‘I Wanted More Women in, but . . .’: Oblique Resistance to Gender Equality Initiatives

Despite many interventions designed to change the gender demographics of positional leadership roles in organizations and professions, women continue to be under-represented in most arenas. Here we explore gender equality (GE) interventions through the example of positive discrimination quotas in politics to develop an understanding of resistance to them. Our case is the British Labour Party, analysing interviews with the people who designed, implemented and resisted the system of all-women shortlists. We develop the notion of ‘oblique resistance’ to describe an indirect form of resistance to the erosion of patriarchal power, which never directly confronts the issue of GE, yet actively undermines it. Oblique resistance is practised in three key ways: through appeals to ethics, by marking territory and in appeals to convention. We conclude by considering the conceptual and practical implications of oblique resistance, when direct and more overt resistance to GE is increasingly socially unacceptable

Putting the discourse to work: On outlining a praxis of democratic leadership development

This article offers a praxis of democratic leadership development, arguing that the framework presented can act as a means of rethinking how collective forms of leadership are developed within and between organisations. Building on notions of leadership development as process and person-based, we interpret these as contested, democratic and contingent discursive achievements in a process of developing. Post-foundationalist theory, particularly the work of Ernesto Laclau, is introduced as a means of ‘democratizing’ key dimensions of leadership development: working with ‘leadership’ and ‘democracy’ as empty-floating signifiers holding the potential to generate energetic engagements between leadership development participants. A framework consisting of four dimensions is introduced, with particular attention paid within each dimension to its practice relevance. First, we seek to democratise the leader-subject, reinterpreted as a contested and contingent signifying subject of discourse. Second, we seek to radicalise the process of development through foregrounding conflict and agonistic practice. Third, we introduce the notion of symbolic violence as a means of thinking about direction setting within development contexts. Fourth, we argue for development that pays attention to the unknown, to the gaps in discourse. We explore each dimension in relation to an illustrative example, a cross-organisational women’s group in the Pacific

Understanding sovereign leadership as a response to terrorism: A post-foundational analysis

This study seeks to better understand how notions of sovereign power as a response to terrorism are built and bolstered through use of the signifier ‘leadership’. Through a post-foundational analysis of the speeches, press conferences and writings of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, we theorise ‘sovereign leadership’ as the deployment of the signifier leadership in ways that foreclose language so as to normalise the discourse and acts of sovereign power. Our key finding is that sovereign leadership offers a (misleadingly) straightforward solution to the complex problem of terrorism through foreclosing language so that alternative responses are excluded. In exploring articulations of sovereign leadership, we illuminate its contingency, and therefore, also its contestability, within a system of discursive resources. We posit three foreclosing moments that are drawn upon to bolster the urgency, affective salience and justness of sovereign leadership: emergency, positivity and vulnerability. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our study for interpreting articulations of leadership in everyday organisational and political life

Theorizing gender desegregation as political work: The case of the Welsh Labour Party

Organization studies offers a detailed understanding of the roots of gender segregation and the obstacles to its dismantling in practice but has not proposed a conceptual framework that can help us understand how radical forms of desegregation may be made sense of and approached, particularly within a hotly contested organizational context. We provide an empirical analysis of the UK's only positive discrimination intervention, in the British Labour Party, and offer a conceptual framework of desegregation as political work, contributing by expanding knowledge of the contestations and possibilities inherent in desegregating organizations. We argue that successful radical desegregation is based on disrupting and contesting the foundational ontological values and identifications of a profession or organization, as gender is intimately enmeshed in these. From this basis we propose two political practices of desegregation: ‘standing up’ and ‘walking with’