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1 – 10 of over 2000Jorid Hovden, Elin Kvande and Bente Rasmussen
The paper criticizes current directions in research on women and management. The purpose of this paper is to propose new directions for such research.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper criticizes current directions in research on women and management. The purpose of this paper is to propose new directions for such research.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is conceptual and is based on a review of recent literature on elites and the gendering of elite positions internationally and in the Nordic countries. This literature is discussed using studies of changing power dynamics and the development of welfare state services in a context of globalization.
Findings
The paper argues that one needs to move away from the focus on individual traits and “female management” to study the processes and practices that (re)produce power differences between men and women in the organisations where they take place. Two contextual factors make new directions in research necessary. The first is the knowledge economy changing organisations from bureaucratic towards democratic forms at the level of production and the financialization of the economy centralizing power at corporate level. The second is the challenging of Nordic welfare states by globalization of the economy. The welfare state results in a “democratization of motherhood” that increases women's participation in the economy, but may limit their opportunity to obtain elite positions.
Originality/value
To understand women's exclusion of elite positions, new research should combine multidimensional analyses of gender and power to explore the symbolic connections between masculinity and “big money”.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersections of gender, development and globalization through an investigation of the ways in which a large‐scale, internationally…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersections of gender, development and globalization through an investigation of the ways in which a large‐scale, internationally financed multi‐dam development project, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), impacts gender relations through its physical presence in the highlands of Lesotho, Southern Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
Field research including interviews with men and women impacted by the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) in Lesotho in 1997 and 2000‐2001.
Findings
The paper finds that, by positioning themselves as sex workers for foreign development workers, non‐elite women are able to access development monies indirectly. The devaluation of women's labor on farms and in the household excludes them as legitimate receivers of “development”, reproducing male ownership and patriarchal authority, and ultimately pushing some women into work that is precarious, low wage, risky, and often demeaning.
Research limitations/implications
This research highlights the complicated and contradictory gendered gains and losses in the development context and how they mirror larger globalization processes and their effects on gender inequality. Further research with sex workers is needed.
Originality/value
Feminist inquiries into globalization, particularly those focused on militarization and economic restructuring, have revealed the gendered effects of globalizing processes as they take place in particular locales (military bases, industries, corporations, factories). The ways in which the presence of sites of development creates particular gendered dynamics have been understudied. Incorporating analysis of the presence of large‐scale development projects in local areas offers opportunities to link the investigation of development in a larger context of globalization, and reveals a more nuanced reading of the gendered politics of development.
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This paper aims to, by drawing on two decades of field work on Wall Street, explore the recent evolution in the gendering of Wall Street, as well as the potential effects …
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to, by drawing on two decades of field work on Wall Street, explore the recent evolution in the gendering of Wall Street, as well as the potential effects – including the reproduction of financiers’ power – of that evolution. The 2008 financial crisis was depicted in strikingly gendered terms – with many commentators articulating a divide between masculine, greedy, risk-taking behavior and feminine, conservative, risk-averse approaches for healing the crisis. For a time, academics, journalists and women on Wall Street appeared to be in agreement in identifying women’s feminine styles as uniquely suited to lead – even repair – the economic debacle.
Design/methodology/approach
The article is based on historical research, in-depth interviews and fieldwork with the first generation of Wall Street women from the 1970s up until 2013.
Findings
In this article, it is argued that the preoccupation in feminine styles of leadership in finance primarily reproduces the power of white global financial elites rather than changes the culture of Wall Street or breaks down existent structures of power and inequality.
Research limitations/implications
The research focuses primarily on the ways American global financial elites maintain power, and does not examine the ways in which the power of other international elites working in finance is reproduced in a similar or different manner.
Practical implications
The findings of the article provide practical implications for understanding the gendering of financial policy making and how that gendering maintains or reproduces the economic system.
Social implications
The paper provides an understanding of how the gendered rhertoric of the financial crisis maintains not only the economic power of global financial elites in finance but also their social and cultural power.
Originality/value
The paper is based on original, unique, historical ethnographic research on the first generation of women on Wall Street.
