Organizational Communication Studies and Gendered Organization: A Response to Martin and Collinson

Abstract

chart the obstacles scholars face in developing an integrated body of research on gender and organization. Arguing that the impediments to such an endeavour far outweigh the incentives, they suggest that gender and organization scholars 'strike out' on their own to establish a new, autonomous field of 'gendered organization'. In this essay, we build on Martin and Collinson's case, suggesting one way that striking out could be realized in its positive (venturing forth) rather than negative (baseball) sense.Our response stems from our own positioning as critical-feminist researchers who 'do scholarship' in the US-based field of organizational communication. This field of study is disciplinarily distinct from, but informally related to, such cognate fields as management and organization studies. Although absent from Martin and Collinson's case, organizational communication studies represents an emergent site of scholarship that already wrestles with many of the obstacles to disciplinary development faced by the nascent field of gendered organizations. Given its position in the academic interstices between the more established disciplinary communities that study organization, our field is situated -institutionally, intellectually, and ideologically -to function as an inclusive, integrative site of gender and organization scholarship, across bodies of water and disciplinary boundaries. And yet, despite such a potential, many scholars concerned with gendered organization appear to remain unaware of our field's existence.With this essay, we seek to enhance awareness of organizational communication studies and to further develop the potential of our field to contribute to the study of gender and organization. Acting as ambassadors of sorts, we aim to introduce gender, work and organization scholars to organizational communication research on gender, power, and organization and to demonstrate how that research represents a significant exception to the key patterns I

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“…Such a view assumes that elite sectors utilize language as a means of transformation between infrastructure and surface structure or the underpinning logics of operation and parallel discourses of action (Mumby, 1988). Others in critical organizational studies suggest a consent model (Kondo, 1990) that aims to better understand how and sometimes why those supposedly dominated acquiesce to structures of domination (see Mumby & Ashcraft, 2006). Clair's (1993) definition of hegemony as the moment ''when the leadership of one group dominates another group through the subjugated group's unwitting acquiescence or active participation'' (p. 114) reflects the dual aspects of domination and consensus.…”

A Woman With a Plan: Recognizing Competencies for Ascent to Administration in Higher Education

“…"The concept of a glass ceiling is generally viewed as a set of impediments and/or barriers to career advancement for women and people of color" (Jackson & O'Callaghan, 2009, p. 460). Gender scholars have long argued that gender is not simply a part of organizational life, but fundamental to the ways organizations are built and operated (Acker, 1990;Britton, 2000;Mumby & Ashcraft, 2006). Acker (1990) argues that masculinity anchors the values and expectations of organizations, necessarily positioning women as outsiders within, and higher education is no exception.…”

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“…Broadfoot and Munshi make much of Mumby and Ashcraft's (2006) response to Martin and Collinson's (2002) efforts to articulate a field of gendered organization studies. They cite it as a prime example of the kind of turf defending and territoriality that smacks of insularity and limits efforts to create interdisciplinary dialogues.…”