Gay Male Academics in UK Business and Management Schools: Negotiating Heteronormativities in Everyday Work Life

Abstract

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.

Towards a Performative Theory of Resistance: Senior Managers and Revolting Subject(ivitie)s

“…Butler's work provides insights into workplace power and subjection (Hodgson, 2005), and, notably, helps challenge organizational ontologies (Ozturk & Rumens, 2014) such as leadership (Harding, Lee, Ford & Learmonth, 2011) and business schools' construction of organizational 'realities' (Parker, 2001). Ontological assumptions about work and management more broadly are also exposed (Cabantous, Gond, Harding & Learmonth, 2015;.…”

Diversity and inclusion for LGBT workers: Current issues and new horizons for research

“…As Ozturk and Rumens (2014) showed in the UK, business schools and management departments can be intensely heteronormative institutions. As Ozturk and Rumens (2014) showed in the UK, business schools and management departments can be intensely heteronormative institutions.…”

Towards Queering the Business School: A Research Agenda for Advancing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Perspectives and Issues

“…However, these avenues of future research share an affinity with other organizational research that makes a plea for developing scholarship that questions the heteronormativity of the business school (Fotaki, 2011;Giddings and Pringle, 2011;Ozturk and Rumens, 2014;Parker, 2002). In so doing I am compelled by my experiences and those of others to sound a cautionary note about not underestimating the difficulty of pursuing such a research agenda.…”

“…Indeed, one gay male academic in Ozturk and Rumens (2014) Viable, visible gay identities within business school contexts were those which adhered to heterosexual norms, occasioning discursive opportunities for gay men to identify as 'normal' in terms of respectability and conformity, with queer positioned as its Other.…”

“…Yet research has shown that the construction and organization of gay male sexualities within business school work contexts may be tolerated and even accepted, only when they align with and strengthen the dominance of heteronormativity (Ozturk and Rumens, 2014). Yet research has shown that the construction and organization of gay male sexualities within business school work contexts may be tolerated and even accepted, only when they align with and strengthen the dominance of heteronormativity (Ozturk and Rumens, 2014).…”