The current literature yields contrasting diagnoses of the diversity problem in the professions: (a) a dominant ‘absence’ view, which explains the exclusion of certain people as a lack to be rectified and (b) an alternative ‘presence’ view, which explains exclusion as a consequence of tacit inclusion. Although the latter challenges the former by exposing the historical interdependence of exclusion and inclusion, it fails to illuminate a path towards contemporary inclusion. This article develops a third, dialectical, view, which theorizes the inclusivity‐exclusivity relation as a contemporary crisis of representation managed through occupational branding. The proposed stance mediates between the optimism of the absence view and the scepticism of the presence view by placing historical formations in undetermined tension with contemporary exigencies. By analysing how specific inclusivity‐exclusivity tensions are confronted through strategic interventions in the marketplace of occupational identity, the dialectical view stands to generate novel possibilities for social change.

This paper investigates the relationship between the body and leadership through a case study of a transgender leader. The study shows that the leader's body, presumed gender, and gendered appearance are salient markers that employees use to make sense of leaders and leadership, and that this gendered nature of leadership shows the deep roots of gender dichotomies and the heterosexual matrix that permeate our understanding of leadership. These two findings lead us to emphasize the need to queer leadership. All leaders experience gendered restrictions, to some extent, via the social norms and expectations of the way leadership should be performed. The construction of leadership through a transgender body reminds us to stay open to the exploration of performativity, particularly the relationships between bodies, gender, sexuality, and leadership and how any body can benefit from queering leadership.

Many studies have shown that female managers have to work harder than men to gain recognition, and that this often leads top female managers away from the leadership style characterized by soft skills and emotional understanding. Instead, another characterization can be seen; that of tough gendered machines fighting their way to the top -cyborgs. This article uses Haraway's metaphor of the cyborg to explore the way in which a top female manger tries to fight for gender equality by employing masculine strategies with a female body. However, contrary to the usual argument that women become masculinized leaders, the article argues for a reading in which female leadership becomes both excessively masculine and excessively feminine, challenging simplified readings of gendered leadership. In the case-study, this leads to a situation where high-performance behaviour from a top female leader in effect ends up reinforcing gender inequality.

This study investigates the lived experience of one transwoman, Claire, a public advocate and a manager with client services responsibilities. We examine Claire's story in order to discuss how situated contexts, such as different roles, locales and interactions, shape the way she experiences and perceives her trans body and gender identity. In particular, our analysis centres on how Claire's lived experience of personal and professional life shift across three different situated contexts, each enabling and constraining opportunities for political transgression. Our findings contribute to existing conversations within queer theory, transgender and organization studies by highlighting how situated contexts mediate the political potential of queer bodies at work. By developing the concept ‘situated transgressiveness’, this article challenges notions of transgender as a stable, ideal disruptive category and advances a more contextually sensitive approach to understanding the contingency of transgender lives and politics. Such insights are important in facilitating more nuanced understandings of the situatedness of transgression and transgender bodies within work and professional settings.

ethics of practice, giving account, limits of responsibility, responsiveness, subjectification,

Due to the fact that immigration in Denmark is a more recent phenomenon, diversity management has had a much shorter history in politics as well as in business, and has not yet been institutionalized to the same degree as in for example North America, from where the concept originates. When crossing the Atlantic, the concept of diversity management merged with Danish universal welfare logics that offer a particular view on equality as sameness together with solidarity through corporate social responsibility. Drawing on 94 employee narratives about difference in a Danish workplace renowned for its diversity work, this article argues that a translation of the original American concept has taken place that turns diversity management into an ambiguous corporate activity when practised through Danish welfare logics. Paradoxically, corporate practices of social responsibility aimed at fostering equal opportunities obstruct successful labour-market integration, as differences are assimilated and marginalized rather than valued and respected. Economic redistribution is thus at the cost of recognition of difference imbued in the business case of diversity. In this article we explore how difference can be reintroduced into the Danish welfare logics to balance the simultaneous need for redistribution and recognition of difference, which goes through aligning diversity management with critical scholarship by means of a norm-critical approach.

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Despite abundant scholarship addressed to gender equity in leadership, much leadership literature remains invested in gender binaries. Metaphors of leadership are especially dependent on gender oppositions, and this article treats the scholarly practice of coding leadership through gendered metaphor as a consequential practice of leadership unto itself. Drawing on queer theory, the article develops a mode of analysis, called ‘promiscuous coding’, conducive to disrupting the gender divisions that currently anchor most leadership metaphors. Promiscuous coding can assist leadership scholars by translating the vague promise of queering leadership into a tangible method distinguished by specific habits. The article formulates this analytical practice out of empirical provocations encountered by the authors: namely, a striking mismatch between their experiences in military fields and the dominant metaphor of leading as military command. Ultimately, the article seeks to move scholarly practices of leadership toward queer performativity, in the hopes of loosening other leadership practices from a binary grip and pointing toward new relational possibilities.