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Through the use of critical hermeneutics, the chapter provides a deep analysis and offers clues as to how management, through the power of communication, can contribute to producing and reproducing embedded gender-based assumptions and values through organizational culture, which can both enable and constrain organizational members. It examines gender discrimination as it relates to employment equity in a well-known airline. We show how an organizational culture, supported by society and communicated through language, can impede progress within an organization through the power of language, and highlight a number of clues as to the processes of gender discrimination at work.

In this chapter we explore the relationship between current gendered practices and past conditions through the lens of actor-network theory (ANT). In particular we are interested in the viability of ANT as a lens for studying the past and in ways that can be reconciled with feminist thought. We argue that although there is some nonresonance between ANT and feminist theorizing, using ANT in a critically historicist way allows some of the barriers between ANT and feminism to be broken down. We synthesize an approach to study gendered organizational processes that exist in and over time, identifying and surfacing some of the actants (i.e., human and material factors that encourage people to act) that work together within networks to produce gendered effects such as ongoing discriminatory practices. We trace these effects using the history of Air Canada as an exemplar, in the process noting the conceptual and ontological differences between the past and history. Finally, the advantages of a critically historical ANT are discussed as a way to achieve a level of fusion between ANT and feminist thought.

ANYONE ENGAGED in aircraft engineering who has visited the Air Canada maintenance base at Montreal to observe the layout, equipment and operating system will have bound to come away greatly impressed with the facilities and efficiency of the plant. In the writer's opinion it is one of the most advanced airline maintenance bases in the world.

ENCOURAGED by a 1984 increase in operating income compared with the previous 12 months and an 11% increase in passenger and cargo traffic after three consecutive years of decline. Air Canada is currently extending its international markets and now connects major cities in Europe as well as having inaugurated a service to Bombay and Singapore early this year. During May, the airline begins operating Boeing 767 aircraft across the North Atlantic which is also something of a ‘first’ in that it has been certificated by the Canadian MOT to operate this equipment on this route so long as the flight path is planned in order that the aircraft is always within the equivalent of 90 minutes, at single engine cruise speed, from the nearest suitable airport. This is the same guideline under which Air Canada operates the 767 within Canada and the USA and since the beginning of 1984, on overwater routes to the Caribbean.

The study compares the corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions of two sectors of hospitality, tourism and travel (hotels and airlines) by researching what Six Sense hotels (a hotel brand) and Air Canada (an airline company) have been doing in order to respond to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they apply the concept of CSR in their operational activities. The article also considers how these activities align with quality-of-life (QoL) dimensions and contemporary CSR dimensions.

Provides a detailed comparative, case study analysis of the reported CSR practices of companies in different sectors of the hospitality and tourism industry based on competitive strategy; environmental protection; internationalization of CSR; and transparency and accountability. The impact of the varied initiatives on quality of work life (QWL) and QoL is also considered together with implications for the circular economy (CE).

Analysis of the two case study examples suggests that these companies' activities are designed to promote sustainability. The findings also suggest that there is a positive relationship between CSR activities and QoL that the case study companies are aware of this and are doing all they can to sustain this relationship given the benefits it yields.

Uses case study analysis of Six Senses Hotels Resorts & Spas and Air Canada to conduct a comparative analysis of the reported CSR practices of companies in different tourism sectors based on competitive strategy; environmental protection; internationalization of CSR; and transparency and accountability.

This chapter presents a feminist poststructuralist account of the role of men and masculinity in the development of Air Canada, specifically in its early years and the development of the organization’s culture. It is argued that an understanding of the development of gendered practices (i.e., the development of male associated or dominated work) over time can help us to understand and identify how such practices develop, are maintained, and also change.

In recent years, inspired by poststructuralist theory, the study of “sex discrimination” has moved from universalistic to con(textual) analysis. Alvesson and Due Billing (1997), for example, argue for analysis of localized constructions and understandings of masculinity and femininity, and Collinson and Hearn (1994, 1996) argue for a greater understanding of different forms of masculinity and the implications for discrimination. In this chapter, we explore the impact of local cultural rules on the social construction of gendered images in three different airlines—Trans-Canada Airlines (TCA), Pan American Airways (PAA), and the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). This comparative investigation reveals both differences and similarities across the airlines in the workplace practices that result in discriminatory outcomes for females. Using a rules approach (Helms Mills & Mills, 2000), this study explores the dynamic nature of localized, social phenomena that create, maintain, and unsettle gendered practices. It is through such an exploration that we interpret the notion of hegemonic masculinity and attempt to unravel the “truths” of unquestioned, mundane practices.