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This paper aims to suggest a shift in thinking about how to improve gender inclusion in organizations, as well as offering a number of practical action points.

This paper takes a perspective based on the authors’ own ongoing research, as well as synthesis of existing insights into gender inclusion in organizations.

To retain top talent and improve organizational climate, the authors need to re-think how the authors measure the success of organizational inclusion policies. Specifically, the paper suggests moving from numbers and targets to looking at the quality of gender inclusion in the workplace. The paper explains why this shift in thinking is important and how to approach it in practice.

The paper provides strategic insights into and practical thinking about ways in which progressive organizations can continue to improve gender equality.

The paper makes a provocative call for a change of perspective on gender inclusion in organizations based on cutting-edge research and puts forward action points in an accessible format.

This paper aims to challenge the cisnormative and binary assumptions that underpin the management and gender scholarship. Introducing and contextualising the contributions that comprise this special issue, this paper critically reflects on some of the principal developments in management research on trans* and intersex people in the workplace and anticipates what future scholarship in this area might entail.

A critical approach is adopted to interrogate the prevailing cisnormative and binary approach adopted by management and gender scholars.

The key finding is the persistence of cisnormativity and normative gender and sex binarism in academic knowledge production and in society more widely, which appear to have hindered how management and gender scholars have routinely failed to conceptualise and foreground the array of diverse genders and sexes.

This paper foregrounds the workplace experiences of trans* and intersex people, which have been neglected by management researchers. By positioning intersexuality as an important topic of management research, this paper breaks the silence that has enwrapped intersex issues in gender and management scholarship. There are still unanswered questions and issues that demand future research from academics who are interested in addressing cisnormativity in the workplace and problematising the sex and gender binaries that sustain it.

Critical management studies (CMS) has been criticised on a number of fronts, not the least of them being its poor track record of reflecting and challenging its internal mechanisms of hierarchy and exclusion. Acknowledging these issues, this chapter explores the role queer theory can play in developing a queer friendship with CMS, whereby CMS might be able to reflect on its normalising tendencies. This chapter does not claim that queer theory is a silver bullet which can deliver itself or otherwise work miracles for solving the complex problems that beset CMS. Rather, it seeks to fan the queer embers that already exist within CMS to spark queerer futures. Part of this endeavour involves bringing CMS and queer theory closer together, but not so close that the two become comfortable companions. As this chapter suggests, a queer friendship will involve antagonisms and tensions between queer and CMS help each other to refute the normative at every turn and gesture towards something more: queerness. Pursuing this project, this chapter provides a brief review of queer theory before outlining current queer stirrings within CMS. The remainder of the chapter focuses on what we might hope to happen from CMS and queer theory being yoked together in a queer friendship, such as bringing queers to the fore in business schools, queering management conferences and embracing forms of queer negativity that condition more radical conceptions of the future.

The aim of this special issue is to bring together contributions from diverse perspectives interested in challenging the quantitative/qualitative divide within organisation and management research.

The papers in this special issue explore at a methodological or paradigmatic level (rather than at the level of particular research methods) the possible ways in which different research methodologies converge, diverge and overlap. Rather that asking questions about the validity and intrinsic value of certain methodologies, we are encouraged to shift gear towards assessing how useful these methodologies are in terms of carrying us from the world of practice to theory and vice‐versa. If methodologies help us to progress our thinking and our practices, they are “true” in a pragmatist sense. If they stall our thinking and do not influence in any way our practices, then they are probably untrue.

It is hoped that the papers presented in this special issue help us process our ideas and experiences in a progressive way, towards finding better, more robust ways of approaching our research practices.

Of course, it is for the reader to decide if this project has made an impact on their own thinking and practical endeavour but we remain convinced that the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative methodologies is not productive and must be abandoned in favour of a heterodox and more pragmatic approach to methodology.

This paper aims to explore how gay men and lesbians draw upon workplace friendship for developing and sustaining managerial careers and identities.

The study adopts a qualitative design, using data collected from semi‐structured interviews with four lesbians and eight gay men, all employed in managerial roles in the UK.

Data reveal the importance of workplace friendship as a resource for mentoring, climbing managerial career ladders, fitting into existing work cultures and developing gay and lesbian managerial identities. A significant finding is that participants preferred to befriend heterosexual colleagues, to that end complicating previous research that suggests gay and lesbian friendship preferences tend to be marked by similarity in regard to sexual identity. Work friends enable and constrain the development and visibility of gay and lesbian managerial identities and careers.

Although the data are not generalisable, it is of concern that gay men and lesbians continue to be disadvantaged by heteronormative constructions of gender and sexuality. While gender and sexual norms can limit the visibility and embodiment of gay and lesbian managers in the workplace, the study reveals also how gay sexualities can be utilised as a resource for developing influential friendships.

This article provides insights into issues not previously covered or understudied in the organisation studies literature such as the agency of gay men and lesbians in constructing different types of workplace friendships as a resource for developing managerial identities and careers.

This paper is concerned with the quantitative/qualitative divide as a particular feature of recent methodological debate in organization research. While substantively this divide is questionable and problematic, it has figured prominently in the so‐called “paradigm wars”. The purpose of this paper is to relate these controversies to a similar debate in economics and draw out the implications of this comparison for the methodological practice of organization research.

The paper takes the form of a conceptual critique.

The paradigms debate can be interpreted as a twentieth‐century instance of the methodenstreit in nineteenth‐century social science, and is argued to resolve along the faultlines of mainline organizational analysis and its periphery. Further methodological progress in the field requires the abandoning of paradigmatic duality in recognition of methodological plurality as a defining feature of organization research.

Management methodology and economic methodology have largely developed as separate literatures alongside each other, with little cross‐fertilisation. This paper links key issues in management methodology to longstanding debates in economic methodology, thereby making progress towards a shared debate on issues of equal significance to both fields of inquiry.

Critical management studies (CMS), as an unorthodox management perspective, has become more and more accepted in Western business schools. The purpose of this paper is to problematize its circulation area and interrogate to what extent CMS has penetrated Turkish academia.

The paper reviews papers presented and published in The National Management/Organization Conference which has been held annually for the last 19 years. In addition, the paper examines the management programs of the top 20 Turkish universities' business schools, in terms of whether their curricula include any critical content.

It is suggested that CMS has not found resonance in Turkey. This case is argued on a set of dynamics as follows: the Americanization process in knowledge producing, economic integration into American vision, late industrialization, bureaucratic political tradition, statism, and some cultural characteristics.

Studies employing critical management arguments and those on the dissemination of critical theory in Turkey seem to be quite silent. This paper questions CMS's place in Turkish management literature, explains the dynamics of its (under)development, and suggests ways in which CMS could be become more attractive in this part of the world.

The purpose of this paper is to show how research that is approached from multiple perspectives, using multiple methods, can help to illuminate the complex and contested nature of the purpose and practice of apprenticeship schemes in England. The author contends that understanding the various participants involved in the schemes helps to reveal how policy at the macro level is adapted at the micro level to suit different groups. The author argues that the usefulness in such an approach provides a greater understanding of the plurality of interests and needs at play within the scheme, opening up the apprenticeship scheme agenda to allow divergent voices to be heard.

This is a qualitative empirical paper which adopts a multi‐perspective, multi‐method approach.

The paper highlights a number of areas of contention between different stakeholders involved in the apprenticeship scheme that could affect the success of these schemes.

The author's aim is to demonstrate the use of a multi‐perspective, multi‐method approach as a way to generate research which takes into account the different experiences and agenda of stakeholders participating in apprenticeship schemes. It is envisaged that the paper will be of interest to readers interested in research methods and for those conducting research on young workers.