Gay men in the performing arts: performing sexualities within 'gay-friendly' work contexts

Building on emerging research on ‘gay-friendly’ organisations, this article examines if and how work contexts understood and experienced as ‘gay-friendly’ can be characterised as exhibiting a serious breakdown in heteronormativity. Taking the performing arts as a research setting, one that is often stereotyped as ‘gay-friendly’, and drawing on in-depth interview data with 20 gay male performers in the UK, this article examines how everyday activities and encounters involving drama school educators, casters and peers are informed by heteronormative standards of gay male sexuality. One concern is that heteronormative constructions of gay male sexualities constrain participants’ access to work; suggesting limits to the abilities and roles gay men possess and are able to play. Another concern is that when gay male sexualities become normalised in performing work contexts, they reinforce organisational heteronormativity and the heterosexual/homosexual binary upon which it relies. This study contributes towards theorising ‘gay-friendly’ places of work as heteronormative

Advancing international human resource management scholarship on paternalistic leadership and gender: The role of postcolonial feminism

This article aims to inspire international human resource management (IHRM) scholarship that incorporates postcolonial feminist theory, using the under-researched topic of paternalistic leadership and gender to illustrate the opportunities and challenges such an endeavour can present. Paternalistic leadership is an important and widely used indigenous framework for examining leadership in Chinese contexts, while postcolonial feminism holds the capacity to problematise the representation of non-western women in feminist theory as a universal, transhistorical category. As this article demonstrates, postcolonial feminist theory centralises cultural difference in theorising gender, strives toward shattering binaries reproduced by colonialism and imperialism (West/East, Western/Third World Woman) and generates indigenous, localised knowledge on non-western women. Three sites of enquiry are discussed: 1) Chinese feminisms and genders; 2) Chinese cultures and gender norms; 3) Voice, agency and the subaltern woman. This article provides research propositions for IHRM scholars to translate postcolonial femininst theory into research on paternalistic leadership and gender. Concluding, the article outlines implications for practice and sifts the discussion for the future avenues of research it signals

Challenging cisnormativity, gender binarism and sex binarism in management research: foregrounding the workplace experiences of trans* and intersex people

Purpose: This article aims to challenge the cisnormative and binary assumptions that underpin the management and gender scholarship. Introducing and contextualising the contributions that comprise this special issue, this article critically reflects on some of the principal developments in management research on trans* and intersex people in the workplace and anticipates what future scholarship in this area might entail. Design/methodology/approach: A critical approach is adopted to interrogate the prevailing cisnormative and binary approach adopted by management and gender scholars. Findings: The key finding is the persistence of cisnormativity and normative gender and sex binarism in academic knowledge production and in society more widely, which appear to have hindered how management and gender scholars have routinely failed to conceptualise and foreground the array of diverse genders and sexes. Originality/value: This article foregrounds the workplace experiences of trans* and intersex people, which have been neglected by management researchers. By positioning intersexuality as an important topic of management research, this article breaks the silence that has enwrapped intersex issues in gender and management scholarship There are still unanswered questions and issues that demand future research from academics who are interested in addressing cisnormativity in the workplace, and problematising the sex and gender binaries that sustain it

Queered methodologies for equality, diversity and inclusion researchers

A chapter on queered methodologies for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) scholars is apposite at a time when queer theory has made recent inroads into the field of methodology and methods within the social sciences (Browne & Nash, 2010; Warner, 2004; Hammers & Brown, 2004; Haritaworn, 2008; Hegarty, 2008). However, lessons have yet to be drawn from this body of literature for organisational scholars undertaking empirical research on EDI issues in the workplace. This neglect is a missed opportunity to study these research themes from alternative perspectives that mount a challenge to ontologies and epistemologies that have become mired within and reproduce heteronormative constructions of sexuality and gender. As such, this chapter grows out of an effort to examine the potential for queered methodologies to problematize the multifarious expressions of organisational heteronormativity by generating research on how lives are lived queerly – at odds with and beyond the reach of heteronormativity – in the workplace. As such, this chapter focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) sexualities and genders which, as I have argued elsewhere (Rumens, 2017), are typically regarded as the standard fare of queer theory research. In this way, I explore how queered methodologies can enable EDI researchers to challenge the heteronormativity of methodological practice, especially as LGBT people have been excluded from important methodological sites in the past or, where they have figured centrally, it has often been to their detriment when research instruments have been used to detect signs of ‘homosexuality’ within contexts where, for example, it is not tolerated and criminalised. Unpacking these issues across the pages of this chapter, I begin by introducing queer theory before discussing an emergent literature on queer methodologies. Against this backdrop, I draw upon my research to discuss the queer ontologies and epistemologies that are central to my work as an organisational queer theorist within the EDI sub-discipline. The challenges of queering methodologies are discussed before the chapter concludes

