No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Binary logics and the discursive interpretation of organizational policy: Making meaning of sexual harassment policy
Abstract
Although workplace policies are written in neutral terms that give the appearance of rationality, research shows that policy meanings are in fact constructed and negotiated through discursive practices. Sexual harassment policies illustrate this phenomenon. Sexual harassment is a highly complex and fluid phenomenon that is dependent on context and culture for its meaning. Although sexual harassment policies tend to use language that appears to lie outside of the interpretive stream, these policies are in fact always subject to discursive interpretation. One particularly powerful form of discursive interpretation lies in the interplay between binary logics and binary language. This study explored the interplay between macro-level binary logics, mezzo-level sexual harassment policy and micro-level binary language during organizational members’ discussions about their organization’s sexual harassment policy. Our analysis of focus group and interview data revealed that participants discursively produced what we have termed a complex binary web that reshaped the meaning of the policy, such that usage of the policy contradicted organizational norms and values. Understanding sexual harassment policy discourse as constructed in a binary web reveals that rational assumptions underlying sexual harassment policy may be inconsistent with the lived experiences in organizational cultures.
... More substantively, echoing previous discussion about how "reporting is not supporting" [28], many respondents had a hunger for other measures to protect survivors and to take into account organizational cultures when implementing the policy. Given these findings and the insights of scholars who have studied the impact of policy on intended outcomes [36], pursuing a deeper understanding of the interactions between implementation of Article X and organizational culture may constitute a particularly valuable endeavor for NSF in future research. Some noted too that there appeared to be gaps in the policy, particularly around how institutions would be held accountable for complying with Article X, especially given that some might have financial incentives not to report harassment in order to avoid losing grant funding. ...
... Finally, it is important to note that our study is only a first step towards understanding whether policies such as Article X will succeed in achieving their intended outcomes of reducing the frequency and consequences of harassment in science. Existing literature suggests that organizational and professional culture is a primary determinant of sexual harassment, and policy implementation may not directly alter culture [29,36]. Culture shapes how policies are interpreted and applied [36]. ...
... Existing literature suggests that organizational and professional culture is a primary determinant of sexual harassment, and policy implementation may not directly alter culture [29,36]. Culture shapes how policies are interpreted and applied [36]. Therefore, additional research will be essential to evaluate the ultimate impact of Article X and other similar policies and how their intended outcomes might be optimized, including qualitative research on the interaction between policy and organizational culture. ...
Federal scientific agencies seek to make an impact on the continued prevalence of sexual harassment in the scientific academic community beyond institutional self-regulation. The National Science Foundation’s Article X, released in 2018, is one of the most significant and ambitious federal policy initiatives to address sexual harassment. The present article presents the results of the first study to examine scientists’ knowledge and attitudes about this important recent policy. We found, although overall knowledge about Article X was fairly low, the majority of participants responded positively to it. Crucially, impressions of the policy varied based on past experience and demographic factors. Individuals who had experienced harassment in the past year were less likely to believe the policy would help reduce sexual harassment in the sciences compared to those who had not experienced harassment (OR = 0.47, 95% CI:0.23–0.97, p = .034) and had greater odds of endorsing that the policy failed to go far enough (OR = 2.77, 95% CI:1.15–6.66, p = .023). Associations between demographic factors and views of the policy were less pronounced, but it is notable that, compared to their White counterparts, Black participants were more likely to believe the policy went too far (OR = 5.87, 95% CI:1.04–33.17, p = .045). Additionally, concerns were raised about the institutional enforcement of these policies and the existence of sufficient protections for survivors. Our work has implications for NSF’s continued evaluation of the efficacy of this program as well as for other federal agencies implementing or considering similar policies.
... Social movements and recent media coverage of high-profile cases have likely created increased awareness of workplace sexual harassment, but there is a lack of recent research investigating whether increased awareness translates into the consistent propensity of individuals to name sexually harassing behaviors (Chawla et al., 2021;Keplinger et al., 2019). New research directions to better understand the factors that impact individuals' propensity to name sexual harassment are necessary because addressing workplace sexual harassment is at least partially dependent upon individuals' propensity to accurately identify sexual harassment when they see it (Dougherty & Hode, 2016;McLaughlin et al., 2012). ...
... Naming is an important prerequisite to addressing workplace sexual harassment because individual naming of sexual harassment behaviors influences (1) harassers' willingness to engage in harassing behavior, (2) victims' likelihood of speaking up about or reporting harassment, and (3) third-parties' inclination to intervene to stop harassment and support victims (Marshall, 2003;McLaughlin et al., 2012;Quinn, 2000). For example, ambiguity around what constitutes sexual harassment creates plausible deniability for perpetrators, allowing them to excuse or justify their actions (Dougherty & Hode, 2016;Key & Ridge, 2011). In addition, when individuals do not name a behavior as harassment, they are unlikely to assign responsibility to the harasser and move towards filing a complaint or taking other actions (Felstiner et al., 1980-81;Ilies et al., 2003). ...
... Although critical for prevention, research suggests that individuals vary widely in terms of their propensity to name sexual harassment behaviors, despite federal law that categorizes sexual harassment as a form of workplace discrimination and codifies the behaviors that constitute workplace sexual harassment (Diekmann et al., 2013;Dougherty & Hode, 2016). For example, variation in the naming sexual harassment behaviors has even been documented among individuals who are aware of the legal definition of sexual harassment (Wiener et al., 2002), suggesting that the propensity to identify these behaviors may be the product of interpretation rather than mere definitional knowledge. ...
Although sexual harassment naming – the process by which individuals identify and label experiences as sexual harassment – is key to tackling the problem of workplace sexual harassment, extant research focused on individual differences has explained a limited amount of variance in individuals’ propensity to name. We push this research in a new direction, drawing on institutional theory and strategic human resource management to identify workplace contextual factors that influence individuals’ propensity to name sexual harassment. Surveying 408 employed adults, we find that current employment in an industry with a high prevalence of sexual harassment reduces individuals’ likelihood of identifying scenarios as sexual harassment. Further, prior work experience in highly sexually harassing industries has a lasting negative effect on individuals’ propensity to name. In contrast, we show that individuals’ propensity to identify sexual harassment is greater when they perceive that their organization has implemented more HR practices supporting a climate for naming and that these HR practices can actually reduce the negative effect of current employment in a highly sexually harassing industry. Critically, by demonstrating that changing industry norms or adopting specific HR practices can shift individual naming of sexual harassment, we offer new avenues for sexual harassment prevention.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... This finding is at variance from results among North American flight attendants, which might be a consequence of the question format (i.e., incidence of sexual harassment vs. unwanted sexual behaviors at work). Taking into account our findings about relative gravity of unwanted sexually related behavior with respect to offender, it also suggests that for accurate estimates of sexual harassment, it is vital to associate behavior with context (whom, where, wanted/unwanted), confirming the recommendations of Dougherty and Goldstein Hode (2016) to acknowledge the emotional landscape of sexual harassment. This also underscores the substantial hazard to workforces experiencing emotional labor. ...
... However, we also found that males experienced more unwanted sexual behaviors, despite less frequently associating them with sexual harassment. These findings are perfectly in line with other research that has clearly established wide genderbased variation of perception of sexual harassment (Baugh, 1997;Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Multiple studies confirmed that, due to different perceptual sets called also different behavioral labels, women interpret a broader range of behaviors than men as sexual harassment (Abbey, 1987;Abbey et al., 1987;Baugh, 1997;Berryman-Fink & Vanover Riley, 1997;Shotland & Craig, 2016). ...
... Female flight attendants, instead, perceived only unwanted sexual attention and sexist comments as sexual harassment. This finding not only reconfirms a difference between male and female perceptions of sexual harassment (Berryman-Fink & Vanover Riley, 1997;Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016) but also indicates that role expectations and stereotypes are still embedded in opinion. First, the femininity of female cabin crew members is incumbent and highlighted, making them more vulnerable and more at risk of experience of sexual harassment (DiTomasso, 1989). ...
Background
The scale and scope of experience of sexual harassment at work among male and female flight attendants was examined. Flight attendants are a predominantly female workforce with an occupational heritage of female and male sexualized stereotypes.
Method
Data represented perception and prevalence of sexual harassment related to hostile work environment among 8,700 North American (U.S. and Canada) and 1,887 United Kingdom (UK) flight attendants in the Flight Attendant Health Study.
Results
Sexual harassment, mostly from passengers, pilots, and coworkers, was reported by 26% of North American flight attendants and 11% of UK flight attendants. Yet, 61% of UK flight attendants experienced unwanted sexual behaviors, pointing to possible underreporting of the sexual harassment problem. Sexually offensive behaviors received variable labeling as sexual harassment depending on gender of the victim and perpetrator profile.
Conclusion
Sexual harassment is a potentially underreported workplace problem for flight attendants with underreporting resulting from gender-specific differences in individual perceptions. Understanding these differences is vital to addressing sexual harassment and the concomitant health risks. Traditional client and customer attitudes might lead to rose-colored victims’ judgment, especially in the case of customer service jobs involving emotional labor. Our results provide new information to guide future research regarding well-being of this understudied group of service employees.
