Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies – serie

Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the writers considered in this first book of the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series make an important contribution to how we think about rationality in managing, leading and working. It provides a space in which to think differently about rationality, challenging dominant masculine logics while positioning relations between people centre stage. A critical and intellectually provocative text, the book provides a nuanced and practical account of rationality in organizational contexts, making it clear that women have and continue to write groundbreaking work on the subject: women like Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who was at the forefront of developments in scientific management, and Frances Perkins, who was the first female US cabinet secretary. Both are important not only for what they achieved but also as illustrations of the ways in which women have been written out of the accounts of managing and management thought. This matters not only because credit is denied to those who deserve it, but also because it impoverishes our understanding of complex organisational phenomenon. Where so much extant writing on managing and organizing is preoccupied with abstract notions of structure, strategy, metaphor and machines, the writers considered here explain why effective working and managing is primarily about seeing and working with people. Writers such as Arlie Hochschild, Mary Parker Follett and Heather Höpfl remind us that rationality cannot be decoupled from emotion or, where a system is to be rationalised, then it should start with and enhance the lives of people – be designed with people at the centre. In this sense, the book is not arguing for a wholesale rejection of rationality. Rather, authors call on readers to move beyond a preoccupation with rationality for its own sake, seeing it instead as a useful and highly contestable aspect of organizational life.Each woman writer is introduced and analysed by an expert in their field. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

There is a long tradition of research on politics, power and exclusion in areas such as sociology, social policy, politics, women’s studies and philosophy. While power has received considerable attention in mainstream management research and teaching, it is rarely considered in terms of politics and exclusion, particularly where the work of women writers is concerned.This second book in the Routledge Series on Women Writers in Organization Studies analyses the ways in which women have theorised and embodied relations of power. Women like Edith Garrud who, trained in the Japanese art of jujutsu, confronted the power of the state to champion feminist politics. Others, such as Beatrice Webb and Alva Myrdal, are shown to have been at the heart of welfare reforms and social justice movements that responded to the worst excesses of industrialisation based on considerations of class and gender. The writing of bell hooks provides a necessarily uncomfortable account of the ways in which imperialism, white supremacy and patriarchy inflict unspoken harm, while Hannah Arendt’s work considers the ways in which different modes of organizing restrict the ability of people to live freely. Taken together, such writings dispel the myth that work or business can be separated from the rest of life, a point driven home by Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s observations on the ways in which power and inequality differentially structure life chances. These writers challenge us to think again about power, politics and exclusion in organizational contexts. They provide provocative thinking, which opens up new avenues for organization theory, practice and social activism. Each woman writer is introduced and analysed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing (thinking!) more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

This third volume in the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series challenges us to think again about the implications of gender, embodiment and fluidity for organizing and managing. The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind / body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history, thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis; each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization as they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge has tended to privilege rather than problematize masculinity, fixity, control, normativity, violence and discrimination.The themes and authors (Acker, de Beauvoir, Halberstam, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kristeva, Yourcenar) covered in this book are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, acknowledging that lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice.Each Woman Writer is introduced and analyzed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

