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Genderwashing is an organizational phenomenon in which claims to gender equity remain superficial because organizational efforts toward gender equity are unsuccessful at creating substantive change. I introduce the concept of encounter as a useful framework in extending our understandings of the ways that genderwashing might occur within workplaces. Drawing on “encounters” as fundamentally informal, everyday interactions, I explore the ways in which these seemingly trivial social interactions make significant contributions to the quality of workplace relationships. Using the manager–employee relationship and performance review process as a basis, I show how paying attention to “small talk” is not trivial, but rather has a significant impact on the performance review process, and functions as an important site for the reproduction of or challenge to existing gender inequities. I also suggest that the consideration of “encounters” offers practical insights that can help identify additional behaviors that result in significant movement toward gender equity.

Drawing on interviews with two types of essential workers – wound clinicians and care workers – the chapter examines stigma management in dirty care work through the lens of emotion management. The study combines two dimensions of dirty work: physical taint in relation to bodywork and social taint linked to working in close proximity to socially stigmatized clients. Hence, stigma management extends to dealing with the physically and socially dirty features of essential care work. In addition, the authors’ assessment of social stigma includes how essential care workers also sought to alleviate the social stigma encountered by their clients. In so doing, the authors extend the literature on dirty work to identify how emotion management skills are central to the stigma management strategies of the essential care workers in this study. The authors demonstrate how both groups deal with their stigma by emphasizing the emotion management skills in ‘doing’ dirty work and in the ‘purpose’ of this work, which includes acknowledging how the authors attempt to address the social taint encountered by their clients. Additionally, by comparing two occupations with different contexts and conditions of work, the authors show how complex emotion management skills are gendered in care work to expand the understanding of gender and stigma management. Furthermore, these emotion management skills emanate from the deep relational work with clients rather than through occupational communities. The authors argue that by focussing on emotion management, the hidden skills of dirty work in gendered care work are illuminated and contribute to contemporary debates about whether stigma can be overcome.

Organizations are affected top-down by the overarching societies and bottom-up by foundational face-to-face encounters: societies provide norms, values, laws, institutions, beliefs, markets, political structures, and knowledge bases. What happens within organizations is done by people interacting with other people, arguing, discussing, convincing each other when preparing and making decisions. Organizations operate within social environments that leave their – however indirect – imprint on what is going on within organizations. This article argues that organizational sociology can benefit from an integrated theoretical framework that accounts for the embeddedness of organizations within the micro- and macro-levels of social order. The argument is developed in two main points: First, this article introduces the multilevel framework provided by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to demonstrate how organizations are shaped by the functionally differentiated macro-structure of society. Organizations follow and reproduce the operational logics of societal domains such as the political system, the economy, science, law, religion, etc. Second, this paper demonstrates how organizations are shaped by micro-level dynamics of face-to-face interactions. Face-to-face encounters form a social reality of its own kind that restricts and resists the formalization of organizational processes. Here, this article draws on Erving Goffman’s and Randall Collins’ work on interaction rituals, emotions, and solidarity, which is inspired by Durkheimian micro-sociology. At the end, this article brings together all the elements into one general account of organizations within the context of their macro- and micro-structural social environments. This account can yield a deeper and more sociological understanding of organizational behavior.

Past research has shown that wellness culture projects identities that are predominantly middle-class, white, thin, able-bodied women. Wellness cultures are amplified through digital media, namely highly visual social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, that promote a feminine ideal that women can (and should) achieve through rigorous commitment and investment. However, discourses surrounding wellness culture are a cause for concern when consumption, choice, and responsibility are positioned as a mode to constantly improve oneself until an idealised appearance is achieved.

In this chapter, the author explores the experiences of five Asian-Australian women aged 18–35 living in Australia as they navigate ideals of femininity. The author draws on perspectives from feminist new materialism to understand the material-discursive practices that form norms and ideals of the female body. Findings are presented in the form of vignettes to help trace affective encounters with objects, digital media, discourses, and other bodies that produce different affective relations as they seek to understand Asian-Australian femininity. The author argues that digital media and wellness culture prompt individual understanding and practices to adhere to transnational ideals of the feminine body rather than dismantling social and cultural norms that limit individual choice, an issue that has thus far received limited scholarly attention for Asian-Australians. This chapter builds on previous studies that position wellness culture within an established white female neoliberal rhetoric.