... Our article presents how the transformation and artistic intervention were planned, implemented and responded to, with theoretical focus on renewed critiques of binary thinking in the organization of human relations (Brewis et al., 1997;Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016;Jeanes et al., 2011;Mumby and Stohl, 1991;Rumens, 2012;Rumens et al., 2019;Thanem, 2011). We contribute to these, prompted by Lefebvre's (2013) empirical interest in disruptions of the everyday and theorizing on dialectics and space. ...
... Binary thinking has attracted and survived continuous critique in human relations studies (Brewis et al., 1997;Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016;Jeanes et al., 2011;Mumby and Stohl, 1991). The oft-repeated problem discussed is the hierarchical power relations tied to binary separations, dualisms and dichotomies (Bondi, 1992). ...
... Before the inauguration and transformation at Uppsala University, like many workplaces, ideas of equality and diversity were thought well understood, and managed habitually, often based on the assessment and balancing of two gender categories across the workforce according to polarized binary qualities of masculine and feminine (Brewis et al., 1997;Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016;Jeanes et al., 2011;Mumby and Stohl, 1991;Rumens, 2012;Thanem, 2011). Despite a growing debate about 'cisgender' in relation to an increased visibility of intersex categories, all-gender discussion and gender-neutral pronouns in social media and the official Swedish dictionary, the toilet intervention revealed a persistent incongruity between these existing, some might say already enlightened, institutional practices supporting gender equality and diversity (symbolized in the original unisex sign and the HR unit expertise) and renewed ideas about all-gender inclusion (cf. ...
Toilets, a neglected facility in the study of human relations at work and beyond, have become increasingly important in discussions about future experiences of gender diversity. To further investigate the spatial production of gender and its potential expressions, we transformed a unisex single-occupancy toilet at Uppsala University into an all-gender or ‘hir-toilet’. With the aim to disrupt and expose the dominant spatial organization of the two binary genders, we inaugurated the hir-toilet with the help of a performance artist. We describe and analyse internal and external responses thereto, using Lefebvre’s work on dialectics and space. Focusing on how space is variously lived, conceived and perceived, our analysis questions the very rationale of gender categorizations. The results contribute to a renewed critique of binary thinking in the organization of workplaces by extending our understanding of how space and human relations mutually constitute each other.
... D'autre part, alors que les analyses discursives s'intéressent souvent au micro-discours de différents individus ainsi qu'aux liens entre celui-ci et le macro-discours de la société, cette étude propose plutôt l'analyse d'un mezzo-discours, soit celui des décideurs d'un tribunal administratif. En élucidant comment ce mezzo-discours juridique reçoit, valide ou rejette le micro-discours des femmes harcelées, des harceleurs et des employeurs, l' étude illustre la relation dynamique entre différents niveaux de discours (Dougherty et Hode 2016). ...
... As a naturalized system of thought, binary logic perpetuates power differentials and the systemic subjugation of those constituted as "other" ». [Références omises.] (Dougherty et Hode 2016, 1733. ...
... [Références omises.] (Dougherty et Hode 2016, 1734 La logique binaire joue un rôle important dans l'argumentation juridique. Les exemples de binômes, ou de dichotomies, sont nombreux dans le domaine juridique : légal/illégal, droit/obligation, apte/inapte, etc. (Reiner 2016). ...
Résumé
Cette étude s’intéresse au discours des juges du Tribunal administratif du travail du Québec en matière de harcèlement sexuel à partir d’un échantillon de 12 décisions rendues entre 2014 et 2017. Dans la moitié des décisions analysées, les motifs du juge reposent sur une logique binaire. Des binômes (femmes/hommes; subjectivité/objectivité; émotionnalité/rationalité, etc.) se glissent dans l’appréciation de la preuve, perpétuant des mythes qui banalisent le harcèlement sexuel. Une logique binaire est généralement associée au rejet de la réclamation. En revanche, dans l’autre moitié des décisions, les motifs du juge prennent en compte le contexte ainsi que la complexité du harcèlement sexuel. Nos résultats illustrent comment le discours des juges sert soit à perpétuer, soit à remettre en question les stéréotypes négatifs relatifs au harcèlement sexuel des femmes au travail, et ce, dans un cadre juridique identique.
... This framing positioned universities as rational entities attending to the irrational behaviors of students victimized by sexual violence. And, in an analysis of sexual harassment policies, Dougherty and Hode (2016) traced how organizational members' readings of sexual harassment policy reinforced constraining binaries that shifted the focus from observable behaviors to perceptions of behaviors. This shift painted targets of perceived harassment as irrational perpetrators and harassers as rational victims 'caught by the idiosyncratic whim of the target' (Dougherty & Hode, 2016, p. 12). ...
... To begin, this study's most notable contribution is the delineation of the unidirectional and bi-directional policy-practice orientations, which emerge through policy talk during the amplification frame. These orientations offer an explanatory framework that suggests that it is not just that policies are subject to interpretation via everyday discourse (Buzzanell & Liu, 2007;Canary, 2010;Dougherty & Hode, 2016), but how organizational members construct the relationship between policy and practice itself is subject to interpretations that impact policy design and implementation. In doing so, this study answers calls to unpack how organizational members privilege different orientations to policy communication (Canary et al., 2015). ...
... However, the communicative assumptions of the unidirectional orientation have gendered consequences. First, unidirectional policy practice talk can perpetuate binary logics (Dougherty & Hode, 2016) that favor standardization, objectivity, and rationality over flexibility, subjectivity, and emotionality (Putnam & Mumby, 1993). Indeed, these binary logics are masked through a language of neutrality (i.e. ...
How organizational members subjectively understand the characteristics of policy design processes can generate different policy outcomes. This case study of a multidisciplinary university team charged with designing and implementing sexual violence response policy articulates two policy-practice orientations: (a) unidirectional orientation (policy → practice); and (b) bi-directional orientation (practice ← → policy). These orientations suggest that how members discursively construct the relationship between policy and practice is subject to interpretations that impact policy implementation. The tension between these orientations amplifies dilemmas of communication and agency that influence what policy text can do and who can do policy. This study offers practical guidance for universities working through policy-practice challenges.
... Harassment against the LGBTQ is rooted in a heterosexist ideology that establishes heterosexuality as the superior, valid, and natural form of expressing sexuality (see Wright and Wegner, 2012;Rabelo and Cortina, 2014). Furthermore, women and the LGBTQ are oppressed by the institutionalized sexism that underscores the supremacy of hegemonic masculinity (male, white, heterosexual, strong, objective, rational) over femininity (female, non-white, non-heterosexual, weak, emotional, irrational;Wright, 2013;Denissen and Saguy, 2014;Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016). In addition, GBDH overlaps with other frameworks (e.g., racism, ableism, anti-fat discrimination) that concurrently work to maintain white, able-bodied, and thin privilege, impeding changes in the broader social structure (see Yoder, 1991;Yoder and Aniakudo, 1997;Buchanan and Ormerod, 2002;Acker, 2006;Liasidou, 2013;van Amsterdam, 2013). ...
... Workplace policy plays an important role in the incidence of GBDH. Finally, evidence shows that policy affects the extent to which the work environment presents itself as LGBTQ-friendly, influencing the experience of LGBTQ individuals at work (Riger, 1991;Eliason et al., 2011;Döring, 2013;Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016;Galupo and Resnick, 2016;Gruber, 2016). Eliason et al. (2011) found that inclusive language, domestic partner benefits, child-care solutions, and hiring policies are relevant for the constitution of a gender-inclusive work environment for the LGBTQ. ...
... Some of the situations they found include refusal of policy reinforcement, leak of confidential information, and refusal to acknowledge the gender identity of a worker (Galupo and Resnick, 2016). Moreover, existent policy may serve to reinforce inequalities if its discourse is based on power binaries (e.g., rational/masculine vs. emotional/feminine) that discredit, oppress, and marginalize minority groups (Riger, 1991;Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016). For example, Peterson and Albrecht (1999) analyzed maternity-policy and found how discourse is shaped to protect organizational interest at the cost of the precarization of women's conditions in organizations. ...
Much has been achieved in terms of human rights for women and people of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) community. However, human resources management (HRM) initiatives for gender equality in the workplace focus almost exclusively on white, heterosexual, cisgender women, leaving the problems of other gender, and social minorities out of the analysis. This article develops an integrative model of gender equality in the workplace for HRM academics and practitioners. First, it analyzes relevant antecedents and consequences of gender-based discrimination and harassment (GBDH) in the workplace. Second, it incorporates the feminist, queer, and intersectional perspectives in the analysis. Third, it integrates literature findings about women and the LGBTQ at work, making the case for an inclusive HRM. The authors underscore the importance of industry-university collaboration and offer a starters' toolkit that includes suggestions for diagnosis, intervention, and applied research on GBDH. Finally, avenues for future research are identified to explore gendered practices that hinder the career development of women and the LGBTQ in the workplace.
