and Linstead, S. (2000), Sex, Work and Sex Work: Eroticizing Organization, Routledge, London. Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2005), Gender and Entrepreneurship, Routledge, London. Colgan, F. and Ledwith, S. (Eds) (2002), Gender, Diversity and Trade Unions: International Perspectives, Routledge, London. Colgan, F. and Ledwith, S. (2005), Gender, Democracy and Trade Unions, Palgrave, London.

Darke, J., Ledwith, S. and Woods, R. (Eds) (2000), Women and the City: Visibility and Voice in Urban Space, Palgrave, London. Eveline, J. (2004), Ivory Basement Leadership: Power and Invisibility in the Changing University, UWA Press, Perth. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, A. (1994), “The male body and literary metaphors for masculinity”, in Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (Eds), Theorizing Masculinities, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 239-58. Gherardi, S. (1995), Gender, Symbolism and Organizational Culture, Sage, London. Grieco, M., Pickuphand, L. and Whipp, R. (Eds) (1989), Change, Transport and Employment, Oxford Transport Series, Avebury. Grieco, M., Apt, N. and Turner, J. (Eds) (1996), At Christmas and on Rainy Days: Transport, Travel and the Female Traders of Accra, Avebury. Ledwith, S. and Colgan, F. (1996), Women in Organisations: Challenging Gender Politics, Macmillan, Basingstoke. Maddock, S. (1999), Challenging Women: Gender, Culture and Organization, Sage, London. Nencel, L. (2001), Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. Vinnicombe, S. (2003), Women with Attitude: Lessons for Career Management, Routledge, London. Vinnicombe, S., Kakabadse, A. and Bank, J. (2004), Working in Organizations, Gower, London.

Guest editorial

541

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,6

542

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

REVIEW PIECE

Gender in change: gendering change Stephen Linstead, Joanna Brewis and Alison Linstead Department of Management Studies, University of York, Heslington, York, UK Abstract Purpose – To provide a critical review of existing contributions to gender and change management and in doing so highlight how organizational change needs to be read more readily from a gendered perspective. Design/methodology/approach – This paper argues that gender has received little attention regarding the change management side of managerial practice and reviews recent contributions to gender and change to demonstrate this. The paper then questions how men and women both cope with and drive change and whether the identified differences are more than superficial. The concept of gender is then read into management theory in order to understand how gender affects the way managers think and act, and the gendering of management is discussed. The paper concludes by outlining future research areas – change agents, entrepreneurs, female innovators, psychoanalytic treatments of change and gender experiences. Findings – The paper finds that traditional and dominant conceptions of masculine and feminine values that rely on static conceptions of gender to argue that more attention to be paid to the dynamic and the genderful approaches. Research limitations/implications – The paper concludes by outlining future research areas – change agents, entrepreneurs, female innovators, psychoanalytic treatments of change and gender experiences. Practical implications – Draws much needed attention to the neglect of gender in change theory and practice and suggests some ways forward. Originality/value – Offers a unique introduction to an important but complex literature that needs to be integrated into change management practice. Keywords Change management, Gender Paper type General review

Preamble Does critical reflection on the gendered business of management itself hold the key to creating the conditions within which an alternative means of managing change can emerge – one that is grounded in non-instrumental modes of relating to others? (Kerfoot and Knights, 1999, p. 212).

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 542-560 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628495

In the late-1990s, one of us was invited to take part in a workshop on change management for a group of research students, all male full-time senior managers, at one of the world’s leading business schools. The curious thing was the topic – gender identity and image, drawing on recent work on the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Brewis et al., 1997). The reason for the invitation? The managers, all involved in leading change initiatives in public and private sector institutions against considerable cultural and political resistance, had chosen the metaphor for their role as organizational transvestites. They felt that when they began to suggest

styles of managing change and relating to others that moved away from the authoritative, patriarchal, competitive, confrontational and often bullying styles of management that permeated their organizations, other managers were beginning to impugn their masculinity – they were accused of “going soft”, becoming “touchy-feely”, losing their “grip” and generally attempting to feminise the rightfully masculine workplace, not facing the facts or harsh realities of the business and replacing action with talk and interaction, and as a result putting the whole enterprise at risk. It remains fairly unusual for change agents openly to acknowledge this, but our private conversations have confirmed that this situation is far from unusual, and indeed may be typical of certain types of organizational change (see, for example, Stace and Dunphy’s, 1994 typology) and a good deal more about the gendered nature of change than we did even a decade ago, but we have barely scratched the surface. There is an urgent need for more research on internal and external change agents, consultants, entrepreneurs, and managers who are involved in initiating, leading and managing change to illuminate its gendered social and behavioural aspects. Gender, management and change practice Gender is widely acknowledged as having an impact on management practice. Proposed managerial responses vary from minimizing gendered differences in terms and conditions; recognising gender difference to make the most of women’s “special contribution” to organizations, or simply treating it as just another kind of difference as part of “diversity”. But gender has received little attention as regards the change management side of managerial practice. In 1990, Eagly and Johnson identified that, according to existing leadership studies, the democratic and participative styles which were increasingly being advocated amongst commentators such as Charles Handy and Rosabeth Moss Kanter were more commonly found among women rather than men (see Brewis and Linstead, 2004 for discussion). Nevertheless, studies of women’s approaches to change or women involved in the management of change remain few. Colgan and Ledwith (1996a) draw on Baddeley and James (1987) to classify the political skills which women need in acting as change agents in organizations. Reading is the ability to read an organization both formal and informal, to identify its decision processes, appropriate power bases inside and outside the organization, the extent of the change agent’s own power bases, the organization’s culture and management styles, its purpose and direction and the importance of politics in this, overt and hidden agendas (Colgan and Ledwith, 1996a, p. 31). The reading of the informal structure of male power is often problematic both for internal and external female change agents. Job segregation may prevent women internals from gaining access and developing the appropriate reading skills. Even training courses may assume informal tacit knowledge which women are prevented from possessing. Homosociability, with its social networks outside the organization such as freemasonry, golf or rugby clubs, again may mean that change issues may be negotiated and settled outside the workplace where women have no access. All of this exclusion from symbolic and tacit information networks poses problems for women when they need to take action to promote change. The second dimension is carrying, as in the carrying of a role relative to one’s personal life. This may be done with integrity, or by operating with ego-defenses to

Gender in change: gendering change 543

JOCM 18,6

544

the fore. Key elements here are the woman’s awareness of who she is, and her own identity, her organizational credibility and image, and her presentation of self. Additionally, she must be able to win the respect of colleagues (which may be given for a man who is capable of giving out simple signals) and to demonstrate a capacity for leadership, which often provokes resistance. One advantage, however, is that having experience of being marginalized, women often find it easier to innovate, and to cross traditional boundaries. At present the awareness that innovation comes from the margins is one of the hot topics in management (see Chapter 17) and the value of women for disrupting traditional structures which oppress creativity is increasingly being recognised (Colgan and Ledwith, 1996b, p. 298). Women may act politically in a “wise” way – a combination of reading the organization well and maintaining one’s integrity, building and using networks of alliances; a “clever” way – which involves behaving opportunistically to further personal ends, behaving to display and draw attention to themselves, often with the sponsorship of a senior male. These women seem either unaware of the risky nature of political shifts, or are prepared to take the risk. Inept behaviour that arises from prioritising personal needs and misreading the politics, game-playing and unawareness of power issues can get both oneself and others into difficulties. Particularly, women run the risk of being stereotyped by males into one of the four deviant roles – “Queen Bee”, “Token woman”, “Seductress” or “man-hater” (Kanter, 1977; Morgan, 1986). Innocent behaviour is more of blindness than a perspective. It means following the rules and appealing only to formal behaviour, pretending that there is no informal organization or that it is irrelevant. Avoiding conflict, such people, which especially includes women, often drift into technical or administrative jobs where they can blend into the background and have no need to confront the existence of a shadow organization. Unfortunately, if the informal system is not acknowledged, then it cannot be changed, and political incompetence results. Buchanan and Badham (1999) and Buchanan and Boddy (1992) emphasise at length the importance of political behaviour for successful change agency. Maddock (1999, p. 5), in a study of the UK public sector, found that radically innovative women, grounded in a strong “user” focus, adopted or displayed: . a process approach to change and new relationships; . a people approach not a systems approach; . confidence in the social values of the organization; . a local connectedness or social awareness; . confidence that those who are on the margins or challengers were instrumental in social transformation; and . a confidence in the community and the workforce that inspired trusting relationships. Maddock also argues that many of the frustrations and experiences encountered in the public sector were shared by women in the private sector. Those women who were most insistent in the need for change in their sector, to improve delivery to the end-user, showed: . confidence in alternatives based on social values; . ability to handle diversity, ambiguity and change;

.

. . .

experience in developing organizations where social objectives determined work – plans, programmes and indicators; an awareness of diversity and gender cultures; a capacity to be critically aware and capable of trusting others; and a desire to develop a collaborative culture.

This combines with the ability to listen, adapt to and communicate with others, personal readiness to collaborate, to think holistically, to promote social and egalitarian relations, to break boundaries and readjust, and to think strategically in achieving improvements, to embody the more “feminized” authority that some commentators have argued is necessary for transformational organizational change (Maddock, 1999, p. 43). In recent studies of women in the US involved in the field of organizational development and acting as external consultants, Waclawski et al. (1995) identified two sets of values – those that were important at the present time, and those towards which the women felt the field should move. The picture was not as positive as Maddock’s. They found that: It appears as though women today are relying less on the traditional social psychologically based methods of OD consulting (e.g. Gestalt methods, T-groups and sociotechnical interventions) and are focusing their efforts instead on helping organisations achieve their desired future states through a combination of approaches including management development programmes – once the exclusive realm of HR and T&D departments – systemic efforts to achieve long term change, and enhancing group goal-setting skills (Waclawski et al., 1995, p. 16).

This, they suggested, supports the idea of a general move in the field towards more business oriented interventions than the traditional “touchy-feely” approaches, and an emphasis on process and problem solving. They also suggested that: The primary values of women practitioners in the field today focus on achieving organizational effectiveness and efficiency. . . the important values for tomorrow focus on more humanistic concerns (i.e. creating openness in communication and empowering employees to act) as humanistic issues are given prominence in social and organizational development efforts (Waclawski et al., 1995, p. 20).

Women change agents, then, appear to continue to harbour a different more relational vision of the future, and their methods contain elements of a more socially oriented nature, but the effects of the simple pragmatism of the client relationship and the persistence of patriarchal cultures in organizations mean that they still work in constrained ways. One consultant interviewed by Kaplan (1995, p. 65) whose study on the voices of women change agents is perhaps the most thorough review of the issues, did believe that there was a major change in orientation of OD under way and the women were making a difference, because traditional OD methods involved: Kind of stripping people of their defenses and making them feel bad. I think I’ve managed to contribute something to that whole movement, I would call it the awareness development or training movement, which has now become a big business. . . we’re doing much better today in man organizations understanding what these issues really mean to people as a result of that early work.

Gender in change: gendering change 545

JOCM 18,6

546

Women with their greater mentoring skills, the fact that women’s problems in organizations often stem from other women notwithstanding, are better placed to help organizations to grow, and men to attend to things that they have not been historically trained to attend to, rather than to plan and instruct or challenge them to do these things. Nevertheless, much more research needs to be done in this area before we understand how men and women both cope with and drive change and whether the differences are more than superficial (Covin and Harris, 1995). Gender, management and change theory However, there is another way to conceive of the relationship between gender and change management – this involves introducing the concept of gender into management theory, and understanding how gender affects the way managers think and act. Theorizing traditionally has sought either to deny the significance of gender for an understanding of managers and managing, or has simply not taken it into account. It fails to recognize the relationship between management and gender: first, because it makes little or no room for any analysis of the actual individuals who occupy the management role, treating management as an abstract set of functions, principles or processes; and, second, because it fails to recognize gender as a significant variable in organizational life even in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence. Indeed, it has been widely suggested that mainstream management theory is actually more accurately labelled “malestream”. Management in this kind of theory is typically presented as genderless, either because it consists solely of a collection of functions (classical management theory) or because it can be explained as a more or less appropriate relationship to one’s workforce (theories of human relations or management “style”). However, management is an inescapably embodied and, therefore, also a gendered experience, an experience which is different for men and women whether they are the managers or the managed. The omission of gender by mainstream/malestream theories of management means that such theories cannot account for the complexity of the management experience – indeed as Hearn and Parkin (1994) point out, the absence of gender and sexuality from the consideration of “human relations”, “interpersonal relations” and “emotional relations” calls into question what these terms can possibly mean. They cannot capture how it feels and what it means to manage (or indeed to be managed) in a modern organization. Despite this absence of gender from mainstream/malestream management theory, some organizational analysts have sought to establish the interrelation between gender and management. That is to say, they consider the embodied nature of managerial work, management as performed by gendered subjects, by individuals who identify as male or female, masculine or feminine, and the consequences that this may have for organizational and managerial practice. In other words, how male and female managers actually manage becomes the focus. This work tends to retain the relational theorists’ emphasis on management as process and on the differences between managerial styles, as well as often relying on the classical management theory notion of a “one best way” to manage as regards organizational effectiveness – if perhaps seeking to reverse it. However, the real contribution of this more contemporary theory is arguably its acknowledgement that it matters what kind of person is doing the managing. This gender in management approach argues that, because men and women are socialized differently, they manage differently. Researchers in this area have, therefore,

concentrated on identifying the key characteristics of “masculine” and “feminine” managerial styles. Rosener (1990, 1997), for example, argues for an emphasis on the feminine-in-management because feminine styles, she claims, are most effective in the current socioeconomic climate. Rosener’s (1990) research asked male and female managers to describe their own managerial style. She discovered that male managers, by their own account at least, adopted what she refers to as a transactional leadership style. This style uses the principle of exchange in managing – giving rewards or punishment for work done well or badly. Rosener’s male respondents also said that they relied a good deal on their positional authority – the status conferred upon them by the organization – in order to manage others. Women, on the other hand, reportedly used a style that Rosener calls transformational leadership. This places the emphasis on motivating staff through persuading them to commit to group/organizational goals, on encouraging them to participate in decision making, on managing through personal qualities rather than by using one’s position, and on trying to make staff feel good about themselves Rosener attributes these differences between men and women to gender socialization in early childhood. She also has it that the feminine model of leadership is likely to be more apposite and more successful in economically turbulent times than the command-and-control style preferred by her male respondents. Rosener’s (1997) more recent work argues that the key to maintaining America’s corporate success and ability to compete in global markets is having women in senior positions in organizations, because their management style increases productivity, innovation and thereby profits. How? Through women’s aptitude for ambiguity and their willingness to empower others. Helgesen (1995) echoes this; firstly in her suggestion that gendered management styles develop as a result of differential socialization, and that women are consequently better at developing creativity, cooperation and intuition in others than men. She goes on to emphasize their preference for managing via relationships as opposed to hierarchical position, to claim that they listen and empathize much more than their male counterparts and to assert that feminine leadership “principles” are becoming more influential because they simply suit today’s public realm better than the “warrior values” espoused by men. Helen Brown’s suggestion that women-only organizations tend to be characterized by flat structures with diffused leadership (as also claimed by Oerton (1996)) is relevant here too, especially given her argument that women have the right social skills to create and manage such non-hierarchical organizations (Brown, 1992; Gherardi, 1995, p. 91). Indeed similar evidence emerges from at least two meta-reviews of the literature on management styles and gender. Eagly and Johnson (1990) reviewed a total of 370 studies using varying methods, concluding that the evidence does point overall to women adopting a more democratic and people-centred approach to managing others, and men tending to be more autocratic and task/production oriented – although these gender differences, apart from democracy versus autocracy, were found to be strongest in artificial environments such as laboratories or assessment centres. Studies undertaken in real workplaces did not indicate such pronounced differences. Fagenson (1993), cited in Alvesson and Billing (2000, pp. 147-8) also summarizes the available research and suggests that women err towards the transformational, towards a web-based, interdependent style of leadership, instead of using their status as men would tend to do.

Gender in change: gendering change 547

JOCM 18,6

548

Taking a rather different approach to the exploration of gender and management style, the British researcher Beverley Alimo-Metcalfe theorizes that the way in which decisions are made in organizations about managerial selection and promotion is at least part of the reason why there are relatively few women in senior management positions. Given that men make up the majority of those involved in formulating choices of this kind, she focuses on discovering whether men and women see leadership qualities differently, so as to be able to ascertain if, “by excluding a significant or matched proportion of women from this sample, one is likely to end up with male-biased criteria of leadership qualities” (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1995, p. 4). In fact, from Alimo-Metcalfe’s research, it appears that male and female managers do define effective management differently. Her female managers perceived an effective manager to be someone who relates to others as equals and who is sensitive and aware of the effects that they have on others. Alimo-Metcalfe’s male managers, on the other hand, valued influence and self-confidence as being particularly important amongst managerial interpersonal skills. The women, furthermore, spoke positively of a working style which is supportive, and which empowers and builds teams – whereas the men placed the emphasis on drive, direction and the transmission of a clear purpose to staff. Alimo-Metcalfe borrows from Rosener in designating these differences of style as transformational and transactional. She then proposes that transformational qualities are undervalued when managerial assessment takes place because, as we already know, it is men who dominate in these situations – and it is also men who would tend to favour transactional characteristics, as displayed by other men, across the board. Moreover, this general preference for promoting men is evident despite the fact that much of the available research, as we have seen, emphasizes the importance and relevance of the transformational leadership approach in a complex and diverse world, and the fact that quality management and leadership is deemed to be central to our collective success and well-being in the future (Rosenbach and Taylor, cited in Alimo-Metcalfe, 1995, p. 8). In sum, then, Alimo-Metcalfe’s conclusions – that men and women managers value different kinds of managerial style, and that the style valued by women may be more apposite in today’s organizational world, whatever the stance taken by those who select for and promote to managerial positions – are very similar to those emerging from the research undertaken by Rosener, Helgesen et al.. The varying cases made by Rosener, Helgesen, Alimo-Metcalfe et al. then, seem to rest on the assumption that women are socialized to manage in certain ways and, therefore, to value a particular kind of managerial approach. However, although these studies represent an advance on traditional management theory in acknowledging the importance of gender, we suggest they do not take sufficient cognizance of important processes within the organization – that they place too much emphasis on life “outside the factory gates”. It is implied that male and female managers arrive at work fully socialized, that the workplace itself has little effect on the ways in which they behave. Thus the gender in management researchers perhaps fail to recognize the interplay of gender and management, the ways in which gender works to shape managerial work and vice versa. Rather, they seem to adhere to an “add gender and stir” approach. In criticizing Judy Rosener in particular, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein (in Harvard Business Review, 1991, p. 151), for example, places more emphasis on work context than pre-work gender socialization in shaping individuals’ behaviour at work. Epstein also cites her research amongst lawyers and her own experience as demonstrating

that women frequently engage in “combative”, “punitive” and “authoritarian” (i.e. “masculine”) behaviour. In-work variables, then, such as the size and culture of the organization, should not be underplayed as influencing and in turn being influenced by management style. Additionally, age, class and ethnic differences as non-work variables apart from gender may also shape/interact with managerial behaviour. Gender is perhaps perceived as being too “sexy” in contemporary management theorizing, attracting so much analytical attention that the exploration of other important factors which influence the way management is done are neglected (Mansbridge, in Harvard Business Review, 1991, pp. 154-6). This is what Alvesson and Billing (1997) refer to as gender over-sensitivity. Moreover, women managers’ preference for the transformational style of leadership, if it exists at all, may actually be a function of those that they manage. Allan Cohen argues that Rosener, for example, overlooks the fact that many of her female managers were responsible for professionals who may well not have taken kindly to a more directive managerial approach. Like Epstein, he also criticizes her for overestimating the influence of pre-work gender socialization (Cohen, in Harvard Business Review, 1991, p. 158). Indeed it is important that we do not overplay the differences between men and women’s socialization per se. The socializing of women to work outside the home does not occur in a context separate to the one in which men are socialized. Neither does their socialization into the essentially private world of caring and nurturing. Women do not learn to be women in isolation from men and then bring these values into the workplace – they are socialized in interaction with men (Gherardi, 1995, p. 91). And if we overemphasize gender differences in management theorizing, asks Silvia Gherardi, how can we then account for those men who prefer to work within a more democratic organizational framework and to manage in more democratic ways – like the 52 per cent of male managers who said they preferred to use teamwork and a participative management style when surveyed by the British Institute of Management (Vine, 1997)? Gherardi suggests that some accounts of gender and managerial work over-valorize the “either/or” of the gender framework, and points instead to the concept of dual presence, as developed by Italian feminists in the 1970s. This represents the mindset of women at this time who self-identified in a “cross-wise” manner. These women saw themselves as subverting but not abandoning conventional feminine role models by operating in many arenas across the social spectrum. They did not allow the world to be symbolically divided up into “men’s business” and “women’s business” – they continually transgressed, did things they were not supposed to do and caused men’s and women’s activities to merge until the gender divide, at the level of action at least, became more fluid (Gherardi, 1995, pp. 94-5). White’s (1995) research into female executives concludes that these women were more different in their approach to leadership than they were similar. She suggests that these differences derived from their varying ages, experiences and expectations. Boucher (1997, p. 154) notes that women managers face a double bind. She quotes one of her respondents as saying that “influencing” as a style of management is, she feels, “more condoned for women” than the direct (and masculine) approach of simply telling someone to do something. Boucher goes on to suggest that a woman who “tells” as opposed to “selling” may well attract derogatory nicknames like “bossyboots” – a term which, she also remarks, would never be used to describe a man (Sheppard, 1989). Teigen (1999, p. 97) echoes Boucher’s point in her analysis of the case of a woman who

Gender in change: gendering change 549

JOCM 18,6

550

failed to secure an administrative position at the Norwegian Directorate of the Coast, and was rejected because she was defined as “domineering and arrogant”. However, as Teigen also points out, “If we think about gender differences in terms of binary oppositions, identical behaviour from a decisive and self-confident man might appear as dominating and arrogant coming from a woman”. Alvesson and Billing (1997, p. 183) agree that any deviation on the part of women managers from the transformational style often leads to unfair evaluations of their performance, and Tomlinson et al. (1997) point to these sorts of judgments being made about women managers by their female colleagues, quoting, for example, a store manager who says that “there is a tendency among some women [managers] to over-react, try to be too hard and too severe to prove that they are not a weak-kneed woman” (1997, p. 222). Wajcman (1998) in a study of companies which had been recognised as having exemplary equal opportunities policies, found that despite this those policies could not reach to the heart of such prejudices, and that women wanting to achieve corporate success were forced to “manage like a man” or suffer the consequences. A picture, therefore, emerges of female managers continually having to work to prove their “gender competence” (Gherardi, 1995, pp. 135-6), whereby they are permitted to achieve at work, so long as they also and simultaneously do all the things and have all the feelings that “proper” women do and have – wanting and having husbands and children, sustaining close and intimate relationships with others, seeking to placate and persuade as opposed to asserting themselves etcetera. Ironically, much of the literature on the feminine in management tends to claim that women’s “special” approach derives from the division of domestic labour and the consequent socialization of women to be nurturing, caring and comforting so that they are later able to care adequately for children and run welcoming and functional homes. But these expectations of women with regard to domestic labour already make it difficult for them to accede to and succeed in management, given the challenges of combining organizational demands with a full load of household duties. Women managers can, furthermore, end up being exploited as peacemakers or as troubleshooters, being called upon to resolve conflicts, make cuts and carry out dismissals, as a result of the assumed connection between their gendered socialization and their particular repertoire of management skills. However, it is also true to say that women can be caring and loving parents at home and demanding, transactional managers at work (Alvesson and Billing, 2000, pp. 149-50, 151, 153-4; Brewis, 1999, pp. 108, 133-n28). In asserting women’s “preference” for a transformational approach, commentators like Rosener fail to question the gender divide and thus end up being complicit with it. Indeed, as long as they continue to label women’s managerial behaviour as typically different from men’s, they reinforce the assumed connection between women and femininity and thus continue to ensure that women who do not conform will always be subject to assessments which derogate them. As an alternative to this kind of argument, we would argue that any analysis of gender and managerial work must take into account not only the orientation to work that gender socialization outside of the organization might produce, but also how the experience of work in itself produces and maintains particular forms of gender identity. The process of becoming gendered continues and changes through life. How then does this process happen in the organization? How are our subjective experiences of gender informed and moulded

by what happens in our workplaces? How does gender in change processes interact with the changing of gender over time? Gendering management As human subjects we come to know who we are through being exposed to particular interpretations of what it is to be human – in this case, either male or female, masculine or feminine. Because we are expected to be either/or, we create and reinforce these stereotypes in our everyday acts and interactions with others. Moreover, gender identity here is not the inevitable product of biological sex. Women may strive to project a masculine identity just as men tend to do. Masculinity, therefore, is not what men do and what they are without thinking much about it; men have problems being men, and they certainly do not have exclusive property rights on masculinity (Kerfoot and Knights, 1993, p. 660; Kerfoot, 1999, p. 186). Neither is being male definitive or exhaustive of all that men are or can be (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996, p. 85). Masculine values The prevailing form of contemporary Western masculinity revolves around being rational, objective, sure of oneself, logical, decisive, unemotional, tough and competitive. This masculinity centres on control. It means being explicit and assertive, saying what you think and speaking your mind plainly; being outer-focused, possibly aggressive; valuing work, sports and organized activities; being action oriented, liking to get things done, a doer; being analytical or calculating about situations, rather than intuitive, relying on hunches or gut-feel; being dualistic, or tending to see things as black or white, either/or; preferring quantitative solutions which involve numbers to qualitative ones which involve opinion; linear thinking (e.g. X causes Y, making predictive connections) rather than lateral thinking (making unusual connections, being creative); being rationalist, valuing reason more than emotion or playfulness; being reductionist, liking to reduce things to their simplest terms and principles, rather than relishing subtle differences; being materialist, with a constant eye on resources, costs and benefits; being constantly aware of one’s position in a hierarchy, engaging in one-upmanship with colleagues, striving to maintain the upper hand and to protect oneself from challenges; and isolating oneself from others and rejecting dependence on them (Hines, 1992, p. 328; Tannen, 1993, pp. 24-5; Nicolson, 1996, p. 146). Not all men will exhibit all of these features of masculinity, because the whole taken together is a stereotype – but it is one which still resonates powerfully in Western society, even at the level of myth. Masculine modern management accordingly requires its incumbents to remain in control – of themselves, others and the environment – by virtue of level-headed decision making, undertaken without anger, emotion or bias, sine ira et studio. Modern management is, therefore, as Lennie (2000, pp. 130-5) claims, predicated on a Cartesian separation of mind and body, on metaphorical disembodiment, within which the manager knows the world through detached, objective, cerebral observation and is, therefore, able to change it, by virtue of directing others’ bodies in the execution of particular kinds of labour. As he argues, the management “order” understands “the sensual world as manageable, in the sense that it stands waiting to be shaped by the vision of a knowing subject” (Lennie, 2000, p. 134). Being able to exercise managerial prerogative – carrying out the “right to manage” others in contemporary

Gender in change: gendering change 551

JOCM 18,6

552

organizations – also depends on instrumental control, on sustaining output through imposing targets that are quantifiable and often highly abstract, but which carry penalties if not achieved and are coercively policed, through the threat of discipline or dismissal, for example (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996, p. 90). Managers, therefore, need to demonstrate their ability to take command, to show that they are capable of “being ‘on top of’ things [,] . . . to appear always in control of situations, even where circumstances dictate that this could not possibly be the case” (Kerfoot, 2000, p. 232). Unsurprisingly, those who identify as feminine (arguably mainly women, although this category can include those men who either choose not to or cannot perform masculinity) are uncomfortable with or marginalized by management’s masculinity. They find its competitiveness, its bureaucratic impersonality, its emotional coldness and its lack of intimacy alien. This may result in them distancing themselves from the content and the context of their work, appearing detached and uncommitted, valuing home, friends and family above their job; but at the very least it will translate into a constant sense of dissonance at work, a feeling of not fitting into the organizational environment (Kerfoot, 1999, p. 188). Indeed there is empirical evidence to the effect that even women who have reached the organizational peak may opt out. Marshall (1995), for example, talks of how her middle and senior management respondents paused to assess their careers, which for many then led to a period of unemployment as a result of their disassociation from the male organizational cultures in which they were employed. In a similar vein, Michelle Martinez (1998) quotes Rosener’s (1997) claim that “Most women [managers] don’t want to fit into a male-dominated company mold”, as well as citing research data from US consultancy Catalyst which suggest that “The women [managers, all of whom had quit their jobs,] . . . surveyed were either moving to companies who provided a more level playing field, or starting their own businesses”. In fact Catalyst (1998) have produced a manual which they suggest will enable organizations to retain their female human resource, based on “best practices from the corporate leaders”. Organizations cited include Motorola, Deloitte and Touche, IBM, Avon, American Airlines, McDonald’s and Texas Instruments. Another category of “female escapee” is the woman achiever who gives up work because she finds juggling work and domestic commitments impossible, and wants to put her family first. The crucial point here is that modern work environments encourage and nurture masculine ways of relating to self and of behaving. However, organizations are not the only social site where this takes place – and masculinity is not uniform. Neither is masculinity static. Kerfoot (1999, 2000) (Kerfoot and Knights, 1999) asserts that demands on managers are changing as organizations become increasingly concerned with flexibility and quality in order to assure responsiveness to customers and, therefore, continued profitability in a highly charged business environment. Kerfoot argues that managers now find themselves responsible for getting the best out of their staff, for fully exploiting the creativity and potential of their organization’s human resource, for extracting the optimum levels of productivity and service, as opposed to simply seeing workers as a “necessary evil” (Kerfoot, 1999, p. 191). She suggests that managers now have to “communicate with, rather than dictate to, subordinates. This is in a manner that demands more sophisticated means of control and direction than through the traditional impersonal hierarchical chain of command” (2000, p. 232). That is to say, Kerfoot has it that a certain “feminization” of management is taking place within which managers must display both “social skills” and “emotional awareness”,

and build at least a degree of intimacy with their staff. This, she also claims, creates difficulties for managers because intimacy of any kind equates to a certain vulnerability, a revealing of aspects of oneself that self-estranged forms of masculinity insists are hidden away. Perhaps, then, as Kerfoot and Knights (1999) suggest, new forms of management are challenging dominant forms of organizational masculinity. Do those identifying with “old” masculinity – controlling, detached, impersonal, hierarchical – risk having their carefully honed traits and behaviours deemed unproductive in current organizational environments, even to the extent that these men and women lose their jobs? Can we speculate that an unintended consequence of such (new management) practices would lead to a fundamental questioning of masculinity in management, organization and subjectivity? Does such critical reflection on the business of management itself (hold) the key to creating the conditions within which an alternative means of managing can emerge – one that is grounded in non-instrumental modes of relating to others (Kerfoot and Knights, 1999, p. 212)? In fact we would argue that such changes in management techniques and approaches can be seen very differently – that the required shift towards a more open and engaged form of communication on the part of managers could be understood as a colonization of the feminine with the result of reinforcing the edifice of masculinism. This may well make management/masculinity easier to perform in the sense that it becomes less anxious and less obsessed with control in its “trying on” of feminine intimacy. As Brittan (1989, p. 187) has it, “hegemonic masculinity is able to defuse crisis tendencies in the gender order by using counter and oppositional discourse for its own purposes.” The above analysis supports the view that masculinity is historical in itself, existing in different forms in different times, in different cultures and in different locations within the same culture (Connell, 1995; Alvesson and Billing, 2000). However, while organizational masculinity itself might shift in emphasis, or exist in multiple forms in the same cultural site, or even in multiple forms in the same organization, this is unlikely to mean that men relinquish any of their privilege – although what is also clear is that the requirement to do masculine behaviour, of whatever sort, is a social challenge, not a natural expression of the essence of being male. In the workplace, behaving in this way in order to succeed as a “manager” is problematic – the demands of masculine management are potentially damaging, not just to male (and female) managers themselves, but also to their staff, their colleagues, their customers, their families and the community at large. In the quest to become a “real manager”, people may come to depersonalize others, to turn them into objects and resources rather than see them as fellow human beings. At the same time, sacrificing a whole range of one’s own experience causes managers to become desensitized, further diminishing their capacities to empathize with and care about others, even themselves, suppressing “a range of emotions, needs, and possibilities, such as nurturing, receptivity, empathy, and compassion . . . because they might restrict [the] ability and desire to control [them]selves or dominate [other] human beings” (Kaufman, 1994, p. 148). Macho managers who are hard on their employees are often even harder on themselves, and this self-sacrifice is another important element of masculine experience (Donaldson, 1991). At the end of this process of stifling emotion, thwarting impulses, suppressing spontaneity for the sake of control, concealing true feelings and intentions – the process

Gender in change: gendering change 553

JOCM 18,6

554

of self-discipline – managers come to regard their selves as just another resource, just another commodity to be “downsized” if necessary (Jackall, 1988). Management is predicated on particular forms of masculine identity work which limit the range of possibilities for managerial subjects to interact with others, and thus make for alienation and self-estrangement, but which simultaneously devalue other, more engaged forms of interaction (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996; Kerfoot, 1999, 2000). Thus managers may do things, but they do not necessarily feel that it was themselves who acted – they often see themselves as playing a role. Similarly, they may endure a great deal of stress as a result of the alienating and disembodying effects of the management role, becoming unable to assess the effects that the labour of management is having on their physical and emotional well-being. It may be others who have to inform such an individual of the damage that he or she is sustaining as a result (Lennie, 2000, pp. 135-6). Feminine values In the light of the above, the question we must now ask is: would feminine values provide an alternative to the dominance of masculine identities in workplaces? Ruth Hines says yes – that feminine values should be reintroduced into organizations to balance out the values of controlling, competitive, aggressive masculinity. She claims that the existing imbalance is damaging to personal survival, growth and wholeness, psychologically, physically and spiritually. This argument says that what is at stake is not just the suppression of women, individually or as a group, but the suppression of ways of thinking, feeling and acting that are considered feminine. These possibilities for thinking, feeling and acting become unavailable to women or men (Hines, 1992, pp. 314-15, 317). The wide-ranging taboo on the feminine at work is seen to be problematic because organizational subjects come to relate to themselves and to others in highly restricted and restrictive ways. They can neither be fully themselves nor fully human. A better balance of organizational values would, therefore, ensure a healthier workplace. Frenier (1996) agrees. Writing from a perspective informed by the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, Frenier asserts that we all have masculine and feminine aspects to our characters, whether we are male or female. She goes on to claim that an injection of feminine values into modern organizations, to compliment the existing emphasis on the masculine, will make our progress towards genuinely sustainable lifestyles (a goal she sees as particularly important) more straightforward. Frenier claims that the feminine turns on dialogue, reflection and the development of community, the better to challenge some of the maxims we organize by – for example, “growth is the name of the game”. Her theme is one of encouraging not only our continued well-being but also our commercial success. In a similar vein, Boucher (1997) suggests that the women managers she spoke to about leadership sought to actively “reject the stereotypical (male) values of a leader (emotional distance, objectivity, unconditional confidence, etc.) and develop a clear sense of their own values”. This, as she argues, tempers “some of the more potentially self-destructive aspects of this social construction of leadership” (Boucher, 1997, p. 155) through its emphasis on connectedness and relatedness (with oneself and others), integrity and honesty. The kind of argument presented by Hines, Frenier and Boucher does not necessarily privilege the feminine over the masculine but, rather, catalogues the problems which an imbalance of values can generate in the organization. It claims that organizations should be informed by a consideration of what they presently do not welcome – the values of the feminine – or at least by a critical examination of the masculine character

of modern organizational values/managerial practice and its consequences. As Alvesson and Billing (2000, p. 149) suggest, although there are undoubtedly problems with some of the available constructions of feminine values, as well as with certain suggestions about how they can benefit organizations, as we have already established in our discussion of the gender in management literature, feminine leadership could “be seen as a constructive counterfoil to prevailing or older ideas about leadership, a counterfoil making it easier for a number of females – and progressive men – to identify with leadership and get some guidelines and legitimation”. They continue by pointing out that men and women who manage using the range of gendered behaviours may well be more effective because of their ability to care and share as well as to direct and control (p. 152) As a view of gender, this is, as we have implied above, too static. Gender emerges and changes in a dynamic between a variety of features and forms of masculinity and femininity, which grow alongside each other. In establishing such relations detail is everything. A changing and dynamic gender identity transcends its roles in constant becoming: it may become genderful – so expansive and inclusive in its myriad gender alignments that it cannot be aligned or consigned within gender limits, as everything is recognised as a form of gender; or it may become ungendered, where gender is dissipated, overlain by and completely absorbed into so many other alignments (i.e. as a dimension of them) that it ceases to function as a category. In staying in motion, in change, it resists those definitions that fix and name it and thus make it one thing or the other. Gender is not the outcome of a performance but is the process of the performance – it is not what you do, it is the way that you do it. From a research point of view, this means that ongoing studies of the organizational micro-practices by which gendered subjectivity is shaped, the actual relations of power, knowledge and gender in talk, myth, image and action, need to be produced as a matter of course if we are to understand better how gendered identity emerges, is changed by and itself affects management practice over time. Gendering change: theory and practice Change theory has been with us for some time, but with specific relevance to organizations and action then Lewin’s (1947, 1951) “unfreezing-refreezing” model is perhaps the foundation or at least point of departure for most modern approaches. It is not hard to see that this approach and the “stepwise” approaches that follow have implicitly incorporated a masculinist model of change – where fixity is the norm, change has to be championed and involves action upon and object, and stability reasserted. Planned organizational change, with goal-setting and progress measuring through stages, with models like the Managerial grid to guide it, elaborates the same basic assumptions and has cast a long shadow through to the present day. Cyclical models have often done little more than to join the end of a straight line to its beginning and have established little sense of openness about the cycles that they describe. In fact, although much formal theorising about change has adopted characteristics of hegemonic masculinist reasoning in their thinking, they have largely ignored gender as an explicit factor in change whilst their concept of change is gendered. From the 1980s onward, however, there was something of a shift of focus as culture change, symbolic management and the management of meaning moved to centre stage,

Gender in change: gendering change 555

JOCM 18,6

556

“feminizing” the old brutal managerial ways, getting people to go the extras mile because it feels good, not because you told them so. It seemed that the old style change practices of presenting the numbers, claiming no alternative and using power to drive change through had finally had their day; even the softer OD models had continued to cling to a data-driven, science based model where the evidence drove the change even when the evidence was soft in its origins. OD lent itself to a tools and techniques approach, and thus often, especially in the UK, became easily co-opted into managerialist agendas. Change often became co-optation and manipulation as it was repeatedly implemented by managers – even very senior ones – with no feel for the underlying values of the approach. Wajcman’s (1988) study of companies that won awards for their diversity programmes demonstrates that even best-practice companies fail to change gender discrimination patterns substantially and women, if they want to succeed, need to manage like a man. We should hardly be surprised that OD suffered from the same ailment, in general, despite some efforts in the community to stop these things happening, and the broader societal changes in lifestyle and work-life roles. As far as theorising change and theorising from change practice goes, there are certain areas that are at best under-researched, and need further work if we are to advance our knowledge of gender and change in practice. First, some work needs to be done on the deep dynamics of change theory, looking at the psychodynamics and psychoanalytics of gender in particular. Second, the specifically gender experiences (including bodily experience) of men and women involved in actual change processes across sectors need to be explored. Specific varieties of this that need attention are the experiences of men involved on non-masculinist strategies in masculine organizational cultures (i.e. on varieties of masculinities and how these get discursively redefined in change processes); women involved in bringing change about either as internal change agents of external consultants; women’s roles in mergers and acquisitions (including international); women’s involvement in innovation; and women entrepreneurs, a much under-researched sector in itself. References Alimo-Metcalfe, B. (1995), “An investigation of female and male constructs of leadership and empowerment”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 3-8. Alvesson, M. and Billing, Y.D. (1997), Understanding Gender and Organizations, Sage, London. Alvesson, M. and Billing, Y.D. (2000), “Questioning the notion of feminine leadership: a critical perspective on the gender labelling of leadership”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 144-57. Baddeley, S. and James, K. (1987), “Owl, fox, donkey, sheep: political skills for managers”, Management Education and Development, Vol. 18 No. 1, Spring: pp. 3-19. Boucher, C. (1997), “How women socially construct leadership in organizations: a study using memory work”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 149-58. Brewis, J. (1999), “How does it feel? Women managers, embodiment and changing public sector cultures”, in Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (Eds), Transforming Management: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, UCL Press, London, pp. 84-106. Brewis, J. and Linstead, S. (2004), “Gender and management”, in Linstead, S., Fulop, S. and Lilley, S. (Eds), Management and Organization: A Critical Text, Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Brewis, J., Hampton, M. and Linstead, S. (1997), “Unpacking Priscilla: subjectivity and identity in the organisation of gendered appearance”, Human Relations, Vol. 50 No. 10, pp. 1275-304. Brittan, A. (1989), Masculinity and Power, Blackwell, Oxford. Brown, H. (1992), Women Organising, Routledge, London. Buchanan, D. and Badham, R. (1999), Power Politics and Organizational Change: Winning the Turf Game, Sage, London. Buchanan, D. and Boddy, D. (1992), The Expertise of the Change Agent: Public Performance and Backstage Activity, Prentice-Hall, London. Catalyst (1998), Advancing Women in Business – The Catalyst Guide: Best Practices from the Corporate Leaders, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Colgan, F. and Ledwith, S. (1996a), “Women as organizational change agents”, in Ledwith, S. and Colgan, F. (Eds), Women in Organizations: Challenging Gender Politics, Macmillan, London, pp. 1-43. Colgan, F. and Ledwith, S. (1996b), “Movers and shakers: creating organizational change”, in Ledwith, S. and Colgan, F. (Eds), Women in Organizations: Challenging Gender Politics, Macmillan, London, pp. 278-300. Connell, R.W. (1995), Masculinities, Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Covin, T.J. and Harris, M.E. (1995), “Viewpoint: perspectives on women in consulting”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 7-11. Donaldson, M. (1991), Time of Our Lives: Labour and Love in the Working Class, Allen and Unwin, North Sydney, NSW. Eagly, A.H. and Johnson, B.T. (1990), “Gender and leadership style: a meta-analysis”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 108 No. 2, pp. 233-56. Fagenson, E.A. (1993), “Diversity in management: introduction and the importance of women in management”, in Fagenson, E.A. (Ed.), Women in Management: Trends, Issues and Challenges in Managerial Diversity, Sage, London. Frenier, C. (1996), Business and the Feminine Principle: The Untapped Resource, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. Gherardi, S. (1995), Gender, Symbolism and Organisational Cultures, Sage, London. Harvard Business Review (1991), “Debate: ways men and women lead”, January-February, pp. 151-60 (incorporates: Cohen, A.R. (p. 158); Epstein, C.F. (pp. 150-1); Goldberg, C.R. (p. 160); Mansbridge, J. (pp. 154-6)). Hearn, J. and Parkin, W. (1994), “Sexuality, gender and organisations: acknowledging complex contentions”, Sexualities in Social Context, paper presented at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, 28-31 March, University of Central Lancashire Preston, UK. Helgesen, S. (1995), The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, Currency/Doubleday, New York, NY. Hines, R. (1992), “Accounting: filling the negative space”, Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 314-41. Jackall, R. (1988), Moral Mazes, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kanter, R. (1977), Men and Women of the Corporation, Basic Books, New York, NY. Kaplan, K.L. (1995), “Women’s voices in organizational development: questions, stories and implications”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 52-80.

