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This article presents the findings of a participative action research project into how arts-based inquiry can revitalise equality and diversity organisational practices. We demonstrate that the arts-based methodologies introduced enabled participants to explore the meanings they brought to equality and diversity work, by creating a liminal space for learning. We illustrate our findings through an exploration of how participants engaged with the inquiry, the learning about equality and diversity that took place in the workshops and the challenges and opportunities of translating this into change practice in the workplace. The article's originality lies in its analysis of poetic writings, dreams and visual artefacts created in the context of participative inquiry. Engaging with tacit knowledge extended understanding of the contribution that arts-based, aesthetic inquiry can bring to organisational practice, and more specifically towards restoring the transformative potential of organisational practices to promote equality and diversity.

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This article intends to open a discussion of what it might mean to lead gender equality mainstreaming in the context of significant changes in equality legislation and in the governance of the public services. The research data are drawn from two sources: a research workshop with public service managers in the south-west of England and interviews with equality advisors in five English local government organizations. The analysis contributes to a growing stream of feminist and critical leadership research that is concerned with the gendered, relational and interpretive practices of leading. It also contributes to research into forms of leadership that are emerging in the context of changes in the public services in the UK and more widely in the European Union. Leadership of gender mainstreaming is conceptualized in its gendered, relational and interpretive qualities.

This paper revisits Jewson and Mason's seminal theoretical framework on liberal and radical approaches to equal opportunity policy and practice by applying it to our research on the implementation of the Gender Equality Duty in UK local government. Conducted at the height of Thatcherism, Jewson and Mason's research offers a useful platform for assessing equality initiatives in local government during periods of political hostility to equality underpinned by cuts to public services, which in more recent time is ascribed to austerity. Drawing on qualitative research in five case study local authorities, this paper assesses strategies for protecting and promoting gender equality practices and policies in the face of change within public services. We analyse three types of politics of equality (political philosophy, organizational politics and party politics) that feature in Jewson and Mason's analysis. In line with recent feminist research, our data indicate that equality specialists continue to use both liberal and radical discourses in instrumental ways to promote equality and resist change as described by Jewson and Mason, but these were more clearly framed within business case arguments influenced by the modernization agenda of the 1990s. Our data indicate that even business case arguments have been unable to protect equality initiatives from the 2010 coalition government's austerity and cuts agenda.

Drawing on theories of responsive and reflexive legislation and gender mainstreaming, this article examines the implementation of the gender equality duty and the Single Status Agreement in five English local authorities between 2008 and 2010. Both of these initiatives coincided with the global financial crisis. The data highlights how organizational restructuring following budget cuts resulted in the separation of these two important initiatives between equality and human resource management teams, preventing the duty from reaching the high expectations of the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Women and Work Commission. The reliance on equal pay legislation and the failure to use the gender equality duty missed an opportunity to move away from adversarial forms of legislation and towards more responsive forms of regulation of pay equality.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to introduce the practices and findings of a visual inquiry developed by the co-authors with students in a Business School in the south west of England. The authors are interested in how students engaged with the visual as a practice of inquiry and how this contributed to their development of a critical approach to the concept of ethics in business organisations. Design/methodology/approach -Students visited an exhibition shown as part of the 100 days countdown to the COP15 UN climate change conference, and constructed visual representation of questions and dilemmas related to ethical business practice. The analysis focuses on student presentations, and the discussions that these provoked on the relationship between "business" and "ethical practice". Findings -Doing co-inquiry with visual images enabled many students to engage more proactively with ethical dilemmas; to attend to deeply felt values that they were not accustomed to bring into the rule bound environment of the classroom; to develop critical readings of the visual as a discourse about business organisations and their claims to ethical practice; and to create their own visual representations of ethical dilemmas within business practice. Originality/value -The research methodology brings together inquiry-based learning and visual inquiry in the context of undergraduate learning in a business school. The paper considers the significance of the methodology and findings as a contribution to visual inquiry methodology and practice, and as a medium for enabling students in a business school to develop their ethical sensibility.

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