... In the context of later life, one set of binaries (continued youthfulness vs. decline) have thus replaced another (normal vs. diseased). Such binary logics are now central to dominant societal discourses of age, creating the appearance of opposition where none may exist (Dougherty & Hode, 2016). These discourses of continued youthfulness and decline work together with consequences for individuals through the construction of identities that promote 'a particular view of what persons are and what they should be allowed to become' (du Gay, 1996, p.3). Underpinning binary logics shape the structure by which meaning is produced and create subject positions which are linked to other hierarchical binary pairings such as young/old and male/female (Dougherty & Hode, 2016). ...
... Such binary logics are now central to dominant societal discourses of age, creating the appearance of opposition where none may exist (Dougherty & Hode, 2016). These discourses of continued youthfulness and decline work together with consequences for individuals through the construction of identities that promote 'a particular view of what persons are and what they should be allowed to become' (du Gay, 1996, p.3). Underpinning binary logics shape the structure by which meaning is produced and create subject positions which are linked to other hierarchical binary pairings such as young/old and male/female (Dougherty & Hode, 2016). Those positioned within the binary discourses of continued youthfulness and decline may find themselves targeted with new and problematic labels, particularly in relation to work. ...
... The construction of retirement as a period of entrepreneurial endeavour highlights how successful ageing has failed to resolve the issue of heterogeneity in later life. The construction does not treat the binary pairing of the success/decline discourses as neutral or morally equivalent (Dougherty & Hode, 2016). Rather it privileges a particular version of successful ageing (one where enterprise may be required) over earlier versions (where health and activity were sufficient markers) which are now aligned with decline. ...
This article explores issues of age and enterprise in later life as manifested in tensions between retiree and entrepreneurial identities. We utilise the concept of a discursive event to examine time-bound online data, specifically media texts and reader comments associated with the online news coverage on of an insurance company report. This report introduced the label Weary to describe ‘working entrepreneurial and active retirees’. Our analysis shows how keeping healthy and active are constructed as insufficient markers of a productive and successful older age. These markers are supplanted by a neoliberal discourse which prioritises enterprise and economic productivity in retirement. However, the Weary subject position has implications within this discourse which constrain the valued contribution of older adults to productive work yet deny access to this group to entrepreneurial endeavours. This highlights the de-stabilization of retirement and critical tensions in its discursive reconceptualization as a period of entrepreneurial endeavour.
... In the present study, we focus on defining "nature" in Western/ized settings (United States, Australia, and New Zealand) in a globalized language (English) based largely on binary logics (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). English also is the predominant language of scholarship in environmental communication (Comfort & Park, 2018), which makes a focus on nuances within meaning-making in English necessary for reflexivity in the field's methodology and analysis. ...
... Dominant Western discourses, or paradigms, are characterized by binary logics (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016), which depend on constructions of mutually exclusive opposites (good/ evil, male/female, black/white, etc.). Within cultures that center these logics, opposites are assumed and reproduced via communication, constraining meaning, mindsets, and possibility. ...
While contemporary ecocidal cultures are premised on a human/nature binary that treats humans as separate from, superior to, and entitled to mastery over nature, this study explores a range of commonly existing imaginaries that unravel the binary and could enable broad systems change. We introduce a deceptively simple freewrite methodology around the foundational concept “nature” to decipher such unravelings in Western/ized settings. Applying this methodology in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, we exhibit how freewrites can improvisationally reveal and engage productive tensions (dialectics) that trouble the binary, support reflexive ecologically centered becoming, and, in some cases, provide ways to eschew the binary altogether. The present study operates from the stubbornly optimistic perspective that our species’ capacity to collectively, even quickly embrace ecocentric meaning systems that trigger massive change should be widely acknowledged and actively encouraged.
... The expectation that targets follow "procedure" and report harassment is common. However, this is complicated by research suggesting communication practices preclude the use and effectiveness of organizational policy (Kirby & Krone, 2002;Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Policy interpretations are culturally specific, and their application can contradict organizational norms (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). ...
... However, this is complicated by research suggesting communication practices preclude the use and effectiveness of organizational policy (Kirby & Krone, 2002;Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Policy interpretations are culturally specific, and their application can contradict organizational norms (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Reporting may threaten the interests of the target or may be discouragingly inaccessible and ineffective. ...
... Menurut Bell, dkk (2014) dan Benson & Thomson (1982), keputusan seseorang untuk melaporkan kejadian pelecehan seksual dipengaruhi oleh ketakutan atas kemungkinan pembalasan dendam (retaliation), tidak ada yang percaya bahwa korban mengalami pelecehan, tidak ada yang dilakukan setelah melapor, dan ketakutan akan menghilangkan privasi (Foster & Fullagar, 2018). Sedangkan menurut Clair, dkk (2019) dan Dougherty & Hode (2016), melaporkan kasus pelecehan seksual akan menimbulkan kemungkinan terjadinya pengasingan (ostracism) dan atau pembalasan dendam (retaliation) oleh rekan kerja; dan dapat berdampak pada karir korban (Ford & Ivancic, 2020). Ketakutan tersebut mungkin bisa tercermin dari kejadian yang menimpa Anita Hill tahun1991 dan Marion Brown di tahun 2018 (Akin, 2018;Brown & Battle, 2019;McLeod, 2018) seperti yang sudah di jelaskan di sub bab sebelumnya. ...
... 1(1), 37-51 akan mengikuti. Workplace ostracism menjadi salah satunya, dimana ini mengkonfirmasi hasil penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Clair, dkk (2019); Dougherty & Hode (2016); dan Pierce, dkk (1997). Tetapi bukan hanya workplace ostracism yang dapat diterima korban sebagai akibat dari membuka suara, tetapi juga victim blaming, dimana menurut Adams, dkk (1983) ;Fitzgerald, dkk (1988); dan Jensen & Gutek (1982), takut disalahkan oleh pelaku atau orang lain dan menyalahkan diri sendiri adalah salah satu penghalang yang signifikan bagi korban untuk melaporkan pelecehan seksual (Judibicus & McCabe, 2001). ...
Banyak korban yang menemukan keberanian untuk mengungkapkan pengalamannya tentang pelecehan seksual, namun ada juga ketakutan yang mempengaruhi keputusan untuk mengungkapkan pengalaman pelecehan seksual yang terjadi di tempat kerja kepada seseorang yang memiliki kewenangan untuk mendapatkan keadilan, salah satunya adalah workplace ostracism. Para korban yang mengalami dan mengungkap pengalaman pelecehan seksualnya di tempat kerja membantu mengungkap topik ini dengan sesi wawancara dengan peneliti. Hasil mengungkapkan bahwa pengucilan di tempat kerja memang terjadi pada mereka yang mengungkapkan pengalaman pelecehan seksual di tempat kerja baik disengaja maupun tidak disengaja. Dampak yang mereka tanggung sebagian besar bersifat psikologis dan mempengaruhi aspek perilaku atau sikap. Intervensi dan regulasi diperlukan untuk membantu para korban mendapatkan keadilan dan penyembuhan yang layak mereka dapatkan dan untuk menciptakan tempat yang aman bagi mereka untuk bekerja dan mengungkap pelecehan seksual.
... The expectation that targets follow "procedure" and report harassment is common. However, this is complicated by research suggesting communication practices preclude the use and effectiveness of organizational policy (Kirby & Krone, 2002;Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Policy interpretations are culturally specific, and their application can contradict organizational norms (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). ...
... However, this is complicated by research suggesting communication practices preclude the use and effectiveness of organizational policy (Kirby & Krone, 2002;Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Policy interpretations are culturally specific, and their application can contradict organizational norms (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Reporting may threaten the interests of the target or may be discouragingly inaccessible and ineffective. ...
This analysis of Karen Kelsky’s (founder of a blog called The Professor Is In) crowdsourced data on sexual harassment in higher education describes the communication processes involved in the widespread isolation and “chilling effect” of inadequate structural responses to sexual harassment. Through the lens of structuration theory, the data demonstrate how communicative processes of isolation are appropriated throughout higher education. The analysis highlights two themes in the data that demonstrate the role of (1) networks and professionalization and (2) the structural estrangement from agency in the (re)production of isolation and organizational exit. Finally, the analysis identifies resignification and participation in the crowdsourced survey as potentially empowering acts of resistance.
... Hierarchy is often presented as a neutral form of rational, logical organizing, similar to the way that organizational policies are often written in depersonalized, unemotional language and are perceived as neutral (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). Divorcing hierarchy from notions of supremacy has colonized our way of thinking and thus our organizing. ...
The ideas of this forum germinated at the Organizational Communication Division’s pre-conference at the 106th annual convention of the National Communication Association (NCA) in 2020. A group of scholar-teachers, committed to addressing various critical social issues, came together to challenge dominant ideas, paradigms, and structures within and beyond organizational communication. We engaged with decolonization and social justice as an ongoing project that cultivates scholarship, pedagogy, and public engagement. Our discussions left us with a sense of urgency and inspiration to work substantively toward thinking differently about organizational communication. Our goal in this forum is to present the collective as a sharp provocation to decenter the spaces of theorizing and pedagogical practices in organizational communication and beyond.