Gender in change: gendering change 557

JOCM 18,6

558

Kaufman, M. (1994), “Men, feminism, and men’s contradictory experiences of power”, in Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (Eds), Theorizing Masculinities, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 142-63. Kerfoot, D. (1999), “The organization of intimacy: managerialism, masculinity and the masculine subject”, in Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (Eds), Transforming Management: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, UCL Press, London, pp. 184-99. Kerfoot, D. (2000), “Body work: estrangement, disembodiment and the organizational ‘other’”, in Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (Eds), Body and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 230-46. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1993), “Management, masculinity and manipulation: from paternalism to corporate strategy in financial services”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 659-77. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1996), “‘The best is yet to come?’: the quest for embodiment in managerial work”, in Collinson, D.L. and Hearn, J. (Eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men: Critical Perspectives on Men, Masculinities and Managements, Sage, London, pp. 78-98. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1999), “‘Man’ management: ironies of modern management in an ‘old’ university”, in Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (Eds), Transforming Management: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, UCL Press, London, pp. 200-13. Lennie, I. (2000), “Embodying management”, in Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (Eds), Body and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 130-46. Lewin, K. (1947), “Frontiers of group dynamics”, Human Relations, Vol. 1, pp. 5-42. Lewin, K. (1951), Field Theory in Social Science, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Maddock, S. (1999), Challenging Women: Gender, Culture and Organization, Sage, London. Marshall, J. (1995), Women Managers Moving on: Exploring Career and Life Choices, Routledge, London. Morgan, G. (1986), Images of Organization, Sage, London. Nicolson, P. (1996), Gender, Power and Organisation: A Psychological Perspective, Routledge, London and New York, NY. Oerton, S. (1996), “Sexualizing the organization, lesbianizing the women: gender, sexuality and flat organizations”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 26-37. Rosener, J.B. (1990), “Ways women lead”, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 119-25. Rosener, J.B. (1997), America’s Competitive Secret: Women Managers, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sheppard, D.L. (1989), “Organisations, power and sexuality: the image and self-image of women managers”, in Hearn, J., Sheppard, D.L., Tancred-Sheriff, P. and Burrell, G. (Eds), The Sexuality of Organisation, Sage, London, pp. 139-57. Stace, D. and Dunphy, D. (1994), Beyond the Boundaries, McGraw-Hill, Sydney. Tannen, D. (1993), You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Virago, London. Teigen, M. (1999), “Documenting discrimination: a study of recruitment cases brought to the Norwegian Gender Equality Ombud”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 91-105. Tomlinson, F., Brockbank, A. and Traves, J. (1997), “The ‘feminization’ of management? Issues of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ in the roles and experiences of female and male retail managers”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 218-29.

Vine, P. (1997), “Battling the myth of superwoman”, British Journal of Administrative Management, November-December, pp. 12-13. Waclawski, J., Church, A.H. and Burke, W.W. (1995), “Women in organization development: a profile of the intervention styles and values of today’s practitioners”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 12-22. Wajcman, J. (1998), Managing Like a Man: Women and Men in Corporate Management, Penn State University Press, University Park, PA. White, J. (1995), “Leading in their own ways: women chief executives in local government”, in Itzin, C. and Newman, J. (Eds), Gender, Culture and Organizational Change: Putting Theory into Practice, Routledge, London, pp. 193-210. Further reading Anker, R. (1997), “Theories of occupational segregation by sex: an overview”, International Labour Review, Vol. 136 No. 3, pp. 315-37. Arlidge, J. (2000), “Dome chief resigns as sponsors revolt”, Guardian Unlimited, 6 February. Brewis, J. and Kerfoot, D. (1994), “Selling our ‘selves’? Sexual harassment and the intimate violations of the workplace”, paper presented to the British Sociological Association Annual Conference, “Sexualities in social context”, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, 28-31 March. Brewis, J. and Linstead, S. (2000), Sex, Work and Sex Work: Eroticizing Organization, Routledge, London. Brewis, J. and Sinclair, J. (2000), “Exploring embodiment: women, biology and work”, in Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (Eds), Body and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 192-214. Chodorow, N. (1989), Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Collinson, D.L. and Collinson, M. (1997), “‘Delayering managers’: timespace surveillance and its gendered effects”, Organization, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 375-407. Collinson, D.L. and Hearn, J. (1994), “Naming men as men: implications for work, organization and management”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 2-22. Collinson, D.L. and Hearn, J. (Eds) (1996), Men as Managers, Managers as Men: Critical Perspectives on Men, Masculinities and Management, Sage, London. Crompton, R. (1997), “Women, employment and feminism in the Czech Republic”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 137-48. Cunningham, R., Lord, A. and Delaney, L. (1999), “‘Next Steps’ for equality? The impact of organizational change on opportunities for women in the civil service”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 67-78. Davidson, M.J. (1997), The Black and Ethnic Minority Woman Manager: Cracking the Concrete Ceiling, Paul Chapman, London. Davidson, M.J. and Cooper, C.L. (1992), Shattering the Glass Ceiling: The Woman Manager, Paul Chapman, London. Dunphy, D. and Stace, D. (1990), Under New Management: Australian Organisations in Transition, McGraw-Hill, Sydney. Enloe, C. (1990), Bananas, Bases and Beaches: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Pandora, London. Enloe, C. (1993), The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Gender in change: gendering change 559

JOCM 18,6

560

Friedan, B. (1963), The Feminine Mystique, Dell, New York, NY. Grey, C. (1995), “Review article: gender as a grid of intelligibility”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 46-50. Griffin, S. (1980), Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Harper and Row, New York, NY. Holtermann, S. (1995), “The costs and benefits to British employers of measures to promote equality of opportunity”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 2 No. 3, pp. 102-12. Jackson, N. and Carter, P. (2000), Rethinking Organisational Behaviour, Financial Times Prentice-Hall, Harlow, Essex. Kasten, K. (1972), “Toward a psychology of being: a masculine mystique”, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 23-4. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1998), “‘Managing managerialism in contemporary organizational life: a ‘man’agerial project’”, Organization, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 7-26. Linstead, S. and Linstead, A. (2004), “Managing change”, in Linstead, S., Fulop, S. and Lilley, S. (Eds), Management and Organization: A Critical Text, Macmillan, Basingstoke. Maddock, S. and Parkin, S. (1993), “Gender cultures: women’s choices and strategies at work”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 3-9. McDowell, L. and Court, G. (1994), “Performing work: bodily representations in merchant banks”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 12, pp. 727-50. McNeil, M. (1987), “Being reasonable feminists”, in McNeil, M. (Ed.), Gender and Expertise, Free Association Books, London, pp. 13-61. Meehan, D. (1999), “The under-representation of women managers in higher education: are there issues other than style?”, in Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (Eds), Transforming Management: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, UCL Press, London, pp. 33-49. O’Donovan, K. (1985), Sexual Divisions in Law, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. Reynolds, L. (1992), “Translate fury into action”, Management Review, Vol. 81 No. 3, pp. 36-8. Sinclair, A. (1998), Doing Leadership Differently: Gender, Power and Sexuality in a Changing Business Culture, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Thomas, D.A. and Ely, R.J. (1996), “Making differences matter: a new paradigm for managing diversity”, Harvard Business Review, September-October, pp. 79-90. Tienari, J. (1999), “The first wave washed up on shore: reform, feminization and gender segregation”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 1-19. Walby, S. (1997), Gender Transformations, Routledge, London. Whitehead, S. (1999), “New women, new labour? Gendered transformations in the house”, in Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (Eds), Transforming Managers: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, UCL Press, London, pp. 19-32. Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (1999), “Introduction: locating personal and political transformations”, in Whitehead, S. and Moodley, R. (Eds), Transforming Managers: Gendering Change in the Public Sector, UCL Press, London, pp. 1-15. Williams, C.L. (1995), Still A Man’s World: Men Who Do ‘Women’s Work’, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Wilson, F.M. (1995), Organisational Behaviour and Gender, McGraw-Hill, London. Wilson, F.M. (1996), “Research note: organisation theory: blind and deaf to gender?”, Organisation Studies, Vol. 17 No. 5, pp. 825-42. Zafarullah, H. (2000), “Through the brick wall and the glass ceiling: women in the civil service in Bangladesh”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 197-209.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Women in change management

Women in change management

Simone De Beauvoir and the co-optation of women’s Otherness

561

REVIEW PIECE

Melissa Tyler Organization Studies, The Business School, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK Abstract Purpose – To consider Simone De Beauvoir’s account of woman as Other, and particularly the appropriation of sexual difference, with reference to the gendered bifurcation and hierarchical organization of change management. Design/methodology/approach – Through a review of relevant managerial texts, as well as a discussion of De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and related scholarship, the paper explores some of the ways in which men and women are “situated” within change management discourse. Findings – Argues that within managerial discourse men are constructed as “effective” managers of change, whereas women are relegated to an “affective” support function, and that this can be understood as an appropriation of women’s ascribed Otherness. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the ongoing development of a critical, feminist approach to the study of management. While acknowledging the many limitations of her work, it makes the case for a reappraisal of De Beauvoir’s thinking in this respect. Keywords Gender, Change management, Women Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction Writing shortly after Simone De Beauvoir’s death in 1986, Claire Duchen (1986, p. 165) reflected that she was “arguably the woman who has had the greatest influence on women and on thinking about women this century”, going on to describe her (albeit in what, with the benefit of hindsight, might seem to be in albeit somewhat cliche´d terms) as the symbolic mother of contemporary feminist thought. First published as Le Deuxieme Sexe in 1949 (selling 22,000 copies in its first week of publication), the book for which De Beauvoir is undoubtedly best known has become a classic feminist text. despite The Second Sex’s status as a formative (if, as will be argued here, somewhat problematic) feminist treatise, De Beauvoir is notable by her absence in critical management and organization studies[1]. This relative neglect of The Second Sex and of De Beauvoir more generally is particularly surprising given the text’s focus on a theme that has seemingly become so central to the development of a gendered approach to organizations in recent years namely, understanding women’s ascribed Otherness[2]. With this in mind, this paper seeks to explore the potential contribution of De Beauvoir’s work, most notably her analysis of women as The Second Sex, to the development of a critical, feminist perspective on management. Specifically, it draws on De Beauvoir’s account of woman as Other in order to understand the ways in which managerialist literature on organizational

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 561-577 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628503

JOCM 18,6

562

change tends to position women largely as affective change managers whose skills are most appropriately deployed in managing the emotional aspects of organizational change, rather than as effective change agents; a situation that reflects broader conceptions of women’s subjectivity. The discussion begins by considering the relationship between gender and organizational change, highlighting the persistence of women’s secondary status both in and through change management discourse. It then goes on to outline De Beauvoir’s account of women’s Otherness, developed primarily in The Second Sex (1988), and considers her analysis of how women’s secondary position is sustained through what she termed the “feminine mystique”. Drawing on research that highlights the significance of affective responses to organizational change (Broussine and Vince, 1996; Carr, 2000, 2001; Doorewaard and Benschop, 2003), the role of women as providers of emotional management is then considered in relation to change. Returning to De Beauvoir in order to draw parallels between the skills and abilities attributed to women as affective change managers, particularly in the so-called “feminization of management” literature, and those associated with women’s Otherness, the analysis concludes by arguing that patterns of organizational change (as well as continuities in change) can be understood in relation to a co-optation of women’s Otherness. Arguing that this serves to reinforce a hierarchical distortion of sexual difference, the paper ends by reflecting on some of the implications of this for organization theory and for the development of a feminist critical management studies. Gender and organizational change In contrast to the relative lack of engagement with De Beauvoir’s work in organization studies, there has been something of a burgeoning interest in recent years in the theme of organizational change and this has resulted in the development of a wide body of largely managerial literature on restructuring, downsizing, virtual organizations, culture management, globalization, diversity and various other themes deemed crucial to managing and understanding change effectively. Of course, if we accept a processual ontology of organization (see Dawson, 2003 for a comprehensive review of this approach, associated most notably with Pettigrew, 1973, 1985), the term “organizational change” becomes something of a tautology. In many respects, the same applies to management – if management is an on-going process, not least one that involves the constant re-negotiation of the identities of managers themselves as well as those subject to management, then “change management” is a similarly meaningless term – to manage is by definition to change, and to manage change. Nevertheless, to manage is also to control and contain; to maintain continuities in and through change and, in this respect, the theme of change management has become a central focus of managerial interest in recent years – yet another management fad (Collins, 2000). Hence, management and business textbooks tend to argue that “change is now one of the most pressing issues facing organizations, their managers and their employees” (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2001, pp. 588-9), so much so that management gurus such as Tom Peters (1988, 1994) have argued that it is no longer enough to speak of organizational change but rather of “perpetual organizational revolution”. Change is, therefore, a major and recurring theme throughout much contemporary business and management literature, and a strategic approach to change and to effective change management is posited as “the contemporary imperative” underpinning managerial

efficiency (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2001, p. 592, emphasis added), in the service of which a range of (mostly) three-letter acronyms (BPR, JIT and so on) and phrases such as “circles of innovation” (Peters, 1997) and “value added metrics” (Carnall, 1999) continue to be invoked. As Dawson (2003, p. 2) notes,

Women in change management

. . . the growing cadre of business consultants who stress the need to create and sustain competitive advantage in an “increasingly aggressive commercial market” reinforces this seemingly insatiable need for change.

563

Not surprisingly, have put it, more critical engagements with management have also begun to focus on the organizational change imperative (Carr, 2000, 2001; Sturdy and Grey, 2003). Sturdy and Grey (2003, p. 651) for instance, have recently developed a critique of what they argue are the core assumptions of organizational change management (OCM), including “a practical and ontological pro-change bias, managerialism and universalism”, in their editorial introduction to a special issue of Organization. Developing a broadly discursive analysis, they highlight the tendency of managerialism to configure the change manager as a largely heroic figure armed only with the techniques of OCM. Critical perspectives, they argue, have as their “core” concerns an interest in understanding the socially constructed nature of OCM, and particularly in the ways in which theories and practices of OCM instantiate and reproduce managerial ideologies[3]. In terms of women’s role in change management, feminist perspectives have tended to highlight not only the impact of organizational change on women’s relatively marginalized position but also the role of women in the change management process. Literature that has come to be associated with the “feminization of management” has focused largely on the potential implications a convergence of organizational and career imperatives might have for “shattering the glass ceiling” (Cooper and Davidson, 1982; Davidson and Cooper, 1992). More critical (and it has to be said, marginal) feminist contributions have explored the potentially collective challenge women’s presence might represent to a masculine organizational hegemony, emphasizing that “the increasing movement of women into the labour market is in itself a significant source of change” (Colgan and Ledwith, 1996, p. 1). Other feminist contributions, particularly those influenced by postmodernism, have highlighted the ways in which processes of “feminization” might merely reinforce masculine norms in their attempts either to eradicate or to essentialize gender difference (Calas and Smircich, 1995). From this latter point of view, De Beauvoir’s account of women’s Otherness is worth re-visiting. As Calas and Smircich (2000, p. 193) have put it in this respect, Rereading The Second Sex, as well as its recent commentators, brings back into view the origins of certain insights in contemporary feminism regarding the subordination of women, insight we may have lost sight of when attending to the varied works of others writing later[4].

De Beauvoir and Women as The Second Sex As Duchen (1986, p. 165) reminds us, The Second Sex was written at a time when there was no unified movement for women’s liberation in France. In this sense, its publication caused something of a “succes de scandale”, and the book was attacked from both the political left and right. While the former accused De Beauvoir of deviating from the “real” political struggle by focusing specifically on “the woman

JOCM 18,6

564

question”, whilst also arguing that, as a privileged member of the Parisian intellectual elite, she could not possibly claim to speak on behalf of ordinary women (Jardine, 1979), the latter pursued more personal attacks; De Beauvoir was daubed both a pornographer and “accused” [sic] of lesbianism because she was unmarried and childless. As Duchen (1986) notes, even Camus (a personal friend of both De Beauvoir and Sartre) stated publicly that De Beauvoir had made a laughing stock of the French male by publishing The Second Sex (Schwarzer, 1984). A further attack came from the contention that it was actually Sartre who had written the majority of the text, and that such a work was beyond De Beauvoir’s intellectual capabilities – a point of critique that seems to have taken her rather literally when she described herself as “Sartre’s disciple in matters philosophical” (Sicard, 1979). In this sense, the significance of The Second Sex was realized largely retrospectively. By the mid-1970s, in a radically different political climate to that in which the book was first received, De Beauvoir and The Second Sex had become influential enough to be the subject of a special issue of the radical French journal l’Arc and since then (and particularly posthumously), her work has provided the focus for a wide range of scholarly books (Evans, 1985; Okely, 1986; Moi, 1994, 1999; Bauer, 2001 for notable examples) and special issues of literary, philosophical and feminist journals, as well as conferences, learned societies and electronic discussion lists. Yet, as noted above, her work has received relatively little critical attention in the sphere of organization and management studies, which seems somewhat curious given the burgeoning interest, in organization theory at least, in questions of subjectivity and in the development of a gendered approach to understanding organizations, and the relationship between subjectivity and OCM (Carr, 2000, 2001; Grubbs, 2000; Sturdy and Grey, 2003). Much of this theoretical discussion has of course, been framed by broader debates on modernist and postmodernist thought and the intellectual closure engendered by the tendency to align one’s ideas (and of course those of others) with either the autonomous, self-constituting (ungendered) Enlightenment subject or with attempts to “get rid of the subject” as Foucault (1977, p. 117) put it, or at least to constraint subjectivity to some form of discursive determinism. Some more than others (and mostly men, it has to be said) have influenced the ways in which debates on modernism and postmodernism, and the nature of subjectivity and its management, have been pursued in social and organization theory. The intention here is not to rehearse these debates, and their various twists and turns, but to revisit the extent to which, in De Beauvoir’s account, we can identify a conception of the subject that elides these two alternatives and their relative limitations and, as Kruks (1992) has noted in her reading of The Second Sex, identify a subject that is neither constituting and transcendental on the one hand or constituted as an effect on the other, but is rather “situated” (see Benhabib, 1992 for a more extended discussion of the situated self)[5]. As Kruks (1992, p. 92, emphasis added) has put it in this respect, In her account of women as subjects “in situation”, [De] Beauvoir can both acknowledge the weight of social construction, including gender, in the formation of the self and yet refuse to reduce the self to an “effect”. She can grant a degree of autonomy to the self – as is necessary in order to retain such key notions as political action, responsibility, and the oppression of the self – while also acknowledging the real constraints on autonomous subjectivity produced by oppressive situations.

In order to understand De Beauvoir’s conception of the situated subject, and to consider how it might provide a useful basis upon which to reflect critically on the positioning or situating of women in various aspects of organizational life, including OCM, it is important to locate it within her broader analysis of the intersubjective process of becoming a woman and in doing so, assuming the status of (as she put it), if not the Other, then certainly an Other. De Beauvoir’s account of woman as Other proceeds from her conviction that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 295). Here, in what is perhaps the most oft-quoted line from The Second Sex, it seems that De Beauvoir is, as Hughes and Witz (1997, p. 48, original emphasis) note, doing two things: . . . first she is articulating the notion that gendering, or becoming a woman or man, is a productive social process. This point came to be absolutely crucial to feminist thinking. Second, she is asserting that biology is not an all-embracing destiny for women.

To add to this, De Beauvoir also appears to be emphasizing that gender is actively achieved. As Butler (1990, p. 36) notes in this respect, for De Beauvoir “to become a woman is a purposive and appropriative set of acts, the acquisition of a skill, a ‘project’, to use Sartrian terms, to assume a certain style or significance”. In this sense, her account of the process of becoming a woman has much resonance with the Foucauldian conception of subjectivity[6]. As Kruks (1992, p. 95) puts it in this respect, De Beauvoir still “speaks to the problem of developing an adequate feminist theory of the gendering of subjectivity”, in its many guises, including it will be argued here, those situated in (and by) organizational processes. Unsatisfied by biological, psychoanalytic and materialist explanations for women’s oppression, De Beauvoir sought to establish an ontological account of sexual difference (the difference between men and women as social subjects), based on her analysis of what it means to be (or rather, become) a woman. In this sense, she builds on the existentialist account of human nature when she argues that “ . . . Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 16). For De Beauvoir the key issue in understanding sexual difference is that “biology is not enough to give an answer to the question that is before us: why is woman the Other?” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 69, emphasis added). She identifies man as positive and neutral, woman as negative – as the “second sex”; man as a human being, woman as merely a sexed being: . . . for him she is sex – absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject. He is the Absolute – she is the Other (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 16).

In “Otherness”, then, De Beauvoir locates woman’s way of being: . . . here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 20).

As Kruks (1992, pp. 100-1) notes, very early on in The Second Sex De Beauvoir appears to develop a more material, situated understanding of Otherness than that found in Sartre’s work (most notably Being and Nothingness) in so far as she begins to distinguish between two relations of Otherness: “those between social equals and those that involve social inequality”. Where the situation is one of relative equality, De Beauvoir argues that Otherness constitutes a relationship of reciprocity – each

Women in change management 565

JOCM 18,6

566

recognizing the other as an equal freedom. Where Otherness exists through relations of (material or physical) inequality, reciprocity or mutual recognition is precluded and the relationship is always already one of submission. It is not then merely woman’s Otherness but her subjection – the nonreciprocal objectification of what it means to be a woman – that De Beauvoir is concerned with. What De Beauvoir calls “the drama of woman” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 29) – what it means to become a woman – lies in the existential conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject (ego) – who regards the self as essential – and the compulsions of a concrete or “situated” existence in which she is already the inessential. In her account of the perpetuation of this conflict, difference is used as the justification for women’s Otherness, for women’s supposed inferiority and consequential inequality. This, therefore, creates a vicious circle for women, so that . . . in all analogous circumstances; when an individual (or group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of “to become” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 24, original emphasis).

Here De Beauvoir notes that if a woman is oppressed to the point whereby her subjectivity is denied her, then her situation is de facto her “destiny”. However, what De Beauvoir derives from Hegelian philosophy (and its development in existential humanism of course) in this respect, is the conviction that the gendered self is not a static state of being, but rather a constant process of becoming. As De Beauvoir (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 66, original emphasis) puts it (drawing also on Merleau-Ponty), “woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming, and it is in her becoming that she should be compared with man; that is to say, her possibilities should be defined”. The search for an underlying essence of womanhood, for De Beauvoir, is therefore, futile and misguided; for her, men and women are ultimately the same in their potential (“possibilities”) as human beings, but this “sameness” is distorted through the social location of woman as the (necessarily ontologically inferior) Other – through her relegation to the “second sex”. In woman, De Beauvoir, therefore, recognizes a self that both men and women have defined as Other; an ideal of womanhood that entails in women a duty to sacrifice themselves ontologically (if no longer literally). For her, what makes the idea that women find a sense of self only by surrendering their claim to a sense of self (to their right to “be” as autonomous human beings) so fundamental and enduring is that women internalize it and so work with rather than against it, as an accurate reflection of what it means to be a feminine woman. This is what De Beauvoir means by the feminine mystique; a concept developed by Betty Friedan (1963) in her liberal feminist account of housewives as “forfeited selves”. It also echoes Wollstonecraft’s (1976 [1788 and 1798]) much earlier assessment of middle class women in the late eighteenth century, confined to the private sphere of the home, as “caged birds”. De Beauvoir, much like Wollstonecraft before her, and Friedan subsequently, argued that the feminine mystique is perpetuated socially through the socialization and education of women into passive (read “feminine”) social roles so that to become a feminine woman means to become a passive, self-sacrificial being. Drawing on various themes found in her main theoretical influences – namely, Hegelian philosophy and its Marxist legacy, as well as French existentialism and

phenomenology – De Beauvoir argued that sexual difference needs to be understood in relation to the human project: . . . the value of muscular strength, of the phallus, of the tool can be defined only in a world of values; it is determined by the basic project through which the existent seeks transcendence (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 91, emphasis added).

Developing this existentialist conception of the human condition as a project of becoming into something more discernibly feminist, she maintained that women are compelled to conform to a feminine (passive, inferior) role in order to “be” (to be accepted as feminine) and so sustain the very relations of difference that constitute the foundation of their oppression in order to survive socially, economically and psychologically. In other words, women are compelled to become in particular ways ways that ultimately sustain their own oppression in order to exist as feminine. In the last third of The Second Sex (in what for many are its most problematic sections – see Evans, 1985), De Beauvoir emphasizes that because woman’s Otherness is socially rather than biologically determined, she need not continue playing the role of the Other indefinitely. Woman, for De Beauvoir, can become a subject (a “One” rather than an “Other”) because there is no prescriptive essence of eternal femininity. Rather, as she emphasizes in her conception of the feminine mystique, this is a myth, and she outlines three strategies that women might pursue in this respect. First, she argues that women must support themselves financially (in order to attain some sense of material autonomy) and hence should engage in paid work. It is important to note, however, that De Beauvoir also cautioned that a woman who works unpaid in the home and on a paid (but exploited) basis within the labour market carries a “dual burden”. This aspect of her writing, as Evans (1985, p. 128) has succinctly put it, “lacks nuance”, remaining as it does relatively undeveloped in her account. Second, she argued that women should strive to become “intellectuals” – a theme that has been developed particularly by proponents of l’ecriture feminine such as Helene Cixous, who urge women to “re-inscribe” themselves into the political process. This, in De Beauvoir’s view, would begin to address the fundamentally epistemological problem of women’s Otherness; in her words, . . . representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 175).

The final, and most important strategy for women to take part in is political transformation through social reorganization and she urged women to act as agents of macro-level social change, in this respect. Yet, De Beauvoir did not put her faith entirely in the development of a post-capitalist utopia, acknowledging that there would always be some differences between men and women. These, she argued, are primarily corporeal – relating to men and women’s different ways of being in the body; the social impact of which should ideally be minimized. These are what she finally (and problematically, many would argue) refers to as “differences in equality” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 740). As she expressed it, . . . her eroticism, and therefore her sexual world, have a special form of their own and therefore cannot fail to engender a sensuality, a sensitivity, of a special nature . . . her relations to her own body, to that of the male, to the child, will never be identical to those the male bears to his own body, to that of the female, and to the child (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 740).

Women in change management 567

JOCM 18,6

568

In this respect, much like Sartre, De Beauvoir regarded the limitations and constraints of the body as needing to be effectively overcome. In some passages of her work, she seems to perceive the body (especially the female body) as abject, and hence as burdensome, shameful, alienating, and dirty. She is particularly concerned to encourage women to relieve themselves from the burden of motherhood and to remain child free (as she herself did), and from the obstacles that, in her view, women’s bodies place upon them. In many ways, as Hughes and Witz (1997) note, she sees the body as a problem, limiting the potential freedom of the self-conscious subject. In doing so, many critics have argued that De Beauvoir does not question but rather leaves intact the Cartesian privileging of the mind over the body, a move which leads her to a conception of women almost as victims of their bodies, one that many other feminists have subsequently found problematic (Evans, 1985; McCall, 1979). Further to this, De Beauvoir has been criticized for her acceptance, even celebration, of male ideals (Kruks, 1992; Moi, 1994). In so far as she remains relatively faithful to the Sartrean notion of the subject, she does seem to appeal to a predominantly masculine version of abstract, universal freedom as the goal for the truly liberated woman – achieved through the hostile encounter of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic. As Kruks (1992, pp. 97-8) notes in this respect, however, sitting uncomfortably alongside this existentialist conception of the subject is the version considered above, one more akin to that developed by contemporary feminists such as Benhabib (1992) and Diprose (1994, 2002) and which De Beauvoir (1976) explored more fully in her book, The Ethics of Ambiguity (first published in 1948). Here she developed a more aesthetic conception of subjectivity that involves a tacit rejection of the Sartrean absolute subject in favour of a situated self that is more interdependent and permeable, a philosophy of subjectivity that proceeds from the view that the self by definition, involves a symbiotic relationship with the Other. As Stanley (2001, pp. 216-7) has put it, in a discussion of De Beauvoir’s play Les Bouches Inutiles in which she explores her ideas about ontological ethics, “self . . . does not exist in a vacuum, cannot exist apart from its relationship and fundamental commitment to other selves in the De Beauvoirian inscription of intersubjectivity”. In Hegelian terms, the meeting between situated subjects in De Beauvoir’s ethics requires both a moral and a political conversion that implies the potential for mutual recognition and the conditions for intersubjective generosity. As Calas and Smircich (2000, p. 196) have commented in this respect, De Beauvoir’s interpretation of dialectics “provides a historical and social context for her philosophy that overcomes the individualistic stance of Sartre’s existentialism”. In this respect her Hegelian reading of Marx means that, for De Beauvoir, women cannot even participate in the master-slave dialectic because their social situation renders impossible recognition of their concrete position as oppressed subjects. As she puts it, “woman is offered inducements to complicity” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 298). Yet despite this aspect of her thinking, De Beauvoir’s persistent references to “man” and “mankind” in many ways demonstrated how insensitive she was to the male dominance of her own intellectual milieu. Her critique of femininity and the female body could be perceived as a corollary valorization of masculinity and male norms. Indeed, she seems to contend that women can only be men’s equals by ceasing to be feminine (or rather by rejecting the feminine mystique), arguing that “. . . the fact of being a woman today poses peculiar problems for an independent human individual”

(De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 691). In this respect, it is perhaps not surprising that De Beauvoir grants the last word of The Second Sex to a call for fraternite´. Ultimately, therefore, she identifies femininity as a problem to be overcome and thereby, it could be argued, trivializes women’s lived experience, asserting, for instance, that women merely “exchange confidences and recipes” (De Beauvoir, 1988, p. 556). In sum, The Second Sex has been: . . . called racist as it did not account for Black women’s experience; heterosexist or homophobic for its depiction of lesbian women as sexually abnormal; patriarchal for accepting male terms of reference and lacking in any notion of woman centred-ness; exclusive because of its existentialist framework and difficult language (Duchen, 1986, p. 166).

Duchen (1986, p. 167) goes on to note that, more recently, De Beauvoir has also been criticized for “her assumption that women ought to be rational (like men) in their lives, . . . [for] ignoring the fact that men, as well as women, need to change, and again for her assumption of heterosexuality as the norm”. Hence, although when The Second Sex was adopted by Anglo-American feminists in the late-1960s its insight that femininity is a social construct and not an immutable essence was something of a revelation, and notwithstanding the extent to which this insight remains central to contemporary feminist thought, by the late-1970s the text had begun to seem somewhat passe´. By then, as Kruks (1992, p. 94) puts it, It was not only that [De] Beauvoir’s descriptions of women’s experiences increasingly applied to a bygone age and to women of a narrow social stratum. Her solutions . . . seemed to deny the female difference that many feminists now valorized.

Hence, De Beauvoir’s analysis of woman as Other and her contention that women constitute “the second sex” has, since the late-1970s, occupied what might be described as something of an ambivalent status; while it tends to be thought of as a quaint anachronism, few feminist theorists (even those who number its most vehement critics) would deny that The Second Sex has been fundamental to the development of contemporary feminism (Stavro, 2000). As Tong (1989, p. 195) puts it in her text on contemporary feminist theory, . . . no introduction to feminist thought would be nearly complete without a discussion of this work, which has helped many feminists understand the full significance of woman’s Otherness[7].

Women as (emotional) change managers In this respect it could be argued that De Beauvoir’s analysis of women as The Second Sex provides several insights that might constitute fertile ground on which to explore the relationship between gender and organizational processes such as change management. First, it emphasizes that sexual differentiation (the social process of becoming a man or a woman) is a social (read organizational) construct. Second, within this process, women become the Other (that which men are not, but which man needs in order to sustain himself both materially and subjectively), and the difference between men and women becomes ordered hierarchically. In the following section of this paper, it will be argued that organizational processes such as change management and the way in which they “situate” women play an active role in this respect, both in terms of constructing and also instrumentally co-opting women’s Otherness. Third, to

Women in change management 569

JOCM 18,6

570

be Other (in a dialectic of sexual difference) is therefore, what it means to be a woman, so that to maintain a feminine role and identity within organizational processes often involves assuming or adhering to an emotional rather than a strategic “situation”. “Becoming a woman” (as a productive social and organizational process), therefore, demands de facto assuming an inferior or secondary position in which women are situated as affective rather than effective managers of organizational change. For De Beauvoir, women’s Otherness is sustained through the feminine mystique according to which women find a sense of subjectivity only by surrendering their claim to a sense of self (their right to become autonomous beings) and alternatively live “beside themselves” (Benhabib, 1992), finding a subjective sense of existence only through self-sacrifice. Much of the practitioner and academic literature on change management highlights the significance of affective, “future shock” responses to rapid and recurrent organizational change, often emphasizing the need to sensitize management to the emotional impact of change (Doorewaard and Benschop, 2003). In his “how to” management guide, for instance, Carnall (1999, p. 78) emphasizes the importance of working through “emotional blocks” in order to manage change effectively. Broussine and Vince’s (1996) metaphorical analysis represents a more critical reflection on the emotional dimension of change management as experienced by those subject to it, as does Carr’s (2001) framing of the emotional dimension of organizational change in terms of processes of grieving. As Nilakant and Ramnarayan (1998, p. 9) note, Given the various manifestations of change, it is not surprising that it evokes a myriad of emotions. Some find the prospect and experience of change exciting, challenging and fulfilling. Others find it daunting, stressful and unpleasant. It can cause both hope and despair. Managing change involves simultaneously managing resources, processes and emotions. This is what makes change a complicated and challenging task.

