Suchergebnisse

PurposeOne of the urgent questions in the field of diversity is the knowledge about effective diversity practices. This paper aims to advance our knowledge on organizational change toward diversity by combining concepts from diversity studies and organizational learning.Design/methodology/approachBy employing a social practice approach to organizational learning, the author will be able to go beyond individual learning experiences of diversity practices but see how members negotiate the diversity knowledge and how they integrate their new knowledge in their day-to-day organizational norms and practices. The analysis draws on data collected during a longitudinal case study in a financial service organization in the Netherlands.FindingsThis study showed how collective learning practices took place but were insufficiently anchored in a collective memory. Change agents have the task to build "new" memory on diversity policies and gender inequality as well as to use organizational memory to enable diversity policies and practices to be implemented. The inability to create a community of practice impeded the change agenda.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research could expand our knowledge on collective memory of knowledge on diversity further and focus on the way employees make use of this memory while doing diversity.Practical implicationsThe current literature often tends to analyze the effectiveness of diversity practices as linear processes, which is insufficient to capture the complexity of a change process characterized with layers of negotiated and politicized forms of access to resources. The author would argue for more future work on nonlinear and process-based perspectives on organizational change.Originality/valueThe contribution is to the literature on diversity practices by showing how the lack of collective memory to "store" individual learning in the organization has proven to be a major problem in the management of diversity.

Abstract
Diversity in the workforce – in terms of social identity categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, and class – has become a prime concern for organisations in both the public and private sectors. Despite decades of equal-opportunities legislation and numerous initiatives, progress towards equality, diversity, and inclusion in organisations remains – at best – slow. Inequality in organisations seems to be an unbeatable seven-headed dragon that has a multitude of faces in different economic, social, and cultural contexts. In this essay, Marieke van den Brink questions whether we have the right swords or bravest heroines to beat this tenacious dragon of inequality. She proposes to unravel the complexity and polyvocality of change by distinguishing between inequality practices – the routinised organisational practices that produce inequality regimes – and equality practices – the planned change interventions aiming for gender equality. Greater insight into the ways that gender equality practices and gender practices interact with, conflict with, and anticipate each other can further our knowledge and understanding of the slow rate of change that gender equality policies have managed to achieve.

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge on the slow gender change in academia by examining university leaders' defensive patterns of responses to feminist knowledge. Identifying the most common responses will enable scholars and practitioners engaged in equality work in academia to anticipate them and implement specialized interventions to target these arguments.


Design/methodology/approach
– The author developed a reflexive, composite methodology, combining participatory action research, documentary analysis and auto-ethnography. It is an explorative study, based on author's own interpretations and experiences while talking about gender inequality issues in the academic setting. Data are drawn from discussions stemming from public lectures and encounters in the academic setting where academic leaders were present between 2009 and 2015.


Findings
– Three patterns of responses are identified: two defensive patterns and one which provides opportunities for change. The two defensive responses resisted the feminist knowledge on the basis of methodology/epistemology or the study's findings. The pattern of commitment shows promising opportunities for change.


Research limitations/implications
– For future research, it could be interesting to further explore the role of leaders in gender equality work. The author examines leaders who are gender aware and analyze how they champion gender equality in their organizations and what actions they take to increase equality. The actual leadership work that has to be done to create gender equal or inclusive work places is an under researched premise.


Originality/value
– Hitherto, little is known about the way the feminist knowledge is received within in the academic community. This paper zooms in on this knowledge transfer and investigates a moment where feminist knowledge and academic leaders meet and learning opportunities occur. In addition, this paper shares the hard task we have as feminist scholars, and the feelings this brings to ones one identity as a scholar.

Academic excellence is allegedly a universal and gender neutral standard of merit. This article examines exactly what is constructed as academic excellence at the micro-level, how evaluators operationalize this construct in the criteria they apply in academic evaluation, and how gender inequalities are imbued in the construction and evaluation of excellence. We challenge the view that the academic world is governed by the normative principle of meritocracy in its allocation of rewards and resources. Based on an empirical study of professorial appointments in the Netherlands, we argue that academic excellence is an evasive social construct that is inherently gendered. We show how gender is practiced in the evaluation of professorial candidates, resulting in disadvantages for women and privileges for men that accumulate to produce substantial inequalities in the construction of excellence.

Purpose
Translating the well-established theory of the gendered organization into strategic interventions that build more gender equitable organizations has proven to be difficult. The authors introduce the emergence of the "bifocal approach" and its subsequent development and examine the potential of the "bifocal approach" as a feminist intervention strategy and an alternative means of countering gender inequalities in organizations. While pre-existing transformative interventions focus on more immediately apparent structural change, the focus begins with the development of individuals. The paper aims to discuss these issues.


Design/methodology/approach
Developed through iterative cycling between theory and practice, the "bifocal approach" links the existing focus on women's development with a focus on transformative organizational change. The bifocal approach deliberately begins with the organization's current way of understanding gender in order to build towards frame-breaking transformative change.


Findings
The authors show how the bifocal is able to overcome some of the main difficulties of earlier transformative approaches, maintaining organizational access, partnership building, sustaining a gender focus and ultimately sustaining the change effort itself. The bifocal approach seeks structural change, however, the change effort rests with individuals. The development of individuals, as conceived within the bifocal approach was designed to create a "small wins" ripple effect, linking individual (agency) and organizational change (structure).


Practical implications
The bifocal approach offers a comprehensive re-modelling of traditional interventions for other scholars and practitioners to build on. Organizational interventions previously categorized as "fixing women" could be re-examined for their capacity to provide the foundation for transformative change.