... In this project, and in line with previous research, we collapse grand and mega discourses into one category and focus only on micro, meso, and macro levels (e.g. Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016;Kuhn et al., 2008). As a whole, Alvesson and Kärreman's framework provides a lens by which it is possible to examine social forces at multiple levels; in this study, it offers a richer understanding of how individual, organizational, and larger cultural conversations constitute and reinforce communication and meaning around the EAP. ...
Correctional officers (COs) in the United States have one of the highest rates of injury and illness among all other occupations. This hidden workforce faces increased rates of suicide, divorce, and posttraumatic stress disorder due to the nature of their work. Internationally recognized and applied resources such as the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) are designed to assist officers with challenges they may face inside and outside of work, but research has noted low rates of use for this program. We take a communicative approach to investigate the challenges that may keep COs from taking advantage of the EAP. Based on interviews with 26 federal COs in the Midwest United States, we explore how officers construct barriers to EAP use by drawing a clear boundary between use of the program for ‘personal,’ but not ‘professional’ reasons. We conclude with a discussion of how practitioners can modify communication around the program to deconstruct barriers to its use.
... Organizational policies and practices frequently obfuscate, ignore, or deny accusations of sexual violence against employees through routinized and organizationally sanctioned practices of interrogation, intimidation, and dismissal. Ignorance, a lack of diversity, or particular discursive practices that inform the crafting and implementation of organizational policies can result in "partial knowledge" of what constitutes sexual violence, influencing how organizations recognize and respond to such incidents (Dougherty and Goldstein Hode, 2016;Harris, 2017. These practices, enacted "through control over knowledge, moral norms and moralising judgements," constitute "opaque violence" (Bessant, 1998: 50), when they limit what is recognized and understood as violence. ...
In January of 2018, after decades of sexual abuse of hundreds of athletes under his medical care, USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar faced 156 of the women he victimized when they testified at his sentencing hearing and detailed the abuse. In the wake of the Nassar verdict, gymnastics and other youth sports organizations have come under fire for abusive practices that victimize young athletes. Scholars have recently argued for an approach to understanding sexual violence as an organizational, rather than individual, phenomenon. The power organizations possess to inflict violence on their members requires an understanding of the increased role of organizations in our decision-making and shaping our values and desires. Through an analysis of testimonies submitted by women who were victimized by Nassar as children, I argue that violence was intentionally deployed as an organizing strategy by USA Gymnastics. Abusive organizational practices traumatized girls, leading them to recalibrate their expectations for what was normal and acceptable, ultimately facilitating their abuse. I propose “high-stakes organizations” as contexts particularly vulnerable to violent organizational practices. I argue, in these high-stakes organizations, trauma is likely to be deployed as a strategy for organizational commitment, further fostering precarity in modern organizations.
... Patriarchal values may be embedded in organizational systems. For example, Dougherty and Hode (2016) observed that management often treats sexual harassment claims as dangerous to men rather than systematically address the effects on women. ...
... … In the analysis, tiebased exchanges, or tie-use for short, were coded as 1 and nontie-based exchanges were coded as.' (Ellis, 2011, p. 110) Other constructs Crilly and Sloan (2014) Hoedemaekers and Keegan (2010) Thomas et al. (2010) Multiple correspondence analysis (Crilly and Sloan, 2014) Quantitative analysis of signifiers using NVivo (Hoedemaekers and Keegan, 2010) Calculation of percentage of codes present against total word count of interview transcript to control for varying 'wordiness' across interviews (2015) 'We triangulated data from several sources to develop a comprehensive and accurate database.' (Pahnke et al., 2015, p. 610) Comparison across data sources to explore discrepancies Thorén et al. (2018) 'Data were triangulated through same-sex discussion groups, mixedsex discussion groups and individual interviews.' (Dougherty andGoldstein Hode, 2016, p. 1736) Comparison between participant and researcher perceptions Rothausen et al. (2017) 'For the 44 informants who left four specific organizations, we triangulated data on the voluntariness of leaving, confirming the organization report with the perception of the informant and our own perception on hearing their stories.' (Rothausen et al., 2017(Rothausen et al., , pp. 2362 Comparison between researchers Sumelius et al. (2014) 'We considered the triangulation of investigators as an important step in improving the process and outcome validity of our study.' ...
Purpose-The aim of this review paper is to identify the methodological practices and presentational styles used to report interview-based research in 'leading' management and organisation journals.
Design/methodology/approach-This paper reviews a sample of 225 articles using qualitative interviews that were published in management, human resource management, organisational behaviour, and international business journals listed in the Financial Times 50 list between 2009 and 2019.
Findings-The review found diversity and plurality in the methodological practices used in these studies and the presentational styles used to report interview research.
Originality-To make sense of this plurality, we map these practices and styles against the onto-epistemological paradigms identified by Alvesson (2003; 2011). The paper contributes to calls for philosophical diversity in the evaluation of qualitative research. We specifically articulate concerns about the use of practices in interview-based studies that derive from the positivistic logic associated with quantitative research.
Practical implications-The findings are expected to help doctoral students, early career scholars, and those new to using qualitative interviews to make decisions about the appropriateness of different methodological practices and presentational styles. The findings are also expected to support editors, reviewers, doctoral examiners, and conference organisers in making sense of the dissensus that exists amongst qualitative interview researchers (Johnson et al., 2007). These insights will also enable greater 'paradigmatic awareness' (Plakoyiannaki and Budhwar, 2021, p. 5) in the evaluation of the quality of interview-based research that are not restricted to standardised criteria derived from positivism (Cassell and Symon, 2015).
... s sense in the context of other research findings that show that workplace sexual harassment policies are not necessarily advantageous for the victim. Formal reporting procedures may disempower the victim and are often precluded by the fear that nothing will be done and can lead to stigma, retaliation, or social isolation (see Bergman et al., 2002;D. S. Dougherty & Hode, 2016). Such prior works supports the findings of the present research that victim resilience decreases upon reporting sexual harassment. If after filing a formal report, the target of harassment (a) experiences negative formal or informal consequences, and/or (b) feels like their organization did not adequately hold the perpetrator accountabl ...
Whether victims of workplace sexual harassment voice their abuse or remain silent has implications for both organizations and victims. This study surveyed victims and observers of workplace sexual harassment to assess how medium of harassment, and voicing behaviors impact victims’ resilience and perceived vulnerability to future harassment. The study also examined the impact of organizational (in)tolerance of sexual harassment on both victims’ and observers’ organizational withdrawal and perceived vulnerability to future harassment. Findings show that victims’ resilience decreases when victims formally report their sexual harassment and when victims withdraw from their organizations, which is more likely to occur in organizations that are perceived as tolerant of sexual harassment. Results also show that observing sexual harassment had no effect on perceptions of organizational tolerance of sexual harassment. Theoretical and practical implications for organizations attempting to address the problem of sexual harassment are offered.
... Our findings suggest that, while men may feel flattered by sexualized comments, women are more likely to view such comments as inappropriate and imposing an unwarranted social penalty on them (see also Siy & Cheryan, 2013 for advantaged group members' failure to acknowledge the negative social implications of seemingly flattering comments made to disadvantaged group members). Being conscious of these differences, which should be considered when thinking what comments to make and how to phrase them, can improve the dynamics between women and men(Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). ...
Two studies examined perceptions referring to appearance comments presented as compliments. When taking the target's perspective (Study 1, n = 678), women perceived appearance comments, especially if sexualized (vs. non-sexualized) as less appropriate than men did. Women also believed that, as the targets of sexualized (vs. non-sexualized) comments, they were likely to be perceived as less warm (whereas men believed that they were likely to be perceived as more competent). When taking an observer perspective (Study 2, n = 398), participants perceived comments made at the workplace (vs. a non-work setting) as less appropriate. Women, but not men, also perceived sexualized comments as less appropriate than non-sexualized comments. Finally, both men and women perceived the target of sexualized (vs. non-sexualized) comments as less warm and competent. The results point to a gap between women's and men's perceptions of the appropriateness of appearance comments in general, and sexualized comments in particular, in both workplace and non-work settings. Moreover, women are more aware than men of the “penalty,” in terms of social perceptions, imposed upon the targets of appearance comments. These results, which can inform sensitivity training to prevent sexual harassment, are especially important in workplace settings, where perceptions of warmth and competence affect how individuals are treated and promoted.
... For organizations interested in addressing this issue, it is argued that 'rational assumptions underlying sexual harassment policy may be inconsistent with the lived experiences in organizational cultures' (Dougherty andGoldstein Hode 2016, p. 1729). Moreover, commonly used human resource management rules, grievance procedures and discourses of legal compliance have been inadequate, as they mostly place the onus on those who experience sexual harassment to pursue individual remedies (e.g. ...
