The networking practices of women managers in an emerging economy setting: negotiating institutional and social barriers

Women managers face institutional and social barriers throughout their careers. In this research, we use networking and symbolic interactionism theories to explain how they network while negotiating these impediments in an emerging economy setting. Focus‐group data revealed three themes. The women in our study, as predicted by networking theory, use networks to bolster career outcomes, although some also use non‐influential networks or network ineffectively. Next, symbolic interactionism explains how expectations of, and personal reflections on, networking lead to a lack of confidence and feelings of guilt that can be career limiting. However, when women understand that their unique networking approach can be powerful, they gain social capital that enhances their leadership. Last, patriarchal cultures of emerging economy settings support stereotypical gender roles, leaving women conflicted between competition and mutual support, thus redefining the so‐called Queen Bee phenomenon. We conclude by showing how women can use networking to enhance career and personal development.     

MANAGEMENT, MASCULINITY AND MANIPULATION: FROM PATERNALISM TO CORPORATE STRATEGY IN FINANCIAL SERVICES IN BRITAIN*

This article is concerned to demonstrate that paternalism and strategic management as forms, styles or ‘techniques’of managing people and organizations, are both constitutive of and embedded in what we term a ‘discourse of masculinism’. Within the context of the UK financial services industry, we examine how this discourse reflects and reproduces management practices, and reconstitutes individuals in accordance with masculinist priorities. This has the effect of privileging men vis-a-vis women, serves to rank some men above others, and maintains as dominant certain forms and practices of masculinity. We identify two of these as ‘paternalistic masculinity’and ‘competitive masculinity’respectively, regarding them as concrete manifestations of the interplay between historically shifting forms of management and masculinities in operation.     

Gender fluidity across the world: a Multilevel Item Response Theory approach

The concept of gender identity refers to the intrinsic self-identification of personal femaleness and maleness. Starting from 1970s, in the framework of gender studies, a theoretical and conceptual demarcation between sex and gender has been proposed. The term “gender” starts being referred to social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female. Recent studies on gender identity suggest that the binary notion of gender identity is changing, recognizing that there are different views on how gender may be performed or experienced. The purpose of our research is to provide accounts of gender code transformation around the world and identify differences in feelings, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors associated with gender across different identity profiles. Using a web-based survey, 1,600 respondents were recruited by a snowball sampling procedure. Based on the intersections of the responses given by participants on three basic dimensions (biological sex, gender self-identification and sexual orientation) the individuals have been categorized into nine groups. To comply with the aims of this study, a two-parameter Multilevel Item Response Theory model has been employed as an appropriate statistical tool for considering both person and item effects on the response data and assessing the effect of group membership on the overall variability.     

Networks,homogeneity and gender in Icelandic business elites

This paper examines business elites in the context of social networks, identity and residential homogeneity. Our focus is gender diversity in business elites and how social activities conducive to networking interact with residential homogeneity. We find that the greater the involvement of top managers in local social activities, the greater the residential homogeneity. This relationship is stronger for women than for men, even though the individual measures are similar for both genders. We suggest that local social activities may foster a shared identity that is especially important for women, as they lack a shared gender identity with men in the group. The paper adds to both theoretical and practical knowledge on the lack diversity in business elites.     

Networks and linkages among firms and organizations in the Ottawa-region technology cluster

This paper reports on a study of the networking and linkage practices of technology and non-technology firms within the Ottawa cluster. The work seeks to understand how and why particular patterns of networks and linkages evolve and it examines empirically the usage and value of networks and linkages. Previous work argues that technology firms need to be relatively more adept at developing external relationships in order to be successful than do non-technology based companies. This work, however, finds that technology firms exhibit fewer linkages than non-technology based companies do within the Ottawa cluster. The research suggests that the vitality of the Ottawa cluster could be further enhanced through the promotion of additional networking and linkages among regional firms. A key implication for management practice is that CEOs of technology-based firms should work towards establishing and maintaining additional valued relationships.     

Gender, emotion and power in work relationships

We offer a theoretical account of how gender and emotion combine to influence the development of power in work relationships. We document the profound impact gender has on the display, perception and evaluation of emotion in the workplace. We illustrate the reciprocal relationship between emotion and power, and identify cycles of powerlessness that prevent women from developing and leveraging power in their work relationships. By exploring the nexus of gender, emotion and power in work relationships, we offer new insights into how the gendering of emotion creates and perpetuates gender differences in power in organizations. Implications for research and practice are offered.     