Originality/value
The contribution of this paper lies in proposing and examining the bifocal approach as a feminist intervention strategy that overcomes the dualism between the existing frames of organizations and the transformative frame of scholars, in order to move practice and theory forward.

Workers in the low-wage service sector represent a sociodemographically heterogeneous and particularly vulnerable group in terms of job security, job quality and health implications. However, organizational inclusion research has largely neglected this group. In contrast, this article builds on a qualitative study of a Dutch aircraft cleaning company in order to assess the 'inclusivity of inclusion approaches' for less privileged groups of employees. By reconstructing how managers and cleaners draw/rework boundaries, we identify certain configurations of inclusion and exclusion that can unfold more or less 'inclusive' consequences for historically disadvantaged group members, and more or less exclusionary repercussions for particularly privileged and/or majority group members. We stress the need to say goodbye to a linear narrative of organizations becoming 'inclusive as such'. Furthermore, we argue that the presence of decent working and employment conditions and the absence of steep differences in those conditions between groups represent the 'silent foundation' of creating inclusivity. Consequently, we ask: does inclusion research reach its 'natural limits' by tiptoeing around the topic of equality?

As most scholarly work on the conceptualization of organizational inclusion seems to be implicitly based on contexts of high-wage labor, this article investigates whether the common themes of organizational inclusion as identified by Shore et al. (2018) also align with the low-wage labor context. Our respective analysis identifies several mismatches between the current conceptualizations of organizational inclusion and the needs and interests of low-wage workers. Consequently, we offer suggestions for adapting these conceptualizations: by paying attention to (1) material and physical safety next to psychological safety, (2) opportunities of non-task-oriented involvement in the workgroup and (3) the recognition and accommodation of low-wage workers' voices and needs. Furthermore, we argue to extend the scope of scholarly work on organizational inclusion by taking into account the broader (historical) social order and different stakeholders who influence the organizational processes of inclusion and exclusion. By engaging with the current "inclusion turn" and providing adaptations, this article contributes to a less "exclusive" conception of organizational inclusion as well as outlines where the organizational inclusion approach might come up against its own limits.

The aim of this article is to unravel the gendered practices in ambition and challenge the hegemonic masculinity within it. Our findings are based on a qualitative study using focus groups in which Dutch men and women, full-timers and part-timers, constructed different meanings of ambition. The men and women in our study used three manifest discourses of ambition in the workplace, regarding individual development, mastery of the task, and upward career mobility. A critical analysis of these three discourses indicates how cultural and organizational norms on gender and working hours affect these constructions of ambition. We argue that a fourth discourse, 'ambition as a resource', is a major driving force of inequality. 'Ambition as a resource' is the dominant hegemonic discourse in organizations, and its power effects mitigate the impact of other discourses on ambition, revealing the potential for change when different discourses of ambition are valued.

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to show that upward mobility of female academics in regular selection procedures is evolving extremely slowly, especially in The Netherlands. This paper aims at a more profound understanding of professorial recruitment and selection procedures in relation to gender differences at Dutch universities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores the recruitment of university professors as a gendered process and is mainly based on the analysis of selection committee reports between 1999‐2003 from six large Dutch universities (n=682).FindingsThe research findings give a clear indication of gender differences in selection and recruitment procedures. Although not in all disciplines, the paper observes a disparity in the percentages of male and female applicants who were successful in the selection procedure. There is no confirmation of the predicted relationship with the nature of the procedure (open/closed), but there is a correlation with the number of women on the committee.Research limitations/implicationsAs it was not possible to make any pronouncements about the quality of the applicants, a strict measurement of gender bias is not possible.Practical implicationsThe results show that academic disciplines are gendered in a different way, requiring different measures at the institutional and individual levels.Originality/valueThis is the first paper on recruitment and selection procedures that takes into account disciplinary differences and factors such as the number of applicants for each professorship and the recruitment potential by gender.

AbstractThere is widespread recognition among scholars, international aid providers and evaluators of the need to take into account the unintended outcomes of international development efforts. Practitioners have also signed on to charters that promise they will do their utmost best to 'do no harm'. This article focusses on the often overlooked unintended gender effects. A rigorous literature review was conducted to reveal some of the most prominent unintended consequences as documented in primary research in development studies. Five prevalent unintended gender effects were identified: (1) household dynamics, (2) anti‐foreign backfire, (3) overburdening of women, (4) human trafficking and sexual exploitation and (5) hype. While not all of the unintended gender effects are negative, most of the reported unintended effects jeopardise the intended outcomes of the interventions. This research provides both a call and a tool to analyse more systematically the unintended gender effects of international development efforts.

Gender-based violence and sexual harassment (GBVH) by and towards academics and students has been under-theorised at an organisational level in higher education institutions (HEIs). The methodology involves a critical review of the literature on GBVH and organizational responses to it, locating it in the context of an analysis of organizational power. The theoretical perspective involves a focus on power and workplace bullying. It identifies three power-related characteristics of academic environments which it is suggested facilitate GBVH: their male-dominant hierarchical character; their neoliberal managerialist ethos and gender/intersectional incompetent leadership which perpetuates male entitlement and toxic masculinities. These characteristics also inhibit tackling GBVH by depicting it as an individual problem, encouraging informal coping and militating against the prosecution of perpetrators. Initiating a discussion and action at organizational and state levels about GBVH as a power-related phenomenon, challenging the dominant neo-liberal ethos and the hierarchical character of HEIs, as well as reducing their male dominance and increasing the gender competence of those in positions of power are seen as initial steps in tackling the problem.