It is no surprise, therefore, that much of the prescriptive change management discourse emphasizes the importance of so-called “soft” skills such as flexibility, sensitivity, patience, interpersonal and communication skills, the ability to mediate and negotiate, and to engender commitment and so on in the emotional management of change. As Loden (1985) and Helgeson (1990) have noted, such attributes are often regarded as important signifiers of the feminine, signifiers which in the last decade or so have come to be regarded as “comprising the missing components of a newly discovered ‘soft’ management style” (Colgan and Ledwith, 1996, p. 2). Several writers have argued that women bring to the workplace their own particular combination of transferable skills (Rosener, 1990) – in interpersonal communication, consensus building, teamworking, negotiation and multi-tasking (a concept seemingly developed to describe the way in which women are supposed to be genuinely skilled in this respect and not simply that they are expected to be) – honed through a lifetime of gendered socialization and project management in the domestic arena (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1995; Carnall, 1999). It was anticipated throughout the 1990s it seemed that these distinctly “female” ways of managing organizations, particularly those experiencing or initiating fundamental change, would be more appropriate than traditional “hard” approaches to management in anticipating and responding to the challenges engendered by organizational change. In this respect, advocates of the “feminization of management” tend to emphasize the extent to which recent changes in the labour market and particularly the strategic co-optation of women’s (attributed) management style and orientation may begin to

address women’s secondary position (Clegg et al., 1996; Fondas, 1997; Helgeson, 1990). Women, it is argued, manage in ways that are particularly appropriate to contemporary organizational life; perpetual organizational change is deemed to mean “it’s a woman’s world” as Peters (1997, p. 395) has put it. Indeed, in an analysis that echoes Carol Gilligan’s (1982) In a Different Voice, Peters (1997) has argued that women have “inherent strengths” as managers, as women’s experiences are based on connection with others rather than separation. Drawing on Foucault’s work on governmentality, Hatcher (2003) has argued that this “truth” is often linked to a feminine ethics of care (see Helgeson’s, 1990 adaptation of Gilligan, for instance), one that has been championed by (cultural) feminists and which is now part of managerical discourse on the skills required for affective organizational management particularly during periods of rapid change. As Hatcher notes, in this respect, rather than challenge the gendered order, writers such as Helgeson (like Gilligan before her) simply invert it by valorizing supposedly feminine approaches over masculine ones. As Hatcher (2003, p. 399, emphasis added) puts it, The popularity and seductiveness of the “female advantage perspective” rests on its capacity to valorize characteristics that previously were produced as “Other” to organizational life. It also provides simple answers as to how managers might manage better, but without undermining the mechanisms through which the more traditional masculine models operate.

Hence, OCM discourse tends, it could be argued, to emphasize how skills that can be attributed to women’s Otherness and which have traditionally been signifiers of women as “organizational outsiders” (Ernst, 2003) are those deemed most appropriate to the emotional management of change – to the pursuit of “soft” participative, charismatic approaches to understanding and managing change, as opposed to “hard” forced evolution or “dictatorial transformation” (Senior, 2002). In this sense, women are positioned as managers of the emotional dimension of change because they are deemed to be able to empower those subject to change by securing employee participation and commitment (Adler et al., 1993; Loden, 1985; Carnall, 1999); women are expected to possess and practice these coveted “soft” skills and hence to be better qualified in this sense than men (Ferrario, 1991). As Ernst (2003, p. 283) has put it in this respect, women are effectively positioned as “social workers in management”. Because, Hatcher notes, (cultural) feminism has been complicit in this respect, coupled with women’s secondary labour market position women are relatively powerless to challenge this “situation”. Women are, therefore, situated not as agents of organizational change but rather as the “emotional managers” of the effects of change, as masculinity continues to be defined as integral to the achievement of effective change management (Leonard, 1998). In a notable example of change management in the public sector, Maddock (1999, pp. 163-4, emphasis added) outlines, for instance, how: Women managers focused on how to manage, how to bring the detail and the general policy picture closer together. They . . . were seen as practical and useful, but their thinking was not valued in an intellectual sense . . . Their experience was that women focused on the relational aspects of “how to do things” while men tend to be expected to think “what to do”.

Much like customer service workers such as flight attendants – more commonly cited examples of the management of others’ emotions (Hochschild, 1983; Tyler and Taylor, 1998, 2001) – women in change management appear to be positioned as performing

Women in change management 571

JOCM 18,6

572

an interpersonal function that conflates safety and service; providing security in times of unexpected turbulence and anticipating, as well as responding to the emotional needs of others. Hence, change management discourse seems to construct men as effective change managers – as the essential subjects of change (Dunphy et al., 2002) to paraphrase De Beauvoir; and simultaneously positions women as affective managers of change. This means that whereas men are positioned or situated in managerial terms as effective – primary, proactive, strategic – managers of change who are neutral, objective, impersonal (read unbiased), cognitive, rational and public in their ascribed orientation, women are constructed largely in accordance with the antithesis of these qualities; as affective, secondary, reactive, supportive, feminine, subjective, personal, corporeal, emotional and private. They are situated as the Others of management; necessary but marginal, in other words as the organizational second sex. Of course, the situated nature of this role is a reflection of the extent to which women “self select” into occupations and organizational roles in which they perceive their skills and experiences will be valued both materially and symbolically (Tam 1997), through a structurated process of labour market positioning. Hence, many of the roles women seemingly opt into involve high levels of emotional and aesthetic forms of labour – relatively neglected aspects of managerial work. In this sense, what De Beauvoir terms the feminine mystique means that to be a feminine woman in managerial terms equates with being an affective change manger – to be able to multi-task, be “integrative”, anticipate and respond to the needs of others, mediate competing demands, be empathetic, self-sacrificing, and to be able to accept explanations for inappropriate/unacceptable behaviour during times of emotional upheaval. In other words, to operate – to “be” – according to an ethic of care (Gilligan, 1982). This is particularly poignant given that many women report experiencing considerable conflict between their femininity and their organizational situation. De Beauvoir (1988, p. 191) argues in this respect, that women are compelled within this context to conform to feminine norms – to adhere to the feminine mystique – and so internalize this organizational/feminine conflict so that, as she puts it, “in woman dressed and adorned, nature is present but under restraint, by human will remoulded”. Conclusions despite being treated as something of a venerable ancestor and hence, consigned to the history books of feminist thought, no longer regarded as having anything of significance to contribute, De Beauvoir and The Second Sex, it has been argued here, potentially provide a useful lens through which to view some of the sexually differentiated aspects of organizational processes, including those associated with change management. Drawing on De Beauvoir’s analysis of women as The Second Sex, this paper has explored some of the ways in which women’s secondary labour market position, coupled with their ascribed role in (emotional) management might be understood with reference to an instrumental co-optation (and hence perpetuation of) women’s Otherness – often framed in terms of “capitalizing on workforce diversity” (Dawson, 2003, p. 21). In this sense it could be argued that De Beauvoir’s analysis of women as The Second Sex provides several insights that might constitute fertile ground on which to explore the relationship between sexual difference and organizational processes such as change management in more depth. First, it emphasizes the extent to which sexual

differentiation is a social, and therefore organizational process. Second, within this process, women become the Other, and the difference between men and women becomes ordered hierarchically. It has been suggested here that organizational discourses such as change management and the way in which they “situate” women play an active role in this respect, both in terms of constructing and also instrumentally co-opting women’s Otherness. Third, to be Other (in a hierarchical distortion of what De Beauvoir regarded as the dialectic of sexual difference) is therefore what it means to be a woman, so that to maintain a feminine role and identity within organizational change processes and their management often involves assuming or adhering to an emotional rather than a strategic “situation” sustained through the feminine mystique according to which women find a sense of subjectivity only by surrendering their claim to a sense of self (their right to become autonomous beings), finding a subjective sense of existence only through self-sacrifice. This latter point seems especially significant in relation to the development of a critical perspective on the managerial “style” attributed to women and the ways in which this is effectively colonized in change management discourse to the extent that women are perpetually situated in a secondary position. Hence De Beauvoir’s account of the unequal or situated Other potentially has the capacity to bring back into view, as Calas and Smircich (2000) have put it, certain insights in feminist theory and to bring these to bear on recent developments in organizations and in critical organization studies. As noted above, it is of course not without its limitations but even these require us to be aware of our own “indifference to difference”, to paraphrase Kristeva’s (1981) critique of De Beauvoir. Notes 1. For a notable exception, see Calas and Smircich (2000) who, in their paper “Ignored for ‘Good Reason’” explore the potential of both Henri Tajfel’s and De Beauvoir’s work for a revision of social identity theories in organization studies. 2. In their recent discussion of the identity work undertaken by women in response to the pressures of restructuring and managerialism in higher education for instance, Eveline and Booth (2004, p. 244) make no reference to De Beauvoir in their focus on Otherness and on “questions of diversity, subjectivity and agency”, all of which are central themes throughout De Beauvoir’s work. 3. However, despite their proclaimed interest in providing an alternative voice, and in understanding the social construction of OCM, neither Sturdy and Grey’s (2003) introduction, or the papers contained in the special issue, explore the ways in which change management might be thought of as sexually differentiated; that as constructed and experienced in accordance with differences attributed to men and women, in part of course, by the managerial ideologies and their universalizing tendencies on which their critique focuses. 4. In her discussion of the “use and abuse” of De Beauvoir, Stavro (2001, p. 263) makes a similar point, arguing that since the recent turn to French poststructuralist philosophy, the prior existential humanist generation of De Beauvoir has been “for the most part ignored or hastily dismissed”. In feminist theory in particular, she argues, this is largely a reflection of the ways in which the so-called “new” French feminists have defined their interest in sexual difference largely in opposition to De Beauvoir – see for a notable example, Irigaray (1993, pp. 10-11) who likens what she describes as De Beauvoir’s wish to “get rid of sexual difference” to a call for genocide. Cixous sums up her view of De Beauvoir equally as

Women in change management 573

JOCM 18,6

574

dramatically, when she argues that De Beauvoir is “not an enemy, she is no-thing” (cited in Stavro, 2001, p. 266). 5. Here De Beauvoir is clearly drawing on Sartre’s view, developed most clearly in Being and Nothingness, that all human beings exist “en situation”. As Moi (1999) argues, the idea that the self is always “situated” is crucial to existentialist thought and particularly its desire to avoid dividing lived experience according to a subject/object dichotomy. 6. Few commentators have drawn this parallel, perhaps due to Parshley’s apparent mis-translation of the relevant passages, hence losing sight of her emphasis on subjectivity as an active production – (see Kruks, 1992 for a notable exception). For a review of the problems associated with the Parshley translation – which she describes as “a philosophical disgrace” see Moi (1994, 1999, p. viii). For a recent analysis of The Second Sex that does draw parallels with Foucauldian feminist accounts, particularly of the body as acculturated and of a performative ontology of difference, see Fishwick (2002). 7. Many other writers have emphasized the importance of De Beauvoir’s work to feminist theory and philosophy more generally. Stanley (2001, p. 202) for instance, has argued that “the fecundity of her philosophical thinking is undeniable and fascinating”. Moi (1999, p. vii) has perhaps put it most passionately, arguing that “The Second Sex is both a major philosophical text and the deepest and most original work of feminist thought to have been produced in this [the twentieth] century . . . Feminist thought can benefit immensely from serious reconsideration of The Second Sex, not as a historical document illustrating a long past moment in feminist thought, but as a source of new philosophical insights”. References Adler, S., Laney, J. and Packer, M. (1993), Managing Women, Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Alimo-Metcalfe, B. (1995), “An investigation of female and male constructs of leadership and empowerment”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 3-8. Bauer, N. (2001), Simone De Beauvoir, Philosophy and Feminism, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. Benhabib, S. (1992), Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, Polity, Cambridge. Broussine, M. and Vince, R. (1996), “Working with metaphor towards organizational change”, in Oswick, C. and Grant, D. (Eds), Organization Development: Metaphorical Explanations, Pitman, London. Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble, Routledge, London. Calas, M. and Smircich, L. (1995), “Dangerous liaisons: the ‘feminine-in-management’ meets globalization”, in Frost, P., Mitchell, V. and Nord, W. (Eds), Managerial Reality, Harper Collins, New York, NY. Calas, M. and Smircich, L. (2000), “Ignored for ‘Good Reason’: beauvoir’s philosophy as a revision of social identity approaches”, Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 193-9. Carnall, C. (1999), Managing Change in Organizations, 3rd ed., Prentice-Hall, London. Carr, A. (2000), “Critical theory and the management of change in organizations”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 208-20. Carr, A. (2001), “Understanding emotion and emotionality in a process of change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 421-36. Clegg, S.R., Barrett, M., Clarke, T., Dwyer, L., Gray, J., Kemp, S. and Marceau, J. (1996), “Management knowledge for the future: innovation, embryos and new paradigms”, in

Clegg, S.R. and Palmer, G. (Eds), The Politics of Management Knowledge, Sage, London, pp. 190-236. Colgan, F. and Ledwith, S. (1996), “Women as organizational change agents”, in Ledwith, S. and Colgan, F. (Eds), Women in Organizations: Challenging Gender Politics, Macmillan, London, pp. 1-43. Collins, D. (2000), Management Fads and Buzzwords: Critical-Practical Perspectives, Routledge, London. Cooper, C. and Davidson, M. (1982), High Pressure: Working Lives of Women Managers, Fontana, Glasgow. Davidson, M. and Cooper, C. (1992), Shattering the Glass Ceiling: The Woman Manager, Paul Chapman, London. Dawson, P. (2003), Understanding Organizational Change: The Contemporary Experience of People at Work, Sage, London. De Beauvoir, S. (1976), The Ethics of Ambiguity, Citadel Press, New York, NY (first published 1948). De Beauvoir, S. (1988), The Second Sex, Jonathan Cape, London (first published 1949, Trans. H.M. Parshley). Diprose, R. (1994), The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference, Routledge, London. Diprose, R. (2002), Corporeal Generosity, State University of New York Press, New York, NY. Doorewaard, H. and Benschop, Y. (2003), “HRM and organizational change: an emotional endeavour”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 272-86. Duchen, C. (1986), “Simone De Beauvoir 1908-1986”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 3 No. 3, pp. 165-9. Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A. and Benn, S. (2002), Organizational Change for Corporate Sustainability: A Guide for Leaders and Change Agents of the Future, Routledge, London. Ernst, S. (2003), “From blame gossip to praise gossip? Gender, leadership and organizational change”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 277-99. Evans, M. (1985), Simone De Beauvoir: A Feminist Mandarin, Tavistock, London. Eveline, J. and Booth, M. (2004), “Don’t write about it: writing ‘The Other’ for the ivory basement”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 243-55. Ferrario, M. (1991), “Sex differences in leadership style: myth or reality”, Women in Management Review and Abstracts, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 16-21. Fishwick, S. (2002), The Body in the Work of Simone De Beauvoir, Peter Lang, Bern. Fondas, N. (1997), “Feminization unveiled: management qualities in contemporary writings”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 257-82. Foucault, M. (1977), “Truth and power”, in Gordon, C. (Ed.), Power/Knowledge, Pantheon, New York, NY, pp. 108-33. Friedan, B. (1963), The Feminine Mystique, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Gilligan, C. (1982), In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Grubbs, J. (2000), “Cultural imperialism: a critical theory of interorganizational change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 221-34. Hatcher, C. (2003), “Refashioning a passionate manager: gender at work”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 391-412.

Women in change management 575

JOCM 18,6

576

Helgeson, S. (1990), The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership, Doubleday, New York, NY. Hochschild, A.R. (1983), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Huczynski, A. and Buchanan, D. (2001), Organizational Behaviour, 4th ed., Prentice-Hall, London. Hughes, A. and Witz, A. (1997), “Feminism and the matter of bodies: from de Beauvoir to Butler”, Body & Society, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 47-60. Irigaray, L. (1993), Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference, Routledge, London. Jardine, A. (1979), “Interview with Simone De Beauvoir”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 1-10. Kristeva, J. (1981), “Women’s time”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 13-35. Kruks, S. (1992), “Gender and subjectivity: Simone De Beauvoir and contemporary feminism”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 89-110. Leonard, P. (1998), “Gendering change? Management, masculinity and the dynamics of incorporation”, Gender and Education, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 71-84. Loden, M. (1985), Feminine Leadership or How to Succeed in Business Without Being One of the Boys, Times Books, New York, NY. McCall, D.K. (1979), “Simone De Beauvoir: The Second Sex and Jean-Paul Sartre”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 209-23. Maddock, S. (1999), Challenging Women: Gender, Culture and Organization, Sage, London. Moi, T. (1994), Simone De Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, Blackwell, Oxford. Moi, T. (1999), What is a Woman? And Other Essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Nilakant, V. and Ramnarayan, S. (1998), Managing Organizational Change, Response Books, New Delhi. Okely, J. (1986), Simone De Beauvoir, Virago, London. Peters, T. (1988), Thriving on Chaos, Macmillan, London. Peters, T. (1994), The Tom Peters Seminar, Macmillan, London. Peters, T. (1997), The Circle of Innovation, Alfred Knopf, New York, NY. Pettigrew, A. (1973), The Politics of Organizational Decision-Making, Tavistock, London. Pettigrew, A. (1985), Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in ICI, Blackwell, Oxford. Rosener, J. (1990), “Ways women lead”, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 119-25. Schwarzer, A. (1984), Simone De Beauvoir Today: Conversations 1972-1982, Chatto and Windus, London. Senior, B. (2002), Organizational Change, 2nd ed., Financial Times/Prentice-Hall, London. Sicard, M. (1979), “Interferences (interview with Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre)”, Obliques, Vol. 18-19, pp. 325-9. Stanley, L. (2001), “A philosopher manque? Simone De Beauvoir, moral value and the useless mouths”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 201-20. Stavro, E. (2000), “Re-reading The Second Sex”, Feminist Theory, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 89-110. Stavro, E. (2001), “The use and abuse of Simone De Beauvoir: re-evaluating the French poststructuralist critique”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 6, pp. 263-80.

Sturdy, A. and Grey, C. (2003), “Beneath and beyond organizational change management”, Organization, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 651-62. Tam, T. (1997), “Sex segregation and occupational gender inequality in the United States”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 102, pp. 1652-92. Tyler, M. and Taylor, S. (1998), “The exchange of aesthetics: Women’s work and the gift”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 165-71. Tyler, M. and Taylor, S. (2001), “Juggling justice and care: gendered customer service in the contemporary airline industry”, in Sturdy, A., Grugulis, I. and Willmott, H. (Eds), Customer Service: Empowerment and Entrapment, Palgrave, London, pp. 60-78. Tong, R. (1989), Feminist Thought, Routledge, London. Wollstonecraft, M. (1976), Mary and The Wrongs of Woman, Oxford University Press, Oxford, First published 1788 and 1798, respectively. (Melissa Tyler is a Lecturer in Organization Studies at Loughborough University. She has published in various journals including Gender, Work and Organization; Human Relations; Organization; Sociology and Work, Employment and Society, as well as in co-authored books and edited collections on gender, aesthetics, sexuality, organization and the body. Her current research focuses on gender, embodiment and organizational abjection, and the management of everyday life.)

Women in change management 577

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,6

578

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Marks and Spencer – waiting for the warrior A case examination of the gendered nature of change management Ann Rippin Department of Management, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself. Design/methodology/approach – Two extant stories: Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War are taken, along with the cultural archetype of the American West gunslinger to explore the gender aspects of change. The Marks and Spencer case is analysed using the corollary patriarchal narrative of Sleeping Beauty, a story whose organising logic is revealed as one of concern for patriarchal lineage, and legitimate succession. The paper, draws on the Marks and Spencer principals’ memoirs and biographies. Findings – Sleeping Beauty is shown as a narrative saturated in misogyny, aggression and violence. This violence, which is shown to characterise the Marks and Spencer case, is amplified in the second narrative, the Trojan War, in the highly personalised battles of the u¨ber-warriors of The Iliad. The paper concludes that violent, hyper-masculine behaviour creates and maintains a destructive cycle of leadership lionisation and failure at the company which precludes a more feminine and possibly more effective construction of change management. Originality/value – Demonstrates how M&S, gendered from its birth, its development through the golden years, the crisis, its changes in leadership and its recent change management has attempted to respond to its changing environment. Keywords Change management, Gender Paper type Conceptual paper

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 578-593 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628512

Introduction When, in Autumn 2003 I needed a case study on organisational change, without too much deliberation I chose Marks and Spencer. This was because the company seemed to me to be well-known, well-loved and in very public trouble. A few months later, the then Managing Director, Roger Holmes, came to give a public lecture at my university, of which he is an alumnus. In the question session at the end of his presentation I asked why he thought that his company enjoyed quite such high levels of public support, and why people wanted it to recover and regain its status as a national institution, despite the fact that declining sales figures suggested that they did not actually want to buy their clothes there. Expecting him to have a department full of market and consumer behaviour analysts who would have such information at their finger-tips, I was surprised and intrigued when he answered simply that he did not know. The fascination with the company, which had been part of my own life since childhood, had taken root and I continued to follow the progress of Marks and Spencer as events unfolded. As I worked on the case using an approach based on a combination of

autoethnographical approaches (such as embroidery and quilting) and narrative analysis, a gendered story began to emerge. This paper explores the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself. There has been a great deal written on narrative and storytelling in organisations (Boje, 2001; Gabriel, 2000; Czarniawska, 1999) to the point where it would be intrusive to cover what is by now familiar material in detail here. There is, however, often some confusion about what is meant by “story” or “narrative”. On some occasions the term “story” means an event or incident with personal meaning for the narrator (Reason and Hawkins, 1988) or it is used when personal development practitioners, for example, use extant stories as a method of analysis and subsequent intervention (Parkin, 1998; Whyte, 1994). Here I am using extant myths and stories available in this culture to analyse the phenomenon of change at Marks and Spencer. My two stories are Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War. I also use the cultural archetype of the gunslinger from the American West. My approach is to use the stories to think with in a manner similar to that described by Arthur Frank, who states that we have to learn to think with stories: Not think about stories, which would be the usual phrase, but think with them. To think about a story is to reduce it to content and then analyse that content. Thinking with stories takes the story as already complete; there is no going beyond it. To think with a story is to experience it affecting one’s own life and to find in that effect a certain truth of one’s life (Frank, 1995, p. 23).

By using stories as a frame of analysis certain key elements or themes are foregrounded which allow us to gain a sharper perspective on the case at hand, in this case Marks and Spencer. What follows is an investigation into the nature of change management at Marks and Spencer through the lens of two well-known narratives. The analysis begins with Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping beauty When I first began to prepare Marks and Spencer as a teaching case my subconscious mind made the link between the company’s position and the fairy tale. This was reinforced by the company’s 2003 Christmas television advertisement in which well-known pop stars featured in ironic takes on popular pantomimes. The second featured Will Young, a famously “out” gay pop singer, climbing into the princess’s chamber and taking the throw from her bed while leaving her alone. The subtle gender illusions were striking and knowing. The parallels between the company and the story of Sleeping Beauty were irresistible. The essential story as found in the storybooks of my childhood is as follows. The king and queen are childless. One day an enchanted frog tells the queen that she will have a daughter the following year when the briar rose blooms. When the baby is born her parents are so overjoyed that they hold a huge christening party and invite all the fairies in the land. For reasons which are variously explained in different versions of the story, one very important fairy is not invited. In some retellings of the story this is deliberate (Grimm and Grimm, 1993; Dalton, 1999) whereas in others it is an oversight (Carey, 1955), and in most the lack of an invitation appears to involve either gold canteens of cutlery or a fixed number of gold place settings. The result of the omission is that the wicked fairy arrives anyway and puts a curse on the child to the effect that she will prick her finger on a spindle on her

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior 579

JOCM 18,6

580

thirteenth or fifteenth birthday and die. The good fairy present commutes this to a deep sleep of a hundred years. Despite the king’s best efforts at protecting his daughter she does indeed prick her finger and falls into a deep sleep along with the rest of the inhabitants of the castle. A large thicket of brambles grows up around the castle where they all remain undisturbed as a succession of princes tries to get through to wake her up. None are successful until, after a 100 years, a handsome prince arrives to wake her up with a kiss and marry her so that they can all live happily ever after. The superficial resemblance between this fairy tale and Marks and Spencer is the notion of an organisation in suspension waiting for the right prince to come and reanimate the body. The gendered elements of the story are as follows: . The role of women in this story is essentialist and therefore biologically prescribed, and indeed the story may be read as a description of the menarche, the transition of the girl from virgin to sexually mature, fertile matron. Women, exemplified by the barren queen, are essentially breeding machines rather than active actors and agents or they are passively awaiting male animation like the princess. The need to have progeny is a requirement of the patriarchal system in which property and other wealth must be transmitted to a legitimate heir, preferably male. . The misogyny of the treatment of the old woman, the crone, the wicked fairy, who is, for whatever reason, excluded from the ceremonial celebration of the production of the heir. . The desirability of the virgin, the princess, with all her potential for reproduction. . The relationship between the two protagonists: the right prince is allowed to win the beautiful maiden; by implication, only the brave deserve the fair. . The climax of the story in the consummation of the relationship between the passive, feminine princess and the active, masculine prince. . The figure of the hero, constructed as strong, active, self-determined, conquering, prevailing against great odds. Before considering these similarities it is instructive to consider similarities in context. The story might be “about” the onset of sexual maturity (Bettleheim, 1991), or about sexual abuse by the father (Sexton, 2001) or by a vampiric woman preying on younger men (Carter, 1995) or the encounter between young and old women (Warner, 1995), or even the dangers of drugs or other addictions for young people as suggested in one classroom discussion I participated in. It is also possible to read it as a story about class, lineage and patrimony. The story opens with a childless royal couple which poses a threat to the succession and therefore the stability of the kingdom. This will be seen to be an important theme in the story of Marks and Spencer. The queen has failed in her duty as the king’s wife because she has not provided the heir required to guarantee that his line will continue in perpetuity. This is certainly a concern of the elite classes rather than those at more subsistence levels, but class is important in the British context in which Marks and Spencer was “born” and was certainly a concern of the founding families. When Simon Marks, the son of the founder and real developer of the business, filled in a questionnaire for a family album when he was 16 his response to the question: “What is your ambition?” was: “To have a handle [sic] to my name”

and he did indeed receive a knighthood in 1944 and an hereditary peerage in 1961 (Bookbinder, 1993, p. 41). When he received the latter he is recorded as saying: I was delighted to be given a knighthood . . . I fancied myself as a knight succouring distressed maidens. A peerage rather reminds me of old, bad barons (Bookbinder, 1993, pp. 152-3).

Indeed, one of the achievements of Marks and Spencer which is frequently alluded to in the authorised accounts of the company’s history is the ability of its clothing to erase class distinctions. The 1962 citation for the major US retailing award, the Tobe´ Award presented to Simon Marks states: “It is no longer possible to distinguish between the upper, middle and lower classes of English society in their dress” (Bookbinder, 1993, p. 153). Israel Sieff, Marks’ brother-in-law and business partner, comments in his memoirs that the Second World War brought about social changes which meant that: The relatively well-defined class divisions would certainly become more blurred . . . women accustomed by the war to a higher standard of living and a more independent poise, would translate this into a demand for good clothes of a classless character . . . Shop girls were going to expect to look like duchesses – as they had in the Wrens or the ATS – and feel just as comfortable (Sieff, 1970, pp. 180-1).

Israel Sieff’s son Marcus takes up the theme in his own memoirs. He quotes a newspaper article from 1955: Before the Welfare State there were broadly two classes of customers, the middle class who had the money and the working class who hadn’t. Now there is only one class and I am told . . . that many a debutante wears a Marks and Spencer nylon slip beneath her Dior dress as if she were just a Gateshead factory girl (Sieff, 1986, p. 169-70, quoting Lawrence Thompson in the News Chronicle, 1955).

Marcus Sieff is evidently proud of what he calls a “democratization of demand” and of the company’s role in “a social revolution in miniature” (Sieff, 1986, p. 170). This democratization was not seen as tearing down class divides, however, the founding dynasties were very proud of their own elevations through the class system (Israel Sieff became life peer in 1966, Marcus Sieff became a life peer in 1980) and the Sieff memoirs and the Bookbinder biography of Simon Marks are full of the principals’ connections with the establishment both politicians and world leaders, and royalty. The class system is important in terms of gender because of the roles it ascribes to women and men. The legitimate role of women is to produce heirs to the patrimony and to be attractive trophies for the conquering heroes. They do not have any direct political power, and again this will be seen to be important in Marks and Spencer. The role of men is to gain and maintain power and wealth to be passed on through the male line. Succession becomes a key issue. These key themes are raised in the Sleeping Beauty story. Sleeping Beauty, Aurora, Briar-Rose, the female protagonist, must be resuscitated not because she is of any intrinsic worth, but so that she can carry on her father’s dynastic hopes. And she must marry the strongest and most competent prince in order to strengthen the bloodline through the diversification of the gene pool. Women in the Marks and Spencer story are conspicuous by their absence. Even in the heat of the succession battles there is never a suggestion that one of Marks’ highly competent sisters should be brought into the business. As the saga of the company’s decline unfolds in an account like Bevan’s (2002) The Rise and Fall of Marks

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior 581

JOCM 18,6

582

and Spencer the absence of women again is exceptional. The action is carried out by men. The only “feminine” character in the story of the company’s early years is Israel Sieff. Sieff emerges as the figure displaying feminine characteristics as he counter-balances Marks’ masculine aggression and bullying. His role as peacemaker is described in various accounts, although the most striking comes from Sieff’s own account of their partnership which essentially began with them as schoolboys at Manchester Grammar (which is a school in the North West of England, UK): We did everything together, and the sharing made every experience richer, every discovery more exciting, every moment sweeter. We never seemed to disagree, we certainly never quarrelled. Perhaps it was because we were so different. Simon was quick, outspoken, frequently explosive. In after life, if he had to reprimand a friend or colleague, he might hit out hard, though in a moment it was over, and his hand was out, and all was forgiven and forgotten. I was of a milder temperament, slower to react, more tolerant of the untoward, living at a lower temperature: so much so, that frequently Simon would persuade me to deal with his offenders: he knew I would be more diplomatic. He was an initiator, original in mind and bold in action. He dominated naturally, I was a natural follower and glad to follow him (Sieff, 1970, pp. 37-8).

The tone here is reminiscent of the hero of a romantic novel with a stereotypically square-jawed man of action, so passionate about the job at hand that he temporarily loses control, but one who makes life sweet for his beloved friend. Indeed in Marks’ unpublished memoirs he refers to his friendship with Sieff as being like that of David and Jonathon (Seiff, 1970), and although there is never any suggestion in any commentary that there was a homosexual element in their relationship the passage above contains faint traces of homoeroticism. It also contains elements of classical and medieval gender physiognomy in which the male is associated with heat and dryness and the feminine with cold and wet (Fletcher, 1995; Klapisch-Zuber, 1992; Laqueur, 1990). When Marks died, characteristically at work, in harness so to speak, Sieff’s reaction is that of the grieving widow. Marcus Sieff describes the scene in slightly bathetic terms. Summoned to the office where Simon Marks was lying dead, he comments: When I got there, Simon was lying on a stretcher covered with a blanket with his feet sticking out; Father was sitting by the stretcher quietly weeping (Sieff, 1986, p. 164).

Israel Sieff wrote in his memoirs: While he was alive he dominated me. I always deferred to him; it never occurred to me to do anything else; I grew up in the assumption of his superiority, as a brain, a business-leader, and as a human being . . . It is difficult for me to be objective about him: nearly the whole of my adult life was spent in a professional relationship with him, one which he dominated. It is impossible for me to conceive of what my life would have been had our partnership not existed (Sieff, 1970, pp. 188, 189).

It is, then, possible to read Marks and Sieff’s relationship as akin to a bourgeois marriage in which the young couple gradually make their way from humble beginnings to comfort and affluence in later years, acquiring certain markers of sophistication along the way. This relationship is paralleled in Marks and Spencer’s relationship with its customers. As we have seen, the company allowed working class women to aspire to the status of a duchess by making high quality clothing available to them. In addition the company offered its customers gentrification through the range of

food it offered. Briggs (1984) in his centenary history of the company quotes Nicholas Wapshott in The Times from 1983. Wapshott points to the gentrification of eating habits in the British public led by Marks and Spencer. The point to note is that in 1983 Wapshott had to describe what are now commonplace vegetables and his “haute cuisine in a wire basket” headline would no longer stand scrutiny:

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior

Who outside the ranks of the well-to-do had ten years ago indulged in the delights of red and green capsicums (the posh name for peppers); the delicate delights of the mange-tout (pealets still in their shells); the wonder of courgettes (neo-marrows); the crisp chomp of fennel; or sucked the slender fingers of asparagus? All are our staple M&S fare (Briggs, 1984, p. 61).

583

.

There is an element of rags to riches in the Marks and Spencer story. The immigrant Michael Marks built the business from peddler’s tray to multi-million pound operation, but there is also a narrative about the embourgeoised marriage that went with this. The customer, in the role of faithful wife, supported the company, the husband, through the early years and now expects to enjoy a happy and prosperous retirement with him. The problem is that the husband has grown rather tired of his spouse and is looking for younger women. An alternative title for this paper could have been, “The First Wives” Club’. Hence, we can read a certain cherchez la femme in Marks and Spencer’s recent retail strategy. Thus in May 2004 Jess Cartner-Morley, the fashion editor of The Guardian wrote under the headline, “Marks and Spencer attempts to woo young customers with minis and boob tubes” that the new product range, Per Una Due, “features the shortest skirt ever to bear the M&S [sic] label – a mere 29 centi meter (11 inch) from waistband to hem” (Cartner-Morley, 2004b). The same writer had already challenged her readers to, “Guess the label on this chic yet foxy underwear set . . . Agent Provocateur? No, Marks and Spencer . . . by Salon Rose” (Cartner-Morley, 2004a, p. 53, emphasis in original), making a direct comparison with one of the best-known retailers of deliberately sexually provocative underwear. The image of the kept woman, however, was irresistibly suggested by the photo shoot accompanying Reid’s article, “Its big news for smalls” in the Financial Times’ How to Spend It supplement. The whiff of the bourgeois is still present, however, as Reid suggests in her closing paragraph: And for those who are worried about more mundane matters, Jenkinson [“the influential head of lingerie and beauty design”] has the reassuring answer: “Women want it all now. They want glamour and practicality. All our bras are machine washable at 408. There are many designer brands that still need to be handwashed – women don’t have time to handwash lingerie.” Good old, sensible Marks and Spencer (Reid, 2004, p. 24, emphasis in original).

The real irony, of course, is that the traditional customer, now in retirement, does have time to hand wash and takes pride in it. And she might well be engaged in this activity while her husband is out in pursuit of the younger woman. In effect, then, this desire to reach the younger customer seen in the launch of these ranges for younger women, and in the disastrous experiment in pared down modernism in the Gateshead Lifestore (Finch, 2004; Dowdy, 2003), could be read as a mid-life crisis for the company in which the aging male seeks to reinvigorate flagging self-confidence by acquiring a sexually attractive and vigorous younger woman; business strategy following subtly gendered lines. From this we can see that the gentrification of the company and its customer base has been a simultaneous process. The patriarchal transmission of inherited wealth to

JOCM 18,6

584

the rightful heir and the importance of lineage, a strong impetus behind the Sleeping Beauty, story is also vitally important. Simon Marks was disappointed when his own son, Michael, showed no interest in the business, preferring instead to become an artist, and it was Israel Sieff’s son, Marcus who eventually succeeded him. Bevan comments of Michael: He was dragooned into working for Marks and Spencer for a few years, but he always avoided his father if he could, preferring to eat in the staff canteen with the clerical staff rather than the executives. To Simon, he was a source of anger and grief. At one famous family gathering at home, Simon asked Michael’s opinion of an M&S [sic] cake. “I’m sorry, I just can’t get interested in Devon splits,” he replied witheringly (Bevan, 2002, p. 39).

The intermarrying of the two families, so that Simon Marks and Israel Sieff were brothers-in-law as well as business partners, also has a dynastic overtone. The dynastic alliance produced the empire which had to be protected at all costs, and Bookbinder (1993) states that this was the source of much of the friction between Simon Marks and his son, the son’s feeling that, for his father, the business always came first. Leadership in M&S Marks and Spencer from its inception then, can be read as a patriarchy. Its governance passed through the male line. Michael Marks may not have been as strong a character as his son or Marcus Sieff, but by these second and third generations the company was directed by a strong leader. These were succeeded by equally strong men who by this point were no longer family. As the direct dynastic heirs were exhausted the battle for the succession became intense, as we shall see in the next section. However, the presence of the strong leader set up a dependency culture which is one of the most strikingly gendered aspects of the Marks and Spencer case. Wilfred Bion’s analysis of group process suggested that one form that dysfunctional groups take is that of a dependent group always searching for its saviour, what Bion called its “Messianic hope”. Bion suggests that the messiah can take the form of a “person, idea or Utopia” (Bion, 2000, p. 152). Although Simon Marks was the strong leader who created the initial dependency culture, it is interesting that he was not immune to it in terms of the creation of a Utopia. Bookbinder relates the following anecdote in an attempt to convey Marks’ artistic sensitivity, but it reveals obsession and nostalgia: Once, at the end of a recital by the violinist Isaac Stern, he left the concert hall with tears streaming down his cheeks: “It made me realize”, he said, “how far we are from perfection in Marks and Spencer” (Bookbinder, 1993, p. 149).

The narrative importance of the right prince arriving at the right time to resolve the story arc in the Sleeping Beauty is also seen in operation in the Marks and Spencer case. Narratives of change at Marks and Spencer constantly concern the appointment of a new hero who will resuscitate the business. When Roger Holmes made his presentation it was striking that this was his exact discourse. As he spoke I noted down his vocabulary which spoke of the need to “recover”, “re-energise”, “restore”, “refurbish”, “reconnect”, “re-engage”, “recapture”, “renew”, “reassure”, “revamp” and “refocus”, the exact discourse of the archetypal restitution story that Frank (1995) traces in the majority of illness narratives – we are sick but we will be healed. The healing is to be brought about by the arrival of the right prince through the briars at the supernaturally determined hour. Thus,

when the company wanted to relaunch its range of children’s wear they recruited the England football captain, David Beckham, at that point the national super-hero. George Davis’ engagement to launch the Per Una brand in 2001 received major press and TV coverage. When Luc Vandevelde was appointed Chairman and Roger Holmes managing director the appointments were presented as the arrival of the messiahs who would turn the company round. In the events that followed the company’s poor performance and the departures of Vandevelde and Holmes, Stuart Rose was presented as the saviour. The company appears stuck in a pattern of optimistic yearning for delivery by the warrior, and disillusion when the saviour fails to deliver. Bevan comments that when Peter Salsbury was appointed as chief executive in 1999 he began a ruthless campaign of: . . . culling with none of the concern for human relations for which the company was famous. Within the rank and file of M&S [sic], Salsbury soon earned himself the nickname Pol Pot’ (Bevan, 2002, p. 204).

Change is also associated with the single actor undertaking heroic action single-handedly. Michael Marks introduced the fixed price policy of everything being priced at a penny to make shopping easier for immigrants like himself who did not have the fluency to haggle. Simon Marks went to the United States in 1924 in true hero’s journey style and returned to the world of Marks and Spencer with the boon in the form of American business efficiency and he later launched Operation Simplification in 1956 to cut layers of bureaucracy and staff. By the time that managers such as Holmes and Rose presented themselves the organisation had come to expect single heroic gestures as intrinsic to leadership. Even the normally insightful commentator, Bevan, is seduced by the narrative and the mythology. Writing of the succession battle which eventually led to the appointment of Salsbury, she comments: What M&S [sic] needed at that point was a man such as John Browne, who became chief executive of BP in 1995 and transformed it from a bureaucratic old-fashioned company into a modern dynamic force that adapted to the changing times in the oil industry. But M&S did not have a person of such exceptional calibre as Lord Browne in its ranks (Bevan, 2002, p. 199).