Age and changing masculinities in gay-straight male workplace friendships

Drawing on interview data gathered from 35 gay men in the UK, this article explores how age influences the negotiation of masculinity within gay-straight male workplace friendships. Study findings show that gay-straight workplace friendships between younger men appear to be framed in terms of equality, not homophobia. Older gay men also report similar experiences, some suggesting how these friendships were not possible in their youth. Gay and straight men of a similar age are also united in friendship by their experiences of ageing and its implications for carrying out work. Interview data also reveals how gay-straight male friendships are constrained at work, thus limiting the opportunities for emotional openness and physical tactility. Overall, the study reveals how younger and older gay men, and their straight male friends, variously align themselves to inclusive masculinities within friendship. This article contributes to inclusive masculinity theory by extending the types of contexts currently studied, both relational and work-related, and adding further emphasis to the contextually contingent nature of inclusive masculinities. It also advances the limited literature on gay-straight friendships by highlighting how they might challenge and reshape the heteronormative contours of work contexts

Re-asserting paradigm plurality: pragmatism and co-production in management and organisation studies

Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) paradigm model has made an enduring impact on management and organisation studies (MOS). Indeed, in a review of its influence and on-going relevance for MOS scholars, Hassard and Cox (2013) reply in the affirmative, extending ‘the Burrell and Morgan framework to account for a third-order paradigm based on post-structuralism and postmodernism’. In particular, Hassard and Cox (2013) acknowledge the ‘paradigm soup’ (Buchanan & Bryman, 2009, p. 4) that has been cooked up within organization theory, and seek to provide a classificatory framework for the contemporary multiplicity of competing paradigms within MOS. Hassard and Cox (2013) is a noteworthy contribution that continues to sustain academic debate about paradigms in general, and Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) seminal paradigm framework in particular

Gender, the body and organization studies: que(e)rying empirical research

Even in organization studies scholarship that treats gender as performative and fluid, a certain ‘crystallization’ of gender identities as somehow unproblematic and stable may occur because of our methodological decision-making, and especially our categorization of participants. Mobilizing queer theory — and Judith Butler's work on the heterosexual matrix and performativity in particular — as a conceptual lens, we examine this crystallization, suggesting it is based on two implicit assumptions: that gender is a cultural mark over a passive biological body, or is a base identity ‘layered over’ by other identities (class, race, age etc.). Following Butler, we argue that in order to foreground the fluidity and uncertainty of gender categories in our scholarship, it is necessary to understand gender identity as a process of doing and undoing gender that is located very precisely in time and space. Given this perspective on gender identities as complex processes of identification, non-identification and performativity, we offer some pointers on how the methodological decision-making underpinning empirical research on gender, work and organization could and should begin from this premise

Challenging cisnormativity, gender binarism and sex binarism in management research

Purpose. This paper aims to challenge the cisnormative and binary assumptions that underpin the management and gender scholarship. Introducing and contextualising the contributions that comprise this special issue, this paper critically reflects on some of the principal developments in management research on trans* and intersex people in the workplace and anticipates what future scholarship in this area might entail. Design/methodology/approach. A critical approach is adopted to interrogate the prevailing cisnormative and binary approach adopted by management and gender scholars. Findings. The key finding is the persistence of cisnormativity and normative gender and sex binarism in academic knowledge production and in society more widely, which appear to have hindered how management and gender scholars have routinely failed to conceptualise and foreground the array of diverse genders and sexes. Originality/value. This paper foregrounds the workplace experiences of trans* and intersex people, which have been neglected by management researchers. By positioning intersexuality as an important topic of management research, this paper breaks the silence that has enwrapped intersex issues in gender and management scholarship. There are still unanswered questions and issues that demand future research from academics who are interested in addressing cisnormativity in the workplace and problematising the sex and gender binaries that sustain it