Mexico is a nation that attracts significant volumes of international tourists annually. The country possesses abundant natural and cultural assets, with significant opportunities for its tourism sector. Its geographical positioning, favourable weather, and the hospitality of its inhabitants enhance these prospects. Simultaneously, this country exhibits a heightened susceptibility to natural calamities and a dearth of public safety measures. The Mexican tourism industry encounters significant challenges within the framework of the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) model. These challenges include the inherent natural risks associated with the country, the escalating impact of global warming, and the proliferation of organised crime. Within this context, the management of tourist destinations in Mexico neglects significant factors highlighted in theoretical models associated with competitiveness and sustainability. These factors include public security, crisis and disaster management, political will, load capacity, and destination’s image. The predicament encountered by Mexican tour operators is formidable, as the socio-political circumstances in Mexico facilitate the expansion of organised crime, leading to its infiltration into various sectors and regions of the country, with significant impacts on tourist operations. This chapter analyses the effects of organised crime on Mexico’s tourism industry, utilising the VUCA framework as a conceptual lens.

In line with global initiatives, the state of Kerala in southern India is actively working towards formalizing its informal solid waste management (SWM) sector. Despite this, there is a dearth of studies on formalization processes, particularly focusing on the conditions of workers within this sector. This study addresses the gap by examining the challenges faced by women workers operating within the formalized framework of Kerala’s SWM sector. It aimed to investigate challenges faced by grassroots women workers in Kerala’s SWM sector during its transition from informal to formal, identifying gaps in the process through their experiences. Using a qualitative methodology, the research gathered data from 10 women workers in the SWM sector in Kozhikode, Kerala, who were part of the Haritha Karma Sena (green task force). Thematic analysis of in-depth interviews revealed two major challenges faced by these women. Firstly, there was a negative societal perception towards them, and secondly, there was a lack of appropriate state response to their needs and requirements. These challenges were attributed to gaps and pitfalls in the formalization process, leading to a lowered socio-economic status for the women, increased vulnerability to health hazards, and societal stigma. The findings underscore the need for significant improvements in the formalization process of Kerala’s waste management sector. The study advocates for targeted policy interventions to enhance the working conditions of SWM workers, emphasizing the importance of expediting and streamlining the formalization process. This, in turn, would contribute to the overall effectiveness of the SWM system in the state.

This part of the book emphasises gender-related concerns in the construction industry as well as career knowledge from a gender perspective. The construction sector has always been seen as a field dominated by men due to its hard-working conditions, large equipment and ingrained gender conventions. However, as cultural perceptions change and diversity is valued more, women's contributions to the construction industry are becoming more widely acknowledged. By examining the difficulties women encounter, the chances for their empowerment and the revolutionary effects of gender diversity in the sector, this introduction seeks to shed light on the role of women in construction.

This chapter presents three Chinese teachers' narrative accounts about how they live in dilemmatic spaces due to excessive entitlement. Still, the teachers move forward with transformative agency. The thick description of the three teacher participants has been reported elsewhere as the narratives of Lee – a math teacher, Ping – a Chinese language teacher and Wang – a school principal. In this chapter, however, ‘excessive teacher entitlement’ is used as a new lens to assist me in revisiting their stories of living in dilemmatic spaces. Narrative inquiry as a method unpacks the three teachers' life experiences. Although Lee, Ping and Wang encounter different entitlements and various dilemmas, their transformative agency in transitioning from a survival mode to thriving human beings brings out the similarities in their experiences. Using Vygotskian philosophy and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this chapter focuses on the teachers' transformative agency as breaking away from given boundaries in their professional lives and taking up initiatives that confront the tacit excessive entitlement in and around them. Furthermore, transformative agency is promising in that it helps develop new practices in teacher education. Finally, the new understanding emanating by viewing the three subjects' experiences from the angle of excessive entitlement has the potential to inspire teachers in other contexts to become conscious of manifestations of excessive entitlement not only in themselves or others they interact with but also in the macro context we live in. This consciousness also increases the likelihood of the urge to find ways to ameliorate excessive entitlement and to move closer to one's cherished professional values.