There is no suggestion here that there is an alternative to this leadership style. It is never for a moment considered possible that a more feminine relational style of management might hold some possibility for success (see Tyler this volume). In a 2004 television programme about the most recent takeover battle, “The Battle for M&S”, the commentary suggested that running Marks and Spencer is about staying power – it requires stamina and is an almost superhuman feat. Thus, Jeff Randall, the BBC’s business editor likened turning the business round to swimming the Atlantic and climbing Everest in a weekend with breath to spare. The image created is of a Herculean task. This is a task for battle-hardened warriors. To return to the Sleeping Beauty narrative, the warrior-hero has slashed his way through the thicket and kissed the sleeping princess, gaining his prize by becoming the leader, acquiring what Campbell calls, in his discussion of the story, “the paragon of all paragons of beauty, the reply to all desire, the bliss-bestowing goal of every hero’s earthly and unearthly quest” (Campbell, 1993, pp. 110-1). At what should be the climactic point of resolution the Marks and Spencer story mutates. The hero does not get to live happily ever after with the princess because the story changes. The clue to this shift, to which we shall return, is the violence at the heart of this story.

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior 585

JOCM 18,6

586

Violation in M&S Although I, like most people, encountered the Sleeping Beauty as a fairy story mediated through Walt Disney and a range of storybooks (Carey, 1955), when I began to look into the origins of the story a more violent and less enchanting story emerged. Warner (1995) returns to the Italian seventeenth-century telling of the story, “Sole, Luna e Talia” by Giambattista Basile. His story contains rape, adultery, murder, infanticide and cannabalism, recounted in what Warner calls, “cheerful cynicism and often scabrous immoralism” (Warner, 1995, p. 221). Warner summarises the beginning of the story: In Basile, the saviour hero is already married to someone else [significantly a barren queen] at the start of the story. Out hunting, he comes upon the sleeping beauty Talia, who has pricked her finger on a sliver of flax. When she will not wake up however much he shouts, he “plucked from her the fruits of love” (as Basile puts it) fathering two children on her in the act, twins called Sole and Luna (Warner, 1995, p. 220).

The story then continues with the desertion of Talia, the abduction and attempted murder of the children by the wife, the attempted murder of Talia by boiling alive by the queen, the actual murder of the queen by being boiled alive in the cauldron intended for her rival and the happy reunion of the king and Talia and their children. Warner raises the interesting question of what exactly Talia is getting in her fantasy ending. This Ur-Sleeping Beauty is significant in that it displays the violence inherent in patriarchy and patriarchal institutions. Hearn and Parkin (2001) argue that organisations are, despite the rhetoric of clinical, disembodied rationality that surrounds them, sexualised places that routinely commit acts of what they term violation. They comment: Organizations are commonly seen and understood as places of discourse, of activity, of communication, even of noise, rapidity and speed. Yet what happens in organization often involves silence, not just in the sense of quietness, but in the sense of that which is not spoken. Organizations are continually structured and practised through the unspoken. Accordingly one might re-understand organizations as very much (subject to) unspoken forces. Those forces include gender, sexuality, violence and violation (Hearn and Parkin, 2001, p. 3).

This silence, I would argue, masks the possibility that organisations can be locations of masculine violence in which the strongest prevail and the weakest are frequently persecuted. This is certainly true of the fairytale world invoked by Basile and Perrault and later sanitised in children’s versions of the story. The central motif of the princess being summoned back to life by a tender kiss from her life partner is rather different to that of rape and desertion. At this point, I have to return to my own life history to make sense of the connection between the story and the Marks and Spencer case study. I was brought up in Nottingham, then a major textile producing city in the East Midlands. Many of my network of friends and acquaintances were connected in some way with factories making items for Marks and Spencer. I therefore grew up with stories about the textile trade, and with stories of businesses brought to the point of near collapse by the constant squeezing of margins by the firms’ most important customer, Marks and Spencer. The hard bargaining is recounted in memoirs of the Marks and Spencer principals but is “spun” to resemble a beneficial process. Thus, Marcus Sieff writes: This co-operative relationship between Marks and Spencer, its manufacturers and the raw material suppliers has been one of the main contributions to our progress and our ability to

satisfy the customer. That relationship is still strong and important . . . These companies are the backbone of our business and they are our friends (Sieff, 1970, pp. 38, 40).

Bevan corroborates this statement with her implication that supplier relationships were important when the founding family was in control: Like a marriage, it was for better or worse. When the going was good, the suppliers reaped the benefit and acquired for themselves Rolls-Royce cars, trophy wives and villas in Spain. When the going got tough they were expected to cut their margins and “make a contribution”. Relationships were based on trust and there was one extra dimension that until the mid 1990 s set M&S [sic] apart from so many other large companies – top management clearly enjoyed seeing their suppliers prosper with them (Bevan, 2002, pp. 104-5).

Israel Sieff also makes it sound like a mutually beneficial arrangement: There was the case of a cotton ribbed woman’s pullover which at one stage we were buying – it was a popular line – to sell at two and elevenpence. I came to the conclusion that without any sacrifice of quality this woman’s pullover could be manufactured at a cost which would enable it to sell at one and elevenpence. Simon and I discussed the matter into the small hours of a November night. In consequence we made a proposal that satisfied all interests. We said that Marks and Spencer would cut its profit margin by five per cent. The manufacturer agreed to reduce his price to us. The result was eminently satisfactory. Sales multiplied five times. The manufacturers and ourselves increased profits; the workers took home each Friday evening not only higher pay but a far better prospect of continued employment. Thousands of women got cheaper pullovers (Sieff, 1970, p. 152).

This evocation of a virtuous circle in which everybody wins and grateful manufacturers are happy to “make a contribution” is not entirely consonant with my experience of growing up in the environment in which this process took place. Most suppliers to some extent were at the mercy of Marks and Spencer because they relied almost exclusively on its custom. When in the 1990s the company decided reluctantly that they had to source products from overseas, they withdrew their custom abruptly and forced several local companies into bankruptcy. From my own experience of uncles and friends of my parents in the hosiery industry it seems to me that for whatever reason, Marks and Spencer’s suppliers frequently experienced doing business with them as a violation, and thus the Ur-text of the story fits. Trojan War The sleeping beauty story, then, despite its fairytale familiarity is actually a story predicated on power struggles and masculine violence. When, at the moment of expected resolution with Rose installed as the new leader, the Marks and Spencer story flips it is to the Trojan War in which Rose becomes Hector, the defender of Troy, with the superhero, Achilles, circling and laying siege to the city. At this point the violent undercurrent of the Marks and Spencer story becomes the dominant motif. Bo¨hm and Sørensen (2003) question the notion of whether we actually ever experience peace or a state of non-war because social organizing is arranged to produce war. War, they suggest, is a signal event in a constant context of violence and preparedness for war. There is an analogy here with the Marks and Spencer case since the organization was born out of violence. Michael Marks fled the Pale of Settlement to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. The Sieff family escaped anti-Semitic persecution in Poland. Violence is a key part of the story; both Marks and Sieff came from families which had first-hand experience of being victims of violence, and

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior 587

JOCM 18,6

588

ironically went on to establish a company which is characterized by the perpetration of systemic symbolic violence. Usually the violence is symbolic as seen in the frequent references to bullying management behaviour throughout the memoirs and Bevan’s history of the company, but occasionally actual violence erupts. Bevan cites the example of Greenbury threatening to punch a customer, and there was scene bordering on farce during the recent takeover battle between Green and Rose. The scene was reconstructed with actors during the Money Programme (2004) special on the takeover[1]. According to this version of events Green delivered his first bid by sending over his bodyguard, Sean, to hand it over in person. It is significant that this person has only one name – Sean. The use of the first name only is a marker of class as in “Fred, the plumber” but it has other connotations. While it is not as resonant as say, Sampson or Titus or any other exotic name for a champion, he is the only person given only one name. It is also resonant of a warlord sending out his herald to begin the battle. The commentators agreed that this was a theatrical gesture, but it is worth considering the (unconscious) symbolic resonance of the act. The bid is treated with contempt and this annoys Green to the point where he spots Rose going into the Baker Street head office early in the morning. According to the reconstruction, Green dragged Rose from his car by the lapels, harangued him and then phoned his wife on his mobile phone and got her to continue the abuse. This quarrel took 20 minutes and it was reported widely in the media. The history of the company is replete with competing heroes attempting get control of the company. This was an observable phenomenon from the very beginning of the company. Bookbinder, and both Sieffs report at length Simon Mark’s five-year struggle to get control of the company from William Chapman. At the end of Marcus Sieff’s account he comments, “That was the beginning of Marks and Spencer as it is today” (Sieff, 1986, p. 9); an accurate assessment indeed. After the Marks-Chapman struggle, there was the vicious succession battle between Peter Salsbury and Keith Oates. Quoting an article from the Sunday Times which is couched in the rhetoric later to be repeated during the Rose-Green battle, Bevan comments: Open warfare is about to break out in the boardroom of Marks and Spencer,” began the story on the front page of the Sunday Times business section. “Hostilities will be triggered by the decision of Keith Oates, the deputy chairman, to start lobbying the company’s non-executive directors to pick him as the next chief executive when Sir Richard Greenbury splits his roles, probably next year (Bevan, 2002, p. 192).

and she goes on to reiterate the description of Oates at a party at this time: . . . one guest remembered Oates, a tall, dark, brooding figure in black, standing apart. “For all the world he looked like a medieval baron plotting against his king,” he said. “It was not hard to imagine him in medieval garb with a stiletto at his hip” (Bevan, 2002, p. 195).

At one level this could be read as the competition between princes to hack through the briars and capture the princess, but the narrative transforms entirely when we come to the Rose and Green episode. The takeover struggle had begun initially in 1999 when Green first expressed an interest in bidding for the company, but it was not until 2004 when Marks and Spencer continued to report disappointing sales figures that the situation became so heated. In an interview in the Guardian, Rose positioned himself as a “Marks and Spencer man”, both through his implied shared lineage with the founders, and through his induction through symbolic violence:

He makes much play of “the four touchstones that I had kicked into me for 17 years”: quality, service, value and innovation. Its a direct appeal to the heritage of the business. The no-nonsense, market trader mentality is part of that heritage, he implies, citing the grand names of M&S history. “Michael Marks, and Israel Sieff, and Teddy Sieff and Marcus Sieff and Derek Rayner and Rick Greenbury all came out of the same stable, by and large. None of them got a position of power in this business until he had learned his trade. They learned it the hard way. They had their arses kicked (Pratley, 2004, p. 34).

Green is also positioned as a hard man. When he invites a team from the Financial Times to spend a day with him, they report as if from the court of a warrior: His imperious approach extends to his own staff whom he often interrupts if they are not expounding the word according to Philip . . . During our meeting he handed Ian Grabiner, Chief Operating Officer of Arcadia and a leading light on the high street, the ashtray to empty (Hargreaves et al., 2004, p. M5).

He is characterised in the article as an aggressive, testosterone-driven egotist, not unlike the portrayal of Achilles in the Iliad, “Its like doing business with Conan the Barbarian – he always gets what he wants” (Hargreaves et al., 2004, p. M5). Roger Holmes’ failure opened the way for Green’s bid and Rose’s succession, and it is interesting to see how this is reported. In the BBC Money Programme Special, Bevan commented that what was lacking was energy, vision and drive. Jeff Randall commented: “Roger Holmes was chucked out like a rack of bad selling blouses and they have to parachute in someone else.” The juxtaposition of Holmes as a big girl’s blouse and the “someone else” presented as heroic, dynamic paramilitary warrior/troubleshooter is irresistible in gender terms. Holmes’ weak managerial style, however, is a persistent theme of the media coverage: “He is chatty and inclusive,” said one critic. “That is nice. But actually he is far too soft on people. When you present to him he doesn’t challenge what you say like a good boss should” (Voyle, 2004a, p. 9).

And, in a metaphor which pertains exactly to the rightful prince hacking his way through the enchanted forest, another critic states, “He has carried on working with most of the teams he inherited. He hasn’t been ruthless enough chopping out the dead wood – and there is a lot of it” (Voyle, 2004a, p. 9). Holmes did not fit the received image of a Marks and Spencer leader: decisive, ruthless, self-contained, prepared to use violence when necessary, the action hero. Rose attempts to fit the description, but it is Green who emerges as a mighty warrior in this coverage, and the takeover battle becomes according the BBC programme a “takeover that turned into a bitterly contested duel” fought in a particularly personal way between two adversaries. Randall, the phrasemaker, in the programme commented: In any contested takeover bid there is often a lot of mud-slinging between the two sides, but by and large it follows the Marques of Queensbury rules: no punching below the belt. You’re allowed to take a swing at their chin, but not at their goolies. In this bid, I’m afraid, anything went. We got down to biting and headbutting.

So, this is framed as a particularly significant battle – one in which the fighting is even dirtier because so much is at stake. And the mention of “goolies” is interesting as it infers that this was a charged battle involving sexual prowess.

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior 589

JOCM 18,6

Initially the story was framed in the press in terms of the lawless viciousness of the Wild West. Voyle’s subheading of her article, “No disguising the shock and fear at M&S as Green circles for a second go” (Voyle, 2004b, p. 25) reads: The high-street’s top gunslinger is expecting to be hunting his quarry in deadly earnest this time round (Voyle, 2004b, p. 25).

590

The image is one of the hired gun: a lone, cold-hearted, steel-eyed killer with no mercy and no conscience. The story goes on to develop Green as a mythic figure, describing him in terms almost completely opposite to Holmes. Far from being the strategising intellectual, Green was an asset stripper and had some setbacks (tests or trials in the way of most heroes) but he reinvented himself as a retailer of touch, possibly introducing elements of the Midas myth. Unlike the bland Holmes, Green has an epic personality. His story, like the founders of Marks and Spencer, is one of rags to riches, mixed with mystery and aloofness, characteristic of the gunslinger, suggesting he is not like other, ordinary men: Once a shadowy figure who refused to be photographed and never met or mixed with the great and the good, he is now famous. His high profile rise to great riches (he is estimated to be one of Britain’s richest men) has been chronicled by the tabloid newspapers almost as much as the city pages (Voyle, 2004b, p. 25).

The “rise to riches” establishes a mythical tone and there is an indication of some distant longing for mythic status in the description of his fiftieth-birthday party: His claim to popular fame was cemented by a lavish 50th birthday party when he flew 200 friends to a Greek island for three days of celebrations that included a toga party with live music from Tom Jones and Rod Stewart (Voyle, 2004b, p. 25).

In case we remain to be convinced that here is an extraordinary man, Voyle assures us, “behind this reputational turnaround lies a remarkable business story.” She describes a man of action with a vision rooted in reality rather than the illusory dot com boom the rest of the market had fallen for. Green bought British Home Stores which he “transformed” with his “hands-on approach”. At one level this can be seen as the magical properties of superhero acuity of vision and the mystical ability to heal through the laying on of hands, but what seems to count more here is the notion of action. The hero does not distinguish himself by thinking but by cunning action. At this point Vandevelde (“a lame duck chairman”) and Homes (“weak”) are still in place. Against the heroic strength of Green, Marks and Spencer has only weakness to the point of extreme vulnerability. An “investment banker” is quoted: There is nobody in that business that is even vaguely capable of leading a defence against a man as determined as Philip Green’ (Voyle, 2004b, p. 25).

And one cannot help but think of Gary Cooper[2] desperately trying to organise a posse to defend the town against the villains in High Noon. The scene is set for the defence of the company but “Mr Vandevelde looked bored said analysts. Mr Holmes was nervous and do not perform well” (Voyle, 2004b, p. 25). The whole spread is labelled “High Noon on the High Street”. The events that unfolded next was the swift removal of Vandevelde and Holmes, both of whom must have thought that they had hacked through the briars, and the appointment of Stuart Rose, who, presumably, being a former employee of the company, also felt that the prize was his. He presented as a much stronger character

than Holmes, but by this stage the story has shifted. He finds himself not secure in the enchanted palace, but firmly in Troy with the enemy camped out before the gates. By the beginning of June, Fuller is headlining her piece on the takeover battle, “How not to turn M&S into the Iliad” (Fuller, 2004, p. M2). Under this heading she writes:

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior

I blame the film Troy. One week you watch Achilles and Hector fighting heroically before the gates of the great city, the next it is al too easy to see Philip Green and Stuart Rose “slugging it out” over Marks and Spencer (Fuller, 2004, p. M2).

591

And she asks rather plaintively, “why must this putative bid be so personalised?” The answer is that this is a company in which leadership is personalised and where men are expected to be prepared and willing to fight others both to sustain their position and to run the company. The champion is always a personalised, individualised, larger than life figure by his very nature, and this is a company founded and permeated by masculine championship behaviour. To return to the gunslinger theme, it is significant that when Yasmin Yussuf was appointed to one of the few senior positions occupied by a woman she was “photographed . . . beneath a portrait of a female torso complete with a gun holster at the hip” (Bevan, 2002, p. 254) By the end of the summer Green’s two bids had been turned down and he was temporarily defeated, but the power of the Trojan myth is particularly potent. Green has spoken repeatedly of giving Rose a year to turn the company round before he returns to launch another attack on him in his besieged citadel, presumably in a weakened state. Randall, in the Money Programme special, commented, “Philip Green is aware that inside the M&S boardroom there is a mindset of no surrender. They’re not going to sell to him at any price.” Conclusion In this paper I have demonstrated, through historical and autoethnographic analysis how M&S is gendered from its birth, its development through the golden years, the crisis, its changes in leadership and its recent change management attempts in its response to its changing environment. By adopting the metaphors of Sleeping Beauty and The Trojan War, the case demonstrates, not so much that change as a phenomenon is gendered, but that change managers act in gendered ways determined by pre-existing norms based on previously effective strategies. Change is brought about by appeal to a heroic masculine champion, gunfighters on the high street and virile princes arriving to reanimate princesses. The steady state of the company appears to have become one of narcolepsy punctuated by incidents of extreme violence. This has reached the state where no alternative mode of action is imaginable or acceptable. We can see how gender is performed and negotiated in the process of responding to and managing change. Marks and Spencer’s employees and other stakeholders have colluded with a culture of symbolic violence in their toleration of bullying and their impatience with and expulsion of less aggressive leaders like Holmes. Butler (1999) reminds us that gender is a dynamic process formed in myriad enactments in everyday life. If this is the case then enacting change is likely to be about enacting gendered change particularly if the whole organisational context is about maintaining the phallocratic hegemony and reinforcing the feminine as passive, as other. The effectiveness of this hegemony is indicated by the fact that the participants

JOCM 18,6

592

and the commentators use a gendered discourse of change, they seem to performing gendered roles and actions largely unwittingly. This paper seems destined to end in a predictable cry for managers to practise reflexivity and to become more self aware, and even to intone that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In this case more change seems doomed to mean no change or a deeper entrenchment of the violent, combative hyper-masculinity that will only ever cede to an even more powerful warrior. When the hero to end all heroes, Achilles, in the guise of Phillip Green or not, finally does enjoin battle Marks and Spencer will have nowhere to go. Notes 1. In 2004 at the height of the takeover battle between Philip Green and Stuart Rose, the BBC’s flagship business show, The Money Programme, ran a special on the events called, ’The Battle for M&S’. It featured interviews with the BBC’s outspoken business editor, Jeff Randall, the long-time commentator Judi Bevan, and dramatic reconstructions of key events played by actors. 2. Gary Cooper was a Hollywood actor who starred in a number of heroic action films. One of his most critically acclaimed roles, however, was as Will Kane, the ageing Ex-Marshal in High Noon (1952), who alone is prepared to stand up against the outlaws terrorising the town, while knowing that this will offend his new Quaker pacifist bride. The film is often “read” as an allegory against US foreign policy in the Cold War, and the Korean War, or the demands placed on people in the film industry by the anti-communist McCarthyist witch hunts. References Bettleheim, B. (1991), The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Penguin, Harmondsworth, first published 1975. Bevan, J. (2002), The Rise and Fall of Marks and Spencer, Profile Books, London. Bion, W. (2000), Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, Brunner-Routledge, Hove, originally published 1961. Bo¨hm, S. and Sørensen, B. (2003), “‘Warganization’: towards a new political violence”, unpublished conference paper, EGOS, Copenhagen. Boje, D. (2001), Narrative Methods for Organizational Communication, Sage, London. Bookbinder, P. (1993), Simon Marks: Retail Revolutionary, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London. Briggs, A. (1984), Marks and Spencer 1884-1984, Octopus Books, London. Butler, J. (1999), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1999 ed., Routledge, New York, NY/London, 1999 edition. Campbell, J. (1993), The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Fontana Press, London (first published 1949). Carey, M.C. (1955), “The sleeping beauty”, in Martignoni, M. (Ed.), The Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, NY, pp. 248-51. Carter, A. (1995), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Vintage, London. Cartner-Morley, J. (2004a), “Shopping life”, The Guardian Weekend, 27 March, p. 53. Cartner-Morley, J. (2004b), “Marks and Spencer attempts to woo young customers with minis and boob tubes”, Guardian, available at: http://guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/ 0,3604,1209(accessed 5 May 2004).

Czarniawska, B. (1999), Writing Management: Organization Theory as a Literary Genre, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dalton, A. (1999), The Starlight Princess and Other Princess Stories, Dorling Kindersley, London. Dowdy, C. (2003), “Finally, M&S goes big on minimalism. . .”, Financial Times, 24/25 May, p. W12. Finch, J. (2004), “Rose wields the axe as M&S slide continues”, Guardian, 10 November, p. 23. Fletcher, A. (1995), Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London. Frank, A.W. (1995), The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London. Fuller, J. (2004), “How not to turn M&S into the Iliad”, Financial Times, 5/6 June, p. M2. Gabriel, Y. (2000), Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Grimm, J.L.C. and Grimm, W.C. (1993), Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Selected Stories, Wordsworth Editions, Ware. Hargreaves, D., Pretzlik, C. and Buckley, S. (2004), “Philip keeps his eyes on the ball as he attempts to turn the high street Green”, Financial Times, 26/27 June, p. M5. Hearn, J. and Parkin, W. (2001), Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Organizations, Sage, London. Klapisch-Zuber, C. (Ed.) (1992), A History of Women in the West: Silences of the Middle Ages, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Laqueur, T. (1990), Making Sex, Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Money Programme (2004) The Battle for M&S, BBC2 (accessed 6 October 2004). Parkin, M. (1998), Tales for Trainers: Using Stories and Metaphors to Facilitate Learning, Kogan Page, London. Pratley, N. (2004), “On his marks”, Guardian, 5 June, p. 34. Reason, P. and Hawkins, P. (1988), “Storytelling as inquiry”, in Reason, P. (Ed.), Human Inquiry in Action: Developments in New Paradigm Research, Sage, London, pp. 79-101. Reid, A. (2004), “Its big news for our smalls”, FT How to Spend It, March, pp. 22-4. Sexton, A. (2001), Transformations, Mariner Books, Boston, MA. Sieff, I. (1970), Memoirs, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London. Sieff, M. (1986), Don’t Ask The Price: The Memoirs of the President of Marks and Spencer, Weidenfield and Nicolson, London. Voyle, S. (2004a), “Rebuilding Marks and Spencer: can the former high street favourite stay in touch with retailing’s new trends?”, Financial Times, 15-16 May, p. 9. Voyle, S. (2004b), “No disguising the shock and fear at M&S as Green circles for a second go”, Financial Times, 28 May, p. 25. Warner, M. (1995), From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, Vintage, London (first published 1994). Whyte, D. (1994), The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Currency Doubleday, New York, NY/London. Further reading McWilliam, G.H. (Ed.) (1976), Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.

Marks and Spencer –waiting for the warrior 593

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

JOCM 18,6

New meanings for entrepreneurs: from risk-taking heroes to safe-seeking professionals

594

Ulla Hytti Business Research and Development Centre, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Turku, Finland Abstract Purpose – To underline that viewing entrepreneurship in the context of shifting career roles and professional identities, gendered organizational life and in the current societal context regarding working life (ageing, gender discrimination) provides us with new lenses and enables us to perceive the entrepreneurial identity as fluid and emergent. Design/methodology/approach – A female entrepreneur’s life-story collected through a narrative interview is applied in the study. In this paper identities, organizations and societies in change form the basis for entrepreneurship. Treating entrepreneurship as a social process constrained by time and place allows it to gain new meanings and understandings of security, reliability, risk-moderation that it has not previously seen to possess. Findings – The paper presents the connections of time and place for entrepreneurship; first, by demonstrating how entrepreneurship as a phenomenon reflects the time and place of investigation; second, how time and place are applied as important elements in the individual story presented in the paper, and, third, how readings of time and narrative are applied to make sense of entrepreneurship in the story. Research limitations/implications – The paper suggests that the social context (different times, places as well as, e.g. different roles, social identities and careers) should more frequently be studied within entrepreneurship research. Practical implications – By portraying entrepreneurship from the non-economic and non-heroic standpoint, and reflecting the social changes that surround it, entrepreneurship is potentially made more accessible for a larger number of people. Originality/value – The paper refuses the research of entrepreneurs as a general overriding, economic category and the quest for the “Theory of Entrepreneurship”. Keywords Entrepreneurs, Women, Self employed workers, Work identity, Narratives Paper type Research paper

Entrepreneurship as a social process: time and place All the beauty of the winter can be found in any single snowflake[1].

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 594-611 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628521

In traditional entrepreneurship research it is customary to perceive and understand entrepreneurship as something extra-ordinary and something highly different from wage-work where the previous incorporates elements of independency, initiative-taking and risk-bearing and is particularly suited for certain (types of) people, not “mere mortals” (Mitchell, 1997). This perception has been reflected in the entrepreneurship research as the prevailing quest the “Definition for an Entrepreneur” and for a “Theory of Entrepreneurship” (Bygrave, 1989; Carland et al., 1988; Davidsson, 1992). Recently, we have acknowledged that entrepreneurship is a field with a divergence and multitude of both theoretical assumptions and methods that are

grounded in very different ontological and epistemological assumptions, and, thus, they cannot be grouped into or even be seen leading to a comprehensive theory of entrepreneurship. The emphasis has been shifted towards understanding entrepreneurship as a social and spatial practice that gains new meanings in the different times and places (Gartner, 2001; Kovalainen, 2001). One of the most compelling suggestions has been to view entrepreneurship not merely as an economic activity but also as a social activity, which shapes and is shaped by our society (Steyart and Katz, 2004). Hence, time and place become crucial for explaining and understanding entrepreneurship. The meanings and contents for entrepreneurship in different places can change over time. Therefore, for example, longitudinal analyses of the changes in entrepreneurial activity (Reynolds et al., 2003) or of cultural understanding of entrepreneurship in different countries and regions become interesting (Hyrsky, 1999). If entrepreneurship is understood from this social rather than the economic perspective, then it becomes equally difficult to define exactly “who is an entrepreneur”. An entrepreneur is an ambiguous and shifting concept that gains new meanings and understandings through the course of time and place (Warren, 2004). For researchers of entrepreneurship this means that we need to produce research that is strongly rooted in the context and where we understand the role of time and place in entrepreneurship research. This point-of-view casts doubt in the possibility of producing research results that could be transferable and easily travel through time and place, i.e. of producing “truths” about the nature of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, respectively. The abandonment of “A theory” or of “the Definition” gives room for other, complementary point-of-views (Gartner, 2001; Kovalainen, 2001). The role of entrepreneurs as active agents in constructing new meanings for entrepreneurship and legitimate entrepreneurial careers provides a new perspective into entrepreneurship research (Thomas and Linstead, 2002 for this argument in relation to middle managers). In this paper a narrative analysis of a female journalist entering self-employment is presented in order to question the traditional unidimensional meanings and attributes assigned for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. Owing to the changes in the societal and organisational level, entrepreneurship is acquiring new meanings and understandings that are also reflected in the personal level – in our personal and professional identities. The context applied in this paper is, firstly, new career thinking that considers careers to consist of several phases of which entrepreneurship might only be one among other phases and career choices (Dyer, 1994; Mallon, 1998). In the field of entrepreneurship and career theories the push and pull dichotomy has been utilised when analysing why people take the decision to become an entrepreneur or change jobs, i.e. what factors are pushing or pulling individuals to make these decisions and moves. This dichotomy if taken as an either or question is reductionist and stereotypical resulting in understandings that do not account for the relationship between pull and push, or more generally the complexity of factors at work. However, it seems that the push factor, the dissatisfaction and disillusionment within the organisation may be an important trigger in the entrepreneurial process (Mallon and Cohen, 2001). In a given place and time, entrepreneurship may be the best or only solution even for the committed, risk-averse journalist. This paradox will be highlighted in the story presented in this paper. Secondly, the paper assumes that the

New meanings for entrepreneurs

595

JOCM 18,6

596

professional identities are not fixed and stable, but fluid, inconsistent, emergent and paradoxical (Linstead and Thomas, 2002; Thomas and Linstead, 2002). An example would be of medical doctors who are taking over more and more managerial and entrepreneurial functions and roles creating potential paradoxes between the different identities (Llewellyn, 2001). Thirdly, this paper analyses entrepreneurship in the framework of the changing organisational life. Working in organisations during financially difficult times makes it necessary to play the “being busy and important member of the community” – game in order to portray an image of a good and efficient worker and to assure their own worth over the others. Organisational politics, being a complex mixture of power, influence and interest-seeking begin to dominate individual activity in the workplaces (Vigoda, 2002). Insecurity and risk are seen to characterise the contemporary experience of work, leaving individuals responsible for the construction of their position in the labour market. Careers have traditionally provided a set of organising principles around which professional employees in organisations have been able to structure both their professional and private lives. There has been a “psychological contract” between the employer and employee based upon loyalty and commitment to the organisation in exchange for the incremental increases in authority, status, and financial remuneration. The combined promise of job security and advancement has constituted the major reward for the middle-class career (Wajcman and Martin, 2001). This is no longer the case in current day organisations as a dramatic change has taken place in work life. Employee loyalty and commitment are still the expected norm in organisations, but this does not result in a secure job. In addition, the temporary workers do not have the same opportunities as others to gain support from stable groups in the workplace since their work is more focused on goals and tasks, short-term personal interaction, effectiveness, rationality and immediate responsibility. The temporary jobs also constitute a problem for the professional, social identity as the fear of losing one’s position is always present (Lindgren and Wa˚hlin, 2001), which is also illustrated in Marge’s story. Fourthly, this paper frames entrepreneurship in the context of ageing and gender issues. Age and gender discrimination have also been identified as potentially important sources for growing dissatisfaction with the organisational life. For example, in their study of the career barriers of older female managers, Still and Timms (1998) discovered that many of the women were growing tired of the gender-political game that career advancements necessitated and were looking for ways of “opting out” through starting their own businesses to escape the working environment. In the studies analysing entrepreneurship and gender with the entrepreneurship research it has been suggested the masculine image of the entrepreneur is emphasised and the female entrepreneur is presented as “the other”. This is done by presenting the female entrepreneur as the exceptional individual, over-emphasising the differences between the men and the women or constructing the “good mother” by creating a feminine, caring entrepreneurial model. Nevertheless, the individuals have also power to reject these images and assumptions and to construct an entrepreneurial identity against these assumptions, for example, by using them as resources for their story (Ahl, 2002; Bruni et al., 2004) that can be seen also from Marge’s story.

The working population in the Western countries is ageing. This development provides both opportunities and threats. In the coming years it is suggested that organisations will be deprived of skilled and professional workers providing opportunities also for new businesses. At the same time, ageing is also a “problem” since the ageing workers are considered to be a burden in the workplaces due to their outdated skills, attitudes or competencies and their assumed incapability of developing new skills or competencies. This has resulted in age discrimination in the labour market with findings suggesting that people over 45 are finding it difficult to find a new job, older people are more easily dismissed than younger people or directed into early retirement, and hence, the degree of people over 55 in the labour market is steeply declining (Yearta and Warr, 1995; Arrowsmith and McGodrick, 1997; Taylor and Walker, 1997). In this paper I will present how these practices are applied to frame also the individual career possibilities. Methodology: narrative research and constructing an entrepreneurial identity Many writers have pointed out the benefits of narrative research in studying identities (Goodson, 2001; Johansson, 2004). This is because the narrative approach gives prominence to human agency and imagination (Riessman, 1993). The process of identity creation or development could be understood as a process of self-reflection that unfolds in the interaction between the self and its social context (Wa˚hlin, 1999). Life-stories are tools for life-management, arenas for identity work, where one deals with the relation of the past to the present, searches for the already been and experienced in order to understand and structure the present guided by the wisdom of emotions (Vilkko, 1997). Narrative interviews or story-telling interviews enable the participant to tell their own stories and not need to accommodate into the preconceived categories set by the interviewer (Mishler, 1986). On the other hand one could argue that researchers have always been interested in the stories the research participants want to tell. The difference lies, however, in that in narrative research stories are seen to be fundamental to knowing, not merely repositories of knowledge and information (Johansson, 2004). Life and story are not separable but they are internally related; one does not exist without the other. Human life is interpreted in stories and human life is a process of narrative interpretation. In a way narrative is seen to be constitutive of human experience and action (Carr, 1986; Widdershoven, 1993; Riessman, 1993). The use of narrative analysis as a method implies firstly that what is being spoken is not the only focus of our interest, but also the way of speaking. This leads us to think that our ways of talking are not neutral, but they propose different roles we have and take, different positions against others and patterns of rights, privileges and obligations (Shotter, 1989). Language is applied to make sense of our ideas or things that happen to us (Bruner, 1986). Therefore, things do not merely happen and take place but their meaning is depicted in the stories that we tell about these events. These meanings need not to be coherent, unitary and fixed but they may remain contradictory, blurred and elusive. In narrative research the focus is on analysing these meaning making structures. The plot that emerges from the story with its sequential structure is under analysis. Sensemaking is an important part of the process as it is the medium that enables introduction of new events into the plot in a way that they

New meanings for entrepreneurs

597

JOCM 18,6

598

become understandable, i.e. make sense (Czarniawska, 1998; Czarniawska-Joerges, 1995). One of the most important features of narratives and narrative analysis is the concept of time. There are two different times present in the narrative – the time of remembering (present) and the time of the event (past). Thirdly, one can also see that life story interviews also reveal something about the future (Ja¨rvinen, 2000; Linstead and Thomas, 2002). Only from the perspective of the end do the beginning and the middle make sense. However, without the past and future there can be no present and thus no experience at all (Carr, 1986). Traditional qualitative analyses often fracture the text in the service of interpretation and generalisation. Researchers analyse themes – what is being spoken – and they organise their reports around these themes. However, as the narrative forms are essential meaning-making structures, hence, these structures need to be preserved, not fractured (Riessman, 1993). Although difficult in the compressed article format with certain conventions regarding the number of words and section reserved for “results”, I have tried to maintain the meaning-making structures of Marge’s story in this paper by presenting it as an individual story. I rely on the idea of narrative identity – the idea that identity is the product of, and realised in, narrative accounts of individuals’ past, present and future. The narrative account is linked to the action – I do not consider it as a mere product of the human thought but much of what is being narrated are stories of what has happened, taken place, what actions were taken to lead to a particular situation (Bruner, 1990, p. 105). The often cited quote from Polkinghorne (1988, p. 150) succinctly captures the idea of the narrative construction of identity: . . .we achieve our personal identities and self-concept through the use of narrative configuration, and make our existence into a whole by understanding it as an expression of a single unfolding and developing story. We are in the middle of the stories and cannot be sure how they end; we are constantly having to revise the plot as new events are added to our lives. Self, then, is not a static thing nor a substance, but a configuring of personal events into a historical unity which includes not only what one has been but also anticipations of what one will be.

