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This paper focuses on visual representation of women leaders and how women leaders’ bodies and sexualities are rendered visible in particular ways.

The arguments are based on a reading of the Danish television drama series, Borgen. The authors interpret the meaning of this text and consider what audiences might gain from watching it.

The analysis of Borgen highlights the role of popular culture in resisting patriarchal values and enabling women to reclaim leadership.

The metaphor of the spectacle enables explanation of the representation of women leaders in popular culture as passive, fetishised objects of the masculine gaze. These pervasive representational practices place considerable pressure on women leaders to manage their bodies and sexualities in particular ways. However, popular culture also provides alternative representations of women leaders as embodied and agentic. The notion of the metapicture offers a means of destabilising confining notions of female leadership within popular culture and opening up alternatives.

In Australia, interest in women in organisations has been overtaken by a focus on “managing diversity”. The first part of this paper describes this trend and the accompanying diversity discourse before reviewing the arguments for and against subsuming women as one category within a diversity framework. The second part draws on three examples to explore how working within a managing diversity brief allows and advances analyses of gender. The paper concludes by arguing the possibilities of working critically with diversity, including being reflective about one’s purposes and using the power that diversity offers for, hopefully, transformational ends.

A survey of MBA graduates of the University of Melbourne suggests the need to re‐examine myths about MBAs ‐ who they are, why they undertake an MBA, what sort of careers they pursue and what capabilities they need. In improving the quality of management education, effort needs to be directed to matching programmes to a better understanding of the management school′s customers ‐existing students, the future profession, the business and wider communities – and to expanding the “management consciousness” of potential students, particularly those under‐represented in management schools such as women and ethnic minorities.

Outlines the discrepancies between men and women in senior management positions. Acknowledges the recent trend of an increase in women in this area but highlights that this is only in selected areas. Considers the place of the MBA in career advancement suggesting that mainly men’s careers benefit from this qualification. Questions whether the structure of the course favours the male gender. Shows that women’s pay is still substantially lower and looks at reasons for this difference.

The purpose of this special issue is to extend the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC)-funded UK seminar series–Challenging Gendered Media (Mis)Representations of Women Professionals and Leaders; and to highlight research into the gendered media constructions of women managers and leaders and outline effective methods and methodologies into diverse media.

Gendered analysis of television, autobiographies (of Sheryl Sandberg, Karren Brady, Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard), broadcast news media and media press through critical discourse analysis, thematic analysis, metaphor and computer-aided text analysis software following the format of the Gender Media Monitoring Project (2015) and [critical] ecological framework for advancing social change.

The papers surface the gendered nature of media constructions of women managers and leaders and offer methods and methodologies for others to follow to interrogate gendered media. Further, the papers discuss – how women’s leadership is glamourized, fetishized and sexualized; the embodiment of leadership for women; how popular culture can subvert the dominant gaze; how women use agency and how powerful gendered norms shape perceptions, discourses and norms and how these are resisted, repudiated and represented.

The papers focus upon how the media constructs women managers and leaders and offer implications of how media influences and is influenced by practice. There are recommendations provided as to how the media could itself be organized differently to reflect diverse audiences, and what can be done to challenge gendered media.

Challenging gendered media representations of women managers and leaders is critical to social justice and equality for women in management and leadership.

This is an invited Special Issue comprising inaugural collection of research through which we get to “see” women and leaders and the gendered media gaze and to learn from research into popular culture through analysis of television, autobiographies and media press.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the following questions: who needs gender? Can there possibly be any intelligence left to share? What is the role of gender researchers in 2010 and in the twenty‐first century?

This reflective piece considers these issues against the author's own personal experience as Gender in Management's Regional Editor: Australasia, as the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner in the New Zealand, as an occasional gender researcher, and as a woman.

Gender in Management has, and continues to act, as a catalyst for authentic, lived collegiality among its networks.

The paper offers insights into some of the big questions which spill out from commemorating 25 years of publication for Gender in Management, previously Women in Management Review.