The purpose of this book is to reimagine the concept of culture, both as an analytical category and disciplinary practice of dominance, marginalization and exclusion. For decades culture has been perceived as a ‘hot topic’. It has been written about and deployed as part of ‘a search for excellence’; as a tool through which to categorise, rank, motivate and mould individuals; as a part of an attempt to align individual and corporate goals; as a driver of organizational change, and; as a servant of profit maximisation. The women writers presented in this book offer a different take on culture: they offer useful disruptions to mainstream conceptions of culture. Joanne Martin and Mary Douglas provide multi-dimensional holistic accounts of social relations that point up similarity and difference. Rather than offering totalising or prescriptive models, each author considers the complex, polyphonic and processual nature of culture(s) while challenging us to acknowledge and work with ambiguity, fluidity and disruption. In this spirit writings of Judi Marshall, Arlie Hochschild, Kathy Ferguson, Luce Irigaray and Donna Haraway are employed to disrupt extant management cultures that lionise the masculine and marginalise the concerns, perspectives and contributions of women and the diversity of women. These writers bring bodies, emotions, difference, resistance and politics back to the centre stage of organizational theory and practice. They open us up to the possibility of cultures suffused with multifarious potentiality rather than homogeneity and faux certainty. As such, they offer new ways of understanding and performing culture in management and organization.This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, and regular corporate scandals, there has been a growing concern with the moral and ethical foundations of business. Often these concerns are limited to narrow accounts of governance codes, regulatory procedures or behaviour incentives, which are often characterized by neoliberal bias underpinned by western masculine logics. This book challenges these limited accounts of ethics and responsibility.It looks at the writing of Gayatri C. Spivak who takes globally networked markets, people and ideas and provides tools to rethink subjectivity, ethics and corporate governance. Eschewing strict hierarchical notions of authority and identity, Spivak’s work invites us to consider who speaks for whom and for what in organizational contexts. Relationality is also to be found in the radical politics and feminist ethics of Judith Butler who continues to draw on and develop her account of performativity to interpret contemporary organizations, management and work.While popular accounts of corporate ethics often concern themselves with the aims and actions of those at the top of organizations, Lauren Berlant focuses on the struggles of those at the bottom of the new social structures created by contemporary forms of capital. Finally, the book also considers ecological challenges through the work of Val Plumwood, who spent a lifetime considering the threats and responsibilities we face in environmental terms, and developed a feminist ecological philosophy for understanding social and species differences.This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, and regular corporate scandals, there has been a growing concern with the moral and ethical foundations of business. Often these concerns are limited to narrow accounts of governance codes, regulatory procedures or behaviour incentives, which are often characterized by neoliberal bias underpinned by western masculine logics. This book challenges these limited accounts of ethics and responsibility.It looks at the writing of Gayatri C. Spivak who takes globally networked markets, people and ideas and provides tools to rethink subjectivity, ethics and corporate governance. Eschewing strict hierarchical notions of authority and identity, Spivak’s work invites us to consider who speaks for whom and for what in organizational contexts. Relationality is also to be found in the radical politics and feminist ethics of Judith Butler who continues to draw on and develop her account of performativity to interpret contemporary organizations, management and work.While popular accounts of corporate ethics often concern themselves with the aims and actions of those at the top of organizations, Lauren Berlant focuses on the struggles of those at the bottom of the new social structures created by contemporary forms of capital. Finally, the book also considers ecological challenges through the work of Val Plumwood, who spent a lifetime considering the threats and responsibilities we face in environmental terms, and developed a feminist ecological philosophy for understanding social and species differences.This book will be relevant to students and researchers across business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology.

Affect in Organization and Management asks how affect theory understands everyday working lives through embodied, social and political practice. Discussing a range of dimensions and perspectives on affect, the book considers how subjects are formed through their connections with others, both human and non- or more-than-human.The six women writers on affect presented in this series (Sara Ahmed, Kathleen Stewart, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad and Rosalyn Diprose) all speak to important themes in organization studies, including power, politics and ethics. Each chapter explores how these thinkers have already influenced organization scholars, as well as how their work can extend our understanding of pressing organizational issues around gender, race, the environment, leadership and ethics. Feminism is a core feature of this collection, highlighting feminist writing with affective, connected and intersubjective possibilities.Each woman writer is introduced by experts on affect and organization studies. The chapters also suggest further reading and accessible resources. The book is suitable for students, academics and practitioners in business and management, organization studies and critical management studies who want to think differently about organizations.

Affect in Organization and Management asks how affect theory understands everyday working lives through embodied, social and political practice. Discussing a range of dimensions and perspectives on affect, the book considers how subjects are formed through their connections with others, both human and non- or more-than-human.The six women writers on affect presented in this series (Sara Ahmed, Kathleen Stewart, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad and Rosalyn Diprose) all speak to important themes in organization studies, including power, politics and ethics. Each chapter explores how these thinkers have already influenced organization scholars, as well as how their work can extend our understanding of pressing organizational issues around gender, race, the environment, leadership and ethics. Feminism is a core feature of this collection, highlighting feminist writing with affective, connected and intersubjective possibilities.Each woman writer is introduced by experts on affect and organization studies. The chapters also suggest further reading and accessible resources. The book is suitable for students, academics and practitioners in business and management, organization studies and critical management studies who want to think differently about organizations.