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Jennifer Jones-Morales and Alison M. Konrad
The existence of disadvantaged sub-populations whose talents are under-leveraged is a problem faced by developing and developed countries alike. Life history data revealed that a…
Abstract
Purpose
The existence of disadvantaged sub-populations whose talents are under-leveraged is a problem faced by developing and developed countries alike. Life history data revealed that a large proportion of elite business leaders in the Caribbean emerged from childhood poverty (families subsisting on US$1-2 a day, 40 percent). The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors supporting the career development of elite leaders from a broad socioeconomic spectrum and both genders in order to build a model of career development for elite leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected via in-depth interviews from a deliberately gender-balanced sample of 39 male and 39 female elite business leaders. Thematic analysis identified consistencies across independent interviews and resulted in a model identifying factors supporting pre-career development as key to eventual attainment of elite leadership.
Findings
Findings indicated that in childhood and youth, proactivity plus talent recognition and mentoring by adults enhanced access to early developmental opportunities. Early career mentoring guided talented youth to build personal drive, self-esteem, altruism, and integrity, which created a foundation for developing career capital through values-based action. Altogether, these findings indicate the importance of pre-career relational capital to attainment of elite career success.
Originality/value
Difficult-to-access elite leaders provided rich information emphasizing the importance of pre-career development in childhood and youth to eventual elite leadership attainment. Virtually all of the elites in the sample remember being identified as talented early in life and consider early messages about drive to achieve as well as support received from parents, teachers, and other interested adults to be critical to their success. Hence, a process of talent recognition and encouragement to excel appear to be crucial for connecting young people to important relational capital allowing them to eventually achieve elite status, particularly those individuals hailing from disadvantaged backgrounds.
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The purpose of this paper is to seek the potential of an intersectional methodology to scholars interested in processes of exclusion and subordination in organizations in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to seek the potential of an intersectional methodology to scholars interested in processes of exclusion and subordination in organizations in particular the sport sector. The amateur sport sector in New Zealand is used as a case to address the theme: intersectional practices of organizing and their consequences.
Design/methodology/approach
The conceptual paper brings together strands of interdisciplinary research to model an intersectional framework for future research development. In the paper, the interplay of shifting forms of inequality, inclusion and exclusion that are implicit in processes of elite amateur sport management, are made visible.
Findings
The paper argues for an intersectional framework to understand the complex processes of inclusion, exclusion and subordination in the elite amateur sport sector. Institutionalized change is a process that can have negative or positive consequences; it depends on perceptions of those affected by it. Sport in the wider environment is portrayed as intrinsically a “good” thing, yet the paper argues that sport reflects and reinforces social inequalities. There is a clear need for intersectional analysis of the work-life experiences of unpaid athletes involved in elite sport development processes.
Originality/value
The paper argues for the use of intersectionality as a multi-level methodological approach for scholars to understand the complex processes of inclusion, exclusion and subordination in organizations, including those involved in the delivery of elite amateur sport. The authors anticipate this methodological approach will contribute a valuable insight to understanding institutional power dynamics.
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The purpose of this paper is to offer a new gender- and class-sensitive framework for research on rural women entrepreneurship by focusing on the women’s agricultural cooperatives…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer a new gender- and class-sensitive framework for research on rural women entrepreneurship by focusing on the women’s agricultural cooperatives in Turkey. Although these cooperatives have been promoted as ideal bottom-to-top organizations to integrate women into economy as entrepreneurs, there has been significant decline in their numbers. This paper tackles with this contradictory situation and intends to offer an alternative research framework on the viability of the women’s agricultural cooperatives in Turkey.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is built on a critical assessment of the existing literature. It argues that a framework that brings together macro-, meso- and micro-factors will provide a springboard to unfold the gendered processes integral to rural female entrepreneurship in Turkey. Drawing on intersectional theory, the multilayered factors which operate to rural women’s (dis)advantages through the cooperatives are unfolded as policymaking, policy implementation and everyday experiences.
Findings
For policymakers and implementers, it points out the need for a holistic and integrated understanding of rural female entrepreneurship and for re-formulation of policies at the state level. For rural women, it draws attention to the measures required to be taken at the cooperative level to overcome inequalities.
Originality/value
This paper is original in making explicit social, political and economic embeddedness of female entrepreneurship in rural Turkey.
