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Professor Ruth Simpson has been a key contributor to the field of gender and organization studies (GOS) over the past 25 years. She has influenced debates on women in management, the gender of management education, masculinity and management and the “doing” of gender in organizational life. In this paper i review our joint work – informed by a poststructuralist feminist perspective – which considers the complex struggles around normativity in relation to management and entrepreneurship.

This review is based on a consideration of four pieces of work completed between 2005 and 2012, including (Simpson and Lewis, 2005, 2007) and (Lewis and Simpson, 2010, 2012).

Drawing on the concepts of voice and visibility, the research examines how the ability to exemplify the norm in relation to management and entrepreneurship must be constantly secured and how processes of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the norm are characterised by relentless agitation and turmoil.

We (Ruth and Patricia) developed the conceptual framework of the (In)visibility vortex as a means of connecting the individual to organizational processes, discourses and cultural norms

This paper aims to recount the author’s personal and professional experiences of working with Professor Ruth Simpson on two interconnected projects: the exploration of meanings that butchers attach to their jobs and the research on the experiences of those involved in such occupations as street cleaning, refuse collection and graffiti removal.

The paper offers a discussion on how the turn to multiple research methods such as ethnography, photo elicitation and collaborative documentary could provide voice to participants and generate richer data sets.

Drawing on Ruth Simpson’s work on how gender is experienced by men in different occupations, the paper highlights how responses to stigma associated with dirty work cannot be understood by attending to just one aspect of difference, as they are formed at the intersection of class, gender, ethnicity and occupation.

The paper provides insights into how manual work can open up meanings integral to an enduring gendered, working class habitus and how exploring one axis of difference (for example, just gender) might fail to address the complexity and ambiguity of the negotiation of many categories that shape identities and experiences of workers in these occupations.

This paper aims to examine how the work of Ruth Simpson and the subsequent collaborations have contributed to understanding of the gendered constructions of meritocracy, as they apply in organizations.

This paper is a personal analysis of the work of Ruth Simpson and her colleagues and the way in which her work has resonated with me and influenced our joint collaborations. The key questions our work has addressed, both when we work together and with others, include how merit is constructed. Is it gendered? How does it influence organizational outcomes? How is merit recognized? Is merit “performed”? Key theoretical constructs and frameworks are used to address these issues; including, gendered organizational structures and regimes (Acker, 1990; Ely and Meyerson, 2000; Gherardi and Poggio, 2001), the gendered nature of meritocracy (Thornton, 2007; Sommerlad, 2012, Brink van den and Benschop, 2012) and the performance and “stickiness” of meritocracy (Ashcraft, 2013, Bergman and Chalkley, 2007).

The paper reveals alternative ways of interrogating the discourse of meritocracy. Usually taken for granted, as an objective and fair mechanism for the allocation of scarce resources, the concept is examined and found to be much more contingent, unstable and subjective than had previously been considered. The gender-based implications of these findings are assessed.

The implications of the work are to broaden the field and develop frameworks within which we can understand more clearly the way in which merit is understood. Through the work we have done, we have highlighted that merit far from being an objective measure of ability is deeply rooted in contextual and we argue, gendered understandings of contribution, worth and desert.

The practical implications are that firms can no longer rely on discourses of meritocracy to evidence their commitment to equality and fairness. They will need to go further to show a direct link between fairness in the design of processes as well as fairness in the outcomes of these processes. Until these objectives are more clearly articulated, we should continue to shine a light on embedded inequalities.

The social implications are that a call for wider societal understanding of meritocracy should be made. Rather than simply accepting discourses of merit, key constituent groups who have not benefitted from the prevailing orthodoxy should seek to examine the concept and draw their own conclusions. In this manner, the author develops societal mechanisms that do not just purport to ensure equality of outcome for all; they achieve it.

This paper offers an examination of the development of ideas, how we can learn from the work of influential scholars within the field and, in turn, through collaboration, advance understanding.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Special Issue developed from a joint research seminar of the Gender in Management and Identity Special Interest Groups of the British Academy of Management, entitled “Exploring the Intersectionality of Gender and Identity”. It also presents an introductory literature review of intersectionality for gender in management and identity/identity work researchers. The authors highlight the similarities and differences of intersectionality and identity approaches and introduce critiques of intersectional research. They then introduce the three papers in this Special Issue.

The authors review the intersectionality literature within and outside management and organisation studies and focus their attention on three intersectionality Special Issues (Sex Roles, 2008, 2013 and the European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2006).

The authors outline the ongoing debates relating to intersectionality research, including a framework and/or theory for identity/identity work, and explore the shared tenets of theories of intersectionality and identity. They highlight critiques of intersectionality research in practice and consider areas for future research for gender in management and identity researchers.

The authors provide an architecture for researchers to explore intersectionality and to consider issues before embarking on intersectional research. They also highlight areas for future research, including social-identities of disability, class and religion.

Gender in Management: An International Journal invited this Special Issue to make a significant contribution to an under-researched area by reviewing the shared and different languages and importantly the shared key tenets, of intersectionality, gender, identity and identity work from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This editorial aims to introduce the special issue on meritocracy, difference and choice.

The first part is a commentary on key issues in the study of the notions of meritocracy, difference and choice. The second part presents the six papers in the special issue.