The term feminism is often treated as a stable and universalizing politics and practice. For postcolonial feminism, the issues of interest are not only social and cultural inequalities in terms of caste, class, color, ethnicity, gender, and religion, but also historical, political, and geographical inequalities in terms of “Third World”, “Global South” and “remnants of the colonial past”. Postcolonial feminism pays nuanced attention to historical diversity and local specificity of feminist issues. This book draws upon the work grounded specifically in the context of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to demonstrate the plurality of thinking.In mainstream management and organization studies, context is often understood as a present, static field. This book discusses how context is an important consideration for any management and organization study and for feminist studies in management and organization studies. It informs the way we need to understand context not just as “present” but also as “past”. Postcolonial feminism highlights the historical roots and past privileges of a context that often gets overlooked in management and organization studies where context is mostly understood in the present.This book highlights the contributions of women writers, poets, and activists such as Christina Stringer, Elena Samonova, Gayatri Spivak, Mary Douglas, Naila Kabeer, and Uzma Falak to postcolonial feminism in management and organization studies. Each of these women has engaged with writing that has the potential to enrich and transform understanding of postcolonial feminism in management and organization studies, making this book a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and advanced students.

The term feminism is often treated as a stable and universalizing politics and practice. For postcolonial feminism, the issues of interest are not only social and cultural inequalities in terms of caste, class, color, ethnicity, gender, and religion, but also historical, political, and geographical inequalities in terms of “Third World”, “Global South” and “remnants of the colonial past”. Postcolonial feminism pays nuanced attention to historical diversity and local specificity of feminist issues. This book draws upon the work grounded specifically in the context of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to demonstrate the plurality of thinking.In mainstream management and organization studies, context is often understood as a present, static field. This book discusses how context is an important consideration for any management and organization study and for feminist studies in management and organization studies. It informs the way we need to understand context not just as “present” but also as “past”. Postcolonial feminism highlights the historical roots and past privileges of a context that often gets overlooked in management and organization studies where context is mostly understood in the present.This book highlights the contributions of women writers, poets, and activists such as Christina Stringer, Elena Samonova, Gayatri Spivak, Mary Douglas, Naila Kabeer, and Uzma Falak to postcolonial feminism in management and organization studies. Each of these women has engaged with writing that has the potential to enrich and transform understanding of postcolonial feminism in management and organization studies, making this book a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and advanced students.

This third volume in the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series challenges us to think again about the implications of gender, embodiment and fluidity for organizing and managing. The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind / body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history, thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis; each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization as they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge has tended to privilege rather than problematize masculinity, fixity, control, normativity, violence and discrimination.The themes and authors (Acker, de Beauvoir, Halberstam, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kristeva, Yourcenar) covered in this book are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, acknowledging that lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice.Each Woman Writer is introduced and analyzed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the writers considered in this first book of the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series make an important contribution to how we think about rationality in managing, leading and working. It provides a space in which to think differently about rationality, challenging dominant masculine logics while positioning relations between people centre stage. A critical and intellectually provocative text, the book provides a nuanced and practical account of rationality in organizational contexts, making it clear that women have and continue to write groundbreaking work on the subject: women like Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who was at the forefront of developments in scientific management, and Frances Perkins, who was the first female US cabinet secretary. Both are important not only for what they achieved but also as illustrations of the ways in which women have been written out of the accounts of managing and management thought. This matters not only because credit is denied to those who deserve it, but also because it impoverishes our understanding of complex organisational phenomenon. Where so much extant writing on managing and organizing is preoccupied with abstract notions of structure, strategy, metaphor and machines, the writers considered here explain why effective working and managing is primarily about seeing and working with people. Writers such as Arlie Hochschild, Mary Parker Follett and Heather Höpfl remind us that rationality cannot be decoupled from emotion or, where a system is to be rationalised, then it should start with and enhance the lives of people – be designed with people at the centre. In this sense, the book is not arguing for a wholesale rejection of rationality. Rather, authors call on readers to move beyond a preoccupation with rationality for its own sake, seeing it instead as a useful and highly contestable aspect of organizational life.Each woman writer is introduced and analysed by an expert in their field. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

