Gender and the modern organization, ten years after

Abstract

This empirical article presents a gender analysis of long-term impacts of some of the many organizational change projects in Swedish industrial work organizations during the 1990s. Based on the results of return visits to three industrial companies and their change projects (implementation of Lean Production or other modern organizational models) that I studied more than a decade earlier, I discuss how the work organizations eventually had changed and specifically how and whether organizational internal gender patterns had changed. The initial study showed genderbased restoring responses to strategic organizational changes, especially in the gender-segregated and gender-homogeneous work organizations. These responses conserved gender patterns as well as the organizations’ culture in general, resulting in less productive work as well as a problematic work environment. The follow-up study showed that the organizations slowly changed according to the modern organizational models (e.g., Lean Production), but at the same time, in some cases, keeping the same gender segregation and stereotypical gender markings of skills and work tasks or with new variants of unequal gender order. In addition, the follow-up study showed other and more positive results with emerging pattern of gender equality, at least in the form of reduced gender segregation and less stereotypical ideas concerning gender. The material indicates that the studied companies, in some aspects, developed into less gendered production organizations while taking some steps toward a modern organization and this was done without gender equality interventions. Therefore, the material indicated that, at least in part, gender equality could be seen as a prerequisite or perhaps even a side effect of modern organizational concepts. This article contributes to the emerging literature on an organizational theory of undoing gender as well as to the research of conditions and consequences of the modern organizational models.

Gendered Potentials and Delimitations in the Church of Sweden’s Social Innovation

“…Even if fundamental gendered differences and borders persist on a general level in the Church organization, this serves to highlight the simultaneous persistency and transformability of norms that condition socially innovative practices of welfare and diaconia (cf. Abrahamsson, 2014;Acker, 1999;Ahmed, 2012).…”

“…Alsos et al, 2013;Andersson et al, 2012;Lindberg & Schiffbänker, 2013;Pettersson, 2007). This is complemented by approaches from previous research on social change in organizations and society, exposing that, when organizational and societal policies are challenged and revised in order to be more inclusive, the excluding borders upheld by policies both in text and practice might be less fitting for alternative approaches than anticipated (Abrahamsson, 2014;Acker, 1999;Ahmed, 2012). The tiresome work of strategic organizational and societal efforts against exclusion is acknowledged by Ahmed (2012) as an enforcement of inclusion by various diversity approaches.…”

“…In the light of previous research on social change in organizations and society, such social innovation processes within the Church imply challenging prevalent organizational and societal policies and may thus be hampered by the excluding borders upheld by such policies (cf. Abrahamsson, 2014;Acker, 1999;Ahmed, 2012;Eurich & Langer, 2016).…”

“…Lindberg et al, 2015), and social change in organizations and societies (cf. Abrahamsson, 2014;Acker, 1999;Ahmed, 2012;Wyller, 2014).…”

Hållbart utvecklingsarbete i vård och omsorg : Ett institutionellt perspektiv på projekt i en professionell och byråkratisk kontext

“…(2005) påpekar att hållbarhet till stor del beror på faktorer som inte kan kontrolleras. Det kan exemplifieras med en studie av Abrahamsson (2014) som visar att projekt som var misslyckade på kort sikt fick oväntade effekter, omvärderades och framstod som mer framgångsrika tio år senare. Flera författare menar att det nästan alltid finns en skillnad mellan det avsedda och det faktiska utfallet (McMillan & Carlisle, 2007;Stacey, 1993) och de mest betydelsefulla förändringarna från ett projekt kan mycket väl vara oförutsedda bieffekter .…”