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Drawing on Bourdieu's conceptualisation of physical capital, this article explores the experiences of male and female employees in non-traditional occupations where body work is an integral part of the role. Specifically, the authors examine how being an underrepresented gender in this context impacts the experience of work, including challenges faced and perceptions for future opportunities in the role.

The research is based on two in-depth case studies undertaken in the social care and security/door work sector. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with male social care workers and female security workers in the night-time hospitality sector. Management representatives were also interviewed in each case. The interviews examined how the nature of the work in these roles impacted on the underrepresented gender's perceptions of various aspects of their working lives.

The findings illustrate how many of the challenges associated with non-traditional occupations are experienced differently in body work roles, either being amplified or instead presenting opportunities for the role holder with implications for the day-to-day and longer-term experience of work. The findings illustrate how the actions and behaviour of management and colleagues can exacerbate the extent to which underrepresented gender feel accepted within their role and organisation.

Organisational decision makers need to be aware of the importance of reviewing practices regarding hiring, promotion and the allocation of tasks and duties for non-traditional role holders engaged in body work.

The article contributes to understandings of “body work” and physical capital in non-traditional occupations, illustrating how gender-based assumptions can restrict individuals in these roles to a greater extent than in other forms of work where the body is salient to the performance of the role.

Summarizes the basic principles of Bioenergetics along with its origin in Riechian psychology. Clarifies that Bioenergetics is used at Cranfield not as psychotherapy, but as an aid to personal development for a specific population of high‐functioning individuals, i.e. managers. Places the Bioenergetic body‐mind notion into a philosophical context of human goodness and potential; thus expanding the focus to body‐mind‐spirit. Examines five body‐mind types through the following aspects: how they operate at work; how they were formed; key attitudes; unique gifts; body shape; development path; how they are best managed. Case histories illustrating the different types in various modes of consultant intervention, i.e. individual development, team building and culture change.

Drawing upon notions of agency and the body, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of agency as a gendered concept through a consideration of women sex‐workers. Specifically, the paper analyses how far women sex‐workers may be regarded as social agents. It then considers how far notions of agency, in relation to sex‐workers' embodied boundaries, may be gendered.

The paper reviews existing literature on sex‐workers and sex‐work practices, looking at indoor sex‐work (massage parlours), outdoor sex‐work (street sex‐work) and trafficking. It considers these types of sex‐work in relation to agency, gender and the body.

The paper acknowledges the diversity of women's experience within different aspects of the sex trade. The paper recognizes claims that treating sex‐workers as “victims” could further jeopardize their social position. However, the paper finds that the “options” available to sex‐workers are severely constrained. Specifically, the lack of capacity among sex‐workers to set embodied “rules of engagement” with clients makes the notion of agency problematic. The paper contends that “agency” is itself a gendered concept not only in relation to sex‐work, but also in the context of women's work more broadly.

Through the idea of agency as a gendered concept, the paper offers alternative ways of exploring agency, the body and women's work.

The paper puts forward the notion of agency as a gendered concept. This opens up possibilities for further research on women's “choices”, and who “makes the rules” within different labour markets.

Women's bodies are abject and ‘out of place’ in organisations where (self and other) disciplining of women's bodies serve to regulate and silence women. Yet we know little about how expectations of body and appearance play out in the career decisions and everyday practices of women academic leaders. In this chapter reflexive accounts are used to explore if dress and appearance expectations have implications for women's career development and advancement, specifically in the context of business schools. The literature review and two reflexive autoethnographic accounts provided, illuminate how, through dress and appearance, the pervasiveness of hegemonic masculinity is both sustained and challenged and the potential impacts of this upon women's careers in academia.

This paper aims to study the embodied nature of service employees’ work in human touch contexts.

The paper adopts the practice theory as its interpretive approach, using focus group interviews with service employees from different industries.

The study identifies four practice bundles related to the embodied dimension of service employees’ work: orienting, attuning, connecting and wrapping up. The findings illustrate how employees’ knowledge, skills and capabilities are used via the body.

The study provides guidance for managers to use an embodied perspective in the management of service employees.

This study contributes to the discussion on embodiment in service encounters by highlighting the embodied nature of service employees’ work.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the role of the body in the vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) processes of classical musicians.