The narrative identities develop in the meaning-making processes with regard to other people and culture. There are no fixed, externally or internally given meanings, but they are being constructed in a dialogue between ideas and the world (Bruner, 1986). In this view, identities are not created neither internally in the entrepreneur’s mind, nor externally by the society and its structure but constructed dialogically between entrepreneurs and others in everyday conversations and life (Cunliffe, 2001). This social constructionist approach rejects the idea that an individual is a unique, stable and whole entity, and adopts the idea that an individual should be seen as a socio-historical and socio-cultural product (Weigert et al., 1986). Social identity reflects the fact that individuals regularly identify themselves, and are identified by others, with reference to a set of standardized categories or positions (e.g. gender, occupation). The existence of multiple identities has been accepted elsewhere but this is followed by the idea that those identities must be managed. However, if we accept the identity is tied to a particular position in space and time, then they do not necessarily need to be managed but can co-exist (Hermans, 2001a). Analysing contradictions or ambivalence in the identity talk could be the solution to understanding multiple identities

(Blumenthal, 1999). The answers of the narrator may be different depending from what point of view the person is narrating from – for example whether as an entrepreneur or a journalist. This focus on how people construct identities for themselves leads us to the notion of identity work (Fournier and Lightfoot, 1997). Identity work is about the way people position themselves in discourse, how they attach themselves to certain issues, using and combining texts and materials, to articulate and give meanings for themselves and their actions. Identity is constructed through a positioning in discourse, as a performance created and sustained through textual labour. Identity is not pre-given or fixed – it is always emergent (Linstead and Thomas, 2002; Thomas and Linstead, 2002). This study is based on a larger narrative study of entrepreneurs (Hytti, 2003). I have gathered the material by conducting a life-story interview with Marge in order to construct her life story as a self-employed. The main focus of the interview was for Marge to reflect on the important events and people regarding her entrepreneurial career. Although narrative research is seen to open up to the experiences and categorisations of the participant as opposed to the researcher, I would argue the necessity to understand and examine the role of the researcher in co-constructing the research material (Roulston et al., 2001). Hence, the story also aims to portray my presence in the field. Although Marge is relatively free to craft her story in the interview, it would be naı¨ve to assume that my own role in the story would be limited to that of a passive listener. It is not possible to capture lived experience, but the experience is created in the social text written by the researcher (Denzin, 1997; Lincoln and Denzin, 2000). The interviews are not without constraints because of the interview setting – there is an asymmetric interviewing format that remains visible in the one-way issuing of questions (Roulston et al., 2001) that is partially broken only on a few occasions because the participant – Marge – wanted to have feedback and interaction. In fact, she sometimes asks for my intervention directly but more commonly a pause in the narration would create a space for my intervention. It is possible to analyse my own role in crafting the story, for example, by analysing also the cues I give the participant to tell her or his story in a particular way, whether it is accepted or rejected or the way I respond to the participant (Jokinen, 1999). Furthermore, the story of our experience is constitutive of the experience. When the telling of a story is met with questions or criticism the story is being organised or reorganised. In a way, on these occasions life can have new meanings that the narrator has not been aware of before (Carr, 1986). These examples illustrate the role of the researcher. For this study, I have talked to Marge only once. The story is being generated on that occasion for an audience consisting of Marge, myself and possibly other parties who are not there (for example, bank managers or other people in Marge’s close networks). The story covers more or less the lifespan of Marge as an entrepreneur having connections to other identity positions in a compressed format. In the analysis I take this compressed story as my starting point, this is the story Marge has wanted to tell me, a researcher interested in entrepreneurial stories. The question remains, however, how much I should say based on this interview. How will Marge feel when reading the story that I have authored as research text? Am I invading her personal space and giving new meanings to her life that she does not recognise or outright refuse to accept? How will I justify my interpretations? It is in the writing that I can try to offer the readers the opportunity of exploring the relationship between myself and

New meanings for entrepreneurs

599

JOCM 18,6

600

Marge as well as the field, “the context” in trying to convey an understanding of the research and especially of the interviews as social settings that are inhabited by embodied, emotional and physical selves that work to shape, challenge, reproduce our identities (Coffey, 1999). Marge’s story and the changing identities, organisations and societies Marge (43 years) has been self-employed for about a year and her business is in providing journalist services for newspapers and magazines. Her decision to enter self-employment is linked to her dissatisfaction and the insecurity she encountered in the labour market and in organisational life (see also similar research settings Lindgren, 2000; Mallon and Cohen, 2001). In the following section, I will demonstrate that is relevant to understand Marge’s story in the context of shifting career roles and identities, changing organisational life and in the current societal context regarding working life (ageing, gender discrimination). The story presented in this paper is open to different interpretations that link to the time and place of entrepreneurship. Firstly, it can be read as a contemporary story reflecting the place (a small region in Southwest Finland) and time (covering the period of recession in the early 1990s until the turn of the century) that provide the basis for a particular story of redundancy, unemployment and self-employment. In this study, self-employment is understood as a form of entrepreneurship. Secondly, the story incorporates elements that reflect time and place as important elements in the story (a community gives boundaries to occupational positions available, economic situation limits the career alternatives) and thirdly, the story provides readings of how time and narrative are applied to make sense of entrepreneurship in the individual story. Presenting the scene I call Marge to set an appointment for our meeting. She has participated in another research project investigating unemployed people that have received start-up financing (Lehto and Stenholm, 2001). Hence when calling her to inform her that she has been handpicked from the survey respondents, I feel a bit uneasy. I do not want to label her as “the representative of the unemployed”, but given the background for my request it would also be unethical to hide the source. Marge is hesitant at first “I’m not saying that I am refusing to participate”. I try to be very positive and encouraging and finally we agree to meet at her home that same week. In the meantime I send her a letter where I introduce my approach and the areas of interest that I have. Marge’s story telling style involves quite long narrations and my involvement in the process is simply to offer some response-tokens (Silverman, 1993) such as “mmms”, nods or laughs which serve to indicate that I am listening. The narration is, therefore, quite one-sided, which is contrary to normal coffee table conversations. The response-tokens ease the tension and the entrepreneur is not forced to speak to the tape-recorder alone while the interviewer is just listening. However, there are several occasions where Marge feels that she has given enough information about a particular event or that she feels she has gone off at a tangent and gives me a direct indication to ask for more. “But the . . . yes? Ask me more, I’ve lost the thread. I cannot remember when I got lost”.

Her questions could be understood as “exit talk” to allow me to move onto the next question (Riessman, 2002). They are also a means to make sure that she is talking about the “right” issues and not to “reveal” anything that is not useful for my research. Although I do not ask many questions in the interview, Marge’s narration is cued by my letter, which she uses to frame her story. She makes several direct references to it and to the concepts raised in it; like “when it comes to identity” when she is making a note on her identity development so it seems clear that she is well prepared for the interview. For example, she sometimes addresses herself like “what was the third thing again” indicating that she has thought over the process of becoming self-employed and the related factors and events that she wants to tell me in the interview. Weighing and pondering upon the idea of setting up the company Marge starts her story by telling of the 3-4 year thinking process that preceded the decision of becoming self-employed, emphasising strongly the role given to weighing the decision, evaluating the options and gaining courage. Marge’s perception of herself is that she belongs to the group of entrepreneurs that are pushed into entrepreneurship (Mallon and Cohen, 2001). So last year I set up [the firm] for real, that I really had the courage and all . . . but I had to think to think about it for 3-4 years at least. And the way I have started up so. . . I’m one of those that have more push pressure than a tremendous urge to become an entrepreneur. But I have a background in temporary jobs and the like. . . So after the long thinking process I gradually was able to convince myself that it is possible to go forward this way also. . .

Marge’s story is focused on her anxieties and fears related to becoming self-employed. A lot of energy is put into calculating, self-assuring, pondering whether she would have the nerve, whether the business idea is good enough, whether she could do enough marketing for the company to make it successful. The reasoning is constructed into a narrative of her professional history and the dissatisfaction it created. She was working in the Littleborough News during the recession of 1994 and the economic circumstances resulted in strong pressure within the newspaper to cut costs. The organisation became a site of struggle where all the employees were engaged in a survival of the fittest type of battle where it was necessary to try to make oneself important and necessary within the organisation by downplaying the roles of others as less important and, hence, dispensable (Vigoda, 2002). Finally, there was a conflict between Marge and the editor-in-chief and Marge decided to leave the newspaper and move abroad with her husband to wait for the recession to abate. Although it was a risky decision to quit her job it is explained firstly by the unbearable situation at work and secondly by her belief that “a laborious person will always find a job”. At the time her husband was also unemployed and free to move, which facilitated her decision. The couple works abroad for a year and returns to Finland in 1995 only to find that the economic situation had not improved. On her return Marge participates in a six-month computer course after which she receives a job as a substitute for a year. Then she takes a course in multimedia and the idea of setting up a company starts to develop. Although later she emphasises the journalist identity over the entrepreneurial one the existence of both is available through the long traditions within the industry of freelance journalists who work for various newspapers and magazines, so she still has a way of building an entrepreneurial identity from the journalist perspective.

New meanings for entrepreneurs

601

JOCM 18,6

602

Although in this sense Marge develops entrepreneurship as a feasible choice for her as a journalist, the issue of marketing and her ability to do it, or her willingness as a journalist to engage in marketing are made an issue in the story. For her marketing is especially in conflict with her journalist identity, her values and ways of thinking are rooted in the 1970s in the famously radical university she went to. When talking about marketing and the university environment of the 1970s Marge laughs aloud further emphasising the unthinkability of linking the two. There is, however, a curious distinction between against-the-journalist-identity-marketing and accepted-marketing-of-your-skills. From the freelancer perspective Marge finds it acceptable, for example, to go around and present herself, her experience and skills to the different newspapers and magazines informing them that she is available. The unacceptable form of marketing is not raised in the story but it could possibly deal with direct advertising or an active persuasion of customers. Betrayal of the working life The university background and the “different times”, which informed her values and thinking are emphasised in the story before returning to the practical situation preceding the start-up decision. After the multimedia course Marge receives a part-time, temporary job in another newspaper and she forgets the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. However, in the next phrase she says “it [the idea of setting up the company] was still there” and now in retrospect she thinks it could have been possible to start working towards this objective since she was working only part-time. As our interview proceeds I learn that this part-time job turns out to be a negative experience but also an important trigger for the setting up the company. Therefore, the retrospective view suggests that she might have avoided the negative experience by establishing the company at that point. The turning point comes when the region faces an economic downturn and, therefore, cost savings are necessary at the newspaper. At the end of the year 1999 the important advertisers informed suddenly that they won’t continue their annual contracts at the same level as previously and it was necessary to save a quarter of a million even from the expenses of the editorial staff so all temporary workers were laid off. Later in the interview: So the editor-in-chief took me as the first example that that person is at least futile that she will be dismissed. That he had considered me all the time as a tool to solve a temporary problem. Marge talks later about acting as an entrepreneur and no longer having to wait that the editor-in-chief “drops a hot stone in my head”.

At first she describes the event in a very impersonal manner but later this incident is described in a very personal way. This came as a shock to her and she felt betrayed which she describes through a metaphor of a hot stone. It seems important for the narrator to take the audience into the scene of the traumatic event by verbalising it as a very concrete event in order for the audience to really feel the hotness of the stone hitting one’s head and the related pain. The actual event – being laid off – is not sufficiently emotional or tangible to carry the feeling of the event. It is reduced to being part of general management talk, which we read in the media everyday.

Setting up the firm So, Marge finds herself unemployed and signs up for an entrepreneurship course targeted at potential entrepreneurs. Simultaneously she is offered freelance work in another newspaper as the result of a sick leave vacancy. Thus, she is taking the course and working as a freelancer. After the two-month course Marge makes up her mind and sets up the company. In her story this decision is supported by a multi-layered account of reasons and explanations. There are, firstly, the rational elements. Journalists are getting older along with the rest of the working population, which will result in increased sick leave, which provides work opportunities for freelancers in the media industry (identification of business potential). She has also established relationships with several newspapers in the course of her professional career. It is these experiences that contribute to her belief that there is a need for a journalist like her with a depth and breadth of experience and expertise. Secondly, she has applied for different jobs and has been interviewed for many. In one particular case she felt especially irritated where a young male graduate with less experience was chosen for a job she felt she would have been good at. These experiences led her to develop her personal theory that a woman in her 40s would not get a permanent job in the small town and region where she was living. By labelling this as Marge’s personal theory I want to emphasise that it is this guideline she uses to interpret the world and make her choices and decisions. From this perspective the idea of getting a permanent job is blocked from her and the remaining alternatives are either being hired for short-term contracts or becoming self-employed. The short-term employment contracts pose a problem for her identity as can be seen from the following quotes: From the point-of-view of the identity I thought it was terribly hard when I did those temp jobs that if you’re working somewhere for a year so you learn to identify yourself as part of an organisation, that I work here and I introduce myself that this is Marge Pitt from Littleborough News or something. And then I’m no longer that, that I do not do the same things so. . . [Sighs] and when you go through this many times [. . .] Now I want something that is and stays, that don’t change constantly. That although in a way I am a sort of substitute and temporary worker it is in my own hands much more. I am this kind of media entrepreneur and because I offer my services I don’t have to change who I am because of who I work for – this is exactly the stability I sought where you do constantly have to change who and what you are.

The meaning of a job or an organisation where one works extends beyond fulfilling the basic needs of earning money to live on and having something meaningful to do with one’s time. Being employed in an organisation provides us with a social identity. Thus, having a social identity and to have personal control over that identity also contributed to Marge’s sense making behind the decision to become an entrepreneur. As a self-employed in the media business she is able to maintain a stable social identity. This stability provides her with a source of security that she cannot find as a wage worker. In the above quote Marge also identifies as a particular type of an entrepreneur – a service provider in the media sector, which is important for her to legitimise her endeavour. This construction of a legitimate entrepreneurial identity that is acceptable for her is an overriding theme in Marge’s story.

New meanings for entrepreneurs

603

JOCM 18,6

604

Marge: Surprisingly the biggest resistance came from home. Ulla: Hmm. . . Marge: My husband found it difficult to understand that it was possible to work that way, that this sort of entrep . . . that it did not quite fit with his ideas of what business is about. In the construction industry it is totally different. He can’t understand that it supports itself like this, that it is something where nothing material is being transported and the aim is to collect the salary money for oneself. So that for him it just did not feel like something laughter that could work and succeed. And many times he explained how unrealistic my ideas were . . . , that no, no-one would pay for that, . . .But at some point I got angry, and well, he hasn’t said it again. Ulla: He believes already? Marge: Yes. That when in fact I get, I get a bigger part, a bigger sum that I can count as my own salary than t he took in his first years. [] This is like, what is the right word, selling expert services in a way. A little bit like one would be a lawyer or, or, some consultant, a bit like that.

The image of an entrepreneur that is suggested by Marge’s husband is taken as a resource – a counterpart – against which it is possible to re-construct another but a legitimate entrepreneurial identity. The better income is applied as the “final” proof of legitimacy in the story. Reflecting on entrepreneurial identity The first year has gone as planned which Marge explains is the result of her long thinking process before the decision, legitimising it as a serious venture as opposed to foolish play and by the related entrepreneurial experiences (working as a freelancer) that prepared her for it. She has, however, been positively surprised by the long-term contracts that she has received as a freelancer because normally smaller newspapers cannot hire professional assistance but have to rely more on amateurs. This part of the story reinforces the identification of Marge as an experienced and professional journalist, which is the base from which the entrepreneurship story is also narrated (see also Mallon, 1998 for a discussion of management consultants who refuse to identify themselves as entrepreneurs). There is a pause to my question of what are the best things about being an entrepreneur. Then, the “certain freedom” is given as an answer in Marge’s story. The freedom in Marge’s story does not refer to independence since she has been working independently and alone as a journalist but the freedom represents being free from expecting to be laid off from the newspaper. This freedom is also extended to cover the notion of not being on call 24 hours a day and to be constantly alert to cover anything which might happen in the region which was part of the job description in her previous jobs. In her current position she is hired for particular work assignments and she is responsible to nobody but herself which is a great relief to her. Although she emphasises the journalist identity in the interview there are also traces of her determination to pursue the entrepreneurial career at least for a while. For example, she decides not to apply for a vacancy that opens in a local newspaper. The job description is similar to one of her previous jobs so it would not have provided her with new challenges but she is also curious if her current business will take off.

This is, however, linked to her fear of exposing her newfound stable identity when she says ironically “There were other reasons for it as well. I thought that if they don’t choose me, how difficult is it for me then”. However, at this early phase of her entrepreneurial endeavour she leaves the backdoor open. She is not “clinging to the form of activity” (entrepreneurship) and the choice will be made case-by-case depending on the contents of the work and the ability to work reasonable hours. There is still room for her to leave the entrepreneurial position in favour of going to work as an employee in a newspaper. Throughout Marge’s story it is possible to see that she portrays her identity as a journalist and to downplay the entrepreneurial identity. She draws a distinction between herself and some of the entrepreneurs that share different values and thinking. She does not identify herself with the “tales from the field”, the ideological propaganda. That entrepreneurs are always oppressed that everything goes wrong and times are awful and everything is so grim. There is a little bit of negative spirit and then the spirit that entrepreneurs are in a specific position of being a lot more oppressed than other groups, that entrepreneurs have to work a lot and you cannot ever take holidays and you are not within any [systems]. I can really see where these issues come from but I am not altogether convinced that it is the whole truth. I have as a wage earner worked entrepreneurially as I am now and received just a cold hand in return that I don’t. . . That it cannot simply be that the line that entrepreneurs or somebody else would be only . . . that if somebody works for the municipality that he would be much different, he does his job well or badly, or feels his responsibility or not but it is the same for everybody so the curious glorifying [of entrepreneurs] that has been in the forefront, I shun that a little bit.

Marge rejects the idea of entrepreneurs as a special group that share the qualities of bearing full responsibility and working harder than other groups, which would largely distinguish entrepreneurs from other professional groups. This makes sense from the identity position adopted by Marge negotiated between the journalist and the entrepreneurial side. Discussion The entrepreneurship research has constructed an image of the entrepreneur as something both “exceptional” and “fixed and stable”. In this paper I have adopted the point-of-view that identities are emergent, paradoxical and fluid and that the entrepreneurial career is not reserved for any special group with superpowers and abilities but is something for us “mere mortals” also (Mitchell, 1997). The meaning of entrepreneurship for the individual is not pre-given but entrepreneurs are active agents who construct an entrepreneurial identity by applying their other identities and positions, their own past and present experiences and future perspectives as resources in the story (Linstead and Thomas, 2002; Thomas and Linstead, 2002). Time and place are integral elements to this process. In this paper I argue that this process is re-enforced by the changes taking place at the individual, organisational and societal level. Marge’s story is instrumental in learning about several simultaneous and intertwined change processes that shape our (professional) identities and the roles assigned for entrepreneurship and work in general. In addition, Marge’s story has been informative of the ways narratives and stories work. Although Marge’s story is

New meanings for entrepreneurs

605

JOCM 18,6

606

narrated in the framework of providing reasons for the start-up it is less clear to what extent this was actually visible before the start-up or whether it is made into such retrospectively. In a similar vein, self-employment also solves another problem, she no longer needs to work the hours and take all the responsibility for a particular area. Although this bonus of being a self-employed is given together with the other explanations and is constructed as a reason for her becoming an entrepreneur, this is something that has only dawned on her later, which she acknowledges in her story. This is the strength of narrative: the stories are narrated from the present enabling us to include new events in our life-stories and helping us to make sense of the events taking place from the current position by giving new meanings to those events. Next I’ll discuss in more detail about the changes in personal, organisational and societal level and the ways they are made visible in the narrative. Identities in change In Marge’s story attention is caught by the immediate paradox in her story and the available two, partly contradicting identities in her story and the process of change from a student in a “radical” University in the 1970s to a “business person”, an entrepreneur/self-employed. In Marge’s story we can see the shifts between the two identities (the journalist and the entrepreneur) and the negotiation the ways the two can coexist in her story/life. The entrepreneurial identity is adopted as a means of trying to create a sense of security and stability for her social and professional identity. Paradoxically the entrepreneurial identity is constructed as a means to safeguard the journalist identity, to be able to work as a journalist in an environment where there is not a constant pressure of fearing the worst, she can find a secure and stable identity as a self-employed in the media business. The way to accommodate the two identities in Marge’s story seems to be related to her finding a way of identifying as a certain kind of an entrepreneur – a knowledge-based entrepreneur in the media business providing expert services. Furthermore, she renounces some of the values and thinking in the entrepreneurship propaganda, for example, from understanding entrepreneurs as a special, heroic group by making it plain that she has shared the entrepreneurial values of hardworking and strong sense of responsibility as an employee. The entrepreneurship is a solution for Marge to take her professional destiny into her own hands; being a self-employed is a position that cannot be taken away from her by others. In the field of entrepreneurship and career theories the push and pull dichotomy has been utilised when analysing why people take the decision to become an entrepreneur or change jobs, i.e. what factors are pushing or pulling individuals to make these decisions and moves (Mallon and Cohen, 2001). In Marge’s case the decision to go into self-employment is seen to be the only alternative to resolve the situation that results from problems of working in an organisation (Mallon and Cohen, 2001). Marge’s experience with job interviews where she was overshadowed by the younger men led her to believe that the employment markets are not suited for women in their forties. In order to escape this reality Marge opted out through self-employment (Still and Timms, 1998). The career perspective could be a useful starting point for entrepreneurship research in general. It would possible to discard the view that successful entrepreneurs are only those who are able to create long-term entrepreneurship and expand their companies but to include also those that practice entrepreneurship for a while as part

of their careers (Dyer, 1994; Mallon, 1998). This perspective would downplay the perception of entrepreneurs as the “exceptional” people and to understand entrepreneurship as an alternative among the others for most people in certain situations. This might also help to dilute the masculine image of the entrepreneur in research and everyday talk. Nevertheless, these images and perceptions can also be applied as a resource in constructing “alternative” identities. The entrepreneurs are active agents engaged in constructing an entrepreneurial identity that is legitimate and acceptable (Bruni et al., 2004; Thomas and Linstead, 2002). Organisations in change Marge’s story although depicted from the entrepreneurial and self-employment position is informative of the organisational life in many ways. It informs us of the tightening atmosphere and increased competition within an organisation during the financial difficulties. Furthermore, the story is also informative of the increase in perceived job and employer insecurity and changing role of the “psychological contract” between the organisation and the employee. Although working hard and in a responsible way Marge was not able to find her place professionally as a journalist. The economic crisis that the country faces drives newspapers to cut down costs. People are hired and made redundant based on the financial situation of the firm, which cannot be directly influenced by the journalists within the paper. As a result, working in the organisation makes it necessary to play the “being busy and important member of the community” – game (Vigoda, 2002). Employee loyalty and commitment are still the expected norm in organisations, but this does not result in a secure job. It is possible to interpret that the management decision to get rid of all the temporary workers in the newspaper violated the “psychological contract” Marge believed in that hard work would pay off and provide for security. Furthermore, the recession can be seen to have violated the contract in a more general sense: it was only then when it became evident that even educated, laborious people would not necessarily find jobs. As an entrepreneur, she applies the employer security as a basis for her social identity and is capable of re-constructing the employer security as an entrepreneur. In a sense, she signs a “new” psychological contract with herself who she knows to be loyal and trustworthy (Wajcman and Martin, 2001). Societies in change Marge’s story can be seen to reflect changes at a larger societal level as the changes taking place in work life are also transforming the constructions and understanding of entrepreneurial life in a more general sense: the once risky choice of becoming an entrepreneur/self-employed seems less risky in the society if mirrored against the alternative: wage-work in the private or public sector. At least as an entrepreneur one has the opportunity of making decisions oneself and not being dependent on some decisions made at a headquarters tens of thousands of kilometres away. Of course, small businesses and small business persons are also affected by globalisation, “China phenomenon” and other current international trends but still they do not have to react forcefully to share-holder pressures and demands like the multinational companies. Thus, I argue that entrepreneurship as a career or as a way of earning one’s living is becoming a more secure alternative with the developments and increasing insecurity

New meanings for entrepreneurs

607

JOCM 18,6

608

and risk involved in the current labour market context. Through the changes in the working life, organizations and the society at large the divide between wage work and self-employment becomes blurred: permanent jobs and long careers have ceased to exist in organizations. Only by setting up one’s own company it is possible to secure a stable social and professional identity. To be able to work as a professional journalist with a certain ethical code or in the acceptable conditions, the entrepreneurial position may be adopted. To escape the organisational politics, sex or age discrimination, the solution to opt out may be through self-employment or entrepreneurship. Hence, I suggest that there is a need for further study in analysing the “insecurity/security” inherent to the entrepreneurial processes embedded in the current labour market. Another societal change reflected in Marge’s story is ageing. Through ageing of her colleague journalists, Marge has been given work opportunities and assignments. At the same time the concept of an elderly worker becomes a blurred and stretched concept (Marge is 43 years of age). Marge’s ageing causes her to believe that she will no longer find a permanent job but is forced to take only temporary jobs where the fear of losing her position is always present, thus, presenting a constant threat to her professional, social identity (Lindgren and Wa˚hlin, 2001). The growing turbulence of the labour market will result in the growing number of ageing or elderly people without jobs: are they doomed outside the labour market or is self-employment/entrepreneurship their sole chance of finding a new job? Or, will they become the “cornerstones and valuable assets” for the companies as expressed in ceremonies and government actions plans? (Yearta and Warr, 1995; Arrowsmith and McGodrick, 1997; Taylor and Walker, 1997). In this study I’ve argued that by treating entrepreneurship as a social activity constrained by time and place we will be able to question some of the “general truths and known facts” about entrepreneurship. In a given place and time, entrepreneurship may be the best or only solution even for the committed, risk-averse journalist. At the individual level the boundaries between traditional career roles and identities become more blurred. In order to safeguard a role as a professional journalist, the entrepreneurial position is occupied (Lindgren, 2000). Simultaneously, entrepreneurship is gaining new meanings of reliability and risk-moderation while the insecurity and organisational politics within organisations are growing. Through Marge’s story – the single snowflake – I hope to have told a different story, yet a story that resonates our knowledge and understanding of entrepreneurship and the ways it is constantly changing and transforming. Note 1. Saying borrowed from Steyart and Katz (2004). References Ahl, J.H. (2002), The Making of the Female Entrepreneur. A Discourse Analysis of Research Texts on Women’s Entrepreneurship, JIBS Dissertation Series, No. 015, Jo¨nko¨ping International Business School, Parajett AB, Jo¨nko¨ping. Arrowsmith, J. and McGoldrick, A.E. (1997), “A flexible future for older workers?”, Personnel Review, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 258-73. Blumenthal, D. (1999), “Representing the divided self”, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 377-92.

Bruner, J. (1986), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Harvard UP, Cambridge, MA. Bruner, J. (1990), Acts of Meaning, Harvard UP, Cambridge, MA. Bruni, A., Gherardi, S. and Poggio, B. (2004), “Doing gender, doing entrepreneurship: an ethnographic account of intertwined practices”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 11 No. 4, p. 406. Bygrave, W.D. (1989), “The entrepreneurship paradigm (I): a philosophical look at its research methodologies”, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 7-26. Carland, J.W., Hoy, F. and Carland, J.A.C. (1988), “Who is an entrepreneur? Is a question worth asking”, American Journal of Small Business, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 33-9. Carr, D. (1986), Time, Narrative and History, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. Coffey, A. (1999), The Ethnographic Self. Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity, Sage, London. Cunliffe, A.L. (2001), “Managers as practical authors: reconstructing our understanding of management practice”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 351-71. Czarniawska, B. (1998), “A narrative approach to organization studies”, Qualitative Research Methods, Series 43, Sage University, Newbury Park, CA. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. (1995), “Narration or science? Collapsing the division in organization studies”, Organization, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 11-33. Davidsson, P. (2002), “What entrepreneurship research can do for business and policy practice?”, International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 1-20. Denzin, N.K. (1997), Interpretive Ethnography, Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century, Sage, London. Dyer, W.G. Jr (1994), “Toward a theory of entrepreneurial careers”, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 7-21. Fournier, V. and Lightfoot, G. (1997), “Identity work and family business”, in Ram, M., Deakins, D. and Smallbone, D. (Eds), Small Firms. Enterprising Futures, Paul Chapman, London, pp. 22-32. Gartner, W.B. (2001), “Is there an elephant in entrepreneurship? Blind assumptions in theory development”, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 27-39. Goodson, I. (2001), “The story of life history: origins of the life history method in sociology”, Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 129-42. Hermans, H.J.M. (2001), “The dialogical self: toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning”, Culture & Psychology, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 243-81. Hyrsky, K. (1999), “Entrepreneurial metaphors and concepts: an exploratory study”, International Small Business Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 13-34. Hytti, U. (2003), “Stories of entrepreneurs: narrative construction of identities”, Publications of the Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, available at: www.tukkk.fi/ julkaisut/vk/Ae1_2003.pdf Ja¨rvinen, M. (2000), “The biographical illusion: constructing meaning in qualitative interviews”, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 370-91. Johansson, A.W. (2004), “Narrating the entrepreneur”, International Small Business Journal, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 273-93. Jokinen, A. (1999), “Diskurssianalyysin suhde sukulaistraditioihin”, Diskurssianalyysi Liikkeessa¨, Arja Jokinen – Kirsi Juhila – Eero Suoninen, Vastapaino: Jyva¨skyla¨, pp. 37-53.

New meanings for entrepreneurs

609

JOCM 18,6

610

Kovalainen, A. (2001), “Research in entrepreneurship and SMEs: visions and divisions”, A keynote given at the RENT XIV Workshop, Turku, 22 November. Lehto, J. and Stenholm, P. (2001), “Yritta¨jyyskoulutuksen vaikuttavuus ja starttirahayritysten menestyminen Varsinais-Suomessa”, Series B Research Reports, B5: Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Business Research and Development Centre, Turku. Lincoln, Y.S. and Denzin, N.K. (2000), “The seventh moment. Out of the past”, in Norman, K.D. and Yvonna, S.L. (Eds), Handbook of Qualitative Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Lindgren, M. (2000), “Kvinnor i friskolor – om ko¨n, entrepreno¨rskap och profession i identitetskapandet”, Rapport fra˚n FEM-gruppen, FSF 2000:3, Forum fo¨ r sma˚fo¨retagsforskning: O¨rebro. Lindgren, M. and Wa˚hlin, N. (2001), “Identity construction among boundary-crossing individuals”, Scandinavian Journal of Management, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 357-77. Linstead, A. and Thomas, R. (2002), “What do you want from me? A poststructuralist feminist reading of middle managers’ identities”, Culture and Organization, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 1-20. Llewellyn, S. (2001), “Two-way windows: clinicians as medical managers”, Organization Studies, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 593-623. Mallon, M. (1998), “The portfolio career: pushed or pulled to it?”, Personnel Review, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 361-77. Mallon, M. and Cohen, L. (2001), “Time for a change? Women’s accounts of the move from organizational careers to self-employment”, British Journal of Management, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 217-30. Mishler, E.G. (1986), Research Interviewing. Context and Narrative, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Mitchell, R.K. (1997), “Oral history and expert scripts: demystifying the entrepreneurial experience”, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 122-39. Polkinghorne, D.E. (1988), Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Reynolds, P.D., Bygrave, W.D. and Autio, E. et al. (2003), GEM Global 2003 Executive Report, London School of Economics, Babson College and Kaufman Foundation, available at: www.gemconsortium.org Riessman, C.K. (1993), “Narrative analysis”, Qualitative Research Methods, Series 30, Sage University, Newbury Park, CA. Riessman, C.K. (2002), “Analysis of personal narratives”, in Jaber, F.G. and James, A.H. (Eds), Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 695-710. Roulston, K.J., Baker, C.D. and Liljestrom, A. (2001), “Analyzing the researcher’s work in generating data: the case of complaints”, Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 7 No. 6, pp. 745-72. Shotter, J. (1989), “Social accountability and the social construction of ‘You’ ”, in Shotter, J. and Gergen, K. (Eds), Texts of Identity, Sage, London. Silverman, D. (1993), Interpreting Qualitative Data. Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction, Sage, London. Steyart, C. and Katz, J. (2004), “Reclaiming the space of entrepreneurship in society: geographical, discursive and social dimensions”, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 179-96.

Still, L. and Timms, W. (1998), “Career barriers and the older woman manager”, Women in Management Review, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 143-55. Taylor, P. and Walker, A. (1997), “Age discrimination and public policy”, Personnel Review, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 307-18. Thomas, R. and Linstead, A. (2002), “Losing the plot? Middle managers and identity”, Organization, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 71-93. Vigoda, E. (2002), “Stress-related aftermaths to workplace politics: the relationships among politics, job distress and aggressive behavior in organizations”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 571-91. Vilkko, A. (1997), “Omaela¨ma¨kerta kohtaamispaikkana. Naisen ela¨ma¨n kerronta ja luenta”, Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia 663. Tammer-Paino Oy: Tampere. Wa˚hlin, N. (1999), “Reflexive identity creation through boundary spanning and boundary crossing”, in Johannisson, B. and Landstro¨m, H. (Eds), Images of Entrepreneurship and Small Business – Emergent Swedish Contributions to Academic Research, Studentlitteratur, Lund, pp. 115-40. Wajcman, J. and Martin, B. (2001), “My company or my career: managerial achievement and loyalty”, The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 52 No. 4, pp. 559-78. Warren, L. (2004), “Negotiating entrepreneurial identity. Communities of practice and changing discourses”, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 25-35. Weigert, A.J., Teitge, J.S. and Teitge, D.W. (1986), Society and Identity: Toward a Sociological Psychology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA. Widdershoven, G.A.M. (1993), “The story of life. Hermeneutic perspectives on the relationship between narrative and life history”, in Josselsson, R. and Lieblich, A. (Eds), The Narrative Study of Lives, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, Vol. 1, pp. 1-20. Yearta, S.K. and Warr, P. (1995), “Does age matter?”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 14 No. 7, pp. 28-35. Further reading Hatch M.J. (1996). “The role of the researcher. An analysis of narrative position in organization theory”, Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 4 No. 5, pp. 359-374. Loosemore M. (1998). “The three ironies of crisis management in construction projects”, International, Journal of Project Management, Vol. 3 No. 16, pp. 139-144.

New meanings for entrepreneurs

611

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

JOCM 18,6

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Men working differently: accessing their inner-feminine Sallyanne Miller RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

612 Abstract

Purpose – To present an account of changes in the behaviour of male bank managers who were engaged in action learning groups whose focus was on improving service quality and leadership development. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative study of the development of group process, and the changes in behaviours of the managers whose values and norms were dominated by discourses of traditional hegemonic masculinity. It is also an autobiographical account of the authors’ experience of facilitating action learning groups. Findings – Analysis of the groups’ processes revealed a connection between the development of the groups in relation to authority and the changes in the managers’ behaviour over a period of 12 months during which they began to behave in ways typically characterised as feminine. Practical implications – Has implications for management development especially the development of male managers and their capacity to work in more feminine ways. Significant factors in developing men’s management and leadership capabilities are peer learning, and engagement with authority in ways that are not dissimilar to the experiences of the adolescent and young adult in relation to peers and parents. There are also implications for facilitators and trainers engaged in management development processes. Originality/value – Offers a theoretical contribution to the concept of the “Authority Cycle”, and theories on masculinity. It is also useful for management development practitioners. Keywords Action learning, Authority, Group dynamics, Masculinities, Gender Paper type Case study

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 612-626 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628530

Introduction This paper explores the development of groups engaged in an action learning project focussing on improving service quality and leadership development. The groups comprised male managers working in a large Australian bank. It explores the link between group development, authority relations and the development of more feminine ways of working. The paper emerged from issues that arose in my own practice as consultant and is autobiographical in nature since I wanted to better understand what was happening in the groups, for the facilitators of the groups and for myself as the project leader. The structure of the paper is unconventional in that the relevant literature is not presented until the second half of the paper. This is because I want the structure of the paper to mimic my own journey – the reflection and study of my own practice and the issues that arose in it, and then engagement with the literature to help me further make sense of what was happening in the groups. Firstly, I discuss the methodological approach and methods employed for the research used for this paper The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful, and generous feedback, and a special thank you to Dr Carlene Boucher who helped me enormously in producing the final version.

before continuing to explain the organization – “the Bank” from here on in – and the context in which the work took place. Secondly I describe how the work was undertaken and the issues that arose in the action learning groups – describing what occurred and making links to the literature on group development, authority relations and the development of more feminine ways of working. Lastly, the paper ends with some suggestions to others undertaking work in management development and in male dominated learning groups. Methodology: action learning in “the Bank” This work is both a qualitative case study of what occurred with the managers in the action learning groups, and an autobiographical study of my experience of facilitating some of these groups and managing the project team. Case study research is described by Wilson (1979, p. 448) as “. . . a process which tries to describe and analyse some entity in qualitative, complex and comprehensive terms, not infrequently as it unfolds over a period of time”. The case study is the examination of a specific “case” such as a program, organization, event, person or process (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991). Anchored in real-life situations, the case study is a rich and holistic account of experience (Merriam, 1988). In studying the action learning groups at “the Bank” I was interested in insight, discovery and interpretation rather. This work is also autobiographical, in that I explore my own experience of being involved in this project. As an insider researcher (Coghlan, 2001; Coghlan, 2003; Coghlan and Brannick, 2002; Coghlan and Casey, 2001) much of my learning came from examining my own practice in relation to that of the male managers and the other facilitators. For the purposes of this paper, autobiographical research is that which “. . . contains information about the self” (Brewer, 1986). Stone (1981, p. 80) describes autobiography as being “. . . simultaneously historical record and literary artefact, psychological case history and spiritual confession, didactic essay and ideological testament”. Autobiography is a way of representing the complexity of the experience of life in organizations, both those in them and of those researching them (Hannabus, 2000)[1]. Data that researchers collect about themselves can be used in two ways. Some studies are intensely personal and most of the data collected is about the researcher. Other studies involve the generation of a range of data that includes some data about the researcher. For example, the researcher may be a participant in the study, the researcher may keep a personal journal as part of the study, or the researcher may keep a record of their thoughts and feelings as part of the process of ensuring that the data generation and analysis is rigorous (Coffey, 1999). It was important to me that I was myself, a woman, in this work, and I brought all of who I was to it. As such this involved for me taking up authority in this way and being fully present as a female authority figure. It informed the reflection and the analysis of the data, and enabled me to feel the tensions and stories in my own project group that were reflected in the groups the facilitators were working with. Eventually, I found myself engaged in a parallel process in which the very dynamics that were occurring between the groups and their facilitators were also happening between the project group of facilitators and myself. The struggles that the facilitators and myself had as we worked on this project were important in how I worked with them, and then in how they worked with the managers. The processes of reflection and reflexivity through our conversations and sharing of narratives were ways in which we could become as

Men working differently

613

JOCM 18,6

614

aware as is possible of our assumptions and biases and how they were being brought to the work. I collected the data by keeping a reflective personal learning journal. It included my personal reflections as a group facilitator, reflection on my role as project manager and reflections on the discussions that occurred during the facilitators meetings. Brookfield (1995, p. 189) writes that: . . . learning journals are the private records of how learners feel about and make sense of their learning. They provide a direct and immediate recounting of the learner’s experiences that are relatively undistorted by teacher or researcher interventions.