Over the past decade managing diversity has emerged as a popular topic for analysis. However, much of the discussion concerning diversity has tended to focus on gender and race. Only limited attention has been centred on disabled people as a minority group in the workplace. One of the biggest challenges faced by disabled people is in obtaining and maintaining employment, particularly for those individuals with a vision impairment. The purpose of this research is to explore some of the issues faced by vision impaired people in the workplace in Australia. It outlines how, with certain accommodations to the workplace, vision impaired employees can be just as capable and efficient as their sighted counterparts. The major barrier still faced by disabled workers is overcoming the negative attitudes and misconceptions of colleagues and employers.

This article focuses on the leadership development of young adults. The topic is of significant importance as leadership identity tends to form early in life, and its long-term implications contribute to leadership formation. The objective of this study was to gain insights into how leadership is constructed in young adults and how it is manifested in their preferred leadership identity.

This research was approached from a constructivist perspective, utilizing discourse analysis. The authors conducted a study involving 24 written essays by young individuals with a business background, in which they shared their early leadership experiences. Drawing upon a modified life story interview structure, the authors meticulously analyzed the content.

The authors identified eight discourses clustered into two groups according to the types of leadership orientation: toward oneself and toward others. The discourses in the toward oneself group consist of leadership as taking responsibility, leadership as courage, manifesting personal strengths and as a role/status. The toward others group includes discourses approaching leadership as balancing directivity, coordinating and organizing work, personalized approach and as performance management.

The major methodological limitations stem from the qualitative design per se. The findings based on qualitative data have limits in generalizing.

The authors' findings have practical implications for educators. The authors propose the utilization of critical self-reflection on early leadership experiences and self-narration as effective tools in nurturing and developing young leaders.

This paper underscores the importance of educating young leaders, as they can create a positive impact on their subordinates and society as a whole. By providing them with leadership skills, the authors initiate a chain reaction of influence that extends through different levels of leadership, leading to significant social change.

The authors' originality and contribution to the literature on leadership development lies in showcasing the diversity of perspectives on leadership among participants sharing a similar background and developmental stage. This holds valuable implications for educators working with this cohort.

Examines popular theories of learning in organizations to highlight their limitations for reform and change. Divides learning approaches into four general strategies ‐ organizational learning, learning organization, learning environment, and “learning space”. Examines how issues of power, diversity, indeterminacy and hierarchy are treated in each approach and the extent to which multi‐vocal strategies of learning are engendered. These issues have been central to concerns raised in the literature about organizational control. However, much of what is popularly promoted as prescriptions for learning in organizations ‐ on dimensions such as teamwork, leadership, and culture ‐ have significant elements in which there is little evidence of reflection on issues of control. Gives particular attention to Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, which has become the blueprint for many organizational learning projects and other learning approaches. Also gives attention to a popular account of learning, an address by the CEO of the Australian telecommunications firm, Telstra. The analysis provides a basis for raising questions about popular learning strategies and underlines the need for managers to reflect on the complex, contextualized, and contentious nature of learning and its macro‐level constraints and its micro‐level impacts.

The purpose of this paper is to share reflective insights on three key questions of concern to critical diversity scholars: what influences play a part in framing a research project and the research questions, what determines the chosen methodology and what knowledge contributions do we want our research to make?

The paper, drawing on organisational ethnography, incorporates key fieldwork experiences to provide reflective insights on an innovative research project design conducted in multiple organisation sites.

The paper highlights the author’s learning from the conceptualisation of an innovative research project to the actual “doing” of what was proposed. It reflects on the unforeseen dilemmas that required continual adaptations be made because of the shifting demands of the research settings.

The paper is important as it provides the sharing of ideas into the influences that shaped a major piece of externally funded research and highlights a range of practical considerations if planning a critical diversity research project where negotiating access to organisations is required.

By reflecting on some important learning and insights into the crafting of an innovative research project and the challenges of enacting what was proposed, the paper is of value to post-doctoral and early career scholars and/or researchers interested in some insights into operationalising an organisational ethnographic methodology.