This paper extends Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scholarship to focus on issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Despite a significant body of work on gender and CSR from a variety of feminist perspectives, long-standing evidence of sexual harassment and sexual violence in business, particularly in global value chains, and the rise of the #MeToo movement, there has been little scholarship focused specifically on these issues in the context of CSR. Our conceptual paper addresses this gap in the literature through two key contributions. First, we extend the theoretical base of CSR scholarship by drawing upon and explicating radical feminist theory, a resource that has been underutilized in the field to date. This theoretical perspective is well placed to offer insights around the issues of sexual harassment and sexual violence, and to explain the centrality of these concerns to the gender equality agenda in business and in CSR. Second, building upon insights from radical feminism, and from research on CSR and human rights, we explicate a business and human rights approach to sexual harassment, sexual violence and CSR. We point to ways in which this approach might be more effective in addressing these issues than previously adopted strategies and suggest directions for future research arising from our analysis.
... Most managers still tend to rely on antiharassment policies to take care of potential SH acts at work. Yet most SH policies use neutral and legalistic language that can be interpreted in many different ways by men and women, and can produce a culture of fear instead of one of dignity and respect (Dougherty & Hode, 2016). As such, we now describe what managers can do in a post-#MeToo world. ...
#MeToo has become a global phenomenon since 2017, when many famous women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment (SH) against many famous men. Our purpose here is to help managers of both sexes understand their role in the wake of the #MeToo movement. We reviewed recent research on SH and #MeToo from both academic and practitioner outlets to get a pulse on what is currently being written on these topics. We also studied data we collected on current attitudes and behaviors men and women are experiencing in the wake of #MeToo, as well as examined one of the newer forms of harassment, namely online SH. We use our data and research to explore actions managers can take to prevent SH and respond to it when it occurs. In doing so, we provide new insights for business practice that both managers and scholars need to be aware of, and act upon, in the wake #MeToo.
... Traditional means of reporting tend to negatively impact the victim. Not only does reporting sexual harassment create the possibility of ostracization or retaliation by co-workers, it can also lead to repercussions to the victim's career (Clair, 2019;Dougherty & Hode, 2016). Recommendations that victims 'report' harassment through formal and bureaucratic organizational channels leave out other possible actions or resistance strategies that may be more satisfying or empowering to the victim (what Clair, 1993 calls 'exclusionary discourses'). ...
Although reports of workplace sexual harassment share various similarities, victims uniquely react and assign meaning to these events. Using Weick’s sensemaking theory coupled with Lazarus and Folkman’s model of coping, this study examines the role of organizational tolerance toward sexual harassment and its influence on victim resilience, coping, harassment fatigue, and perceived vulnerability to future sexual harassment. Survey results from 187 victims of workplace sexual harassment indicate that organizational tolerance of sexual harassment is a significant predictor of victim vulnerability, resilience, and harassment fatigue. Specifically, organizations that are more tolerant of sexual harassment are associated with higher victim vulnerability to future harassment and harassment fatigue, as well as lower resilience. Additionally, victims who responded to harassment using problem-focused coping were significantly more resilient, while formally reporting sexual harassment was associated with lower victim resilience. Overall, results illustrate the complexity of addressing sexual harassment from both an organizational and individual perspective.
... To combat this issue, organizations are attempting to minimize harassment in the workplace by creating anti-harassment policies (DOL, 201;Dougherty & Goldstein, 2016) and offering harassment training (Levin, 2016). While policies and trainings offer awareness of the functional definitions of workplace harassment, these strategies may prove inadequate for eradicating harassment in the workplace due to ambiguous definitions and confused perceptions of what qualifies as harassment (Branch, Ramsay & Barker, 2013;Gordon, Cohen, Grauer & Rogelbert, 2005;Pierucci, Echterhoff, Marchal, & Klein, 2014;Toker, 2016). ...
This study aimed to examine online commentary about enacted workplace harassment conflict to determine the applicability of existing, functional definitions of workplace harassment in this new context. Online comments (N=721) were analyzed through an inductive thematic analysis to identify trends in women's commentary about harassment in the workplace. The analysis developed nine themes of content evident in women's discourse about workplace harassment as well as characteristics of each content theme which were compared to literature on harassment conflict. The study confirms that current, definitions of harassment closely relate to how women describe workplace harassment conflict in this new, mediated context.
... Where neoliberalism emphasizes standardization across contexts, fourth wave feminism emphasizes the importance of recognizing intersectional diversity and being cognizant of how different institutional contexts mean there can be no one-size policy that fits all institutions (Iverson & Issadore, 2018). A second recommendation is thus to take situational context into account so that organizational policies can effect change at a local level (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016;Iverson & Issadore, 2018). Without focused attention on expanding organizational knowledge of the dynamics of sexual violence beyond the experiences of the dominant group, institutions of higher education risk perpetuating what Harris (2016) described as intersectional inequalities. ...
This article uses the lens of fourth-wave feminism to examine media accounts of institutional and student responses in two cases of sexual violence at institutions of higher education. Competing discourses reveal a disconnect between what institutions say they do and students’ actual experiences of the institutional handling of sexual violence cases. When policies, actions, and values are not fully aligned, institutions of higher education are unable to respond to societal and institutional injustices. Hence, recommendations for better alignment between institutional values and actions are proposed.
... Finally, bystanders tend to treat targets as villains in the organization. They are treated as irrational, fragile and evil (Dougherty & Goldstein Hode, 2016). In essence, the predator is treated as a hero and the target is treated as a villain. ...
#MeToo has breathed new life into the women’s movement and especially into understanding and rectifying sexual harassment, abuse and assault. It has galvanized activists around the globe. And it has placed thousands of stories of the harassed in full view of the public. Sexual harassment, abuse and assault may occur within the organizational context or beyond; but sexual harassment, in particular has been legally labeled an organizational phenomenon. With this in mind, Robin Clair frames the early part of this article around the most recent organizational communication theories (see the appendix for an overview of these theories). Following the essay is a forum, in which invited scholars address questions related to the #MeToo movement.
Formal complaints and disciplinary processes constitute a mandatory aspect of organizational responses for addressing sexual harassment in many jurisdictions. However, previous research has found that reporting parties are not well served by such processes. In particular, Ahmed ( Complaint! ; 2021) argues that the institutional climate that enables harassment or discrimination to occur—including its gendered dynamics—also shapes how complaints about harassment are handled. Building on Ahmed's work, this article analyses how gender “gets into” formal reporting processes for sexual harassment within organizations. It draws on interviews with 18 students and staff who went through a formal institutional reporting process for gender‐based violence or harassment in UK higher education between 2016 and 2021. Using Connell's theorization of “gender regimes,” we outline how “dimensions of gender” within organizations affected different stages of formal reporting processes, including how evidence was gathered during reporting processes, as well as how it was assessed. These findings demonstrate that gender regimes—via gender relations of power, gendered “attachments and investments,” and “gender‐neutral” processes—can override formal processes and affect outcomes of sexual harassment reporting. These findings explain how gender regimes contribute to the failure of sexual harassment complaints to be upheld within organizations.
There is a consensus that power is central to sexual harassment. Research has focused most heavily on the bases of power upon which harassment is perpetrated. However, a feminist poststructural view locates power everywhere, suggesting that people encountering sexual harassment also have power. This study focuses on an encounter with sexual harassment experienced by a woman, whom we name Beth, while working for the government. We use deconstruction to understand how power manifests in Beth's narrative of sexual harassment by a congressman. Our deconstruction uncovers the complex manifestations of power in encounters with sexual harassment. We follow our deconstruction with a reconstruction, a fictional restory that demonstrates how power dynamics could ideally shift. Our findings shed light on the many ways in which power operates and highlight the ineffectiveness of current best practices around workplace sexual harassment.
This chapter explores how SHW has come to be a ‘problem’ of sex-based discrimination. The idea of ‘sex-based’ implies a kind of discrimination done at a workplace that is attributed to the biological sex of a person. Or discrimination done unto a person due to their biological sex (female in the case of workplace harassment). This problematization was identified on the basis of the direct ‘problem’ setting language used not only in the policies within India but also in a global policy context. I present three technologies of government through which sex-based discrimination is established: The unwelcomeness tenet, the quid pro quo tenet and the hostile work environment tenet. I argue that these technologies deepen a binary understanding of ‘sex’, thereby confining the ‘sex-based’ problematization to a ‘problem’ between the sex/gender binaries.
We theorize workplace sexual harassment in terms of narrative. Two case studies – one at Ford Motor Company plants, the other involving former New York State governor Andrew Cuomo – ground thematic analysis of victims’ accounts of experiences of harassment and commentary on their capacity to give accounts. We identify six challenges - features of workplace harassment and its social context - that victims face in narrating harassment, which facilitate abuse and undermine redress: (1) ambiguity of meaning; (2) stepwise harassment; (3) coerced co-participation; (4) admonitions/mechanisms against telling; (5) competing narrative constructions; and (6) storyteller marginalization. Anti-harassment efforts should target these challenges.
Introduction: Feedback is invaluable in helping learners improve their performance and clinical competence, but studies have historically documented contrasting perspectives between learners and teachers in how much feedback is given by teachers to learners in clinical training. We explore why there is a discrepancy between learner and teacher perceptions of the feedback that is shared in a clinical teaching encounter.