Learning journals have long been a source of data for those pursuing research. In a sense the learning journals provided me with a means of unobtrusive research, which allowed me both immediate and later access to information about events, my thoughts and my experiences (Kellehear, 1993). In these journals I also recorded some extracts from individual manager’s speech which seemed to be important for the management development work I was doing and the text that resonated with me at the time. At the time of “data collection” and later as I analysed the data retrospectively the gendered nature and meaning of text struck me. These data are presented here in the form of direct quotes and are dispersed with my autobiographical accounts throughout this paper. As I had no preconceived notions of what I would find in the data, it was analysed using a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1979) to enable the theory to emerge from the analysis of the data. The concept of grounded analysis is that the theory is embedded within the data. Themes emerge from the analyses of the data’s content, giving rise to a theory, which then can be explored. The organization wanted to improve and standardise the quality and consistency of service being provided through the organization, and the national organization change and development department had developed a suite of changes that were to be implemented across the country. These would be implemented top-down in a prescribed manner. However, a lot of change over recent years had contributed to a culture of scepticism in relation to change that left people feeling disenfranchised, powerless and irrelevant, and staff increasingly argued that they wanted to be consulted – involved in making their own decisions and have input into the changes that affected them. In this light, a process for change needed to be created that would enable managers to be consulted and involved in the change. In the division in which I worked, it was decided that the approach to this change project would engage the managers, help them to take up their own authority, and bring their own issues to the dilemma of service quality. This process was action learning. Action learning is a process of action, reflection and learning in a community with peers from the same or other organizations. Small groups of managers come together in what have traditionally been called action learning sets for purposes including exploring organizational problems, addressing change issues, management development and community development (Pedler, 1983). Initially, six groups of between 10 and 12 managers were formed to work together for at least 12 months. All of the group members were men. The groups met for one half day every fortnight with an appointed facilitator. Their task was to identify those issues related to service delivery and leadership they wanted to work on, and to also identify the ways that they wanted to respond to the bank-wide initiative. I was the project leader, responsible for

developing and managing the facilitators (male and female), working together with them as a project team, and overseeing and assessing the development of the action learning groups. I had strongly urged the management of our division to take this approach, as I believed it would make a significant difference to the outcomes they sought to achieve. I had seen so many of what I had come to call the “sheep dip” approaches to change and had been part of their short life. I believed that if the managers were involved in the change, the change was more likely to stick. I had worked for many years in this organization and was committed to trying to improve it. Broussine and Fox, 2003 would call this a “labor of love” referring to the notion that researchers are not separate from their work, but are people with values and beliefs that will impact on the research. I was passionate about helping these managers take a stronger, more empowered stance with the running of their branches. The action learning group facilitators were selected on the basis of their capacity to enable others’ learning, and facilitate and support the process of reflection. We chose people who wanted to work differently, and who were not content experts. The gender mix of the facilitators was not a consideration. After an initial one and a half day workshop, each action learning team met once a fortnight with their facilitators. The facilitators met together every week and engaged in a process of “interactive introspection” (Ronai, 1992) where we shared and reflected on the stories of our work in the groups. What began to emerge through this process was a narrative of what was happening in the groups, and we began to discover common themes and shared experiences. We needed to be aware of the impact we were having on the groups and on each other as we worked together as a project team in this action learning process. My role was to help the facilitators consider and reflect on what was emerging both between them and their groups, but also within our group. This process of reflexivity (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991) was important in surfacing assumptions, and gaining an insight into both what was happening for the managers in the groups, as well as what was happening for us in our own group, and how one set of data might reflect and shed insight on the other. Very early on issues around gender and authority emerged, and what became apparent was that the project team itself became a basis for exploring these dynamics given the mix of male and female facilitators and myself as a female authority figure. This enabled us to use the project team as its own action learning set where we could explore and reflect on the dynamics between men and women, as well as between men and women and a female authority figure. “The Bank”: group dynamics and gender What follows is a description of the journey the managers and facilitators (including myself) took in this change project over a period of approximately 12 months. The description is interspersed with references of theoretical constructs that have helped me understand what occurred. The patterns and dynamics that I describe are those that occurred at the group rather than the individual level. Groups will exhibit certain characteristics and behaviours that can be examined by conceptualising and analysing what is going on at the level of the “group as a whole” rather than as an outcome of the amalgam of behaviours of a number of individuals (Bion, 1959; Wells, 1980). Further, groups develop in relation to authority in a way analogous to the

Men working differently

615

JOCM 18,6

616

developing person in relation to the authority of the parent. There are identifiable stages of development that groups go through in relation to the authority of the leader that are distinguishable, and provide insight into the dynamics occurring within the group and between the group and the authority figure (Reid, 1965). The beginning of the groups The beginning of the life of the groups, which began with a one and a half day program to develop the project framework and purpose, was characterised by conflicting and paradoxical emotions. There was excitement, scepticism, confusion, denial, blame and suspicion. Initially, the managers were excited about a new change, and about being involved in what would happen to them. They had a lot to say about what should be done. At the same time there was frustration with yet another change and scepticism about its potential for success based on their previous experiences of change. This was reflected in comments like: “What’s really going to be different this time?”; “It’ll last five minutes before it all goes back the way it was?” and “We’ll just do what we need to do to keep ’em happy”. The level of anxiety in the groups rose as the managers tried to get a sense of the function and purpose of them, their relationship to their facilitators, and what was expected of them around the change itself. This propelled them into a search to find quick answers and quick solutions for what they agreed were tough problems. At the same time, here was strong denial of their own responsibility for the problems of service and leadership, and many accusations of how it was “senior management’s fault and they should fix it!” This was accompanied by great lists of what senior management should do, and quickly followed by direct requests of the facilitators for direction and answers. The facilitators experienced constant requests for “agendas”, and groups demanded to be told what to do. The action learning methodology meant that the facilitators responded by encouraging the managers to discuss their organizational concerns and problems, and helping them to decide what they wanted to do. This resulted in the managers becoming increasingly angry and suspicious. Facilitators were accused of “knowing the answers” and deliberately withholding them. This lack of traditional structure and boundaries created a sense of chaos and ambiguity and facilitators were met with accusations that the program was “bullshit”, “a waste of everyone’s time”, and were increasingly asked: “When is the real work going to start?” Additionally, in the absence of the guidance and direction they sought the managers demanded to know what the facilitator would be doing, why they were there, and question the need for the facilitator to be there at all. The facilitators were accused of being “soft” or “touchy-feely” or generally useless. There was little work done, certainly no problem sharing and no substantial dialogue between the managers. The interaction was between the managers and the facilitators. By the end of the one and a half days the managers left with feelings of unease and uncertainty that were alleviated by the group allowing one or two of its members to arbitrarily set an agenda for their next meeting. Dependency, authority relations and gender relations. The sense that the project was a waste of time, and the feelings of chaos are typical of dependency in relation to authority. The groups were dependent on their facilitator to tell them what to do. Having been given some autonomy for the first time, their sense of not knowing what

to do was unbearable, and their reaction was to initially seek guidance and permission. It was as though the managers had no capacity to act on their own, and they seemed to be powerless to do anything for themselves. The constant looking to the facilitators to provide the direction, structure and answers typifies a dependent relation to authority, as the group “looks to the designated leader to initiate activity” (Reid, 1965). Hierarchy defines identity, through knowing and expertise, and once this is known it creates a sense of comfort that is hard to move out of. Hierarchy arises out of notions of expertise and the “rational manager”, and as such, being in control is “masculine knowledge”, and is privileged above other forms of knowledge (Kerfoot and Knights, 1998). In this context, questioning and reflection were experienced as invalid and illogical – “a waste of time”. At times they were experienced as dangerous. The need for control and rules and order was so strong that the managers only knew how to do what they were told, and the absence of them created havoc and anxiety. The managers at times appeared literally unable to think, and in the space the facilitators created, the anxiety that emerged was intolerable. As a result the managers became hostile and suspicious. Hostility is a characteristic of a “counter-independent” relation to authority that occurs when groups are given some freedom but do not want it. An analogy is the reaction of people held captive who shy away from freedom when initially offered it, having been imprisoned for so long they do not know what to do or where to go. To outsiders it seems strange, but they can feel angry at suddenly being thrust into an unknown world. The managers reacted strongly against the freedom and choices being offered to them. The first six months Following the workshop, the meetings began each fortnight and the managers all but ignored the facilitators. In the first few meetings the managers attempted to take action, set objectives, define outcomes, order their meetings, identify problems/concerns, and agree what they would tell their staff to do. There was constant action, each manager independently deciding what they would do and announcing it to each other. There was no active support or sharing but rather a lot of announcing and telling. There was little connection between the managers and no intimacy. It was “every man for himself” as competition for leadership and the best actions grew and energy increased. There was no reflection, and questioning took the form of competition rather than enquiry. During these early meetings groups generally avoided the issue of leadership, preferring to focus on more tangible problems that had concerned them for some time that were related to service, like errors in customer deposits or withdrawals, lending discretionary limits, or mistakes made at the back office processing centres. This became more frenzied as older members of the group would compete for leadership on different issues, and that enabled them to focus on specifics and provided a sense of purposeful action. They were also issues that could be addressed from a systemic perspective, and generally involved needing someone from outside of the group to take action. The managers colluded to actively avoid reflection on the part of the problem that might involve them. The reluctance to share and work together was evidenced by statements like: “Why should I help you young managers? You should work to find out and get there just like I did”.

Men working differently

617

JOCM 18,6

618

Also, leadership struggles emerged between the older and the younger managers when occasionally a younger manager would quietly make suggestions, or try to open discussion and reflection. This was met with the silent and stoic faces of their peers, or they were teased, for example: “Are you the facilitator now are you?” a response that was followed by comments like “just stirring you up mate!” The managers were unable and unwilling to focus on themselves. They stated repeatedly that the service being delivered from their branch was fine, and rejected reflection or considerations of this on the basis that their customers would tell them if there was a problem and since they were not, there was no value in thinking about it further. In regards to leadership, while they were quick to make complex judgements about their managers, they felt the leadership they were providing was fine, because, “of course if it weren’t, their staff would tell them!” The facilitators became all but invisible, any comments or interventions offered by them were generally ignored, and any that were not ignored came under scrutiny or attack. Their efforts to create the space for questioning and reflection, and to encourage the managers to collaborate were constantly rejected and met with increasing levels of anxiety. There was a vigorous and ferocious rejection of all things foreign to their way of working, with statements like: You don’t know what you are doing, if you did you would tell us what to do? You don’t know what it is like for us so where do you get off making comments? You have no idea about the real world.

Eventually the groups began to fantasise about what it would be like if the facilitators did not come, or if they arranged to meet without them. The level of hostility also included sexualised comments like: “This stuff is touchy-feely wank!” and culminated in an awful attack on myself and another female facilitator when a member arrived late, and looking around the room he saw that there was a seat between us and commented: I’ll be the prick between two cunts!

Counter-dependency and authority relations. The groups exemplified a counter-dependant relationship to authority. The attitude to the appointed authority was that they could well do without them, and they would show them how. This is an acceptance of some freedom, but also a reaction to the “leader who will not lead” (Reid, 1965). The leadership struggles within the groups, and establishing patterns of work are also characteristic of this stage, as is alternating between expressions of hostility toward the facilitators and ignoring them. Groups in counter-dependency are not able to engage with the leader, they are too angry with them for not doing what they expect them to do, and with that the group can find strength in a collective enemy. The energy with which the managers moved away may well have been an expression of their hostility to the authority of the wider organization with whom they were constantly dissatisfied. Much like the teenager who engages in a constant criticism of the parents, these managers were endlessly dissatisfied, and, just like the teenager, they would test the authority to see just how much freedom they really had.

The hostility, however, had the effect of galvanising action, and paradoxically, in this way the groups began to work. The work, however, was not very creative, and it was still work they were deciding others should do. The managers were not behaving in anyway differently from the organizational leaders they sought to criticise, and this was played out in the way they began to construct lists of actions they would dictate to their staff. Counter-dependency and gender relations. Masculinity involves a compulsive desire to be in control (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996, p. 85).

It was terribly difficult for these managers to be confronted with problems; to be encouraged to find problems and not to have the reaction that they had to do something about it, and they were angry at not being in control. Further, the extent of the hostility was also a rejection not just of feelings of dependence on authority, but of feelings of dependence on a feminine authority, not unlike the abrupt and sometimes violent way in which boys reject all things female. At times the hostility in the groups felt violent, and the attacks on the facilitators were attacks on the feminine (Fondas, 1997; Harragan, 1977; Lindsay, 1993; Metcalfe and Linstead, 2003). The gender of the facilitator was not significant – both the male and female facilitators came under criticism. The nature of the name-calling was a rejection of the way in which the facilitator was working. The values being modelled were not understood and in that way were not recognised as being useful to the group’s purpose. The use of the terms “wank”, and “touchy feely” were derogatory terms that Greer (1999) would call one of the many names in men’s “vast vocabulary of insults” for women. It felt at this time that rejection of the facilitators and their “touchy-feely” process, and the subsequent assertion of the rightful place of the “customary” ways of doing things seemed certain! Chodorow (1994, p. 45) argues that “boys and men come to deny the feminine identification in themselves and those feelings they experience as feminine: feelings of dependence, relational needs, emotions generally”. Masculinity embraces individual competitiveness in a way that determines that the way men become “real” managers is by proving themselves without the help of others. Mates learn through innuendo, they do not have “heart to hearts”, are unforthcoming, and see a real danger in affiliation, and so resist possibilities for closer intimacy (Formaini, 1990; Gilligan, 1982; Kerfoot and Knights, 1998). There was certainly great reluctance to share, let alone discuss problems or concerns that might leave them feeling vulnerable. The teasing and “stirring” of the managers who advocated for more sharing and reflection was a way of keeping them “in the mould”, ensuring that the prevailing masculinity would be continued, as “rarely does masculinity embrace the world or even itself with a sense of wonderment, pleasure or engagement” (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996, p. 82). The teasing was a clear reminder not to break ranks, and stems from what Kindlon and Thompson (1999) call the “culture of cruelty” in which boys experience domination, humiliation, fear and betrayal for failures to conform to the norms of behaviour in their early school years. These experiences stay with men long into their adult lives and are rarely shared, but become powerful reminders of the consequences of behaving in any way that might be perceived as somehow not masculine or different. Six to nine months After a about six months of meeting, there was a sense of celebration and self congratulation as the managers began to see that some of their actions had worked, for

Men working differently

619

JOCM 18,6

620

example the regional office had allocated resources to investigating errors. The managers started to feel good about their work, which created an atmosphere of some power, control and influence, and so the idea of exploring problems and reflection were even more strongly rejected as their own successes confirmed that they were an unnecessary waste of time. There was increasing levels of avoidance of the original task as the managers started questioning what they were there for, since having achieved some results there did not appear to be any reason left to stay together. The managers became confused about their purpose and started complaining about not meeting for the sake of it, wasting time on reflection. A frequently made comment was that they were not a “mothers group”. Independence and authority relations and gender relations. The groups continued to largely ignore the facilitator and ignore the task. They did what ever they wanted – because they could. This is typical of an independent relation to authority where the experience of freedom can feel heady, and the groups “resist serious business which might disturb the pleasurable flight from reality in which the group is engaged” (Reid, 1965). The managers behaved in typical masculine fashion, asserting their individuality, and also behaving in the ways they always had. Now, having rejected their leader they no longer had alternative role models and had to rely on traditional stereotypes in order to know how to behave. The last three months – a year of meetings Towards the end of the previous period, however, what slowly started to emerge was an informal network of communication between the managers, and they started to call each other between meetings and begin to share their workplace stories. When asked to say more about these conversations, they reported saying they called to “run something by him” or to “check out” if the same problem was happening somewhere else. These informal conversations were the first sign of the emergence of dialogue and relating to each other, and the experience of contacting each other and sharing feelings and concerns, and, after about nine months started becoming commonplace. The act of sharing and supporting each other was happening with increasing frequency and by choice. They started to reflect on their experiences with each other and for themselves. What also happened is that the managers started to encourage reflection, and began challenging each other and asking questions in the way the facilitator had. They also began to actively support and help each other. The managers had an increased knowledge about each other, and would let others know if one member was away or ill. There was a shift in the relationship with their facilitator with whom they started reporting in, tell them what they were doing and modelling their behaviour on them. There was a softening; a gentler energy and accusations fell away, although there were still criticisms that the facilitators “didn’t understand them”. But the new ways of behaving were hard to hang onto, and there was movement and oscillation back and forward between old ways and these new ways of working. One little set back would mean that the new skills could be quickly forgotten. So when the managers started to discover that the actions from the first meetings did not have a long-term effect, they regressed. They were identifying the wider systemic blockages

to their problems, and at the same time were finding that at their own branches the problems they experienced were not as straightforward as they had originally thought. They were also beginning to see their part in the problems, and this was painful. They began to get a sense of the change needed within them and how hard it was. As one manager said:

Men working differently

I got to my position by winning and beating the rest, and by using my power and authority. Now I’m being asked to encourage and support and work with you. If you think it’s hard for you, I’ve got 43 years of habit to change!

621

For example, the error investigation had identified key issues of absenteeism, morale and staffing levels as part of the problem, and they were beginning to realise that their problems were more complex than they had originally felt. But in their exasperation and anxiety they returned to old habits. The ways that had started to work were forgotten – sharing, supporting and reflecting were seen as useless unless the organization did something. The groups returned to wanting to put proposals before the executive, feeling that anything they do would be a waste of time until “the Bank” addresses other, systemic issues. Yet, the managers were somehow able to cope in a very different way – something had changed. While they would engage in flights of fantasy about “the Bank getting their act together”, this time the managers began to engage with the complexity of the problems through conversation and dialogue with each other. The facilitators continued to encourage the managers to engage with their problems and in doing so, started to be seen as affirming rather than punishing figures, as people that would hang in there, and continue to encourage and support them. Comments like “It’s strange getting support for stuffing up!” were common at this stage. A connectedness emerged between the managers, and they began to talk about feeling less isolated, and less alone in doing their work. There was a shift in the nature of engagement, from engaging in activity to engaging in conversation leading to more considered action. The managers began to recognise at this point that talking to their staff and spending some time understanding and reflecting on their problems would be a worthwhile activity. They also announced that this would be “really hard”. One manager described his ambivalence to working this way in a reaction he had to a staff members’ error by saying: Once I would have ripped his guts out, but instead I have met with him twice and tried to understand his problem and work with him to find solutions. I still might rip his guts out, but I’ve tried to empathise first.

They felt anxious about how they would work with values and attitudes in their staff, but a small number of managers decided to bring their teams together to do this work. The managers spent time discussing activities such as having team meetings with staff with open agendas, being more visible and involved with the staff, and encouraging their staff to talk to them and each other about how they were doing. They began to discover they could work differently, take some risks, and start to empower staff by using their power to foster the growth of others – just as they had experienced in their own groups. It was, finally, some 12 months or so later that the groups were starting to work with two of the fundamental aspects of service and leadership individual values and attitudes.

JOCM 18,6

622

One of the most striking features of this last stage of the work in these groups was that some managers started talking about their personal problems and lives to each other in the group meetings. This represented a real acknowledgement of the connection between the personal and professional and feelings of connection and trust between the men with their own difficulties and struggles. The managers became more confident in these new ways of working which included values of connectedness, co-operation, relatedness, nurturing and support. Finally, the groups began to recognise how the facilitators might be of some use to them, and the facilitators found that they were being consulted, asked to help the managers with other kinds of work and even thanked for all the efforts they had put in. The managers began to recognise the enormity of the journey they had all been on, and the role and value of their facilitator in taking up and offering them an alternative way of working. Interdependence, authority relations and gender relations. In relation to authority, groups do not move in a linear fashion and so there was movement backwards and forwards in relation to authority. A difficult experience, or an unfavourable response would set them back. So once they realised that the kinds of actions they had been taking were not fixing the problems, there was a period of giving up, where the groups regressed to earlier stages. However, although they wanted to get someone else to “fix it” again, the managers were not filled with the same kind of energy of earlier months. Instead they seemed flattened, bottomed out and tired. It was like the weight of the world had descended upon them, and there was a sense of heaviness, and rather than the indignant rage and blaming of earlier meetings, there was a more realistic sense of the world. This taking the world seriously, and engaging with reality is characteristic of interdependence. An interdependent relationship with authority in groups is characterised by recognition of the leader, and of the mutual dependency between the leader and the group. There was a more subdued tone; more considered exploration of ideas, and sharing and creativity. Finally, what also emerged in this stage was some intimacy between the managers, and the setting of a new level of personal communication. The managers were beginning to find within themselves their own authority and bring more of who they were discovering themselves to be, into their work. They were beginning to foster and encourage these new ways of behaving and were becoming more centred and generative toward themselves and others. As they became more able to engage with and recognise the mutual dependency of their relationship with the facilitators they also became more able to express themselves more fully, and this included behaviours such as empathy, caring, nurturing, attentiveness to others, and co-operation. The managers had begun to reconfigure themselves emotionally (Connell, 1995), and this was new learning and a new way of working for these men who had long ago learned that the hallmarks of success in a masculine world were action, control, individuality, achievement and competition. Discussion This paper has discussed the stages of group development in relation to a characteristically feminine authority figure, and the resultant changes in behaviour of the male managers. Whilst there is a plethora of literature that explores psychodynamic theories of the stages of group development and leadership of groups, there is very little literature that explores the psychodynamics of group

development in relation to authority as defined in Clyde Reid’s work on the “Authority Cycle” (1965) with the exception of Hirschhorn and Krantz (1982), Lundgren (1979), Taylor et al. (1979). However, none of these aforementioned authors develop Reid’s work further, and none of them explore the notion of a groups’ development in relation to gendered authority. Action learning privileges creativity, risk, intuition and experimentation. Working and learning together, holding each other to account, reflection, identifying parallels between behaviour within and outside of the groups were all ways of engaging and relating markedly different from the usual approaches to change which would prescribe behaviour and proceed in a very ordered, logical way with rules and controls throughout the process. In this way the action learning groups and the nature of the authority taken up by the facilitators was gendered, encouraging and modelling for the managers behaviour that was characteristically feminine, and in striking contrast to the dominant masculine culture of the organization. A significant factor in this work was the engagement with authority. Authority was held by the facilitators, but not wielded; it created a space for the work but was not dictatorial. Neither was authority abdicated, or simply handed over to the groups. Each fortnight the facilitators would be at the action learning sets, helping the managers reflect, consider and focus on their actions in ways that held the managers’ accountable and responsible for their work. This role is reminiscent of the family parent, who helps the young adult navigate their way, holding them responsible for their actions, but not dominating or abandoning them. The action learning sets provided the space for the managers to bring more of self into work, it was difficult for them to know what to bring, what to say, what to do, and this struggle was an enduring theme in the groups, manifesting in hostility and anxiety. It also gave rise to in an inner turmoil in which managers struggled to know what the codes of behaviour and ways of thinking were supposed to be. This freedom eventually enabled the exploration of other ways of behaving and being, and for previously out of awareness aspects of self to emerge. This paralleled the way adolescents develop, in groups, together challenging authority and the status quo. In this way the managers “grew up” again, were parented again, and this led to growth and change. The managers got “bigger”; they had an increased capacity for action, more choices about how they managed and led, and more insight into their own values and behaviours. The movement in stages of group development came from the facilitators creating a space in which the group members were able to experience themselves more fully, and allowing them freedom to make their own decisions, and determine their own tasks. This is much like mothers do with their children. These managers worked together and changed together with their peers. In this way were able to collectively shake off the shackles of the dominant masculinity. Implications for management development Given that currently desirable conceptions of leadership and management are more consistent with feminine values (Billing and Alvesson, 2000; Rosener, 1990; Schor et al., 1994, 1995; Sloan and Krone, 2000), this research has implications for management development especially the development of male managers and their capacity to work in more feminine ways. Much literature has focussed on finding ways for women to take up more senior roles, and the role of men in this has been largely in making way for women through policy change and active support. Research on gendered

Men working differently

623

JOCM 18,6

624

organizational change has focussed on understanding how men and women approach change and learn differently and the gendering of workplaces (Abrahamsson, 2001; Paton and Dempster, 2002). While there is literature that examines the ways women adopt masculine characteristics (while maintaining feminine ones (Fagenson, 1990; Sinclair, 1998)), there is little if anything in the literature that examines how men might develop a wider repertoire of behaviour to include the kinds of feminine characteristics becoming so important to management. The difficulties managers face in response to pressures in having to manage social relationships means that managers need to become more comfortable with who they are before they can come into relationship with those they manage. These difficult changes need to be undertaken by adopting approaches to change from outside the dominant organizational discourse, and give consideration to creating supported spaces in which managers can first come to know more about how they currently behave, and be supported to discover other ways of behaving. Finally, management development processes need to incorporate, in real ways, recognition of issues of resistance to change, create opportunities for self-discovery, peer support, and applied learning and reflection. More importantly, men need to have opportunities to learn together, and be allowed to challenge and engage authority without punishment while at the same time be held accountable for their management practice and development. Note 1. The debate about the extent to which autobiographical data is “true” is beyond the scope of this paper. References Abrahamsson, L. (2001), “Gender-based learning dilemmas in organizations”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 13 Nos 7/8, pp. 298-307. Billing, Y.D. and Alvesson, M. (2000), “Questioning the notion of feminine leadership: a critical perspective on the gender labelling of leadership”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 144-57. Bion, W.R. (1959), Experiences in Groups, Basic Books, New York, NY. Brewer, W.F. (1986), “What is autobiographical memory?”, in Rubin, D. (Ed.), Autobiographical Memory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Brookfield, S. (1995), Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA. Broussine, M. and Fox, P. (2003), “The politics of researching gender in organizations”, Management Research News, Vol. 26 No. 8, pp. 27-37. Chodorow, N. (1994), “Gender, relation and difference in psychoanalytic perspective”, The Polity Reader in Gender Studies, Polity Press, Oxford, pp. 41-9. Coffey, A. (1999), The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity, Sage, London. Coghlan, D. (2001), “Insider action researcher projects: implications for practising managers”, Management Learning, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 49-60. Coghlan, D. (2003), “Practitioner research for organizational knowledge”, Management Learning, Vol. 34, pp. 451-63.

Coghlan, D. and Casey, M. (2001), “Action research from the inside: issues and challenges in doing action research in your own hospital”, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 35 No. 5, pp. 674-82. Coghlan, D. and Brannick, T. (2002), Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization, Sage, London. Connell, R. (1995), Masculinities, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards. Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Lowe, A. (1991), Management Research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Fagenson, E. (1990), “Perceived masculine and feminine attributes examined as a function of sex and level in the organizational power hierarchy”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 75 No. 2, pp. 204-11. Fondas, N. (1997), “Feminization unveiled: Management qualities in contemporary writings”, Academy of Management. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 257-83. Formaini, H. (1990), Men. The Darker Continent, Mandarin, London. Gilligan, C. (1982), In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts. Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. (1979), The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Aldine Publishing Company, New York, NY. Greer, G. (1999), The Whole Woman, Doubleday, London. Hannabus, S. (2000), “Being there: ethnographic research and autobiography”, Library Management, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 99-106. Harragan, B. (1977), Games Mother Never Taught You, Warner, New York, NY. Hirschhorn, L. and Krantz, J. (1982), “Unconscious planning in a natural work group: a case study in process consultation”, Human Relations, Vol. 35 No. 10, pp. 805-44. Kellehear, A. (1993), The Unobtrusive Researcher: A Guide to Methods, Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1996), “The best is yet to come?: the quest for embodiment in managerial work”, in Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (Eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men. Critical Perspectives on Men, Masculinities and Managements, Sage Publications, London. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1998), “Managing masculinity in contemporary organizational life: a man’agerial project”, Organization, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 7-26. Kindlon, D. and Thompson, M. (1999), Raising Cain. Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, Penquin, London. Lindsay, C. and Pasquali, J. (1993), “The wounded feminine: from organizational abuse to personal healing”, Business Horizons, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 35-41. Lundgren, D.C. (1979), “Authority and group formation”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 15 No. 3, p. 330. Merriam, S. (1988), Case Study Research in Education: A Qualitative Approach, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA. Metcalfe, B. and Linstead, A. (2003), “Gendering teamwork: re-writing the feminine”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 94-119. Paton, R. and Dempster, L. (2002), “Managing change from a gender perspective”, European Management Journal, Vol. 20 No. 5, pp. 539-48. Pedler, M. (Ed.) (1983), Action Learning in Practice, Gower, Aldershot. Reid, C.H. (1965), “The authority cycle in small group development”, Adult Leadership, April.

Men working differently

625

JOCM 18,6

626

Ronai, C. (1992), “Reflexive self through narrative. A night in the life of an erotic dancer/researcher”, in Ellis, C. and Flaherty, M.G. (Eds), Research on Lived Experience, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Rosener, J.B. (1990), “Ways women lead”, Harvard Business Review, November-December. Schor, S.M., Van Buskirk, W. and McGrath, D. (1994), “Caring, voice and self-reflection: feminist values and organizational change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 7 No. 6, pp. 34-48. Schor, S.M., Kane, K. and Lindsay, C. (1995), “Three women’s stories of feeling, reflection, voice and nurturance: from life to consulting”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 8 No. 6, pp. 39-58. Sinclair, A. (1998), Doing Leadership Differently: Gender, Power and Sexuality in a Changing Business, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Sloan, D.K. and Krone, K.J. (2000), “Women managers and gendered values”, Womens Studies in Communication, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 111-30. Stone, A. (Ed.) (1981), The American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Taylor, S., Bogdanoff, M., Brown, D., Hillman, L., Kurash, D., Spain, J., Thacher, B. and Weinstein, L. (1979), “By women, for women: a group relations conference”, in Lawrence, W.G. (Ed.), Exploring Individual and Organizational Boundaries. A Tavistock Open Systems Approach, Wiley, Chichester. Wells, L. (1980), in Alderfer, C.P. and Cooper, C.L. (Eds), The Group-as-a-Whole: A Systemic Socio-Analytic Perspective on Interpersonal and Group Relations in Advances in Experiential Social Processes, Vol. 2, Wiley, New York, NY. Wilson, S. (1979), “Explorations of the usefulness of case study evaluations”, Evaluation Quarterly, Vol. 3. Further reading Brill de Ramirez, S. (1999), “The resistance of American Indian autobiographies to ethnographic colonization”, Mosaic, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 59-73. Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (1996), “Breaking the silence: on men, masculinities and managements”, in Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (Eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men. Critical Perspectives on Men, Masculinities and Managements, Sage Publications, London.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Shifting forms of masculinity in changing organizations: the role of testicularity Lynne F. Baxter and Alasdair MacLeod

Shifting forms of masculinity

627

Department of Management Studies, University of York, York, UK Abstract Purpose – This paper seeks to utilize the concept of testicularity put forward by Flannigan-Saint-Aubin to explain a shift in the hegemonic masculinities in two organizations which were unusual in being successful in realizing their aims for improvement. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological approach taken is broadly social constructionism. The two organizations featured in the paper are drawn from a more extensive study of 22 organizations studied in the UK and the Netherlands. The first phase of the research consisted of extended interview visits. The visits, lasting two or three days, consisted of a mix of formal interviews and observation of the sites and less formal discussion and observation, frequently during meal breaks. Findings – The organizations instigated change processes, which created opportunities for women employees, sometimes at the expense of men. Previous work has discussed whether organization change can represent a feminizing of the workplace, but this did not fully encapsulate the present findings – the men remained in charge – and this led the authors to investigate further masculinities. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin’s concept is rare in that it argues for positive aspects of masculinities in a growing literature which has a tendency to focus on the negative. Originality/value – The paper argues that shifts in gender performance are a useful way of exploring organization change. Keywords Change management, Organizational change, Gender Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction This paper explores change processes designed to improve operations in two organizations. The organizations restructured, delayered and employed an internal labor market coupled with extensive education and training to reorganize production. Part of the new way of working was to promote employee involvement. In several noticeable instances the outcome led to women progressing, sometimes being promoted in preference to men. If one subscribed to a trait or role theory of gender (Pease, 2000, for critique of this), one might argue that this represents a “feminizing” of the organization style. The practices may have encoded and favored “feminine” traits over “masculine” ones (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996), however, following on from Due Billing and Alvesson’s (2000) work on leadership, we argue for a more subtle analysis of the processes. Indeed we conclude that whilst acknowledging the real gains achieved by these women, the new work relationships far from representing a feminizing of the workforce, represent instead a shifting of investment (Hollway, 1996) from one form of masculinity to another: The investment of masculinities in human characteristics and practices is a continuous, dynamic achievement, requiring power and never securely established. Masculinity is

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 627-640 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628549

JOCM 18,6

628

insecure to the extent that it depends on the achievement of asymmetrical power in relations with the “opposite sex” through the continuous ideological reproduction of difference. Variations among men in the extent to which they invest in this through their defensive masculine subjectivity can be explained in terms of unique emotional histories, which to a greater or lesser extent to give rise to splittings based on gender difference as a defence against anxiety. The conditions for changing those defensive psychic structures – and the organizational and domestic conditions which allow them to be reproduced – or are surely one of the key political issues in the theory of organizations (Hollway, 1996, pp. 40-1).

We give prominence to Hollway’s ideas here because it has particular relevance to an organization undergoing formal change. Masculinities are insecure, and the selection of the form of change unseated some men and reinforced the position of others – these others retained the difference between the men and women of the organization, indeed the quote from Hollway shows how the gender relations were mobilized to make the “ruling men” and “preferred women” more secure at their workplace, exacerbating the anxieties of those excluded. The above quote is also useful in indicating our stance in relation to other writers on masculinity. Masculinity as a topic to investigate has a comparatively short history (Whitehead, 2001). Authors such as Hearn and Collinson (1994) and Kerfoot and Knights (1996) have carried out useful work in developing conceptions of forms of masculinity but these are so far restricted in range, largely negative and seem rather static. Connell (1995) argued that there can be hegemonic masculinities, which have ascendancy over other forms at any given point in time. As Martin (2001) notes, some writers have taken this to be an actual form of masculinity. We share Hollway’s view of masculinities quoted above – forms of masculinity are an accomplishment which have to be performed continuously (Butler, 1990). In the paper we describe circumstances where this dynamic is under specific threat from an organizational change in order to add to the all too small pile of descriptions and analyses of gendered power relations in this area. The change reproduced the difference, buttressing one form of masculinity whilst undermining another. Just as it is important to acknowledge that power can be constructive as well as repressive (Foucault, 1977), masculinities can have positive and negative aspects – indeed can be seen as multiplicities (Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004). However, we will extend the debate here to incorporate the possibility of a positive aspect to masculinity as it is performed in change and put forward Flannigan-Saint-Aubin’s (1994) work below as a useful articulation of a critical standpoint on current views of masculinities which helps inform an analysis of a shift in the hegemonic masculinities in the organizations we studied because this shift created opportunities for the women who worked there. The altered management style which emerged was different to the traditional autocratic, authoritarian masculine one witnessed in the previous modus operandi. The new values seem congruent with a more positive style, with “leaders” facilitating employees to contribute to decision making at a local level. Extensive training and development opportunities were made open to the entire workforce. This positive, facilitating masculinity is not well accommodated in most writer’s typologies of masculinity as it is by Flannigan-Saint-Aubin (1994). What was clear from both cases was that the change process had served to improve the position of the women in the workforce, they accumulated qualifications, were associated with the successes of the changes, and were promoted or recruited,

displacing men. In turn they were highly attached to the new working practices, in Knights and McCabe’s (2000) terminology, they could be described as “bewitched” by the change, with consequent substantial positive effects on their lives. The paper continues with a short discussion of the approaches taken by the organizations to improvement before the concept of masculinity is explored further. Quality improvement The organizations we studied used models as strategic frameworks to provide structure (Martin, 1996) to support and channel employees into being more involved (Oliver, 1990). The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), Business excellence model, the United States Baldrige Award and indeed internally devised “balanced scorecards” (Kaplan and Norton, 1992) encode more benign human resource policies. Organizations using the former two models have to be able to prove to external judges that they have in place mechanisms for employee involvement, that these have achieved results, and that the employees share this view. In order to accumulate a high score this has to be embedded for a sustained period. The form of employee involvement in the organizations we studied resembled a re-badging of familiar participative approaches to organizing, representing a move from direct control to responsible autonomy (Friedman, 1977). Operations management writers (Schonberger, 1979) usually construct this approach differently to organization theorists. Although the idea has been around in one form or another since pre World War II, it has been given added impetus with populist texts promoting it as an element in performance improvement exemplified by the success of Japanese manufacturing organizations of the 1970s and 1980s (Ohno, 1988; Imai, 1986; Schonberger, 1979; Oakland, 1995). Academics may question the validity of this belief and Kondo (1990) provides a more considered account of organization life in Japan, but the ideal typical Japanese worker as contributing ideas and being involved in a constructive way in the labor process has many industrial subscribers in the UK. The operations management texts choose to portray employees as having not been “involved” in the past, and that the culture needs to be changed so that this can come about (Oakland, 1995). The organizations we studied in the course of our research subscribed to the EFQM organization and its model, however, we found very few organizations that had made any real progress to meeting these criteria of “excellence” which is a common finding (Wilkinson et al., 1998). Much of the criticisms Wilson (1996) applies to organization theory can apply to the operations management literature – it is gender-neutral – or Linstead (2001) has contested – gender-blind. Our initial analyses of the organizations which had made sporadic and temporary changes had been gender blind, however, gender emerged as an important element in our analysis of the organizations which had been more successful. Writers on gender such as Wajcman (1998) have noted the opportunities afforded to women by so-called Japanese manufacturing methods. The use of the very term “employee” is intended to remove class and gender from this area of people management. However, as Due Billing and Alvesson (2000, p. 145) note, men occupy the top positions of organizations whilst if women are employed they usually occupy lower status and more marginalized positions (Gherardi, 1995). Due Billing and Alvesson’s (2000) paper discusses, another aspect associated with TQM, leadership, and whether the change in emphasis from management to leadership

Shifting forms of masculinity

629

JOCM 18,6

630

marks a “feminization” of the workplace. Some traits of the ideal leader have been labeled “feminine” but we would agree with them and Pease (2000) that utilizing “trait” theory is inadequate in both leadership and employee involvement contexts. There is a theme within the literature exploring whether women who do progress in organizations end up performing “masculinities” (Metcalfe and Linstead, 2003; Wajcman, 1998) or shifting the nature of the performance to that more associated with the feminine (Rosener, 1990). We would go so far as to agree with Segal’s finding the “the variation within each sex far outweighs any differences between the sexes” (Rosener, 1990, p. 64) which is also supported by Ramsay’s (1996) detailed review. Segal (1990, p. 96) goes on to quote Connell’s assertion that there are three main structures underlying relationships between women and men: labor, power and desire. Our paper does not address the third structure of desire, although it is possible to extend our analysis to include this. We examine labor and power relations in work contexts focusing specifically on the discourse of masculinity (Kerfoot and Knights, 1996). Forms of masculinity “Men and masculinity are usually implicit but central/centred” (Hearn and Collinson, 1994). Masculinities have a central role in organizations but this is rarely acknowledged. These authors in another text (Collinson and Hearn, 1996, p. 2) note that feminist writers have failed in the past “to name men as men”, and that writers who do tend to assume a unitary conceptualization of the masculine, which is also inadequate. It is easy to see how this oversight is sustained in different contexts. In the quality improvement area, almost all the textbooks are gender blind, in that they assume a form of masculine viewpoint, and this is reproduced in other more esteemed texts as Segal (1990, p. 85) notes “There are not two sexes in Lacanian writing, but only one: one and its Other – Woman does not exist”. Many authors have now explored the masculine and identified discourses of masculinity in the workplace. For example, the most cited is Collinson and Hearn’s five competing discourses of managerial masculinities. These encompass firstly paternalism or the rule of the father, with its moral overtones, a family metaphor, secondly authoritarianism, a subcategory of which reinforces masculine management style with rules and practices, thirdly entrepreneurialism, the self made thrusting man with its association with “laddism”, fourthly careerism, the confident pursuit of advancement and lastly informalism or locker room banter and bonding (Collinson and Hearn, 1996). The terms used to describe the discourses do not always mean the same thing, or different terms are used to describe similar process. For example, McDowell (2001) would argue that Kerfoot and Knights’ (1993) patriarchy label corresponds to Collinson and Hearn’s paternalism and Collinson and Hearn propose another term strategic masculinity which contains elements of authoritarianism. What can be commented is that the discussion of these discourses almost always focuses on the negative and repressive, as though it is difficult in some areas to conceive of more positive aspects of masculinity. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin (1994) would categorize these discourses as adopting a “phallic” view of masculinity, i.e. they portray an active, invading, penetrative and unstable form of masculinity, and this corresponds to Connell’s (1995) detailed work on forms of masculinity in his book which is remembered chiefly for its concept of