High reliability Human Resource Management (HRM): A system for high risk workplaces

High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) research is based on the search for the most suitable bundle of complementary practices appropriate for the organisation and its operating environment. We examine the contents of a HPWS in organisations seeking impeccable safety and reliability as their foremost ‘performance’ outcome. We propose a ‘High Reliability HRM’ framework, and examine the degree of implementation in a three case study of Australian state emergency services organisations. The findings highlight HRM practices inconsistent with the framework, and illustrated by rich interview accounts, we detail associated negative implications for employee behaviour and attitudes. We contribute to HPWS research by empirically examining how reliability-seeking organisations conceptualise and implement HRM systems. This study emphasises how inconsistency in HRM practice bundles can pose a threat to reliable service provision, a critical finding for emergency services and reliability-seeking organisations more broadly.     

The Site of Diversalizing: The Accomplishment of Inclusion in Intergenerational Dance

In this study, we aim to revisit theorizing on inclusion by turning to practice theory. Challenging the individualist ontological assumption of most diversity and inclusion studies, we follow a practice-based theory of diversity to understand how an inclusive social order is accomplished. Our empirical case centres on the real-time practicing of a dance production where diversity was central to its production process as well as final performance. Using a research strategy of connected situationalism, we uncover and document three practices: mixing, inverting and affirming, that are recursively intertwined into a nexus, producing inclusion. We advance the inclusion literature by proposing the notion ‘a site of diversalizing’ that processually captures the accomplishment of multiplicity through practices and their associations in time and space, highlighting the necessity to understand ‘practice’ as the entanglement of bodily, discursive and material components, and approaching context as comprised of mutually constituting relations instead of micro/macro levels.     

Governing through Teamwork: Reconstituting Subjectivity in a Call Centre*

ABSTRACT This article focuses on teamworking as a form of governmentality whereby management seeks to govern by distance. This involves mobilizing the support and commitment of employees to teamworking and organizational goals by appealing to their autonomy, unity, sociability and desire for a more enriched work experience. It is the struggle over subjectivity that is of concern here, for teamworking can be seen as a technology that aims to transform individuals into subjects that secure their sense of meaning and significance through working as a team. We will explore through a case study of a call centre in a large building society how a discourse of teamworking has begun to impinge upon individuals so as to shape not only how they behave but also how they think, derive meaning and understand the world. In turn, we consider some of the tensions and inconsistencies of teamworking in relation to the secrecy of pay differentials, and the return to productivity pressures after a period of relaxation and trust. Ultimately the article examines how individuals respond to, agonize over, resist and baulk against the imposition of ‘team lives’ when this rubs up against what they understand to be their ‘private lives’. This will involve considering gender tensions that have so far been largely neglected in relation to call centres and teamworking. Teamworking, we will argue, reflects a will to govern rather than a mechanism of government.     

Network embeddedness in the internationalization of biotechnology entrepreneurs

This study investigates how entrepreneurs of biotech enterprises embed in domestic and international networks so as to internationalize. We advance a contextual framework of embeddedness of internationalizing entrepreneurs, providing a contribution (i) by synthesizing and applying existing conceptual insights from the networking literature to provide a more culturally sensitive view of getting embedded for international entrepreneurship in the biotech industry and (ii) by adding insights into the practices and (micro)processes of how and in what ways embeddedness integrates with the internationalization of biotech entrepreneurs. Our study involves six entrepreneurs from Canada, Finland, and New Zealand. Context-specific embeddedness was studied by exploring the (i) type, (ii) strength, (iii) locality, and (iv) importance of the international and national network ties among internationalizing entrepreneurs. We found differences in relation to the locality of universities and research institutes, role and type of financiers, and customer focus in internationalization. For instance, while customers were central to the embeddedness of Canadian and New Zealand entrepreneurs, Finnish entrepreneurs had no focus on their customers, but acted solely through sales channels and partners. The customer focus of New Zealand entrepreneurs was mainly international, whereas it was domestic in the case of Canadian entrepreneurs.     

