From Theory to Practice and Back: How the Concept of Implicit Bias was Implemented in Academe, and What this Means for Gender Theories of Organizational Change
Inhalt: Implicit bias is one of the most successful cases in recent memory of an academic concept
being translated into practice. Its use in the National Science Foundation ADVANCE
program—which seeks to promote gender equality in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) careers through institutional transformation—has raised fundamental questions about organizational change. How do advocates translate theories into
practice? What makes some concepts more tractable than others? What happens to theories through this translation process? We explore these questions using the ADVANCE
program as a case study. Using an inductive, theory-building approach and combination
of computational and qualitative methods, we investigate how the concept of implicit bias
was translated into practice through the ADVANCE program and identify five key features
that made implicit bias useful as a change framework in the academic STEM setting. We
find that the concept of implicit bias works programmatically because it is (1) demonstrable, (2) relatable, (3) versatile, (4) actionable, and (5) impartial. While enabling the
Inhalt: Feminist organization theories develop knowledge about how organizations and processes of organizing shape and are shaped by gender, in intersection with race, class and other forms of social inequality. The politics of knowledge within management and organization studies tend to marginalize and silence feminist theorizing on organizations, and so the field misses out on the interdisciplinary, sophisticated conceptualizations and reflexive modes of situated knowledge production provided by feminist work. To highlight the contributions of feminist organization theories, I discuss the feminist answers to three of the grand challenges that contemporary organizations face: inequality, technology and climate change. These answers entail a systematic critique of dominant capitalist and patriarchal forms of organizing that perpetuate complex intersectional inequalities. Importantly, feminist theorizing goes beyond mere critique, offering alternative value systems and unorthodox approaches to organizational change, and providing the radically different ways of knowing that are necessary to tackle the grand challenges. The paper develops an aspirational ideal by sketching the contours of how we can organize for intersectional equality, develop emancipatory technologies and enact a feminist ethics of care for the human and the natural world.
Schlagwörter:climate change; Emanzipation; ethics of care; feminist; feminist critique; inequality; intersectionality; organizational theory
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Netzwerke und Organisationen
Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Disciplined discourses: The logic of appropriateness in discourses on organizational gender equality policies
Autor/in:
Amstutz, Nathalie; Nussbaumer, Melanie; Vöhringer, Hanna
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2020)
Inhalt: Organizational gender equality policies must address critical issues in organizations, as well as challenge hierarchies and the unequal distribution of power and resources. At the same time, they are reliant on acceptance by organizations when developing an official course of action. On the basis of a neo‐institutional perspective, this study investigates how gender equality discourses are disciplined so that they fit organizational expectations by maintaining the rationality myth of the organization. The empirical analysis of four Swiss organizations demonstrates that, although they intend to reduce gender inequalities, their gender equality policies are shaped by a logic of appropriateness that leads to a continuous reproduction of heteronormativity within gender equality policies. This study thus contributes to the understanding of how the logic of appropriateness protects the heteronormative matrix in organizations by disciplining gender equality discourses.
‘Homeliness meant having the fucking vacuum cleaner out’ : The gendered labour of maintaining conference communities
Autor/in:
Burford, James; Bosanquet, Agnes; Smith, Jan
Quelle: Gender and Education, 32 (2020) 1, S 86–100
Inhalt: This article extends examinations of the gendered nature of care and service in academia, with a particular focus on the labour of maintaining conference communities. Utilising empirical data from a cultural history of the International Academic Identities Conference, we draw on interviews with 32 conference organisers, keynote speakers and participants to explore the gendered dynamics of reproducing conference communities. While some participants experienced exclusions, most participants described a conference that felt caring, welcoming and like ‘home’. Following this discussion, we interrogate the idea of the conference as ‘home’, asking questions about the gendered division of ‘academic housekeeping’ practices that underpin such home-making. Engaging with feminist theorising of emotional labour, we argue that academic women undertook significant, and often hidden, care and service labour to maintain a homely conference community.
Gendered inequalities in competitive grant funding : An overlooked dimension of gendered power relations in academia
Autor/in:
Steinþórsdóttir, Finnborg S.; Einarsdóttir, Þorgerður; Pétursdóttir, Gyða M.; Himmelweit, Susan
Quelle: Higher Education Research & Development, 39 (2020) 2, S 362–375
Inhalt: Research grant funding influences the organisation of academic work and academic careers. We problematise general approaches to gender bias in research grant funding and argue that it fails to include the wider structures of inequality and the unequal gendered power relations in academia. Approaching the subject with gender budgeting we challenge assumed gender-neutral practices. The objective is to illuminate how the gendered funding system and (the previous and subsequent) gendered structures of academia are maintained. The whole grants scheme is assessed, drawing on statistical data collected on the whole population of a medium-size, comprehensive research and educational institution in Iceland, and two types of competitive grants. The data is measured against the pool of applicants and comparisons within and between fields and ranks are made. By including the structures of inequality and the gendered power relations, the results show how the funding system is biased not only in favour of men, but towards the male-dominated and culturally masculine positions and fields. This approach illustrates the need to address the whole academic system in order to challenge the norms that maintain and reproduce gender inequalities.