“hegemonic” masculinities. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin’s chapter is concerned with widening the range of metaphors in use for maleness beyond the phallic. He argues that the almost exclusive use of the phallic metaphor fails to account for the range of possible masculinities, indeed causes masculinity to be conflated with patriarchy, and proposes a variation: that of testicularity (1994) as a way of spurring alternatives. The “testicular” form of masculinity encompasses a “nurturing, incubating, containing and protecting” (Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, 1994, p. 250) way of interacting. It could be seen as a positive variant of the paternalism discourse outlined above. The negative counterpart is “testeria”, characterized by “stagnation, stubbornness, petulance, . . . fretful, . . . morose (behavior)” (Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, 1994, p. 250). This forms an obvious parallel with hysteria, so named as the ancient Greeks believed an extremely upset woman was subject to her womb moving around her body and influencing her mind, and as Flannigan-Saint-Aubin notes that there is no corresponding term in common usage to describe a man overcome with hormones. He thinks it important to acknowledge that the male embryo comprises of both the X and Y chromosome and that “masculinity is experienced as constant insecurity in the face of feminine absorption.” (Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, 1994, p. 245). Although he is concerned with extending the repertoire of acknowledged ways of performing masculinity, his arguments are broadly sympathetic with those who oppose dualisms such as “male female” “mind body”. He uses these ideas to discuss “Superman”, and as far as we are aware, nobody has used them to analyze organizations. Although the preferred site of gender relations is between men and women, increasing numbers of authors have noticed that relations between men are gendered. Indeed Martin (2001) noted that many of the ways men have for mobilizing masculinities have male, not female audiences – for example, she identifies “peacocking” or showing off one’s achievements as a largely male activity targeted at a male audience. And just as women are acutely aware and sensitized to the effect their gender has on work relations (Wajcman, 1998), gender relations are a source of alienation and anxiety for some men as individuals (Guttenman, 1994; Seidler, 1997; Hollway, 1996). We would therefore want to avoid too shorthand conceptions of masculinity, to acknowledge that what constitutes masculinity in the workplace takes many forms which change over time and can encompass so-called female characteristics (Ashcraft and Mumby, 2004). In is within this context of overarching masculinist strategic change (Kerfoot and Knights, 1993), where power relations are constitutive as well as repressive and multiple possibilities for masculinities emerge, that we introduce our case studies and go on to analyze them in relation to the concept of testicularity. Methodology The methodological approach we have taken is broadly social constructionism in the tradition of Berger and Luckmann (1971) and Denzin (1991). The two cases featured in the paper are drawn from a more extensive study of 22 organizations we studied in the UK and the Netherlands. We received funding from Quality Scotland Foundation and the Institute of Management Services to support our work. Quality Scotland Foundation and the EFQM provided us with a list of contacts, the European list consisting of prize winners in the area. We contacted an EFQM or Quality Scotland network listed improvement manager at the organization and asked if

Shifting forms of masculinity

631

JOCM 18,6

632

they had an improvement they would like to relate to us. It should be mentioned that not all managers contacted considered they had an improvement they were willing to share; indeed some were completely open that they did not, others seemed more reluctant to admit this. We were less successful in obtaining access to companies in European countries such as Spain, Italy and France, although the Dutch organizations proved more accommodating. The first phase of the research consisted of extended interview visits to each organization that agreed to participate where we spoke to managers responsible for improvement and interviewed them about the approach the organization had taken and the results. After a preliminary analysis of the material we obtained we decided to investigate five organizations which seemed more successful in their approaches more thoroughly. There were three organizations which seemed to have more long-term success, and in the course of researching them gender relations emerged as a category in the analysis. The first case was that of a cement works, where a tiny percentage of workers were women, so our attention was not drawn to this specifically; the second was that of a global telecommunications manufacturing and service organization where the category emerged for the first time; and the third a global agrochemicals pharmaceutical organization where it became more elaborated. For all five, we discussed the purpose of our investigation with the manager responsible for process improvement stressing that we wanted to build a full understanding of the change process they had experienced and leaving it up to them to determine who the stakeholders in the process were for us to interview. We did stress we wanted to talk to a wide range of employees, including shop-floor people. We visited each organization together – our impressions are intersubjectively negotiated (Giddens, 1976). The visits, lasting two or three days, consisted of a mix of formal interviews and observation of the site and less formal discussion and observation, frequently during meal breaks. In three of the five visits out of hours formal dinners were arranged, where we were quizzed about our study and managed to obtain further information about the context to the change. The formal interviews consisted of us asking the people the improvement manager had identified to represent the stakeholders in the change to relate what their involvement was and to comment on the process as such. Gender was not the subject of formal questions. Interviews were not taped, notes were taken, these were transcribed, compared and analyzed using grounded theorizing (Glaser and Strauss, 1968; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Through “constant comparison” (Glaser and Strauss, 1968; Boje, 2001) we analyzed the narratives we had prompted and constructed our own subjective impression of the processes which we present below. This is very much our own “microstorium” in relation to the change microstoria (Boje, 2001). We have constructed it from the data and gender was not one of our initial interests. The people we talked to were focusing on the changes to the organization and themselves and as Martin says “The women’s . . . ‘theorizing’ about what they were observing, provided a space . . . to also theorize their experiences with men and masculinities in organization” (Martin, 2001, p. 594). We have extended that space to include a man as well. First, we will discuss the telecommunications organization: Telcom Telcom, a global organization with businesses in several aspects of the telecommunications sector took over several sites in the UK in the early 1990s, and

inherited a workforce which had been subject to rounds of hiring and lay-offs. We studied their site in Northern Ireland. The local senior management implemented a local initiative to transform the organization using the EFQM framework to guide them. They implemented a number of changes including delayering the hierarchy, forming process flow oriented teams, altering the production process, and enacting a much more visible and personal style of leadership. A new organization structure had been designed by management which had a flatter hierarchy, with line management responsibilities going to team leaders who in turn managed larger teams than before. There were fewer tiers of management so the team leaders had a more direct relationship with the top of the organization. The team leader role was seen as key and a formal assessment process was set up to identify people displaying “leadership” traits. Some existing managers migrated into the new posts, other people from the shop floor were promoted and some people were hired from outside because they had displayed competence in a similar role. Some individuals were given additional training in the hope of acquiring the desired traits, others were reassigned elsewhere. As mentioned above, when we visit an organization, we ask to speak to a range of people, and in some cases our entreaty to speak to shop floor workers is ignored. Telcom managers were very enthusiastic for us to talk to a wide range of individuals including people who had both been advanced as well as been displaced by the changes. We met a former line manager who was now working in the procurement function. It would be very difficult to exaggerate the disaffection one sensed in this person. He told us about how he had liked his job, but the selection process for the new team leaders meant there were fewer line management jobs. He was not selected to be a leader and was offered the new job. He felt the job was fine, but not as good as his previous one. His whole demeanor was that of an unhappy person, and he projected this onto the people nearby. We had an opportunity to gain this impression both from his demeanor in the interview and in more social settings, such as lunch in the canteen. When we quizzed the host manager about this he concurred about our reading of this person’s demeanor, and mentioned again that the company was keen to reassign staff where possible – the previous owners had a history of laying off staff and they wanted to avoid this as far as possible. This could be sharply contrasted with the five female employees we interviewed, who had been the subject of layoffs during previous regimes, but now were much happier in teams, indeed two had gained academic qualifications with the encouragement and support of the company, and had been promoted. We also spoke to a new female team leader who had been hired from another organization because she displayed the required characteristics, and her whole demeanor was in sharp contrast to the former line manager discussed above. A much quoted and symbolic event was the demolition of the old senior management office tower block which was situated in a separate building from the main one. The senior management was now situated near the production floor and could be seen. The most senior manager was known universally as “Brian” and people discussed him as if they knew him well, they could recognize his voice, talked with him and felt they knew him as a person. Employees thought the organization far more committed to the plant and the individuals working there. We never spoke to “Brian” but we almost thought we had, from our interviews with female staff.

Shifting forms of masculinity

633

JOCM 18,6

634

His name cropped up on a regular basis – in an organization of well over a thousand staff he seemed to have a personal relationship with these employees, given the amount of times his name cropped up in the interviews. They clearly had warm feelings for him, and had stories to tell of going to off site presentations with him, and which described his personal behavior patterns. There appeared to be an atmosphere of positive familiarity between them. They seemed almost “bewitched” by the person as well as the processes as in Knights and McCabe’s (2000) use of the word. The HR policies of selection, training and development might have left some formerly powerful people feeling marginalized, but the employees whose jobs had in the past been marginal felt more integrated and had gained more personally from the changes. The plant’s key performance indicators were being achieved, and shortly after our visit they became an award winning site of “excellence” and acted as a model site for the rest of the company. The processes, activities and outcomes described above can be construed in a number of ways. The company could be accused of replacing expensive male labor with cheaper more docile female labor as part of their strategic intensification of the labor process, but whilst this might help provide an explanation for the loss and dislocation experienced by the former line manager it fails entirely to capture the real gains made by the female employees who were far from docile. Indeed “Brian” was clearly being subjected to far more questioning, “piss-takes” and interchanges than he had ever had from the more status conscious male manager, who was both at the same time trying to conceal his feelings but projecting an aura of negativity. We will analyze this further after we discuss the similar case of Medicorp. Medicorp MediCorp is a global agrochemical/pharmaceutical organization, headquartered in Europe. Over the past decade the organization has been structured into a series of business units and support units. We first approached the organization’s support unit for total quality management for an improvement process to research. We visited the support unit, and interviewed three of the permanent staff in the unit and the long-term consultant who had helped shape the approach the organization as a whole took to TQM. It emerged that each business unit manager could avail themselves of resources such as training materials, consultants and advice from the support unit. However, it was the business unit managers’ decision as to whether their units adopted TQM, and across the organization as a whole implementation was patchy, which made the support unit feel vulnerable, indeed the head of the support unit felt that being given that job was a demotion – he appeared highly defensive. The unit also ran an annual prize competition, and after some discussion the support unit manager suggested that we study the management improvement project, which had won the prize last year, while the consultant suggested we examined one of the finalists – what was termed “the secretaries” project, which we chose to do first. The consultant had been very pleased with the head of this unit, as after the initial training on the approach to TQM which included briefing on the key concepts and additionally playing scalextric and getting drunk, the head had embraced the ideas wholeheartedly, and implemented and facilitated them to great effect: On “the secretaries” site there was around 70 sales technical and administration staff who managed the business unit’s activities in the UK. The nature of the business

was base “support” to the itinerant sales force and distant customer. The organization was more balanced in terms of numbers of men and women compared to others we studied, with the technical staff and senior management being men, the administrative support and sales representatives being women. We were treated royally, with access to everyone and anyone at the small site – except the finance director whose office was between the managing director’s office and the conference office we were based in an we will return to discuss this later. All site personnel had undergone training in the preferred method for “managing total quality” with the assistance of the support unit, and the site leader was particularly enthusiastic about the method and its results. Through equipping people with problem solving techniques and enabling them to form teams the staff themselves had redesigned several aspects of the site’s key processes in a way which reversed the traditional hierarchy. The secretaries had identified problems with the current way of working with the sales staff, which left both the sales staff and secretaries frustrated. A reorganization and change in the working practices resulted in improvements from both perspectives. The secretaries reorganized to be more responsive to the sales staff, and the sales staff changed their working practices to fit in more with the secretaries. Customers were reported to be far happier with the new system, and the organization’s “Evidence of Success” performance indicators were moving upwards. Several female staff had won promotion, and the secretaries’ function was now recognized as being more core to the effective running of the unit. Again a similar enthusiasm and constructive interplay could be witnessed between the male leader “Stephen” and the female staff who had gained much from the transformation. Stephen’s name surfaced in the interviews and transcripts far more regularly than other bosses did in our extended sample. With this case it was “Stephen” who was our main contact, and his personal assistant made most of the arrangements for our interviews with the stakeholders. Again there was a higher representation of women than was normal on the list of people we spoke to, but again these women had progressed but were still not senior. Stephen and his PA had offices in the corner of the first floor of the building, and we were greeted there and went back in between our interviews which were conducted in a meeting room two doors along. The next door along was the finance director, and we were never introduced to him, or could we see him, because unlike the other offices, his was curtained off so it was impossible to tell if he was in or not. We learned about this person from others – they mentioned in interviews that he did not participate in improvement activities and were in some ways proud to say that was his privilege. Stephen admitted he would have liked everyone to be involved but it had not slowed things down as the finance function did not intrude on everyday operations. People had told us about him before we ever remarked about the curtains being closed round that office – when we spoke to Stephen and his PA about the oddness of the drawn curtains they viewed it as consistent with the finance director’s negativity. In one way or another he cropped up in most interviews. Again this person was labeled a bit of a throwback, but there was never any question of him leaving. He was quoted as being completely against the new way of working, not joining in at all, despite the nature of the changes which were supposed to include everyone in improving processes and measuring outcomes.

Shifting forms of masculinity

635

JOCM 18,6

636

We arranged to visit the site where the prize winning improvement had been implemented there we found a very embarrassed senior manager and a group of stakeholders who did not know to what we were referring. The improvement project was a new method for carrying out post mortems on all projects, and the all male team the contact person arranged for us to speak to did not know about the method and certainly did not use it. Other than in the report submitted to the TQM support unit, the project did not really exist, yet it had won the prize in the competition with the “secretaries” project which was very real and contained a series of examples where the support unit’s resources and working practices were implemented to material effect. Analysis Both Telecom and MediCorp constitute representations of change processes where attempts were made to involve employees (Oakland, 1995). There is very much as sense of “before” and “after” and some radical intervention. Our analysis would suggest that far from the aspects such as delayering, training and development leading to a holistic form of involvement, involvement seems to have taken place along gender lines. Marginal women became core and men who were core and high status became less involved than they were before. The quality improvement literature (Oakland, 1995; Ohno, 1988) attributes lack of involvement down to ignorance and lack of effort in implementation but neither appears to occur here. The gender relations are important when trying to analyze the cases in more depth. Both cases contained instances where women developed as individuals and progressed up the organization hierarchy, in the Telcom case at the expense of men. However, the ultimate leaders of the organizations were not only male, but far more secure males than before, through generating loyalty and support from the women, and marginalizing some men. It is possible to explain some of this by drawing on existing discourses of masculinities. Both cases represent attempts to use more rational control based strategies to move away from authoritarian paternalist regimes (Kerfoot and Knights, 1993). The gamut of Collinson and Hearn’s (1996) discourses can be identified in the Telcom case, as there was a change program which was designed by a coterie of men and imposed on the rest of the company because it would be at one and the same time good for the organization and the individuals in control. It served to promote the site and the individuals making such an improvement effort. In some respects it resembled elements of the strategic masculinist discourse outline by Kerfoot and Knights (1993). There is less evidence of the full constellation of previously articulated discourses of masculinities at the Medicorp site, as Stephen was far less authoritarian at the start, and capitalized on the accomplishments less than a more entrepreneurial form of masculinity would allow. Nonetheless, there was a patriarchal overtone to the changes, it did boost his career and this was going to maintain his power position for the long term. Curiously enough, the Medicorp support unit designed to be a catalyst for this kind of change displayed a failure to move from paternal-autocratic forms of masculinity in its devaluing of the “secretaries” project and what appeared to be unjustified recognition of another project’s worth. The social processes for allocating prizes reflected an enactment of a fratriarchal (Hanmer, 1990) element to the masculine

system of domination (Martin, 1996), where the project which included a large female element was evaluated as being less worthy. The support unit’s bosses demeanour seems more consistent with “testeria” and his allocation of the prize to an intangible project has more to do with choosing the audience he was performing to (Martin, 2001). These discourses of masculinities fail to explain fully the constructive aspects of the change, the supportive behavior of the male leaders and the retention of the managers labeled deviant. To us here mobilizing the discourse of “testicularity” helps account for these processes: both the testicular masculinity of Brian and Stephen, and the testeria of the displaced managers. We would argue Brian and Stephen’s version of masculinity is similar to Flannigan-Saint-Aubin’s (1994) “testicular” metaphor, in that they both provided the structures and resources to help incubate the change processes, nurturing the improvement initiatives and staff which developed and yielded considerable dividends. This can be juxtaposed with the managers who lost out in the changes, whose behavior resembles what Flannigan-Saint-Aubin (1994, p. 250) would term “testeria.” The Telcom manager was morose and fretful, the Medicorp man petulant, stagnant and intractable, but it is part of Brian and Stephen’s testicularity that these men retained any position in the organizations. They were both very male in their approach to leadership, the organizations were not “feminized”. Hollway (1996) is useful in reminding us that the positivity of testicularity enabled the managers to defend and promote their own position, and that this is an accomplishment requiring repeated attention. Equally, the testeria displayed by the disaffected managers would perhaps further marginalize them. Exploring the relationship between the leaders and the female staff, the change processes served to bolster each side, and this was displayed in playful banter, in a way which would have been totally inappropriate before and these instances of intimacy triggered visible displays of alienation and anxiety. A form of Collinson and Hearn’s (1996) informalism is occurring between genders, which is difficult to capture in writing or texts, but was evident in the tone of voice used when we watched interactions between Stephen and his female co-workers and heard Brian described by his. In some subtle way this is supported by the “losing” men’s obvious social dislocation. The two cases, and the relationship of the Medicorp’s support unit to the case site, illustrate the insecurity of the masculinities enacted in the organization, how they shape and are shaped by events. The cases highlight several areas where gender difference is maintained, although the power relations have shifted and in some instances enabled women to progress. Disaffected managers displaying signs of testeria provide more readily acknowledgeable forms of splitting as a defense against anxiety (Hirschhorn, 1988). More positively, Brian and Stephen’s testicular response to the pressures to intensify the labor process is perhaps a response to them having a personal history where gender difference was seen to be a creative force, and where positive relations between themselves and women provide a more secure defense against the anxieties of maintaining their masculinities. Conclusions This paper examines changing power relations in two organizations undergoing periods of radical change. Well-established management practices, which were

Shifting forms of masculinity

637

JOCM 18,6

638

consistent with the reproduction of difference (Hollway, 1996), were labeled ineffectual in achieving performance goals. Considerable effort was vested in outlining and projecting new practices. These new practices could be seen to be a move away from traditional enactments of masculinities through interactions and formal and informal evaluations (Martin, 1996), causing a repositioning of what could be described as defenses against anxieties. We argue that the male leaders enacted a form of masculinity known as “testicularity” which was subtly different from paternalism or other forms of masculinity described in the literature. The displaced managers can equally be argued to display “testeria”. We find it strange that Flannigan-Saint-Aubin’s (1994) ideas constitute a rare portrayal of masculinity in a positive light and share his concern to reintroduce the body in the discussion of masculinities. Although sympathetic to previous very thorough attempts to outline discourses of masculinities (Collinson and Hearn, 1996; Kerfoot and Knights, 1993), we would argue that neither gender has a monopoly on positivity or negativity, and that the study of gender relations in the workplace could be enhanced by acknowledging and exploring this further. We would also argue that our cases highlight the importance of gender relations in organization change, both within and between the sexes. References Ashcraft, K.L. and Mumby, D.K. (2004), Reworking Gender: A Feminist Communicology of Organization, Sage, London. Berger, P. and Luckmann (1971), The Social Construction of Reality, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Boje, D. (2001), Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research, Sage, London. Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble, Routledge, London. Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (Eds) (1996), Men as Managers, Managers as Men, Sage, London. Connell, R.G. (1995), Masculinities, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Denzin, N.K. (1991), Images of Postmodern Society, Sage, London. Due Billing, Y. and Alvesson, M. (2000), “Questionning the notion of feminine leadership: a critical perspective in the gender labelling of leadership”, Gender Work and Organization, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 144-57. Flannigan-Saint-Aubin, A. (1994), “The male body and literary metaphors for masculinity”, in Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (Eds), Theorizing Masculinities, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 239-58. Foucault, M. (1977), Discipline and Punish, Penguin, London. Friedman, A.L. (1977), Industry and Labour: Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Capitalism, Macmillan, London. Gherardi, S. (1995), Gender, Symbolism and Organizational Culture, Sage, London. Giddens, A. (1976), New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies, Hutchinson, London. Glaser, B. and Strauss, A. (1968), The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Weindenfeld and Nicolson, London. Guttenman, D. (1994), “Postmodernism and the interrogation of masculinity”, in Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (Eds), Theorizing Masculinities, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 219-38.

Hanmer, J. (1990), “Men, power and the exploitation of women”, in Hearn, J. and Morgan, D. (Eds), Men, Masculinities and Social Theory, Unwin Hyman, London, pp. 21-42. Hearn, J. and Collinson, D. (1994), “Theorizing unities and differences between men and between masculinities”, in Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (Eds), Theorizing Masculinities, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 97-118. Hirschhorn, L. (1988), The Workplace Within: Psychodynamics of Organizational Life, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Hollway, W. (1996), “Masters and men in the transition from factory hands to sentimental workers”, in Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (Eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men, Sage, London. Imai, M. (1986), Kaizen, McGraw-Hill, London. Kaplan, R. and Norton, D.P. (1992), “The balanced scorecard – measures that drive performance”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 70, pp. 71-9. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1993), “Management, masculinity and manipulation: from paternalism to corporate strategy in financial services in Britain”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 659-77. Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1996), “‘The best is yet to come?’: the quest for embodiment in managerial work”, in Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (Eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men, Sage, London. Knights, D. and McCabe, D. (2000), “Bewitched, bothered and bewildered: the meaning and experience of teamworking for employees in an automobile company”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 1, p. 11. Kondo, D. (1990), Crafting Selves: Power Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Linstead, S. (2001), “Comment: gender blindness or gender suppression? A comment on Fiona Wilson’s research note”, Organization Studies, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 297-303. McDowell, L. (2001), “Men, Management and multiple masculinities in organizations”, Geoforum, Vol. 32, pp. 181-98. Martin, P.Y. (1996), “Gendering and evaluating dynamics: men, masculinities and managements”, in Collinson, D. and Hearn, J. (Eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men, Sage, London. Martin, P.Y. (2001), “Mobilizing masculinities: women’s experiences of men at work”, Organization, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 587-618. Metcalfe, B. and Linstead, A. (2003), “Gendering teamwork: re-writing the feminine”, Gender Work and Organization, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 94-119. Oakland, J.S. (1995), Total Quality Management, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford. Ohno, T. (1988), Toyota Production System – Beyond Large-scale Production, Productivity Press, Portland, OR. Oliver, N. (1990), “Employee commitment and total quality control”, International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 21-9. Pease, B. (2000), Recreating Men – Post Modern Masculinity Politics, Sage, London. Ramsay, H. (1996), “Engendering participation”, occasional working paper, Department of Human Resource Management, Strathclyde University, Glasgow. Rosener, J. (1990), “Ways women lead”, Harvard Business Review, November. Schonberger, R. (1979), Just in Time Manufacturing, Free Press, New York, NY.

Shifting forms of masculinity

639

JOCM 18,6

640

Segal, L. (1990), Slow Motion, Virago, London. Seidler, V.J. (1997), Man Enough: Embodying Masculinities, Sage, London. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1990), Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theorising Procedures and Techniques, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Wajcman, J. (1998), Managing like a Man, Women and Men in Corporate Management, Polity, Cambridge, MA. Whitehead, S. (2001), “Man: the invisible gendered subject”, in Whitehead, S. and Barrett, F. (Eds), The Masculinities Reader, Polity Press, Cambridge, MA. Wilkinson, A., Redman, T., Snape, E. and Marchington, M. (1998), Managing with Total Quality Management: Theory and Practice, Macmillan, Basingstoke. Wilson, F.M. (1996), “Research note: organization theory: blind and deaf to gender?”, Organization Studies, Vol. 17 No. 5, pp. 825-42. Further reading Brod, H. and Kaufman, M. (1994), Theorizing Masculinities, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Hearn, J. and Morgan, D. (1990), Men, Masculinities and Social Theory, Unwin Hyman, London. Itzin, C. (1995) in Itzin, C. and Newman, J. (Eds), Gender, Culture and Organizational Change, Routledge, London, pp. 30-63. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA. Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA.

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Woman in the ivory tower

Woman in the ivory tower

Gendering feminised and masculinised identities Joan Eveline

641

UWA Business School, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia Abstract Purpose – To challenge dualistic concepts of masculinity and femininity via a case for understanding gender as a verb. Design/methodology/approach – Using Deleuzian and feminist frameworks, the paper appraises six plateaus of desire and intensity through which gendered identities are assembled and re-assembled in binary terms. The case study approach highlights the positioning and repositioning of a woman whose leadership of a leading academic institution involves breaking new ground in a male-defined occupation, at a time when higher education is undergoing radical restructure. Findings – The paper shows how masculinised and feminised identity positions are effected through attempts to affix certainty to indistinct and multiple dimensions of being and becoming. Originality/value – Suggests that if we wish to understand gender in non-dualistic terms we should think through the body to see both corporeality and identity as ambiguous and always unfinished assemblages. Keywords Change management, Work identity, Women, Gender Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction Dominating the wall of the University of Western Australia Senate Room was a large Rupert Bunny nude, Psyche at the Pool. The portrait had hung for the pleasure of senior managers, all of them male, for over 50 years. The eminent geographer being interviewed for the post of vice-chancellor was not impressed. In her own words, Fay Gale was seated so that every time she looked at her potential employer, the chancellor of the governing board (the Senate), he was “framed by these bare breasts on either side of his head”. With a comment that made it clear she thought the painting was inappropriate Gale shifted chairs so the chancellor’s breast-haloed head was out of her line of vision. Objecting to a work of art during the high-level job interview may well be cast as trivial within that jurisdictional plane. Since she was subsequently offered the position, we can only presume Professor Gale managed to avoid that outcome, possibly because her behaviour was viewed as the sign of an authoritative leader. Yet Gale’s identity work (Linstead and Thomas, 2002) on that occasion simultaneously highlights her outsider positioning not only as a woman on male terrain, but as one who would be offended by the objectification of women. Such emphasising of feminine sensibilities is considered unusual for the woman in management. Brewis and Linstead (2004, p. 78), for example, claim there is “considerable evidence . . . that women managers labour to distract their colleagues from their female bodies, in order to emphasize that they are just as capable of the masculine behaviours and demeanour” deemed desirable in the modern organization. Yet such an analysis portrays the behaviour of women managers

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 641-658 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810510628558

JOCM 18,6

642

as reactive and one-dimensional. It also assumes that they understand gender as an attribute they can dispense with at will, rather like an item of apparel that can be easily swapped or changed to fit the context. In this paper, I suggest that rather than viewing gender as an attribute we focus instead on the process of gendering – which means understanding gender as a verb. In common usage, gender is deployed and viewed as a noun. As a noun it is difficult to portray gendering as an effortful and adaptable ordering which assembles, embodies, differentiates and regulates women and men into a binary of masculine and feminine identities. As a noun gender too easily assumes and portrays a fixed binary, embodied attributes and institutionalised asymmetries and inequities. Hoagland (1988, p. 224) describes the enunciative desire to affix certainty to ambiguous and always unfinished processes as particularly strong among users of the English language, who “focus more on categories and classifications which define a thing and fix its nature for all time, and are less concerned with processes, movement and change”. Positioning gender as a verb also leads me to prefer the terminology of “feminised” and “masculinised” identities, rather than of “feminine” and “masculine”. At its most general the paper investigates the forces, intensities and desires shaping and reshaping what the feminised leader can represent in a restructuring organization. More particularly, it focuses on the identity work (Linstead and Thomas, 2002) that goes into gendering a woman vice-chancellor, not only through feminised and masculinised subject-positions, but also as a feminist and masculinist leader and change agent. Background and data sources Female vice-chancellors are a tiny minority in most developed countries. Like their male counterparts, they are generally grappling with dramatic political and economic change in higher education. For both those reasons female vice-chancellors tend to shy away from the scrutiny of research. We rarely see biographical accounts of their lives as women managers managing change – much less what those changes can mean for representations of feminised, or indeed masculinised, identities. Whereas a number of writers have examined the gender binds that women educators and managers face in a rapidly restructuring higher education system (Prichard and Deem, 1999; Blackmore and Sachs, 2001; Krefting, 2003), it is equally crucial to explore such queries from the vantage point of the sector’s women pioneers. The research presented in this paper is set in the Australian context, where the first woman vice-chancellor was not appointed until the late1980s, and where by 1995 there were still only two women holding that position. By late 2004 women led 9 of the 38 universities, out of the 13 women who had taken a turn at that role in less than a decade. That rapid statistical change at the top is slightly better than the representation of women in the adjacent roles of senior management (Morley, 2003) with Australian women doing twice as well as those in the United Kingdom. However, the numbers of women in deputy vice-chancellor positions is very low indeed (AVCC, 2004). Data for the paper comes from two sources. The first is a series of interviews with the first woman in 80 years to head the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee. Retired from that role since 1997, this woman was willing to tell her story in detail. Significantly, I examine the gendering of her reputation as a change agent, focussing

on accounts which variously feminise and masculinise her performance as vice-chancellor from 1990 to 1997. The material for those accounts comes from the second source of data: my ethnography of the university she led for eight years, including interviews and focus groups with 213 academic and administrative staff, as well as archival records, newspaper articles and secondary sources of literature. Thinking through the body In situating gender as a verb I view it as an inescapably unfinished and effortful process. Acker (1990) provides a theory of the incessant force that goes into gendering organizations, through a process of separating structures (of hierarchies and jobs) from the people in them. Her account of the processes through which structures are gendered (in contexts representing jobs and bodies as gender-neutral) moves us toward thinking of unfinished and indeterminate processes, and is an advance on the second wave feminist notion of both sex and gender as fixed, oppositional categories. Yet Acker’s positioning of organizations as “gendered” rather than “gendering” nevertheless evokes a structural stability and attachment that I would wish to go beyond. West and Zimmerman (1990) designed their ethno-methodological account of “doing gender” in order to highlight an ongoing process. They aimed to demonstrate empirically how gender is accomplished through the disciplining of bodies, actions and language, effecting organizational and institutional arrangements primed to reproduce identifiable categories of “women” and “men”. Yet although their idea of “doing gender” is a useful reminder of an ongoing and effortful process, their framework sustains a dualistic view by situating categories of masculine/feminine as universally oppositional and unchangeable in their asymmetry. In line with earlier formulations of the sex/gender distinction (Hartsock, 1983) they characterise the body as the precursor to social construction. That view of sex and gender relied on an idea of femininity and masculinity as social attributes with which a non-signifying body is fitted out. A vocal critic of that “overlay” concept of gender was Gatens (1983), who made the point that gender was being seen as a cultural cloak that can be thrown off by liberated minds. As Gatens noted, such an understanding of the sex/gender distinction reaffirmed the mind/body dichotomy, a dichotomy identified as privileging assumed masculine rationality over “womanly” emotionality. Integral to Gatens’ insight that all bodies are encultured is her argument that bodies “matter”. For Gatens, interrogating the immanent body offers possibilities for a non-dualistic interpretation, one which could emphasise the multiplicity and incompleteness of both corporeal and political processes. For this task she deploys the notion of immanence from Foucault’s thinking on power, coupled to a Spinozist ontology of thought as explicated by Deleuze. Gatens’ project is to locate intelligence and the emergence of meaning at the level of embodied being. An immanent view of power moves away from the idea that power is something we have to the idea of power as a multiplicity of effects through which being and identity is situated, individuated and known: Masculinity and femininity can be read as clusters of specific effects and powers of bodies which are organized around a particular binary form (male/female) through various complex assemblages: legal, medical, linguistic and so on (Gatens, 1996, p. 178).

Woman in the ivory tower

643

JOCM 18,6

644

Yet the expressive effects of power are not simply representational, because the body is always more than a value or sign within thought. In other words “the body is both the locus of thought and that which remains (necessarily) unthought” (Colebrook, 2001, p. 82). This “anti-juridical” tradition of thought, to which Foucault, Deleuze and Spinoza belong, disavows the dualist ontology of immanence vs transcendence and, as Deleuze and Parnet (1987, p. 133) argue, speaks instead of “a multiplicity of dimensions, of lines and directions in the heart of an assemblage”. Deleuze draws on Spinozist ethology to offer “an ethics of the molecular – a micropolitics concerned with the ‘in-between’ of subjects . . . which manifests the range of possible becomings” (Gatens, 1996, p. 167) from such assemblages. For Spinoza, “one’s power of being does not affect but is expressed through one’s power of thinking, and vice versa” (Gatens, 1996, p. 165). The becoming-body of this ethics takes rhizomatic form, with “neither beginning nor end but always a middle . . . from which it grows and which it overspills” (Deleuze and Guattari, cited in Linstead and Linstead, 2005). The mobility and dynamism of the molecular, operating on the plane of immanence, is blocked and contained, but incompletely, by the rule-based morality of assemblages producing the molar (extracted and transcendental) subject: Any plane of organization selects possibles from the plane of immanence and attempts to pass these possibles off as actual – the only possible actual (Gatens, 1996, p. 183).

To think and map rhizomatic corporeality is a way of understanding thought itself as arising from the process of embodied becoming, amid immanent change and unpredictable development. Linking the body of feminist writing to the identities accorded the living bodies of women and men is helped by a view of gender as a verb rather than a noun. As Linstead and Linstead (2005), argue, feminist uses of the ontological intervention of Deleuzian thought move us “from the traditional view of gender as property or the performative view of gender as a product of linguistic or social performance to gender as itself a form of productivity”. In response they argue for an ontology of gender, as a productive form of desire that places identity not only as organised extracts from the extensive, unfinished processes of the molecular, but also in a state of becoming even in its extracted form: Gender is not the construction or the outcome of a performance but is immanent within those performances making them productive of new molecular connections in the meshwork of identity (Linstead and Linstead, 2005, p.insert).

Gatens makes a similar observation, but whereas Linstead and Linstead see the greatest value of Deleuzian thought as a means of theorising identity, Gatens (1996, p. 178) argues that it can and should help feminists engage with gendering on two fronts: We need to address both the plane that organizes our possibilities into molar political realities and experiment with micropolitical possibilities that may be created on the plane of immanence. We do not have to choose between either this or that: we may say feminist politics is this and that.

So how is that engagement to occur? Gatens’ answer is through ethology and the device of an immanent appraisal. She cites Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, who argue that an immanent appraisal of language must show “how enunciation in itself implies collective assemblages” (Gatens, 1996, p. 180). An ethological approach,

therefore, will analyse “specific statements and specific utterances . . . for the manner in which they capture, transmit or engender affects” (Gatens, 1996, p. 180). In following Gatens’ suggested method I enunciate below some of the molar realities of a woman who occupied the masculinised terrain of the university’s top layer of management. Six plateaux, middles in the ceaseless rhizomatics of the productive gendering body, map collective assemblages of feminised and masculinised positionings. A rhizome, according to Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 21) “is made of plateaus”. Moreover, “We call a plateau any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such as way as to extend a rhizome” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 22). A rhizome is both paradox and disjunction; it can have pieces broken from it, or disjunctive syntheses can enfold, sprout from or fuse with each other in unpredictable molecular connections. The following plateaus track an intersecting network of power-effects that simultaneously enable and constrain masculinised and femininised subject positions. 1989: the “least likely” candidate The woman who most observers had ranked as “least likely” on the UWA short-list was to show herself in the selection interview as plain speaking, with an ability to raise successfully micropolitical possibilities on the plane of immanence that might otherwise remain unacknowledged and unspoken. Before her interview ended Fay Gale criticised the elitism and complacency that she argued was likely to drive the university into an academic backwater, made sure that the panel was appraised of her social justice goals for women and Aboriginal people[1] and told a questioner on the selection panel that the university’s number two account (at the time the wealthiest portfolio of investment and endowment funds of any Australian university) “is a big moral hurdle”. While the molar politics of choosing an establishment vice-chancellor may well have seen these comments characterised as unfitting, they proved to be no barrier to the employment of this woman candidate. As another panel member described it, she gave “the most impressive presentation I’ve seen”. Professor Gale recalls finishing a novel over breakfast the next morning when the chancellor rang to offer her the job. She had already decided against it. After meeting some of the team she would be expected to work with she told herself “this will kill me, I don’t want this”. She later conferred with women in similar positions in the US and Europe and as a result set aside her qualms. In her reflections on putting aside her doubts and taking on the job Gale suggested she was responding to the double standard women face when they break new ground as women: “if I had said no, they would have said it was because a woman can’t cope with the pressure, the task, the stress. It is quite different when a man opts out; people see that as someone who can’t cope, not something about men per se” (Gale transcript, July, 1999). In her account Gale articulates the gendering activity of feminisation (i.e. “they would have said a woman can’t cope”) and links it to an asymmetrical relation (i.e. “quite different when a man opts out”). Thus she itemises her awareness of the gendering of “woman” – and the advantages that gives to men – as an unavoidable factor in her decision-making. She also delineates it as the prompt for a conscious act of reflection that tips the scale toward her decision. We can “read” that identity work, in which Gale situates her decision as an ethical response to her gendering-awareness, as “the only possible actual” (Gatens, 1996,

Woman in the ivory tower

645

JOCM 18,6

646

p. 183) of a feminised experience. We can also view it as an extracted possibility from the extensive relations and intensive capacities criss-crossing the plane of immanence, an extract (n 2 1) which does not prevent or preclude further articulated actuals, yet restrains the gendering body in a molar form of sexual specificity. Thinking through the body places sexual specificity at the centre of the analysis. For example, as Gale notes, a man has no need to factor into his job acceptance a link between his decision and men’s worth and capacity. This means he also feels no need to engage in the task of explicating gendering that Gale’s identity work is doing. As Gatens (1996, p. 165) reminds us, “one’s power of being” and “one’s power of thinking” are not two different things but are necessarily expressed through each other. Identity work, in other words, is not simply an outcome of representative or performative practices, but expressive of the embodied experience of being and becoming. 1919-1992: territorializing the outsider When the Senate offered Gale the Vice-Chancellorship, UWA was one of the richest and oldest universities in Australia, privileged as both a “sandstone” (similar to ivy league status) and a member of the envied Group of Eight (research intensive universities). In 1988, the previous year, the Commonwealth Labour Government (under Hawke) had announced the beginnings of major changes for all Australian universities. These shepherded in the monitoring and control typical of what Power (1994) calls the “audit society”. The Australian university system was being dragged into the realm of strict economic rationality through new accountabilities, and the need for increased fund-raising from business and industry. All this occurred in shadow of decreasing willingness to provide government funds and so tighter funding controls on project and productivity directions. Perth, the capital of Western Australia, is often characterised as the world’s most isolated city. With the federal Commonwealth seat of government 4,000 kilometres away in Canberra, West Australians can point to numerous instances in which they are left out of medical, legal, educational, research and artistic networks and funding arrangements. Moreover, as Australia’s most resource-rich state, the taxes of West Australians have for many years augmented expenditure in the other states, leading in the past to heavy pressures for WA to secede from the rest of Australia (Watt, 1957; Craven, 1986). The assemblage in WA of “go-it-alone” history, rich primary resources and geographical isolation brings to the fore community loyalty, cultural cringe (about the worth of its own secondary and tertiary products, including its citizens and their innovations) and entrepreneurial verve. Until 1989, loyalty and parochialism had reigned at UWA, ensuring that previous vice-chancellors for the state’s first and most prestigious university had usually been chosen from its own ranks. Furthermore, until 1988 female vice-chancellors were non-existent in Australia, with the first and only one before Gale being appointed to a second-tier New South Wales University (Macquarie) in that year. Gale had a stellar record from another sandstone university, and a reputation for having extensive research and administrative networks across the centres of academic power in Australia, including Canberra. In 1989, despite the relative wealth and security of their university, UWA governors were concerned (as were their counterparts from less privileged institutions) about retaining market share in

an increasingly competitive system. An applicant with the ability to predict what politicians in Canberra might be plotting, and to manage those agendas successfully to UWA’s benefit, was seen as crucial. Gale had greatly outranked her competitors in that regard, and the confidence she inspired in the members of the selection panel went along with an obscuring of the gendering process for most participants in these events. Yet gendering was achieved through various forms of feminised positioning. The state’s only morning newspaper The West Australian greeted her arrival in 1990 with the headline: “Gale Blows In to UWA”. In the WA vernacular, this meteorological pun is double-edged. A “blow-in” is someone from “outside” who has no allegiance to the community in question, and who therefore cannot be relied upon to stay. The phraseology also invited trouble and disruptions. As a line of flight it had a hint of foreboding. Gale’s positioning as feminised outsider was achieved through the comment that she was the first woman to be a vice-chancellor in WA and that she was a divorced mother of two. It is hard to imagine the media greeting a male vice-chancellor by referring to him as the 32nd man to be appointed or as the divorced father of two. Gendering here was a process geared towards feminising “woman” as the indeterminate and risky outsider, verified through her anomalous deviance from the normal male enunciative subject of WA history. Early in her term, certain notables from the West Australian community took it upon themselves to offset yet highlight Gale’s “new-chum” status by dictating what she should do about what they saw as “problems” at UWA. Eight years earlier, for instance, Professor Sandra Bowdler had become the first woman Professor at UWA, and Founder of the Centre for Prehistory, situated in the Archaeology Department. Through this Centre Bowdler regularly undertook consultancies to assess Aboriginal land claims of sacred sites. At a dinner in Gale’s honour a representative from the speculative mining lobby informed her that she “had to get rid of that Bowdler woman”. He wanted the new vice-chancellor to consider disbanding the Centre for Prehistory as “the courts took too much notice of her [Bowdler’s] research on sacred sites, so W.A. missed out on revenue from potential mining endeavours” (Gale transcript, 1999). The mining lobbyist claimed Bowdler had personal and professional links with Aboriginal communities. This he regarded as biasing her judgement on the accuracy of land rights claims. If Gale knew what was good for her and for UWA, she was told, she would sack Bowdler and support the miners who had been so much a part of WA’s prosperity, and a significant source of donorship for UWA[2]. Gale’s selection process had taken place across “a multiplicity of dimensions, of lines and directions in the heart of an assemblage” Deleuze and Parnet (1987, p. 133) with only a partial recognition of the potential of that multiplicity. Yet such partial recognition of the need for new approaches was sufficient to throw into question old and well-established practices and invite reaction and backlash. As an icon appointed to foster such new ways Fay Gale had a double-edged agenda to manage. Could she meet the expectations of change and keep the establishment on side? Subsequent events over the Centre for Prehistory were to rock UWA to its core, became major media and parliamentary events, and were (as Gale’s premonitions had foretold) a seriously life-threatening outcome for her standing and health. When the assemblage of rhizomatic memories jump to the end of her term her positioning in these events as woman gets denied as significant.