Social bricolage in the aftermath of war

ABSTRACT

While social bricolage has emerged as a key theoretical frame for understanding how social entrepreneurs mobilize and deploy resources to create social value under situations of resource scarcity, there is scant knowledge about social bricolage in post-conflict settings characterised by extreme resource paucity and adversity. Drawing on field research in post-conflict northern Uganda, we show how groups of disenfranchised young people use social bricolage to create social change in a volatile situation marked by extreme resource deprivation and a plethora of challenges arising in the aftermath of war. Based on empirical data, we outline three key practices of social bricolage employed to cope with resource scarcity, extended crisis and volatility. First, we unravel the practice of securing resources and creating social value by mobilizing peers. Second, we show how pluriactivity is used to stretch and make the most of scarce resources in a shifting environment. Third, we illuminate the practice of rekindling pre-war cultural resources to reunite fragmented communities. By illuminating these practices and showing how the context of the post-conflict developing country setting influences the dynamics of ‘making do with resources at hand’, we seek to extend social bricolage theory.     

What's New in New Forms of Organizing? On the Construction of Gender in Project‐Based Work

abstract    In several industries, projects are now the normal form of work for individuals. The consequences of project work have not so far been subject to critical inquiry, however. This implies inquiry not only on how people handle project work at work, it also means inquiring into how they live their lives when working by projects. In this paper, we study this from a constructionist gender perspective, in which project work is seen as an ongoing construction of patterns of femininity and masculinity in society. The aim of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of how project work is related to the ongoing construction of femininity and masculinity in the work and lives of human beings.
From a narrative study of individuals in the same project team in an IT-consultancy company, we discuss masculinization and femininization in project-based work. It appears that current project work practices imply reproduction of masculinities such as rationality, efficiency, control, devotion to work etc, while femininization is instead found in the rhetoric of the organizational context and the expectations on newly recruited women. The organization was in the process of femininization through rhetoric on 'family friendliness', but everyday life for consultants was not spent at the organization but in project teams in the customers' offices. Projects are special in the sense that they are clearly delimited episodes of work in which it is possible to apply entirely different norms than 'outside' the project – which makes the tendency to reproduce traditional masculinities even stronger.     

Next Generation External Venturing Practices in Family Owned Businesses

Drawing on an Entrepreneurship as Practice (EaP) approach, this article examines how next generation members in family owned businesses (FOBs) engage in external venturing. Our study builds on longitudinal qualitative research in two Mexican FOBs where the next generation launched ten ventures. It reveals five different practices of external venturing used by next generation family members: ‘obtaining family approval’, ‘bypassing family’, ‘family venture mimicking’, ‘jockeying in family’, and ‘jockeying around family’. The five practices are combined into three routes for external venturing: ‘imitating the family business’, ‘splitting the family business’, and ‘surpassing the family business’. Building on notions from Michel de Certeau’s practice theory, this study contributes to theorizing the five practices as ways of operating and the routes as modes of sensing to better understand how next generation family members deal with settings featured by dominant orders within the family and the FOB in their attempts to originate and launch their new ventures.     

Socialization of people with disabilities in the workplace

Socialization has crucial outcomes for both the employee and the employer. Through an exploratory qualitative study conducted in India, we examined how people with disabilities (PWD) viewed various aspects of their socialization process. Specifically, we looked at the role of coworkers, supervisors, organizational practices, and employee proactive behaviors in influencing organizational integration. We found that integration was most influenced by coworkers and supervisors. Organizational practices and employee proactive behaviors were less important. Respondent gender and tenure also influenced certain findings. Specifically, PWD with less tenure sought and accepted more help from coworkers and supervisors. Further, more men with disabilities than women with disabilities indicated that they were proactive in terms of obtaining training to make themselves employable, and more men with disabilities indicated that having coworkers with a disability helped them during socialization. We discuss both theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions based on our findings. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

‘Embrace the masculine; attenuate the feminine’ – gender,identity work and entrepreneurial legitimation in the nascent context

This article critically analyses how gender bias impacts upon women’s efforts to legitimate nascent ventures. Given the importance of founder identity as a proxy for entrepreneurial legitimacy at nascency, we explore the identity work women undertake when seeking to claim legitimacy for their emerging ventures in a prevailing context of masculinity. In so doing, we challenge taken for granted norms pertaining to legitimacy and question the basis upon which that knowledge is claimed. In effect, debates regarding entrepreneurial legitimacy are presented as gender neutral yet, entrepreneurship is a gender biased activity. Thus, we argue it is essential to recognize how gendered assumptions impinge upon the quest for legitimacy. To illustrate our analysis, we use retrospective and real time empirical evidence evaluating legitimating strategies as they unfold, our findings reveal tensions between feminine identities such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ and those of the prototypical entrepreneur. This dissonance prompted women to undertake specific forms of identity work to bridge the gap between femininity, legitimacy and entrepreneurship. We conclude by arguing that the pursuit of entrepreneurial legitimacy during nascency is a gendered process which disadvantages women and has the potential to negatively impact upon the future prospects of their fledgling ventures.     