Using grounded theory, the paper analyzed semi-structured interviews with 48 musicians (27 children; 21 parents) to understand how classical musicians’ bodies intermediate the meaning of work. The Aristotelian concepts of potentiality and actuality frame this study.

The paper reveals that: “tuning” bodies is as important as tuning instruments (body as object of work), and diseases, occupational injuries, and accidents pose challenges to both health and performance (body as obstacle).

Theoretically, the paper contributes the notion that phases of VAS are fused not just through cognitive and relational processes, but also through embodied learning for classical musicians.

At the practical level, the paper reminds that the body is an important source of vocational socialization information.

The paper is filling a gap in organizational literature, which has under addressed the materiality of the body.

The purpose of this paper is to compare public health discourses on the importance of motherhood with organizational attitudes towards childbearing. It shows how pregnancy and the nurturing of infant children are valorized within public health discourses, which treat pregnancy and new maternity as a miraculous “project”, encouraging mothers to position maternity as central to their lives. By contrast, the paper shows how employers treat pregnancy and new motherhood as inconvenient and messy: as monstrous, at work.

The paper draws upon a database of qualitative netnographic (or internet-based) research. It analyses netnographic interactions between pregnant and newly maternal women. These virtual data are afforded the same validity as face-to-face research.

The paper demonstrates how maternal responsibilities for nurturing pregnancy and infant children, and the bio-medical properties of the maternal body, are central to public health discourses. By contrast, the maternal body is treated within organizations as alien, or monstrous.

The paper compares and contrasts public health valorizations of motherhood, with organizational tendencies to treat pregnancy/newly maternal bodies as monstrous. It highlights dichotomies faced by employed mothers. A continuing chasm between the social organization of maternity, and the attitudes of employers towards children and maternal bodies, is identified.

The prevalence of body art is on the rise; particularly among college age persons. This study aims to use group norms theory (GNT) and the justification‐suppression model of the expression of prejudice to examine the impact of body art such as tattoos and piercings on ratings of acceptability by co‐workers.

In a full‐factorial two‐by‐two scenario‐based experiment the authors manipulated the presence or absence of face‐to‐face customer contact and the interdependency of the distribution of rewards.

After controlling for participants' own tattoos and piercings, impression management, openness‐to‐experience, and agreeableness, the authors have found that an inside sales job and independent rewards are significantly positively related to acceptability but that their interaction was not.

The limitations of this study include the fact that it is a scenario‐based experiment using a fictitious co‐worker and that the sample is comprised of college students. However, manipulating body art in a live confederate would likely to have been impossible and college students are in the age group in which body art is most prevalent, making them logical candidates on which to examine the hypotheses.

Even those with body art themselves still prefer not to work with body art (non‐concealable) wearers in jobs with high levels of face‐to‐face customer contact or in jobs in which rewards are shared equally like team‐based sales.

An experimental design is used so as to manipulate only those characteristics of the work relationship hypothesized to be of interest, while controlling for extraneous variables like attractiveness and personality in the co‐worker, which vary greatly from person to person.

This paper aims to draw on Ashcraft’s (2013) metaphor of the “glass slipper” (which highlights the need for alignment between occupational identity and embodied social identities of workers) to show how merit may not adhere to individuals when social identity in the form of gender, race or class fails to fit the definition and perceived characteristics of the job.

This is a conceptual paper.

This study develops the notion of the Teflon effect to describe the way merit may go unrecognised and may therefore not “stick” to the bodies of women in management and leadership roles.

This study provides an explanation for the persistence of the glass ceiling and the barriers women face as they undertake or aspire to management and/or leadership positions in organisations.

This study introduces a more embodied notion of merit which relies on both performance and recognition to “take effect”. Professionals must see beyond “objective” measures of merit in performance reviews and/or in recruitment and promotion decisions to include reflection on the significance of merit’s subjective, “performed” dimensions.

This study adds to understandings of women’s positioning in organisations.

This study develops the notion of the Teflon effect. This highlights the significance of the recognition, performance and embodiment of merit and how merit may fail to adhere to the bodies of women in management and leadership roles.