Methods: We recruited 23 preceptors (clinical teachers) from a mid-size Canadian medical school that has a diverse group of generalist and focused specialties. We used inductive content analysis to explore preceptors’ perceptions of both how much feedback they shared with learners, as well as amount of feedback that they believe learners would report was shared.
Results: Analysis of interviews generated two themes: (i) difficulty among preceptors in quantifying the feedback they share to learners, and; (ii) discrepancies between preceptors in the definition of feedback.
Discussion: The key themes identified in this study highlight that preceptors’ varying definitions of feedback and their difficulty in ascertaining how much feedback they share with learners can be attributed to a lack of a common understanding of feedback. When engaging in a feedback conversation, both the teacher and the learner engage in a meaning-making process that yields a shared understanding that feedback is occurring, and that information offered by the teacher is aimed at supporting the learner. We recommend that both faculty development sessions and educational sessions with learners should incorporate early check-ins to ensure a shared understanding of the definition of feedback.
Notwithstanding developments in the advancement of gender equity in secular and non-secular contexts, women still remain profoundly unable to access leadership roles globally and traverse the entrenched barriers of gender bias in institutionalized sexism. In order to disrupt conditions of gender disenfranchisement, persistent efforts are required to expose and challenge the status quo of embedded gender-organizational dynamics. This paper focuses attention on understanding the current phenomenon of gender marginalizing treatment within the male-dominated workplace of the Church in Hong Kong, by examining one pervasive aspect of gender inequality: vertical segregation. This shows how Hong Kong clergywomen are not exempt from gender-biased treatment, but instead are compelled to practice and work under deeply-gendered and hierarchical conditions.
Sexism and sexist ideology have significant negative consequences for female victims of sexual assault and other crimes. Thus, uncovering how language is used as a discursive tool for maintaining unequal power relations is extremely important in discourses around sexual misconduct and sexualized violence. In this study we used Critical Discourse Analysis and Manne’s theory of the moral economy of patriarchy to analyze Facebook posts supporting a religious leader who had committed sexual misconduct. The analysis reveals the patriarchal ideology underlying some of the Facebook conversation discourses and the discursive strategies used by individuals to try to normalize their sexist arguments. Content of the posts shows the religious leader’s defenders showing sympathy for the perpetrator, ignoring the female victims, and minimizing sexual assault, as they argue that he should not be criticized or held accountable for his actions.
Technology has changed the modern work environment. In contemporary workplaces, employees can communicate from anywhere in the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week through email, corporate social media, text messages, blogs, etc. In general, this increased communication access supports productivity, but in some circumstances, the increased employee to employee access presents troubling outcomes. One such troubling outcome is the rise of cyberbullying and harassment in the workplace. In fact, research indicates that the number of individuals experiencing cyberbullying in the workplace is on the rise. With increased virtual incivilities, organizations must create strategies to protect the employees and organizational efficiencies. With these goals in mind, the following chapter will examine the importance of creating a clear organizational definition of cyberbullying, the organizational consequences of allowing cyberbullying to continue and solutions organizations can implement to create a positive work environment that is free from cyberbullying.
In this chapter, we examine some institutional effects of the implementation of policies designed to eradicate gender-based violence on campus at two Canadian universities. In doing so, we adopt Sara Ahmed’s practical phenomenological approach to highlight problems with the embodied lived experience of those involved with said policy implementation. In addition, we share some initial findings from a qualitative study that examines the implementation of gender-based violence policies through interviews with practitioners and institutional leaders. Preliminary results of this study suggest that, if we wish to eradicate gender-based violence on university campuses, we need to focus on dismantling sexism and other forms of institutional oppression. This dismantling entails seeing gender-based violence as a structural as well as an individual, embodied practice. It is argued that policies alone cannot eradicate gender-based violence in institutions. Rather, there needs to be systemic change at the macro, meso, and micro levels of the institution. Finally, we offer suggestions for how we might educate future professionals to deal with the systemic issues underpinning gender-based violence in institutional settings.
As the United States has become increasingly polarized, policymakers have had difficulty gaining bipartisan support for policy proposals. Political polarization can lead to the othering of individuals, a process characterized by the tendency to construct members of an opposing party in negative ways. In this article, we examine the creation and disruption of othering through the lens of language convergence/meaning divergence (LC/MD) and pragmatic ambiguity. LC/MD and pragmatic ambiguity framed our case study of the successful bipartisan passage of the Global Food Security Act (GFSA) in 2016. We found that othering was produced through a maestro Discourse of Polarization that structured interactions between other Discourses, including the Discourse of National Security and the Global Good Discourse. Discordant framings of the three Discourses created the ambiguity necessary to disrupt othering and achieve collective action. The findings provide new theoretical insights into othering processes while pragmatic ambiguity broadens LC/MD in important ways.
The work experiences of faculty in higher education often entail being overworked and stressed, and this is particularly true for women faculty and faculty of color. This essay is situated at the intersection of gender, race, axiological, epistemological, and occupational identities. In this metatheoretical argument, we propose a new concept communicative labor by exploring how existing scholarly frameworks regarding workplace emotion, compassionate communication, and gendered work intersect to inform the experiences of critical women scholars and the ways their labor is communicatively manifested across research, teaching, and service. More specifically, we argue that communication itself (i.e., literally listening, speaking, and writing) becomes emotionally-laden work amid the research, teaching, and service performed by critical women scholars. We aim, through our articulation of communication labor, to disrupt dominant narratives of what faculty work lives should be, and we call for a paradigm shift in the way faculty labor is socially constructed so that we can improve critical women faculty’s success and well-being.
This chapter introduces contemporary and emergent business communication theories which our survey and scholarly polling may have overlooked, especially due to some being relatively new. We humbly acknowledge that our choices are not all inclusive. We may have missed some high-quality contributions. Nonetheless, these exciting developments were selected for their capacity to transcend the boundaries of a particular discipline, move the field of business communication forward, and with the guidance of an expert, multi-disciplinary panel. The chapter begins by explaining our decision criteria and then explores theoretical innovations which are rooted in the theories from our catalog. We next present more novel business communication theories, including those which have been adapted from other fields.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores employment discrimination against gender diverse job applicants and employees in Western Australia (WA).
Design/methodology/approach
Using grounded theory, this study draws on semi-structured interviews with respondents (n = 20) who identified as trans women, trans men, nonbinary or agender. Thematic analysis focused on the multiple dimensions of disadvantage experienced by respondents, including subtle, not so subtle and overt types of employment discrimination.
Findings
The authors’ results point to several reasons why gender diverse individuals (GDIs) may fear the labor market, including difficulties in concealing their stigma and acquiescence to discrimination. On the other hand, our results also point to sources of organizational support, including encouragement from direct line managers and colleagues who are also Allies.
Practical implications
The results of the research have important implications for sociological frameworks surrounding dramaturgy, stigma, aesthetic labor, organizational silence and social identity. Practical implications for employers, employees, human resource (HR) professionals and trade unions are also articulated.
Originality/value
Whereas previous studies have prioritized the discriminatory experiences of GDIs in the US and European labor markets, this study reports on gender diverse voices in WA. Furthermore, recent work on this topic has been experimental and largely quantitative, whereas the present study offers a compelling set of profound narratives, thereby addressing calls for qualitative research that foregrounds the complexities and nuances of lived experience for GDIs and renders their voices heard.
Recent high-profile cases of sexual misconduct in intercollegiate forensics demonstrate a compelling need for critical reflexivity about sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era. This essay draws on structuration theory and the concept of institutional logics to explain how toxic cultures of sexual harassment manifest and are sustained in competitive speech and debate. We focus on three practices-judging philosophies, ballots, and team cultures-to explain how policies, ideologies, and individual actions work to concertively sustain sexual harassment while constraining opportunities for recourse. We also provide a set of best practices aimed at combating the recurrence of sexual harassment and the institutitonal logics that sustain it.
Recent high-profile cases of sexual misconduct in intercollegiate forensics demonstrate a compelling need for critical reflexivity about sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era. This essay draws on structuration theory and the concept of institutional logics to explain how toxic cultures of sexual harassment manifest and are sustained in competitive speech and debate. We focus on three practices-judging philosophies, ballots, and team cultures-to explain how policies, ideologies, and individual actions work to concertively sustain sexual harassment while constraining opportunities for recourse. We also provide a set of best practices aimed at combating the recurrence of sexual harassment and the institutitonal logics that sustain it.
This chapter provides a generational overview of sexual harassment research and proposes an agenda for research on bystander intervention. Given that sexual harassment is saturated with emotions, it is surprising that sexual harassment is often viewed through a rational lens when it comes to bystander intervention. Research has made it clear that sexual harassment is both a sociocultural and an organizational culture phenomenon. The chapter describes sexual harassment from a legal perspective, followed by a discussion of three generations of research. The research is then used to develop a model of bystander intervention that can support the next generation of sexual harassment research and intervention. Three generations covered are solving sexual harassment through information/messages, sexual harassment as a social construction, and sexual harassment and communication constitutes organizing. Each generation treats communication in different ways. Of course, as with all generational thought, the seeds for the next generation are planted in the one that precedes.