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Andriana Johnson, Natasha T. Brison, Hailey A. Harris and Katie M. Brown
Guided by self-presentation theory and social role theory, this study examines the different strategies elite female athletes used in personal branding on social media before and…
Abstract
Purpose
Guided by self-presentation theory and social role theory, this study examines the different strategies elite female athletes used in personal branding on social media before and after becoming mothers. Scholars have investigated the authenticity of female athletes’ frontstage versus backstage representation on social media for branding purposes, but this study further expands on existing literature to review how female athletes would present themselves in the same realm once entering motherhood.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a content analysis, researchers evaluated whether there was a shift in three elite female athletes’ (Serena Williams, Allyson Felix and Skylar Diggins Smith) Instagram posts and captions one year before their pregnancy and one year after motherhood. A total of 732 posts were examined and were organized into six main categories: athletic, professional, promotional, personal, motherhood and dual identity.
Findings
Results revealed there was a difference in the self-presentation strategies used by the three female athletes on their social media pages. Specifically, the researchers confirmed the presence of a combined role of athlete and mother.
Originality/value
The findings support existing literature on the importance and the challenges of “balancing” a third identity of blending being both a mother and elite athlete as one. Yet, the findings challenge the previous notion that women cannot continue to perform at an elite level and manage the expectations that society institutes of being a “good mother.”
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This study offers a lens for exploring women leaders’ production of resistance through postfeminist discourses. Through the case study of Bozoma Saint John, a high-profile Black…
Abstract
Purpose
This study offers a lens for exploring women leaders’ production of resistance through postfeminist discourses. Through the case study of Bozoma Saint John, a high-profile Black C-Suite executive, this study examines micro-acts of subversion and considers the extent they can promote feminist thinking in the corporate world and the implications for feminist theorising about women in leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
Interviews with Saint John were collected from YouTube and examined using feminist critical discourse analysis informed by intersectionality, feminist poststructuralism and Foucault’s notion of “reverse discourse”.
Findings
Saint John reproduces elements of the postfeminist confidence discourse to defy stereotypes of Black women, while simultaneously reversing the individualistic conception of confidence in favour of corporate and collective action. This has the potential to facilitate positive change, albeit within the boundaries of the confidence culture.
Research limitations/implications
Combining reverse discourse, intersectionality and feminist poststructuralism with a micro-level analysis of women leaders’ language use can help to capture the ways postfeminist concepts are given new subversive meanings.
Originality/value
Whereas existing studies have focused on how elite women’s promotion of confidence sustains the status quo, this study shifts the research gaze to the resistance realised through rearticulations of confidence, illustrating how women-in-leadership research can advance feminist theorising without vilifying senior women even as they participate in postfeminist logics of success.
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Christina Constantinidis, Typhaine Lebègue, Manal El Abboubi and Noura Salman
Studies on women’s entrepreneurship in Morocco are scarce, despite the potential of women for the country’s economy. This research takes place in a socio-cultural environment…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies on women’s entrepreneurship in Morocco are scarce, despite the potential of women for the country’s economy. This research takes place in a socio-cultural environment searching for a compromise between tradition and modernity. Families occupy a prominent place in Morocco, directly influencing women’s activities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of family in Moroccan women’s entrepreneurial success.
Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative research is based on 60 interviews with women entrepreneurs in Morocco, including women business owners, women professionals and also women co-operators who have not been documented until now, due to data accessibility. It is diversified in terms of personal, family and professional characteristics. The analysis uses an intersectionality framework taking gender and social class into consideration.
Findings
The results highlight three categories of women entrepreneur: the “elite”, the “self-made women” and the “co-operators”. Each category is characterised by specific familial and professional realities, underpinned by differentiated dynamics in terms of gender and social class.
Practical implications
The study, from a practical point of view, contributes to a better understanding of the differentiated realities encountered in terms of women’s entrepreneurship, in the Moroccan context.
Originality/value
Studies in developing countries tend to consider women entrepreneurs as a homogeneous group. This research highlights the fact that family support, women entrepreneurs’ practices and their role in entrepreneurial success depend on the background situations in terms of gender and social class. It also contributes to the entrepreneurial success field, revealing different definitions and perceptions of success among women entrepreneurs.
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Pawan Budhwar, Andy Crane, Annette Davies, Rick Delbridge, Tim Edwards, Mahmoud Ezzamel, Lloyd Harris, Emmanuel Ogbonna and Robyn Thomas
Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce …
Abstract
Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.
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