The effects of age and family constraints on gender hiring discrimination: A field experiment in the French financial sector

Using correspondence testing, we investigate whether age and family constraints have an effect on the gender gap in access to job interviews. We sent job applications from three pairs of candidates to the same job advertisements in the French financial sector between January and March 2002, focusing on low-skilled administrative or commercial jobs and high-skilled administrative or commercial jobs. Within each pair, the applicants' characteristics were similar except for gender. We compare the gender gap in access to job interviews for single and childless applicants aged 25 and 37. We find significant hiring discrimination against women aged 25 applying for high-skilled administrative jobs. Young men are preferred to young women when employers offer long-term contracts. Among single and childless applicants aged 37, we find no significant hiring discrimination against women. We then compare the gender job-access gap for applicants aged 37 who are single and childless or married with three children. We do not find significant hiring discrimination against female applicants aged 37.     

Individualization and Marketization of Responsibility for Gender Equality: The Case of Female Managers in China

This article investigates the question of where the responsibility for promoting gender equality resides in the Chinese employment context. Utilizing Acker's (2006) inequality regimes framework, the study explores women's underrepresentation in management roles in China and explains the persistence of gender inequalities in managerial echelons of Chinese organizations. Based on 30 interviews with female managers, the findings demonstrate the marketization and individualization of gender equality in organizational activity. The existing gender inequality, and the lack of responsibility for tackling it, has been either legitimized by eluding to the commercial‐only focus of organizations or rendered invisible through a belief in individual choice as the determining factor of career progression for women. Gender inequality in management is also maintained through the compliance of female managers themselves with the presumed legitimacy of gender‐based differential access to managerial roles. References to culture and tradition, market forces, competitive pressures, and individual choices by female managers are often made in explaining the unequal career paths and outcomes for men and women in their organizations. Our findings contribute to the human resource management (HRM) literature by framing macrosocietal context as a dynamic and endogenous aspect of management of human resources in organizations and provide novel insights into the interplay between HRM and societal context. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Entrepreneurship and mutuality: social capital in processes and practices

Social capital, which offers the broader theoretical construct to which networks and networking relate, is now recognized as an important influence in entrepreneurship. Broadly understood as resources embedded in networks and accessed through social connections, research has mainly focused on measuring structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of the concept. While useful, these measurements tell us little about how social capital, as a relational artefact and connecting mechanism, actually works in practice. As a social phenomenon which exists between individuals and contextualized through social networks and groups, we draw upon established social theory to offer an enhanced practical understanding of social capital – what it does and how it operates. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Robert Putnam, we contribute to understanding entrepreneurship as a socially situated and influenced practice. From this perspective, our unit of analysis is the context within which entrepreneurs are embedded. We explored the situated narratives and practices of a group of 15 entrepreneurs from ‘Inisgrianan’, a small town in the northwest of Ireland. We adopted a qualitative approach, utilizing an interpretive naturalistic philosophy. Findings show how social capital can enable, and how the mutuality of shared interests allows, encourages and engages entrepreneurs in sharing entrepreneurial expertise.     

Managing equal opportunities for women: sorting the friends from the foes

Employees working in Hong Kong were surveyed on their attitudes towards managing equal opportunities for women. Results indicate that gender is a better predictor of attitudes than work identity. Manager/employee work identity has an add‐on moderating effect on some women‐friendly policies but not on others. Out of seven women‐friendly dimensions, women as managers are less receptive of only two: 'training and development' and 'positive equal opportunities'; men as managers, in contrast, are less resistant to 'training and development' and 'flexitime'. The findings suggest that there are three levels of gatekeeping: one, male employees; two, male managers; and three, female managers. We suggest that to help women employees break the glass ceiling, different organisational and societal change programmes are needed to target the different groups of gatekeepers.     

A Clash Of Subcultures? Questioning Queer–Muslim Antagonisms in the Neoliberal City

This article explores the framing of conflicts over public space as they unfold in a climate of neoliberal urban transformation in contemporary Germany. Examining how the alleged concerns of a ‘queer community’ have been pitted against the alleged moral agenda of Muslim immigrants in the country, examples of conflicts over ‘queer’ public leisure spaces in Berlin will give insights into how different cultural minority positions are mobilized against each other in the context of both urban and national citizenship debates that are marked by a neoliberal re‐evaluation of diversities and inequalities.