There is a long tradition of research on politics, power and exclusion in areas such as sociology, social policy, politics, women’s studies and philosophy. While power has received considerable attention in mainstream management research and teaching, it is rarely considered in terms of politics and exclusion, particularly where the work of women writers is concerned.This second book in the Routledge Series on Women Writers in Organization Studies analyses the ways in which women have theorised and embodied relations of power. Women like Edith Garrud who, trained in the Japanese art of jujutsu, confronted the power of the state to champion feminist politics. Others, such as Beatrice Webb and Alva Myrdal, are shown to have been at the heart of welfare reforms and social justice movements that responded to the worst excesses of industrialisation based on considerations of class and gender. The writing of bell hooks provides a necessarily uncomfortable account of the ways in which imperialism, white supremacy and patriarchy inflict unspoken harm, while Hannah Arendt’s work considers the ways in which different modes of organizing restrict the ability of people to live freely. Taken together, such writings dispel the myth that work or business can be separated from the rest of life, a point driven home by Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s observations on the ways in which power and inequality differentially structure life chances. These writers challenge us to think again about power, politics and exclusion in organizational contexts. They provide provocative thinking, which opens up new avenues for organization theory, practice and social activism. Each woman writer is introduced and analysed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing (thinking!) more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

This book elaborates on the concept of response-ability. Although the notion is becoming popular in organization and management studies to talk about the ethical dimension of academic practices and research work, it has been formulated outside this discipline with Joan Tronto, Donna Haraway, Vinciane Despret, and Karen Barad as key authors. This book honors the foundational contribution of these scholars and their legacy.This book adopts a feminist posthumanist definition of response-ability as an iterative and emergent process that unfolds within embodied relations and through academic practices. A response-able academic practice intertwines personal reflexivity and critical analysis of the politics underlying our ways of knowing and doing in academia. Furthermore, a response-able approach requires us, as researchers, to pay attention to the consequences of our research practices through which multiple encounters are made possible (or impossible).By offering empirical examples and theoretical elaborations, this book invites students, researchers, and practitioners to find ways of embodying response-ability when generating knowledge.With the exception of Chapter 1, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC‑BY) 4.0 license.Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.

This book elaborates on the concept of response-ability. Although the notion is becoming popular in organization and management studies to talk about the ethical dimension of academic practices and research work, it has been formulated outside this discipline with Joan Tronto, Donna Haraway, Vinciane Despret, and Karen Barad as key authors. This book honors the foundational contribution of these scholars and their legacy.This book adopts a feminist posthumanist definition of response-ability as an iterative and emergent process that unfolds within embodied relations and through academic practices. A response-able academic practice intertwines personal reflexivity and critical analysis of the politics underlying our ways of knowing and doing in academia. Furthermore, a response-able approach requires us, as researchers, to pay attention to the consequences of our research practices through which multiple encounters are made possible (or impossible).By offering empirical examples and theoretical elaborations, this book invites students, researchers, and practitioners to find ways of embodying response-ability when generating knowledge.With the exception of Chapter 1, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC‑BY) 4.0 license.Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.

Organizations, Jobs and Gender: Joan Acker’s Theory in Practice provides a full application of Joan Acker’s five gendering processes through an in-depth case study of an Australian trade union. It demonstrates how gendered divisions, cultural images, everyday interactions, and identity work are organized and sustained through a logic of doing duty and being responsible. Drawing on life history interviews and participant observation, the book provides practical guidance on how to operationalize Acker’s framework in research, offering clear templates, methodological insights, and strategies for tracing subtle and often taken-for-granted inequalities. Written for scholars, graduate students, and researchers in sociology, gender studies, organization studies, and industrial relations, as well as union practitioners and activists, this book delivers an integrated roadmap for analyzing gender in organizations. Readers will gain the tools to see what is often hidden and to adapt Acker’s framework to complex empirical settings. By preserving and extending Acker’s legacy, the book advances methodological clarity and provides a foundation for future studies to uncover, challenge, and transform gendering in organizational life.

As part of the series Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Management and Organization Studies, this volume aims to explore the writing of organization in the sense of how meaning is inscribed into the social context by organizational practices. Across Central and Eastern Europe, women activists have long been at the forefront of transformative change, navigating the complex landscapes of business, politics, and civil society to redefine leadership on their own terms. This book is to bring their stories to light, showcasing the diverse ways in which women have shaped their organizations, communities, and nations.This volume moves beyond traditional, often masculine and men-coded notions of activism, revealing how women in the region have shaped alternative paths through cooperation, resilience, and visionary organizing. Authors showcase the lives and work of women who played central roles in shaping organizations and politics across the region. From corporate boardrooms to grassroots initiatives, from public institutions to political movements, these women have built networks of support, reimagined governance, and challenged exclusionary structures. Through a series of compelling narratives, this book offers a fresh perspective on activism, one that centers on collective action, social impact, and community-building.