Formalisation of safeguarding in sport occurs in increasingly diverse contexts to address abuse of athletes and promote ‘safe sport’. Moreover, safeguarding policies are occasionally integrated in transnational Sport for Development (SfD) partnerships as a condition for funding. In this article, we draw from social movement theory to explore political mobilisation against abuse in Zambian sport associations that have a Norwegian SfD partner. Using the concept of ‘cultural framing’, we examine how safe sport is captured, presented and understood by coaches and sport leaders involved in Zambian sport. The analysis shows that there was considerable support for formalised safeguarding, even though ambivalence was expressed regarding the extent of abuse in sport. With motivation grounded in resonance with sport priorities and humanistic values, safeguarding seemingly equipped the sport associations with a practicable formula for confronting a morally evocative problem. Coupled with a strong network of local mobilising actors championing this cause and a conducive political climate for connecting sport with broader social responsibilities, we suggest that this cultural framing facilitated political mobilisation against abuse in Zambian sport. Lastly, we outline some implications of our findings for safeguarding in sport and for the politicisation of sport issues.
Organizational scholars have established that sexual harassment, the most studied kind of sexual violence, is an organizational problem. Extending this work, we analyze two critical events regarding sexual violence in the United States—one in the military and another at a university—in which discourse detracts from understanding the problem in this way. We draw upon feminist new materialism and its primary method—diffraction—to track ‘cuts’, the practices that simplify and pause agency’s complex, perpetual motions. Our analysis shows that agency moves in discussions about the aftermath of violence. That momentum highlights the organization’s capacity to respond to rape. Even so, during discussions about enacting violence, the perpetual motion of agency congeals around discrete humans, thereby maintaining assault as an individual act. These cuts, whereby agency pauses on individual perpetrators, obscure how organizational dynamics make sexual violence more or less likely to occur. We suggest that a focus on agency’s kinetic qualities can help feminist scholars continue to highlight how the systemic aspects of harassment and other forms of violence become hard to notice.
Legal responses to rape and sexual assault on university campuses are often framed as being protective of victim’s human rights but are only enacted when threats are made to masculine privilege. This is especially the case when gender identities and behaviors challenge or violate state- sanctioned institutionalized hetero-patriarchal gender norms. Building on Agamben’s Homer Sacer by examining the state of exclusion and abandonment within the context of sexual violence, the recent case of Brock Turner is analyzed as a starting point for a broader theoretical discussion of the treatment of rape and sexual assault on university campuses in the United States.
Younger employees are highly susceptible to sexual harassment, and with the advent of increased social media use, workplace sexual harassment now extends beyond the organization into cyberspace. The current study investigates younger employee experiences of sexual harassment across settings and the role of uncertainty management in this process. We discuss important considerations at each level related to uncertainty; namely, employment status, target status, spillover, coworker relationships, culture, and space. We offer important theoretical implications including the consideration of hegemony, uncertainty, and spillover to work on sexual harassment. Practical implications include encouraging organizations to develop policies that incorporate online sexual harassment.
The purpose of the study was to investigate the quality and online availability of policies for employee sexual harassment prevention. The availability and characteristics of employee sexual harassment policies were compared across the following types of colleges and universities: (a) government sponsored state nonprofit, (b) private nonprofit, and (c) private for-profit. Web sites of 496 U.S. colleges and universities were searched. Available policies were collected and coded for whether they included the following: (a) mandatory supervisory reporting of harassment, (b) availability of informal and formal complaint procedures, and (c) availability of multiple reporting options to ensure harassing supervisors can be bypassed. Each school web site was also searched for discussion of the availability of sexual harassment training for employees. Results suggested that only 23 % of for-profit universities made their policies publicly available on their web sites versus 99 % of state universities. Seventy percent of available university harassment policies/web sites were deficient on one or more of the characteristics studied. Based on these findings, it appears that universities should increase both the quality and accessibility of their sexual harassment policies as well as the availability of anti-harassment training.
A poststructuralist feminist reading of Herbert Simon's construct, bounded rationality, is presented in this article. Following from this notion, it is maintained that even though bounded rationality provides a modified critique of "pure" rationality, this concept is grounded in male-centered assumptions that exclude alternative modes of organizing. Through a feminist deconstructive process, bounded emotionality is introduced as an alternative organizing construct. The premises, conditions of organizing, and implications of this alternative are discussed and illustrated. Finally, theorists are urged to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between rationality and emotionality, in order to question the assumptions that underlie traditional constructs and to create new grounds for future theoretical activities.
Efforts to end sexual harassment that rely primarily on target reporting are unlikely to be successful because most targets do not report their experiences. Thus, we explore an alternative mechanism for controlling sexual harassment - observer intervention. We examine observer intervention in sexual harassment using the literature on bystander intervention for guidance. We describe the concept of observer intervention, develop a taxonomy of intervention types, and discuss factors promoting and inhibiting its occurrence.
In this chapter, we first provide a brief 'story' – how it all began; then we pre-sent an overview of some important research agendas in CDA and discuss new challenges for CDA research. Secondly, we discuss the various theoretical and methodological approaches assembled in this volume from a sociological and epistemological perspective. 2 There, we focus mostly on three central and con-stitutive concepts: power, ideology and critique. We also, of course, summarize some of the salient principles which are constitutive of all approaches in CDA. In addition, we mention some important criticism which CDA has been con-fronted with in the past years (see Billig, 2003, 2008; Chilton, 2007; Chilton and Wodak, 2007;Wodak and Cillia, 2006 for an extensive discussion of this issue). The terms Critical Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are often used interchangeably. In fact, recently, the term CDA seems to have been preferred and is being used to denote the theory formerly identified as CL.Therefore, we will continue to use CDA exclusively here (see Anthonissen, 2001; Chilton and Wodak, 2007 for an extensive discussion of these terms and their history). The manifold roots of CDA lie in Rhetoric, Text linguistics, Anthropology, Philosophy, Socio-Psychology, Cognitive Science, Literary Studies and Sociolinguistics, as well as in Applied Linguistics and Pragmatics. Wodak-3795-Ch-01:Wodak-3795-Ch-01.QXP 9/29/2008 4:29 PM Page 1 Nowadays, some scholars prefer the term Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). For example,Teun van Dijk provides us with a broad overview of the field of (C)DS, where one can identify the following developments: between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, new, closely related disciplines emerged in the humanities and the social sciences. Despite their different disciplinary backgrounds and a great diver-sity of methods and objects of investigation, some parts of the new fields/paradigms/linguistic sub-disciplines of semiotics, pragmatics, psycho-and sociolinguistics, ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis and discourse studies all deal with discourse and have at least seven dimensions in common (see Van Dijk, 2007a;Wodak, 2008a): • an interest in the properties of 'naturally occurring' language use by real language users (instead of a study of abstract language systems and invented examples) • a focus on larger units than isolated words and sentences and, hence, new basic units of analysis: texts, discourses, conversations, speech acts, or communicative events • the extension of linguistics beyond sentence grammar towards a study of action and interaction • the extension to non-verbal (semiotic, multimodal, visual) aspects of interaction and communication: gestures, images, film, the internet, and multimedia • a focus on dynamic (socio)-cognitive or interactional moves and strategies • the study of the functions of (social, cultural, situative and cognitive) contexts of language use • an analysis of a vast number of phenomena of text grammar and language use: coher-ence, anaphora, topics, macrostructures, speech acts, interactions, turn-taking, signs, politeness, argumentation, rhetoric, mental models, and many other aspects of text and discourse.
In this article, we study emotional processes associated with the project management discourse. Employing a constructionist approach where emotions are experienced within an ordering discursive context, the study identifies four distinct emotional processes associated to the invocation of the project management discourse in daily work practices. From a study of theatre and opera house employees, we suggest that the project management discourse tends to normalise feelings of rigidity and weariness in project- based work, whilst emphasising projects as extraordinary settings creating thrill and excitement. Moreover, we argue that this discourse is invoked in ways that lead individuals to internalise emotional states related to chaos and anxiety, whilst ascribing feelings of certainty and confidence to external organisational norms and procedures. The study highlights how employees construct project-based work as a promise of exciting adventures experienced under conditions of rational control, but also how the negative and suppressed aspects of project-based work are constructed as inevitable and to be endured. Through these emotional processes, the Project management discourse is sustained and reinforced.
This study examines the intersection of power, professional work, organizing, and emotional deviance at two municipal courthouses in the United States. A variety of qualitative methods including observation, shadowing employees, informal interviewing, and semi-structured respondent interviews were used to collect the data. A total of twelve municipal court judges were observed during arraignments, pre-trial conferences, and trials, and four of these judges participated in member checking interviews for a total of sixteen in-depth, audio-recorded interviews.This article centers on emotional deviance, or the expression of emotion that occurs when employees disregard feeling rules and express emotions that do not align with organizational expectations. In the case of judges who are mandated to be rational and neutral, emotional deviance becomes a distinctive advantage. Furthermore, the findings of this piece suggest that professional work is actually quite emotional and it also introduces the concept of privileged deviance to describe the ways in which deviance is related to power and specific verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors. The article ends by discussing implicit and explicit privileged deviance and offers practical implications related to the training of municipal court judges and the mandates to process cases quickly while still fostering a high level of defendant satisfaction.