Five of the six papers in this special issue explore the work experiences of women managers/directors in senior positions within a variety of organizations. All of these papers demonstrate that despite their economic empowerment, these women are still strongly connected to the domestic realm through their continued entanglement in the traditional roles of mother and homemaker. This has led them to interpret their work situation either through a consideration of what they understand by the notion of merit or a presentation of their situation through the lens of choice. A further paper which explores the experiences of sex workers exposes the gendered nature of agency, highlighting the limitations on “choice” that different types of workers experience.

The authors comment on how contemporary notions of merit and choice individualise women's experience within organisations, ignoring the structural and systemic elements inherent to women's continued disadvantage. This allows “blame” for women's absence in the upper echelons of organisations to lie with women themselves, explaining this in terms of their lack of skills or the traditional “choices” they make. The six papers which make up the special issue explore how women's “choices” are constrained, how the contemporary discourses of merit and choice conceal issues of structure and organizational process and how women struggle to make sense of their own and others' experiences.

The issues discussed in the papers have important implications for understanding women's experience of work and organizations. They highlight the need to introduce a structural and systemic element to the understanding of how women experience work at senior (and other) levels of organizations, why they take the decision to leave a senior position and why women appear to “choose” not to seek senior positions.

Gender and Management: An International Journal invited this special issue on meritocracy, difference and choice to draw attention to the ways in which women draw on these discourses as a means of understanding their organizational situations and how use of these discourses acts to conceal the structural and systemic element connected to their work experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to detail how the ethnographic approach can be usefully adopted in the context of researching dirty or undesirable work. Drawing on a study of refuse collectors, it shows how ethnography can enable a fuller social articulation of the experiences and meanings of a social group where conventional narrative disclosure and linguistic expression may be insufficient.

Viewing ethnography as no one particular method, but rather a style of research that is distinguished by its objectives to understand the social meanings and activities of people in a given “field” or setting, this paper highlights aspects of reproductive and “dirty” work which may be hidden or difficult to reveal. Combining the methods of participant observation, photographic representation and interviews, we add to an understanding of dirty work and how it is encountered. We draw on Willis and Trondman's (2002) three distinguishing characteristics namely, recognition of theory, centrality of culture and critical focus to highlight some meanings men give to their work.

By incorporating these issues of theory, culture and reflexivity throughout the research process, this paper highlights how Willis and Trondman's (2002) approach aids the ethnographic objective and is crucial to the understanding of representation and experience.

As such, the value of this paper can be understood in terms of developing a further understanding of dirty work, which incorporates an ethnographic process and interpretation, to achieve “rich data” on the dirty work experience.

This paper sets out to explore the gendered nature of the MBA and the benefits men and women gain from the course. In so doing it aims to highlight a relationship between the masculinity of the MBA and the “un‐development” of men.

The paper draws on secondary data and critiques the masculinity of the MBA pedagogy.

Examining outcomes from the MBA, evidence suggests that while men may achieve greater progress in terms of career development and pay, it is women who are more likely to undergo “transformational” change.

Drawing on work from critical management education (CME) and on models of learning, this paper argues for the need to “feminise” the MBA, where feminisation is used in a critical context to include a challenge to rather than rejection of dominant discourses. This goes some way to address the charge that, while CME has highlighted some of the programme's moral and political foundations, it has failed to recognise the gendered implications of the MBA.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how QROM has become an outlet that gives voice to de-valued and marginalised work/research and those who undertake it. The authors present an overview of the research published in the journal over the past ten years that has provided rich accounts of hidden and marginalised groups and experiences. The authors also summarise the unique contributions of the research covered in the special issue the authors co-edited on doing dirty research using qualitative methodologies: lesson from stigmatized occupations (volume 9, issue 3).

The authors adopt a literature review approach identifying key pieces covered in QROM that surface various forms of qualitative methods employed to illuminate the everyday practices of “Other” occupations, individuals and groups; experiences situated outside of the mainstream and often hidden, devalued and stigmatised as a result.

The authors conclude that the articles published in QROM have demonstrated that in-context understandings are critically important. Such studies offer insights that are both unique and transferable to other settings. A number of invisible or hidden issues come to light in studying marginalised work/ers such as: the hidden texts, ambiguities and ambivalence which mark the experiences of those marginalised; that stigmatised work/research is embodied, emotional and reflexive; and, that expectations of reciprocity and insider-outsider complexities make the research experience rich, but sometimes uncomfortable.

The authors review the research published in QROM over the past ten years that contributes to understandings of work, research and experiences of those who are often de-valued, silenced and marginalised in mainstream business and management studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of gender, sexuality and occupation and to analyse how male cabin crew utilize space in managing gender identity.

The paper draws on a project where interviews were conducted with 17 male cabin crew, all aged < 35 years, from 5 different airlines in airports in the South East of England. The crew worked in a mixture of short-haul, low-cost and long-haul global carriers.

The paper shows how men in a feminized service role negotiate masculine subjectivities within and through space and how gendered meanings attached to space can impress on and both challenge and be challenged by the performances and subjectivities of individuals within them.

The findings on which the paper is based surface the diverse challenges facing men in non-traditional roles – an area that would profit from further research in different contexts. Further, the findings have implications for work-based practices and employee relations within a paraprofessional service role.

The paper adds to the understanding of how gender and identity intersect as well as to how space, seen as both gendered and gendering, is implicated in the processes involved.