This article is a study of professional identity work, using in-depth interview material from research conducted into the work lives of 10 gay men employed in a UK National Health Service Trust. Using the men's portraits of professional life, we examine the different ways they understand what it means to be a `professional'. The article suggests that while gay men appear to be empowered by forms of agency to self-identify as professionals in `gay-friendly' work contexts, they are by no means unaffected by dominant professional norms and discourses of heteronormativity that treat sexuality and professionalism as polar opposites. Thus how straightforward it might be for the interviewees to self-identify as `professional' and openly gay within an organization that is perceived to be `gay-friendly' is scrutinized in terms of the professional identity dilemmas experienced by the study participants. We conclude that, even within `gayfriendly' organizational settings, fashioning a professional identity is a process marked by negotiation and struggle.

This paper is based on a series of 'anti-narrative' interviews with self-identifiedLGBT people designed to explore the ways in which lived experiences of age, gender and sexuality are negotiated and narrated within organizations in later life. It draws on Judith Butler's performative ontology of gender, particularly her account of the ways in which the desire for recognition is shaped by heteronormativity, considering its implications for how we study ageing and organizations. In doing so, the paper develops a critique of the impact of heteronormative life course expectations on the negotiation of viable subjectivity within organizational settings. Focusing on the ways in which 'chrononormativity' shapes the lived experiences of ageing within organizations, at the same time as constituting an organizing process in itself, the paper draws on Butler's concept of 'un/doing' in its analysis of the simultaneously affirming and negating organizational experiences of older LGBT people. The paper concludes by emphasizing the theoretical potential of a performative ontology of ageing, gender and sexuality for organization studies, as well as the methodological insights to be derived from an 'anti-narrative' approach to organizational research.

This article explores the methodological possibilities that Judith Butler's theory of performativity opens up for organizational research. Specifically, it draws on insights fromButler's critique of subjective recognition as a process of perpetual 'undoing' through which the complexity of lived experience is compromised in the performance of a seemingly coherent, recognizable subjectivity. Drawing on an interview-based study focusing on workplace experiences of gender, ageing and LGBT sexualities, the article considers what it means to undertake organizational research premised upon a performative ontology grounded in a critique of the normative conditions governing organizational recognition. Specifically, it asks: What form might a Butler-inspired methodology take? What opportunities might it open up or difficulties might it pose for organizational researchers? The article outlines and evaluates a method described here as 'anti-narrative interviewing'. We argue that this method constitutes a valuable methodological resource for organization studies researchers with an interest in studying how and why idealized organizational subjectivities are formed and sustained, as well as a way of empirically advancing the in-roads that Butler's writing has made into the study of human relations at work.

This paper contributes to a neglected topic area about lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people's employment experiences in UK business and management schools. Drawing on queer theory to problematize essentialist notions of sexuality, we explore how gay male academics negotiate and challenge discourses of heteronormativity within different work contexts. Using in-depth interview data, the paper shows that gay male academics are continually constrained by heteronormativity in constructing viable subject positions as 'normal', often having to reproduce heteronormative values that squeeze opportunities for generating non-heteronormative 'queer' sexualities, identities and selves. Constructing a presence as an openly gay academic can invoke another binary through which identities are (re)constructed: as either 'gay' (a cleaned up version of gay male sexuality that sustains a heteronormative moral order) or 'queer' (cast as radical, disruptive and sexually promiscuous). Data also reveal how gay men challenge organizational heteronormativities through teaching and research activities, producing reverse discourses and creating alternative knowledge/power regimes, despite institutional barriers and risks of perpetuating heteronormative binaries and constructs. Study findings call for pedagogical and research practices that 'queer' (rupture, destabilize, disrupt) management knowledge and the heterosexual/homosexual binary, enabling non-heteronormative voices, perspectives, identities and ways of relating to emerge in queer(er) business and management schools.

No abstract