Woman in the ivory tower

647

JOCM 18,6

648

1999: from a masculinist eye – hero or interloper? Interviewed in 1999, UWA’s longest serving member of Senate extracted a heroic figure from Gale’s term in the vice-chancellery: She had to manage one of the most difficult periods as Vice-Chancellor, certainly in the time I was a Senate member. . . Nothing to do with being a woman. If a female vice-chancellor was appointed again she wouldn’t have problems on the scale that Fay did. (Fay) inherited a pro-chancellor who wasn’t regarded as a high performer, and a deputy who she found it very difficult to work with. Both had applied for her job. It was no doubt a great relief when she could replace them, but one of them left behind some very questionable decisions. So in the first two years she was totally neutred by these difficulties, then she had three good years when she was able to make her mark before she became chair of the AVCC, where she was able to do more in her area of expertise. She introduced important change and supported what needed protecting, but usually those who achieve greatly don’t get it all right. . . She’s been a wonderful and heroic pioneer, she should be remembered as such.

In the early years of her term Gale faced the rivalry and antipathy of some of her male lieutenants, against which she was positioned as displaying unwavering nerve – the heroics to which the male senate member alludes above. Of more interest for my purposes at this point, however, is the way in which the shows a respect for Gale’s leadership which both identifies her as a woman who faces unique pressures yet simultaneously denies the relevance of her status as a woman. Is such positioning of the woman in authority part of what is being denied here – the productive work of gendering? Smith (1999) tells the story of a male university administrator in a similar context. Speaking about “the elaborate courtesy” he and other men extended to a woman who took on a position of authority in their midst the administrator interprets the men’s behaviour as “not born of respect but rather of unease . . . she was not perceived as another academic administrator to be judged on the basis of her competence, but as a different kind of creature” (cited in Smith, 1999, p. 201). For Smith (1999, p. 200) one answer here is the historical “subjectlessness” of women in the history of universities as an exclusively masculine terrain of authority and privilege. The woman who takes on a leadership function in such territory necessarily contradicts “her subjectlessness as a woman” in a configuration which “would create uneasiness” for the prior occupants, according to Smith, and lead to a denial of gender as an issue. In assigning Gale the status of a successful leader the interviewee cited above relies on an economy of the same to place her into the category of those he has been used to characterising as successful – a category of being from which gender has been subtracted as of no account – but a category hitherto comprised only of men. The references to “neutred” and “hero” are part of this supposedly non-gendered assemblage of molar status. Gender as a product of gendering is rendered imperceptible by signifying practices of courtesy and respect which organise the (ir)relevance of power effected by masculinised and femininised subject positions and confine gender as the property of a “woman”, with woman characterised as a subjectless feminine body. The body of the feminised interloper could also be extracted from this conjunction of flows and intensities of desire and unease. During those early years Gale says she was left in little doubt that a group of male staff held a poor view of her authority for leadership, through configurations that positioned her as an intruder. She told the story

of walking into the staff club (bar) one Friday evening, where she encountered a group of senior male professors and faculty deans. The men were laughing loudly. She met regularly with most of this group, so she asked to be let in on the joke. She was told, with accompanying smirks, that they were rating her leadership on a scale of 0-10. After taking an average, said one, they had decided that she rated “barely a five” because “it takes you too long to make up your mind” (Gale, taped interview, November, 1998). Other elaborations of Gale’s leadership feminise her approach as consultative and collaborative. Feminisation-as-lack shapes and reflects the positioning of her leadership as deficient, whether through the sporty one-upmanship of a Friday long-lunch at the bar, via masculinist notions of authority, or through a molar formation of both those assemblages of desire. It organises the body of the woman leader to signify sexual difference, reaffirming the primary positioning of the authoritative (male) leader within a sedimented history of masculinised advantage. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 177): “ (Gendering) significance clings to the soul just as the organism clings to the body, and it is not easy to get rid of either”. 1990-1997: feminist desires – groundbreaker or disappointment? Official UWA literature notes that, as vice-chancellor, Gale built a senior executive team whose efforts propelled the university into top ranking in the quality rounds of the mid-1990s and by 1997 to the top of the Good Universities Guide for research and teaching. Records show that, in tune with government pressures for new directives on management and accountability, the team pioneered a leaner senior management structure, devolved many internal governance responsibilities to teaching and research units, gained prize-winning performance-based funding for research and teaching, fostered transparency or at least new forms of accountability in the university’s procedures and operations, developed more equitable systems for rewarding and training academic and administrative staff (including several innovations in promotions criteria and a well-funded staff development unit), launched a remunerative and successful international student program, registered important productivity gains (partly through shedding labour in the lower levels of administrative and academic staff), extended scholarships and slowed fee increases, and employed considerably more women as professors, lecturers and in mid levels of administrative staff. That record of success shows a tempering of efficiency and accountability measures with a rise in standards of gender equity. In the recollections of those who worked at UWA during the 1990s, despite the long list of changes across many areas, it is Gale’s reputation as a champion of gender equity that registers most strongly. Women tended to assign that identity through stories and anecdotes evoking esteem and admiration, men were more inclined to portray that success as not only detrimental for men, but as a pastime which kept Gale from the “real” work of academic administration. Since her retirement Gale helps foster that reputation as equity champion. Indeed equity managers and others make strategic use of her history and willingness to be identified as a supporter in women’s groups and policy circles in both Australia and throughout the Asian region. Moreover, when asked, she makes no secret of the challenges she faced in pursuing women’s advancement in her term at UWA.

Woman in the ivory tower

649

JOCM 18,6

650

Gale recalls how, on taking up her position in 1990, she was shocked and dismayed at the invisibility of women on campus. “Women”, she recalled, “spoke behind closed doors”. At the time UWA had one of the poorest records on women’s employment and status in Australia, with small numbers employed and clustered at the bottom in almost every academic (faculty) category (Crawford and Tonkinson, 1988). By the end of Gale’s term, eight years later, UWA was boasting significant change in the numbers, profile and recognition of women and their contributions. Under Gale’s leadership, the university moved from the bottom of Western Australia’s gender equity index (a gender audit tool used by the WA Department of Equal Opportunity in Public Employment) to the top. It also won, in the second half of the 1990s, several awards for equal opportunity and was consistently placed in the top band for all categories in the Australian Government’s quality review process. Thus by the end of her term (1997) Gale had gained a reputation as a path-setter for other women. One configuration that reinforced that reputation was a hand-inscribed scroll featuring tributes from a score or so of UWA women, presented to Gale when she was retiring in 1997. A typical example reads: I admire Fay so much for the way she has stuck to her commitment to equity in the face of considerable opposition by a very vocal minority. I have been at UWA for nearly 20 years and, as a woman in academia, I at last feel this is a comfortable place for women to be.

Several staff who recollect that era positioned Gale’s leadership as a powerful mechanism for raising the expectations and aspirations of other women. Around Australia, high-ranking university women also took the opportunity to celebrate what this vice-chancellor had achieved. In early 1998, the National Colloquium of Senior University Women convened a women-only testimonial to honour Fay Gale’s contribution to the scholarship and leadership of Australian universities. The speaker presenting the tribute, Vice-Chancellor Reid (1998, p. 7) of the University of Western Sydney, made a feature of what Gale had achieved for women: Fay has never been reluctant to speak plainly about the position of women in universities and of putting in place processes in her own university that ensure good women are recognised and rewarded.

Yet appreciation of the feminist groundbreaker comes at a cost. The woman who succeeds on male-defined territory, particularly if she expresses any interest in equity issues, is often expected to clear the way for other women. Anticipation of her capacities as change agent places a considerable burden on the pioneering woman whose token status can mean she needs to keep proving herself in terms that fit with what Smith (1999) calls the “ruling regime”. Unlike many of their male counterparts, few women at the top have the advantage of a wife at home, a point that Gale (taped interview, September, 1999) sometimes made about herself. Yet the double burden for the woman leader exceeds the need to juggle public image, job management, household and family arrangements. “The invisible job”, as Martin (2004) calls it, is the pressure on the woman leader to position herself as a path-breaker for other women (Fletcher, 1999). Yet the expectation, by both women and men, that the woman leader can always be relied upon to accomplish “the invisible job” can prove wildly idealistic. A woman professor told of the disappointment in UWA’s Status of Women Group (an informal

campus lobby group) when Gale was invited to address them in the early part of her term: I remember how disappointed we all were. We wanted her to overturn a decision she’d made about a woman professor. She not only refused but we had the feeling that she was not going to back any of the major things we wanted to see happen. . . It’s easy to see how naı¨ve we were to think that such changes could be straightforwardly driven from the top. . . we were blown over by having a woman up there. We were quite unrealistic.

For those who harboured such expectations at UWA the price was not only a feeling of disenchantment, but also a tagging of Gale as lacking in the expected “feminine” attribute of ensuring women’s advancement. As another female subordinate said: “We used to say that she didn’t seem to be doing things any different to a man. Yet when we look back now, at the promotions changes, the cultural audits, the women professors, the leadership programme, the scholarships, you can see she did it anyway”. Bruni and Gherardi (2002) write of the “gender switching” in which women managers engage as they traverse the masculinised terrain of management. The problem with the concept of gender switching, however, is its dualistic approach. It assumes that women managers and leaders must oscillate between two binary gender poles. We may advance our thinking more by emphasising that the verb of gendering destabilises any claim to identity. Thus the problems people have of fixing women like Gale into one or other gender category may well be because she and women like her live their lives in molecular assemblages which exceed the terms of those binary enunciations. 1990-1997: media machinations and the lesbian mafia On a Saturday evening in February 1996, six years after her term began, Fay Gale was driving to join the Governor of Western Australia (the Queen’s representative) in opening the Annual Arts Festival of Perth, which each year attracts tens of thousands of audience and performers. News stands surrounding the venue for the launch carried a headline in huge letters: “Lesbian Mafia Takes Over UWA”. The obnoxious news story (Poprezecny, Sunday Times, 18 February 1996) was the latest salvo in a long-running media war between the daily West Australian newspaper and the weekend tabloid, the Sunday Times, called by some wags The Sunday Slimes. In March, 1992, Sunday Times reporter Joe Poprezceny began his attack by predicting the vice-chancellor would “lose her job” if she allowed the refusal of tenure to an Archeologist named David Rindos. He alleged UWA was biased against Rindos because he was gay and that Rindos had friends in high places who would ensure his tenure. The controversy that became known as the “Rindos saga” allowed the simmering antagonism that had surrounded Gale’s appointment to boil over into a parliamentary inquiry fuelled by a mixture of sexual politics, homophobia and disputes over mining and land rights. Although the parliamentary inquiry, which began in March 1996 and concluded in December 1997, generally spoke of The University of Western Australia as the body under investigation, it was clear as the saga wore on that in the tabloid media the body under scrutiny was that of a woman – Fay Gale. The circumstances surrounding Rindos were juicy pickings for the purveyors and readers of Sunday scandals. Rindos was gay, his superior Bowdler was lesbian ensuring an audience of homophobics if nothing else. But there was also the spectacle

Woman in the ivory tower

651

JOCM 18,6

652

of a struggle over whether commercial or academic interests should hold the right to dictate the goals of the state’s oldest and most prestigious university. Over a period of two years Rindos was accused of racism, of sexual harassment for the photos of himself and his lovers he showed students and colleagues, and between 1990 and 1992 his Head of Department (Bowdler) issued him with several memos to improve the quality and approach of his teaching and research. While Bowdler was mounting claims against Rindos he was accusing her of interference in his role as Acting Head of Department, and making counter-accusations about her sex life and its effects on students. In 1992, Bowdler furnished a highly critical response to his tenure application and in February 1993, after three inquiries, his application was subsequently refused. Before the refusal of tenure the story had taken many twists and turns, drawing in deans and postgraduate students, two high-level internal inquiries, a transfer of Rindos to another department, and an external Review of the Archeology Department. The fringe elements of the mining lobby also joined the fray, with dominion mining and the parliamentary member for Kalgoorlie (a large mining electorate) making claims of pro-Aboriginal bias against the Centre for Prehistory, directed by Bowdler, which was often called upon to give evidence against mining developments in Aboriginal land rights claims. The Clyde and Hotop (1992) internal report of 31 March, recommended disestablishment of the department and severe penalising, with possibility of dismissal, of Bowdler due to student complaints of bullying. It was later revealed (West Australian, 13 March 1996) that five of the seven complainant students worked for mining companies. After allowing Bowdler to respond (with support from union and human resources), Vice-Chancellor Gale arranged for Archeology to be absorbed into anthropology in June 1992, and in July despite massive protests by Indigenous groups disbanded the Centre for Prehistory. Having built her own research reputation on studies which promoted the Aboriginal cause for social justice, Gale’s decision to close the Centre was a particularly difficult and poignant one. Ironically, among the small group of males at UWA who stated that Gale “couldn’t make the hard decisions” the “favouring” of Bowdler, who retained her job, over Rindos, who was refused tenure, was invariably cited as an example. The mining lobbyists were not satisfied with the disbanding of Bowdler’s Centre for Prehistory, however. They fuelled a subsequent media campaign to assemble a view of Gale as the monstrous Queer – the out-of-order feminised abject. Before the saga drew to a close a mining politician had attempted to blackmail Gale into buying another position for Rindos at another university or face a parliamentary inquiry, under parliamentary privilege the same politician hinted that Gale was having a sexual relationship with Bowdler, and Gale found herself lampooned in the issues of an anonymously published newsletter circulated around the UWA campus depicting “Gay Fay” and her imaginary sexual exploits in terms bordering on the pornographic. Over this period Gale received hate mail, her car windscreen was smeared with dog excreta, and her house broken into and trashed. In hindsight, Fay Gale wondered whether most of that harrowing time could have been avoided had she taken the advice of the Sunday Times and sacked Bowdler instead of Rindos, or the advice of some of her lieutenants and sacked them both. Her decision to retain Bowdler, she maintains, was made on both academic and ethical criteria. Bowdler’s publication and research record was excellent, she was trusted by local Aboriginal communities, highly acclaimed by other archeologists and no formal

complaints of unprofessional conduct were lodged against her by students. On hearsay evidence Gale was not prepared to bow to media and mining pressure and sack Bowdler for unprofessional conduct. Besides, she recalls, she refused to be a party to the double standard. None of the men calling for Bowdler’s dismissal, she notes, were calling for Gale to sack the straight men who had affairs with their students. Braidotti (2000, p. 172) argues that “there is a nostalgic or negative appropriation of the monstrous imaginary for the purpose of the conservative backlash or of a crisis of masculinity. . . (a) nineteenth century topos that connects the abnormal to the morally deficient”. The sensationalist media positioning of Gale as the monstrous Queer deflected attention from the crisis of masculinity prompted by her leadership of UWA and displaced it onto the crisis-afflicted university system. At a time when the traditionalists of the old university system were struggling to retain academic autonomy against the new demands for commercial control, that pejorative assigning of Queer identity fed the desire for a sensationalised witch-hunt among a certain audience of the WA populace. Such with-hunts have certainly proved popular in Australia. As poet Les Murray noted, “a lone woman is being crucified by the (Australian) press at any given moment” (Toohey, 2000). Murray’s account rings true for the lives of many Australian women but it is too simplistic to lay Australian misogyny at the door of the press in the case of Professor Gale. Although one news journalist hounded her for years, several articles published in the only daily newspaper offset that crucifixion with more balanced and informed accounts. To focus simply on the press is to fail to scrutinise the anti-women sentiment of life at the top of the ivory tower, where in this case fear and resentment about the changes a feminised authority might herald collided with struggles over the commercial territorialization of university autonomy to produce a woman vice-chancellor as the monstrous usurper of masculine privilege. Such extreme figurations are fixed, brought into being, “in the hiatus between the subject-positions women have begun to develop and the forms of representation their culture makes available to them” (Braidotti, 2000, p. 171). 1990-1999: the world’s greatest networker In the early part of her term Gale decided that gaining the support of Senate for amalgamating the two “money” committees – the Finance Committee and the Investment Committee – had to come first, so that strategic management of financial policy could be developed to include productivity incentives. One of the female Senate members during those years described the process by which Gale brought the Senate members in line with her thinking: Fay wasn’t someone who tried to do things rapidly and dramatically. She tried to do it from the bottom up through consulting and getting people involved and owning change.

The lengthy leadership process of “bringing people along” was not a style familiar to committees and administrators at UWA at that time. According to her immediate personal staff Gale also used overt techniques of command and control, particularly when she wanted something done in a hurry. But because the public face of her identity work was that of a negotiator, she could be negatively construed as procrastinating or dallying. Through such encounters, women in male-dominated fields are given the message that they need to conform to a heroic image of leadership (Sinclair, 1998).

Woman in the ivory tower

653

JOCM 18,6

654

According to Gardiner and Tiggeman (1999) women who refuse to conform to that image are the most stressed. Although in the view of some Gale was distant and reserved, her ability to relate to staff at all levels (sharing ideas, pleasures and gossip) challenged at times the customs of an “old” university. The established practice at UWA before 1990 projected the image of a vice-chancellor who operated in an ivory tower, far removed from those who worked in the “ivory basement” – particularly those in the lower levels of the administrative, maintenance and grounds staff. In the events she held while living in the large house that UWA assigned to its Vice-Chancellor, Gale broke with that tradition in mixing guests from all walks of life. For example, as a male professor remarked: “I was surprised to find myself sitting next to the cleaning lady”. In Gale’s view, however, it made sense to give a member of cleaning staff who had been employed for 15 years a send-off alongside the retiring professors. Yet although she raised eyebrows sometimes with the people she threw together socially, there was no lack of understanding that Gale’s gestures stemmed from ethics and politics rather than a lack of knowledge about protocol. In fact Gale’s relational skills were legendary; she was described by male colleagues as a “superb mixer”, who could “work a room better than anyone I ever saw”. Another of her male lieutenants called her “the world’s greatest networker”. Male professors who had no respect for Gale as a “leader” were also impressed by her public presence and social skills. One gave a long and involved account of how she had charmed a large gathering of the Italian community in an hour, making “each and everyone feel as if they had been personally appreciated and heard”. The notion that women are concerned to show they care about people and their responses is not without foundation in research (Acker and Fuerverger, 1996; Blackmore and Sachs, 2001; Sinclair, 1998) although there are also studies showing women managers behave much like men (Wacjman, 1999). The overall pattern of responses in this study showed a wide recognition of Gale’s relational capacities. One interviewee, for example, said: “at an operational level she got to hearts and minds rather than being seen as a figurehead”. For others, a sense of security in her professional fair-mindedness was the result. For example: . . . at a personal level you knew where you stood, she was someone who said it as it was. And I think she was tactful, she worked the numbers like everyone who has to work the numbers.

Here we have a view of authority as a negotiated and ultimately social relationship. Yet it would be unsound to wipe the effects of positional authority from the story. A senior manager’s ability to control strategic directions through funding resources and information flows, performance measures and procedures for selection and promotion should not be underestimated. When a vice-chancellor invites the head gardener to “stop by my office for morning tea”, and he is asked to cut back his cherished heritage shrubbery in the interests of women’s night-time safety, it will be interpreted quite differently from a student asking for the same thing because there’s been a stranger rape in a nearby park. In this case, as in other actions attributed to Fay Gale, leadership achieved its goals by a mix of tact and authority rather than by executive fiat. Rather than removing enactments of power and authority her relational approach reshaped them in ways in which were then positioned as collaborative and mutually respectful.

The ultimate projection of such relational capacity (Fletcher, 1999) is encapsulated by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu who said: “Leadership is best when the people say: ‘we have done this ourselves’” (Shields, 1994, p. 56). The double bind for women, however, is that relational capacity is associated with the feminine, which means that women can often (and are expected to) practice those skills more easily. However, relational skills are also associated both with the domestic sphere and with servicing the needs of the more powerful. As Fletcher (2002, p. 3) notes “strong, societal beliefs about individual achievement and meritocracy” ensure that in the workplace relational skills are unconsciously associated “with a lack of power”. In practice men are active participants in the family sphere and women participate in paid work. Yet a social imaginary of two very different forms of effort engender in powerful ways expectations of how women and men should act at home and at work. Gardiner and Tiggemann (1999) reported that men in male-dominated industries in Australia gained rewards from following a personally oriented leadership style, while women leaders in the same industries were penalised through pressure to drop their personal orientation and adopt a more masculine style. For women at the top as well as in the basement, if that leadership process is at times consultative it is therefore likely to be concealed as leadership. Male colleagues who worked closely with Gale suggested she exemplified an effective and innovative facilitator. One senior executive said: Fay was interesting in that she really didn’t direct anyone to do anything. Working with her you knew what the issues were and you would develop your own momentum. At least you thought it was [yours]. There were times when I thought something was my idea and later realised it was part of something she’d earlier said or written.

Two other senior UWA managers told similar stories. One, a yachting enthusiast, likened Gale’s style of “getting people to run with the ideas” to a process of “tacking”: I said to her once, “have you done much yachting?” Because she would tack out way past anyone else I ever saw. She would be right out here, tacking back and forth until everyone else was steady up to the line. It worked. But it meant people never knew how much she did to make it happen.

From her closest colleagues, then, we have a story of a vice-chancellor whose actions spark and nurture the collaborative relationships around her. Simultaneously, their story positions her leadership style as “other” to the masculinised norm. While her process of engaged leadership is described and credited as a valuable form of people management, it nonetheless is presented as lacking, for good or ill, the characteristics of the heroic and masculinised standard. Conclusion In writing and drafting the case of Fay Gale, I have been tempted to portray her leadership as post-heroic and therefore different to that of the men around her. In so doing I might have extracted the same representation of her leadership as the men in the stories above, and assembled the case of a woman who lacks legitimacy and status within the heroic canon. On the odd occasion when Gale’s leadership was given the stamp of heroism the speaker was loathe to see any gendering at work. While most who saw her in action assembled a version of her leadership as post-heroic, some feminised the woman they portrayed while others highlighted masculine

Woman in the ivory tower

655

JOCM 18,6

656

characteristics. Yet Gatens’ account of immanent corporeality leads us to suspect that each and all of those versions is incomplete. Indeed, when one listens to the conflicting and contrasting stories of identity, and reads the archives and media reports that say so much yet so little about this woman’s term in office, it is easy to believe that the “possible actuals” on the plane of immanence far exceed the “only possible actual” of a micropolitical assemblage. Aligning women with power (whether at the top of an organization or not) is invariably a highly contested task. In the words of Sinclair (1998, p. 109) “even before they open their mouths or act, men are likely to be endowed with power and the potential for leadership”. In effect, the customary examples, language and concepts that evoke leadership associate organizational power with men, and leadership with masculinised ways of knowing (such as tough-mindedness, emotional detachment) and doing (such as assertive self-promotion, making “hard” decisions and disconnection from family responsibilities). The forces, intensities and desires gendering this woman vice-chancellor disguise heroic masculinity as gender-neutrality, and extract and enunciate interviewees’ memories of a “woman leader” into a series of molar forms, forms that deny the desires and longings through which they are assembled. By remembering to think “gendering” rather than “gender” we might keep those desires and intensities in view. Notes 1. Neither of which are popular causes in a state with a recent history of white settler and frontier heroics. 2. It should be noted that the speculative mining lobby, unlike the long-established mining firms, has provided little by way of donations and support to UWA, but the two groups are often aligned in their impact on political and economic decision-makers. References Acker, J. (1990), “Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations”, Gender and Society, Vol. 4, pp. 139-58. Acker, S. and Fuerverger, G. (1996), “Doing good and feeling bad: the work of women university teachers”, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 26, pp. 401-22. AVCC (2004), Senior Women’s Register, available at: www.avcc.edu.au/database/report. asp?a ¼ seniorwomen Blackmore, J. and Sachs, J. (2001), “Women leaders in the restructured university”, in Brooks, A. and Mackinnon, A. (Eds), Gender and the Restructured University, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Buckingham, pp. 45-66. Braidotti, R. (2000), “Teratologies”, in Buchanan, I. and Colebrook, C. (Eds), Deleuze and Feminist Theory, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 156-72. Brewis, J. and Linstead, S. (2004), “Gender and management”, in Linstead, S., Fulop, L. and Lilley, S. (Eds), Management and Organization: A Critical Text, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmill/Basingstoke, pp. 56-92. Bruni, A. and Gherardi, S. (2002), “Omega’s story: the heterogeneous engineering of a gendered professional self”, in Dent, M. and Whitehead, S. (Eds), Managing Professional Identities: Knowledge, Performativity and the “New” Professional, Routledge, London/New York, NY. Clyde, D. and Hotop, S. (1992), Report to the Vice-Chancellor on the Department of Archeology, March.

Colebrook, C. (2001), “From radical representations to corporeal becomings: the feminist philosophy of Lloyd, Grosz and Gatens”, Hypatia, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 76-93. Craven, G. (1986), Secession: The Ultimate States Right, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Crawford, P. and Tonkinson, M. (1988), The Missing Chapters: Women Staff at the University of Western Australia, 1963-1987, Centre for Western Australian History, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, Trans. B. Massumi. Deleuze, G. and Parnet, C. (1987), Dialogues, Columbia University Press, New York, NY, Trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, pp. 132-3. Fletcher, J.K. (1999), Disappearing Acts, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Fletcher, J.K. (2002), “The greatly exaggerated demise of heroic leadership: gender, power and the myth of the female advantage”, CGO Insights, Briefing Note Number 13, Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons College of Management, Boston, MA. Gardiner, M. and Tiggemann, M. (1999), “Gender differences in leadership style, job stress and mental health in male- and female-dominated industries”, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 72, pp. 301-15. Gatens, M. (1983), “A critique of the sex/gender distinction”, in Allen, J. and Patton, P. (Eds), Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx, Intervention Publications, Sydney, pp. 143-63. Gatens, M. (1996), “Through a Spinozist lens: ethology, difference, power”, in Patton, P. (Ed.), Deleuze: A Critical Reader, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 162-87. Hartsock, N. (1983), Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Imperialism, Northeastern University Press, Boston, MA. Hoagland, S. (1988), Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value, Institute of Lesbian Studies, Palo Alto, CA. Krefting, L. (2003), “Intertwined discourses of merit and gender: evidence from academic employment in the USA”, Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 260-78. Linstead, A. and Linstead, S. (2005), “Gender as multiplicity: desire, difference and dispersion”, Identity and Organization, Routledge, London. Linstead, A. and Thomas, R. (2002), “‘What do you want from me?’ A poststructuralist feminist reading of middle managers’ identities”, Culture and Organization, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 1-20. Martin, J. (2004), “Treacherous terrain: equity and equality in work and home, keynote address”, paper presented at Senior Women Executives and the Cultures of Management Conference, Intercontinental Hotel, Sydney, 29 November. Morley, L. (2003), “Sounds, silences and contradictions: gender equity in commonwealth higher education”, Clare Burton Memorial Lecture. Power, M. (1994), The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Prichard, C. and Deem, R. (1999), “Wo-managing further education: gender and the construction of the manager in the corporate colleges of England”, Gender and Education, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 323-42. Reid, J. (1998), “Tribute to Professor Fay Gale”, paper presented at National Colloquium of Senior University Women, University of Sydney, 19 March. Shields, K. (1994), In the Tiger’s Mouth: Leadership and Empowerment in Community Organizations, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC. Sinclair, A. (1998), Doing Leadership Differently: Gender, Power and Sexuality in a Changing Business Culture, Melbourne University Press, Carlton.

Woman in the ivory tower

657

JOCM 18,6

658

Smith, D. (1999), Writing the Social: Critique, Theory and Investigations, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Toohey, P. (2000), “Witch hunt”, The Australian Magazine, 15-16 July. Wacjman, J. (1999), Managing like a Man, Allen and Unwin, St Leonard’s. Watt, E.D. (1957), “Western separatism: the history of the secession movement in western Australia”, PhD thesis, University of Western Australia. West, C. and Zimmerman, D. (2003), “Doing gender”, in Ely, R., Foldy, E. and Scully, M. (Eds), Reader in Gender, Work and Organization, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA, pp. 62-74. Further reading Chance, K. (1997L), Standing Committee on Public Administration – Report on Events Surrounding the Denial of Tenure to the Late Dr David Rindos by UWA, Legislative Council, Seattle, WA.

The 1st Annual Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards 2005 Organizational change and development Sponsored by Journal of Organizational Change Management Winner:

Dr Sally E. Riad Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

“Managing merger integration: a social constructionist perspective” Abstract: This research argues for the utility of a social constructionist perspective in examining merger integration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it examines two salient topics in merger integration: planning and organizational culture. Each of these two topics becomes the subject of four categories of critical analysis: language, context, power, and pragmatism. In considering integration planning, the research critically examines its teleological and temporal assumptions. It discusses aspects that render planning salient in merger integration while depicting the negotiative complexity of planning practice in merger management. It also offers a reading of planning as a relational and generative practice that is part and parcel of the context in which it is undertaken. It illustrates how integration planning is shaped by relational power dynamics that enable certain activities and constrain others. Finally, it demonstrates how people in a merger formulate positions on particular planning features, specifically the pace of integration, based on an assessment of pragmatic consequences. In examining “organizational culture”, the research develops two themes. The first theme argues that “organizational culture” is not simply a variable or a metaphor; it is a discourse, a regime of ideas and practices that conditions both the way in which people relate to merger integration and the way in which merging organizations relate to one another. This argument differs from efforts in the merger literature to validate the role of “organizational culture” in integration: rather, it illustrates its generation and reproduction in discourse. It examines the organizing power of discourse on “organizational culture” and its power effects. It illustrates the political appropriation of “organizational culture”, how people resist it, and then how that resistance is overcome. The second theme illustrates the role of context in defining perspectives of acculturation in mergers. This position offers a “bicultural” reading of merger integration as the last analytical component in the research. The research concludes by posing the notion of “merging as redefinition” and discussing its implications for academics and practitioners.

JOCM 18,6

660

Note from the publisher Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards As part of Emerald Group Publishing’s commitment to supporting excellence in research, we are pleased to announce that the 1st Annual Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards have been decided. Details about the winners are shown below. 2005 was the first year in which the awards were presented and, due to the success of the initiative, the programme is to be continued in future years. The idea for the awards, which are jointly sponsored by Emerald Group Publishing and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), came about through exploring how we can encourage, celebrate and reward excellence in international management research. Each winner has received e 1,500 and a number have had the opportunity to meet and discuss their research with a relevant journal editor. Increased knowledge-sharing opportunities and the exchange and development of ideas that extend beyond the peer review of the journals have resulted from this process. The awards have specifically encouraged research and publication by new academics: evidence of how their research has impacted upon future study or practice was taken into account when making the award selections and we feel confident that the winners will go on to have further success in their research work. The winners for 2005 are as follows: Category: Business-to-business marketing management Winner: Victoria Little, University of Auckland, New Zealand Understanding customer value: an action research-based study of contemporary marketing practice Category: Enterprise applications of internet technology Winner: Mamata Jenamani, Indian Institute of Technology Design benchmarking, user behaviour analysis and link-structure personalization in commercial websites Category: Human resource management Winner: Leanne Cutcher, University of Sydney, Australia Banking on the customer: customer relations, employment relations and worker identity in the Australian retail banking industry Category: Information science Winner: Theresa Anderson, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Understandings of relevance and topic as they evolve in the scholarly research process

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 18 No. 6, 2005 pp. 660-661 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0953-4814

Category: Interdisciplinary accounting research Winner: Christian Nielsen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Essays on business reporting: production and consumption of strategic information in the market for information Category: International service management Winner: Tracey Dagger, University of Western Australia

Perceived service quality: proximal antecedents and outcomes in the context of a high involvement, high contact, ongoing service

Note from the publisher

Category: Leadership and organizational development Winner: Richard Adams, Cranfield University, UK Perceptions of innovations: exploring and developing innovation classification Category: Management and governance Winner: Anna Dempster, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge, UK Strategic use of announcement options Category: Operations and supply chain management Winner: Bin Jiang, DePaul University, USA Empirical evidence of outsourcing effects on firm’s performance and value in the short term Category: Organizational change and development Winner: Sally Riad, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Managing merger integration: a social constructionist perspective Category: Public sector management Winner: John Mullins, National University of Ireland, Cork Perceptions of leadership in the public library: a transnational study Submissions for the 2nd Annual Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards are now being received and we would encourage you to recommend the awards to doctoral candidates who you believe to have undertaken excellent research. The deadline by which we require all applications is 1 March 2006. For further details about the subject categories, eligibility and submission requirements, please visit the website: www.emeraldinsight.com/info/researchers/funding/doctoralawards/ 2006awards.html.

661

Call for papers Special issue on Standing conference for management and organizational inquiry – call for papers – 2006 The theme of the conference is ‘‘The Deficit of Democracy’’. Knowing our participants, we are sure that papers will range from examinations of democracy (or the lack of) in organizations, to the corporate agenda and the crisis of democracy in American, European, Australian, and other societies, through to issues of corporate globalisation and the assault on democracy at the global level. Our participants come not only from America (US, Canada and Mexico) but also from Europe and Australia/New Zealand. Theoretical orientations all share a critical perspective, but include critical theory, feminism, post-colonialism, postmodernism, etc.

.

Add 50 late registration fee (after 1 February 2006)

.

Graduate student fee is 60

.

To order printed copy of Proceeding 45 (note: CD version with ISSN is provided as part of registration fee)

You can register on line at: http://scmoi.org

Deadlines: .

15 October 2005 – 1 to 3 page single-spaced Abstract due to Track chair; abstracts will be placed on this web site for review: cross-cultural management; critical organization theory tracks.

.

15 November 2005 – Reviews due back to the track chair (s)

.

1 December 2005 – Acceptances sent out by Track chair to contributors; track chairs send copy of acceptance to program co-chairs: Alexis Downs: [email protected] and Grace Ann Rosile: [email protected]

.

15 December 2005 – date for room availability in main hotel.

.

1 January 2006 – Program Schedule will be available on this web site.

.

The 16th annual scMOI will be held 6-9 April 2006 (Thursday to Sunday) at: The Churchill Hotel (guest rooms cost: 149/night): www.thechurchillhotel.com/home.html

15 February 2006 – due date for Full Papers to be submitted to sc’MOI Annual Proceedings editor: Carolyn Gardner: [email protected]: Papers are single-spaced, APA format, and limited to 25 pages (including references and tables); Only accepted papers for registered conference participates will be printed in the Official Proceedings; Proceeding are produced on CD with ISBN number and is included with conference registration pricing; We also can produce printed and bound copy of Proceeding, for 45 extra registration.

.

Location: Between DuPont Circle and Adams Morgan (a lovely neighbourhood in Washington, DC): http://adamsmorgan.net/; see map: www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dupontmap.htm

15 Feb 2006 – Deadline for Conference Early Registration – Must be pre-registered to have your (accepted) paper in Official Conference Proceedings.

.

6-8 April 2006 (Thursday-Sunday) – The Conference dates: local arrangements: Contact: Ken Ehrensal: [email protected]

For our keynote speakers, we attempt to find someone from outside the business school environment. In the past we have had Doug Kellner, who spoke on post-modern theory; and this year (in fact this, last weekend) our keynoter was Stanley Aronowitz. Write your abstract and choose a track to send your abstract to with designation: Critical strategy (Usha C. V. Haley: [email protected]); Cross-cultural management (Slawek Magala: [email protected]); or Critical organization theory(Alexis Downs: [email protected] and Grace Ann Rosile: [email protected]); Organization development and change track (David Boje: [email protected]), and/or Spirituality in management track chairs (Jerry Biberman and Graeme Coetzer: [email protected]).

Site of next annual meeting: Washington, DC

Conference fees: .

scMOI conference registration to Faculty 230 (on or before 1 February 2006)

For more information: write to our Program chairs: Alexis Downs: [email protected] and Grace Ann Rosile: [email protected]