Hidden social exclusion in Indian academia : Gender, caste and conference participation
Autor/in:
Sabharwal, Nidhi S.; Henderson, Emily F.; Joseph, Roma Smart
Quelle: Gender and Education, 32 (2020) 1, S 27–42
Inhalt: Conferences are key sites for the development of academic careers; however multiple studies have shown that conferences are exclusionary on the basis of gender and other axes of social disadvantage. This study focuses on India and as such also incorporates caste as an axis of privilege and disadvantage in relation to access to conferences. Conferences in this paper are framed within a broader professional development agenda, which is the way in which conferences are located in Indian higher education policy discourses, and a social exclusion perspective is taken as the analytical lens. The paper is based on data from a large-scale national study of social inequalities in higher education, which included quantitative analysis of administrative records and qualitative analysis of interviews with academics on their participation in conferences and professional development activities. Key findings include that participation in conferences is proportionally lower for women and scheduled caste academics than for men and upper-caste academics, and that access to conferences is embroiled in relational processes of social exclusion which operate in the academy, despite formal policies being in place. The article recommends further scrutiny of policy implementation and replication of this analysis across different country contexts.
Review and analysis of publications on scientific mobility: assessment of influence, motivation, and trends
Autor/in:
Gureyev, Vadim N.; Mazov, Nikolay A.; Kosyakov, Denis V.; Guskov, Andrey E.
Quelle: Scientometrics, 124 (2020) 2, S 1599–1630
Inhalt: The phenomenon of scientific mobility, actively developing in recent decades, attracts increasing attention of researchers in view of its importance for the development of science, dissemination of scientific knowledge, making informed decisions in the management of science and training of qualified personnel. Based on an extensive analysis of the literature on the topic in the last 30 years with the use of bibliometric approaches, this paper outlines the main evolutionary stages of scientific mobility in the context of brain drain and circulation concepts; considers relations, advantages and disadvantages of scientific mobility in relation to scientific inbreeding; describes the main approaches and methodological aspects formed today in the study of the scientists mobility; discusses its positive and negative consequences for researchers, organizations, countries, and individual disciplines, and summarizes the motivations and driving forces of scientists when leaving the country and when returning.
Schlagwörter:Brain Drain; career progress; citation; international academic mobility; internationale akademische Mobilität; literature review; Mobilität; mobility
CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Netzwerke und Organisationen, Wissenschaft als Beruf
The perception of crisis, the existence of crisis: navigating the social construction of crisis
Autor/in:
Gigliotti, Ralph A.
Quelle: Journal of Applied Communication Research, 48 (2020) 5, S 558–576
Inhalt: Crisis remains a pervasive phenomenon for organizations of all kinds. The ubiquitous and casual invocation of crisis cuts across organizational sectors and bodies of literature; and the popularity of crisis holds true for institutions of higher education. There is much agreement among communication scholars and practitioners that crises disrupt and derail organizational practices, threaten individual and institutional reputations, and require rapid responses. However, the ways in which individuals disentangle a ‘crisis’ from a ‘non-crisis’ or ‘potential crisis’ is much less certain. Through a communicative lens, the identification, interpretation, and meaning-making of situations that may be perceived as crises is a socially constructed process. Drawing upon nearly 40 semi-structured interviews with senior university leaders, this article explores the ways in which crises are constituted through both stakeholder perceptions and leadership discourse and behaviors and concludes with specific implications for applied practice.
Schlagwörter:communication; crisis; higher education; leadership; organisational behaviour; Organisationsanalyse; perception; university
Why is it so difficult to reduce gender inequality in male-dominated higher educational organizations? : A feminist institutional perspective
Autor/in:
O'Connor, Pat
Quelle: Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 45 (2020) 2, S 207–228
Inhalt: Using a Feminist Institutional perspective, and drawing on a wide range of evidence in different institutions and countries, this article identifies the specific aspects of the structure and culture of male-dominated higher educational organizations that perpetuate gender inequality. Gender inequality refers to the differential evaluation of women and men, and of areas of predominantly female and predominantly male employment. It is reflected at a structural level in the under-representation of women in senior positions and at a cultural level in the legitimacy of a wide range of practices to value men and to facilitate their access to such positions and to undervalue women and to inhibit their access. It shows that even potentially transformative institutional interventions such as Athena SWAN have had little success in reducing gender inequality. It highlights the need to recognize the part played by the ‘normal’ structures and culture in perpetuating gender inequality.
Rethinking Diversity Management: An Intersectional Analysis of Diversity Networks
Autor/in:
Dennissen, Marjolein; Benschop, Yvonne; van den Brink, Marieke
Quelle: Organization Studies, 41 (2020) 2, S 219–240
Inhalt: The aim of this paper has been to further our knowledge on diversity management practices by applying an intersectionality lens to single category diversity networks. Diversity networks are in-company networks intending to inform and support employees with similar social identities. Their focus on single identity categories is exemplary of current diversity management practices. We shed light on the strategies of network members to deal with their multiple identities vis-a-vis their network membership (structural intersectionality) and on the processes that hamper collaboration and coalition building between diversity networks (political intersectionality). Our intersectional analysis shows how the single category structure of diversity networks marginalizes members with multiple disadvantaged identities and reveals how collaborations between diversity networks are hindered by processes of preserving privilege rather than interrogating it. We contribute to the literature on diversity management practices by highlighting how dynamic processes of privilege and disadvantage play a role in sustaining intersectional inequalities in organizations.