This article suggests new possibilities for queer theory in management and organization studies (MOS). MOS has tended to use queer theory as a conceptual resource for studying the workplace experience of 'minorities' such as gay men, lesbians and those identifying as bisexual or transgender (LGBT), often focusing on how heteronormativity shapes the discursive constitution of sexualities and genders coded asLGBT. But this deployment is crucial and apposite but it can limit the analytical reach of queer theory, ignoring other objects of analysis such as heterosexuality. Potentially, MOS queer theory scholarship could be vulnerable to criticism about ignoring queer theory as a productive site for acknowledging heterosexuality's coercive aspects but also its non-normative forms. As such, the principal contribution of this article is twofold. First, it proposes a queering of queer theory in MOS, whereby scholars are alert to and question the potential normativities that MOS queer theory research can produce, opening up a space for exploring how heterosexuality can be queered. Second, we show how queering heterosexuality can be another site where queer theory and politics can come together in the MOS field through a shared attempt to rupture sexual and gender binaries, and challenge normative social relations. This article concludes by outlining the political implications of queering heterosexuality for generating modes of organizing in which heterosexuality can be experienced as non-normative and how it might rupture and dismantle heteronormativity.
Even in organization studies scholarship that treats gender as performative and fluid, a certain ‘crystallization’ of gender identities as somehow unproblematic and stable may occur because of our methodological decision‐making, and especially our categorization of participants. Mobilizing queer theory — and Judith Butler's work on the heterosexual matrix and performativity in particular — as a conceptual lens, we examine this crystallization, suggesting it is based on two implicit assumptions: that gender is a cultural mark over a passive biological body, or is a base identity ‘layered over’ by other identities (class, race, age etc.). Following Butler, we argue that in order to foreground the fluidity and uncertainty of gender categories in our scholarship, it is necessary to understand gender identity as a process of doing and undoing gender that is located very precisely in time and space. Given this perspective on gender identities as complex processes of identification, non‐identification and performativity, we offer some pointers on how the methodological decision‐making underpinning empirical research on gender, work and organization could and should begin from this premise.
The post-re/productive: researching the menopause Purpose: In reflecting on our experiences of bidding for, winning, completing and disseminating a government-funded report on the effects of menopause transition on women's economic participation, we consider the impact on our work and on us. These experiences took place in a variety of work contexts.Design/methodology/approach: Following the publication of the report, we undertook collective, autoethnographic memory work that forms the empirical body of our argument. This is presented in thirteen vignettes. Findings:From the earliest days of the menopause transition project, we found ourselves continually traversing the supposed public-private divide in our work contexts. Our experiences speak to broader social issues around gendered ageism in these contexts.Research Implications: The paper analyses the challenges of researching what is a universal experience for women yet also a taboo subject. It discusses the relevant implications for and possible effects on researchers who investigate such topics in organisation and work studies and elsewhere. Originality/value: Menopause experiences as they connect to work are under-researched per se. Our paper extends knowledge of how this research area is not only shaped by researchers but has an impact on those researchers.
Sexuality is nothing if not complicated-but that is no excuse for ignoring it. (Burrell, 1984: 113) Gibson Burrell's 'Sex and organizational analysis', published in Organization Studies in 1984, represented an extremely important contribution to the development of critical management and organization studies. It was based on the application of insights from various disciplinary fields such as sociology, philosophy and social history to the study of sexuality in work organizations. Thirty years on, while sexuality remains a relatively marginal topic in mainstream organization studies, a substantial body of ideas has emerged in more critical quarters representing a flourishing dialogue that, in the spirit of Burrell's earlier contribution, has stretched across disciplinary boundaries. In recent years, this sub-field has been inspired and influenced particularly by the impact of feminist theory and post-structuralism, as well as insights from queer theory and post-colonialism.Alongside these important theoretical developments, lived experiences of sexuality within organizations have changed considerably during the last three decades. As consumers and workers our lives are shaped by the ubiquity of organizations and by the centrality of sexuality to our lives; 'we live, in short, in a sexualized world ' (Hawkes, 2002: 1). With the economies of most contemporary market societies being supported by thriving sex industries and sexualized modes of commercial exchange, sexuality has arguably never been so controlled, commodified and commercialized. An ever-expanding range of goods and services are provided and consumed
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