The Discourse of Management and the Management of Discourse

Discourse is a pervasive tool of management; one might even say that discourse is what managers do. A widespread assumption among managers is that discourse is not only a pervasive tool, but an effective one for precise communication of information, for making decisions, and for enlisting action, essentially a transmission tool. This paper maintains that the transmission view is a limited conception of language use, one which leads to a faulty conception of what managers do. It ignores the need for an ethics of communication and misjudges the creative aspects of language use. Management discourse is a far more complex and fluid phenomenon, one requiring not just effective use, but management itself. In other words consideration of the discourse of management leads us to the need for the management of discourse.

Positioning the Destination Product-Can Regional Tourist Boards Learn from Private Sector Practice?

This article examines the role of positioning in the marketing of a tourism destination. The study focuses on the current positioning strategies pursued by the Regional Tourist Boards (RTBs) in England. A recent nationwide consumer research study into short holiday destination choice in the UK revealed that consumers were confused by the regional product message. The evidence suggests that current RTB positioning strategies are failing to keep pace with the constantly evolving needs of the consumer. This article explores the reasons for clearly positioning the destination product and suggests that, although RTBs could learn from marketing strategies employed in other sectors of the tourism industry, there are likely to be organisational and cultural barriers inhibiting this learning curve

Masculinity at work: The experiences of men in female dominated occupations

This paper presents the findings of a research project on the implications of men's non-traditional career choices for their experiences within the organization and for gender identity. The research is based on 40 in-depth interviews with male workers from four occupational groups: librarian-ship, cabin crew, nurses and primary school teachers. Results suggest a typology of male workers in female dominated occupations: seekers (who actively seek the career), finders (who find the occupation in the process of making general career decisions) and settlers (who settle into the career after periods of time in mainly male dominated occupations). Men benefit from their minority status through assumptions of enhanced leadership (the assumed authority effect), by being given differential treatment (the special consideration effect) and being associated with a more careerist attitude to work (the career effect). At the same time, they feel comfortable working with women (the zone of comfort effect). Despite this comfort, men adopt a variety of strategies to re-establish a masculinity that has been undermined by the 'feminine' nature of their work. These include re-labeling, status enhancement and distancing from the feminine. The dynamics of maintaining and reproducing masculinities within the non-traditional work setting are discussed in the light of recent theorising around gender, masculinity and work

'Mine's a Pint of Bitter': Performativity, gender, class and representations of authenticity in real-ale tourism

Leisure choices are expressive of individual agency around the maintenance of taste, boundaries, identity and community. This research paper is part of a wider project designed to assess the social and cultural value of real ale to tourism in the north of England. This paper explores the performativity of real-ale tourism and debates about belonging in northern English real-ale communities. The research combines an ethnographic case study of a real-ale festival with semi-structured interviews with organisers and volunteers, northern English real-ale brewers and real-ale tourists visiting the festival. It is argued that real-ale tourism, despite its origins in the logic of capitalism, becomes a space where people can perform Habermasian, communicative leisure, and despite the contradictions of preferring some capitalist industries over others on the basis of their perceived smaller size and older age, real-ale fans demonstrate agency in their performativity

Learning masculinities in a Japanese high school rugby club

This paper draws on research conducted on a Tokyo high school rugby club to explore diversity in the masculinities formed through membership in the club. Based on the premise that particular forms of masculinity are expressed and learnt through ways of playing (game style) and the attendant regimes of training, it examines the expression and learning of masculinities at three analytic levels. It identifies a hegemonic, culture-specific form of masculinity operating in Japanese high school rugby, a class-influenced variation of it at the institutional level of the school and, by further tightening its analytic focus, further variation at an individual level. In doing so this paper highlights the ways in which diversity in the masculinities constructed through contact sports can be obfuscated by a reductionist view of there being only one, universal hegemonic patterns of masculinity

Work restructuring and changing craft identity: the Tale of the Disaffected Weavers (or what happens when the rug is pulled from under your feet)

This article explores the changes in worker identity that can occur during manufacturing restructuring – specifically those linked to the declining status of craft work – through an in-depth case study of Weaveco, a UK carpet manufacturer. An analysis of changes in the labour process is followed by employee reactions centred on the demise of the traditional craft identity of male carpet weavers. The voices of the weavers dramatize the tensions involved in reconstructing their masculine identity, and we consider the implications this has for understanding gendered work relations

Concealed concern: Fathers' experience of having a child with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Despite increased research into families of chronically ill children, more needs to be known about the father’s experience. We address this issue through asking: ‘What is it like to be the father of a child with juvenile idiopathic arthritis?’ (JIA). Four members of eight families with an adolescent diagnosed with JIA, including seven fathers, were interviewed and transcripts analyzed using grounded theory. This study suggests that fathers of children with JIA experience several severe losses which are exacerbated through comparisons they make between their own situation and that of fathers of healthy children. In addition, the fathers faced several constraints which reduced their opportunities to communicate with their ill child through shared activities. Fathers appeared to conceal their distress by adopting strategies of denial and distraction however their adjustment was facilitated, to some extent, by social support. They could also develop greater acceptance of their situation over time as the care of their ill child became assimilated into family life and constraints upon their life gradually reduced through the increased maturity of their son or daughter with JIA. These findings have implications for healthcare professionals and voluntary organizations

'White knuckle care work' : violence, gender and new public management in the voluntary sector

Drawing on comparative data from Canada and Scotland, this article explores reasons why violence is tolerated in non-profit care settings. This article will provide insights into how workers' orientations to work, the desire to care and the intrinsic rewards from working in a non-profit context interact with the organization of work and managerially constructed workplace norms and cultures (Burawoy, 1979) to offset the tensions in an environment characterized by scarce resources and poor working conditions. This article will also outline how the same environment of scarce resources causes strains in management's efforts to establish such cultures. Working with highly excluded service users with problems that do not respond to easy interventions, workers find themselves working at the edge of their endurance, hanging on by their fingernails, and beginning to participate in various forms of resistance; suggesting that even among the most highly committed, 'white knuckle care' may be unsustainable

'It's a Form of Freedom': The experiences of people with disabilities within equestrian sport

This paper explores the embodied, gendered experiences of disabled horse‐riders. Drawing on data from five in‐depth interviews with paradressage riders, the ways in which their involvement in elite disability sport impacts upon their sense of identity and confidence are explored, as well as the considerable health and social benefits that this involvement brings. Social models of disability are employed and the shortcomings of such models, when applied to disability sport, are highlighted. The data presented here demonstrates the necessity of seeing disability sport as an embodied experience and acknowledging the importance of impairment to the experiences of disabled athletes. Living within an impaired body is also a gendered experience and the implications of this when applied to elite disability sport are considered