While Alvesson and Kärreman’s (2000) ‘Varieties of Discourse’ essay was an important and oft-cited marker in the field of organizational discourse studies, I argue in this response that their rather gloomy, even curmudgeonly, updated reading of the field is not only misplaced but also rooted in their own reductionist conception of discourse — a charge that they themselves level against contemporary organizational discourse research. As a communication scholar who makes his interdisciplinary home in the area of organizational communication/organization studies, I argue that much of Alvesson and Kärreman’s critique has its origin in a rather anemic, even wrongheaded, reading of the ‘linguistic turn’ — a reading that limits the generative and analytic possibilities of post-linguistic turn organizational discourse studies.
Organizations tend to be guided by a rationality=emotionality duality in which rational behaviorisprivilegedoveremotionalbehavior.Consequently,emotionsinorganizationshave historically been undervalued in favor of rationality. Despite the privileging of rationality, however, organizations are emotion-laden environments. The present study uses sensemak- ing theory to explore how employees manage the rationality=emotionality duality in the workplace. Using a qualitative analysis of 38 emotional experiences derived from 19 inter- views, it was found that participants accept the duality by orienting toward emotions that are associated with the disruption or enhancement of ''rational'' business practices. Further,
Unlike previous research on maternity leave using Department of Labor statistics, survey data, or analyses of single cases or texts, this study explores 15 women's discursive constructions of their workplace experiences while pregnant, on maternity leave, and upon return to paid work. Through a poststructuralist feminist analysis, findings not only show how these women positioned themselves and others vis-à-vis gendered discourses and organizing, but also how this positioning process shaped possibilities for practice in particular ways. The ironies and contradictions exposed by participants' discourse reflect ongoing feminist debates about the productive management of dialectic tensions and suggest directions for change in micropractices and macroprocesses of gendered organizing.
We use structurating activity theory,an integration of structuration and cultural-historical activity theories, to examine how individuals construct policy knowledge.The study was conducted over 5 months with participants from related activity systems who interacted regarding special education policy. Qualitative analysis focused on how participants drew on system-specific and structural rules and resources to construct policy knowledge within and between activity systems. Results reveal how participants developed policy knowledge that was mediated by system elements of divisions of labor, communities, rules, subjects, and both material and symbolic mediating resources.The mediated knowledge construction process also reproduced broad structural features. Results interpreted through structurating activity theory extend current understandings of policy and knowledge processes and offer directions for future research.
Sexual harassment continues to be pervasive in the workplace. It is doubtful that organizations consciously encourage inappropriate social‐sexual behavior, yet the prevalence of sexual harassment suggests that organizations may unofficially or informally sanction behaviors that facilitate or encourage sexual harassment. This study tests a cultural influence model of sexual harassment that explores how sex, victim status, perceptions of fair interpersonal treatment, social‐sexual behaviors, and sexual harassment training and knowledge influence employees’ perceptions of how their organization lives up to its stated zero tolerance sexual harassment policy.
The university has become a site of increased debate over policy and procedures as the experience of sexual harassment reaches all levels of the academic hierarchy. Although this topic has been researched thoroughly, few studies have explored sexual harassment through the voices of men in academe. In this study, sexual harassment is explored from the perspective of two men who are tenured, full professors at a southwestern university. This research employs narrative analysis to locate patterns of discourse that illuminate fractured identities. Through the examination of these fractures, this analysis exposes the ways gender, identity, and sexual harassment are intertwined within academe.
Although work-family benefits are increasingly important organizational policies, limited research addresses the impact of communication on benefit utilization. However, communication is significant because the perceived appropriateness of work-family benefits emerges through interaction. For example, when coworkers complain about "picking up the slack" for those using family leave, their discourse may impact future decisions of other workers regarding whether they utilize the work-family benefits available to them. We apply Giddens' (1984) Structuration Theory to examine organizational members' discursive responses to conditions (and contradictions) present in utilizing work-family benefits in a governmental organization. We argue the daily discursive practices of individuals can either reinforce or undermine formally stated work-family initiatives, and in turn discuss the implications of this "structuration" of policy.
examine the current literature on the role of emotional labour in organizations / show how it is tied to the myth of rationality that pervades Western culture and underlies bureaucratic structures / employ feminist theory to critique the use of emotional labour in organizations and to show how it marginalizes the personal and relational nature of emotions / illustrate this critique through two case examples that demonstrate how simultaneously defining and negating emotions creates a contradiction that exposes the myth of rationality and makes emotional labour problematic / the first case highlights [the contradictions inherent in a boss–secretary] work relationship / [it shows] how secretaries can . . . challenge bureaucratic rationality through parody, the discourse of bitching, and acts of resistance / the second case example focuses on sources of [emotional] ambiguity in hospital social work
provide alternatives that treat emotion as central to organizational experiences / show how these alternatives might function . . . through a case study in which emotions are treated as central to the participatory process of [teacher–graduate student training team] members (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article examines current debates about gender equality, work-life balance and flexible working. We contrast policymakers’ and organizational discourses of flexible working and work–life balance with managers’ and employees’ talk about these issues within their organizations. We show how, despite the increasingly gender-neutral language of the official discourses, in the data studied participants consistently reformulate the debates around gendered explanations and assumptions. For example, a ‘generic female parent’ is constructed in relation to work–life balance and flexible working yet participants routinely maintain that gender makes no difference within their organization. We consider the effects of these accounts; specifically the effect on those who take up flexible working, and the perceived backlash against policies viewed as favouring women or parents. We argue that the location of work–life balance and flexibility debates within a gender-neutral context can in practice result in maintaining or encouraging gendered practices within organizations. Implications of this for organizations, for policymakers and for feminist researchers are discussed.
This article provides an overview and critique of the extant research on workplace resistance. It argues that much of this research has developed around an implicit duality of resistance and control. In other words, critical studies have highlighted either the growing ubiquity and subtlety of managerial control or have privileged workers 'abilities to carve out spheres of autonomy within these control mechanisms. It suggests that, in contrast to this implicit dualism of control and resistance, a dialectical approach better captures the notion of resistance and control as mutually constitutive, and as a routine social production of daily organizational life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Management Communication Quarterly is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Poised within the borderlands between two nations, Border Patrol agents form the largest federal law enforcement organization in the nation, yet the public knows very little about agents themselves. Agents complete a variety of job duties that may be viewed as “dirty work,” or work that society considers physically, socially, or morally objectionable. They also perform emotional duties and emotional labor, which are often stigmatized by the public. This interpretive ethnographic research provides a descriptive portrayal of the Patrol and extends theory in the areas of emotional labor—the emotional performances required to carry out certain jobs—and dirty work. This article asserts that emotion and emotional labor are emotionally tainted, and that engaging emotion provides one strategy for workers to make sense of this type of dirty work. A definition and framework for emotional taint are offered, extending the current discussion of both emotion and taint at work.
Sexual harassment remains a persistent problem for businesses. Indeed, employers spend millions annually in sexual harassment litigation and liability costs. Furthermore, current U.S. law effectively makes it management's responsibility to implement programs to prevent and correct harassment, or else face heightened liability. A common element of prevention programs is training, especially for employees in positions of authority. Several states have gone so far as to mandate sexual harassment training. However, little research exists to demonstrate the efficacy of such training programs. It is known that training sensitizes people in recognizing harassment. However, no research has indicated that training enables managers to accurately identify harassment and respond appropriately. This exploratory study addresses this issue by examining whether training quantity (i.e., cumulative training hours), training variety (i.e., the number of training methods employed), and training recency (i.e., the elapsed time since training) predict a manager's ability to (a) accurately identify sexual harassment and (b) recommend an appropriate response. Results suggest that, while training increases sensitivity, training is associated with decreased accuracy in identification of sexual harassment. No relationship was found among the predictor variables and manager accuracy in recommending an appropriate response. Implications concerning these results are offered along with directions for future research.
Bringing together papers written by Norman Fairclough over a 25 year period, Critical Discourse Analysis represents a comprehensive and important contribution to the development of this popular field.
This book introduces an approach to policy analysis called 'what's the problem represented to be?' It argues that policies contain implicit representations of the 'problems' they purport to address and that these 'problem representations' need to be subjected to critical scrutiny. The book targets the way in which 'women's inequality' is represented as a 'problem' by examining key policy initiatives in the areas of education, pay equity, abortion, sexual harassment, domestic violence and equality policy.
Retirement is an expected phase of life that is made meaningful through social discourses such as master narratives. This study identified and explored a master narrative of retirement. Eighty-four individuals were interviewed representing four work experience phases. A thematic analysis revealed a master narrative of retirement that shaped expectations for retirement. Participants consistently narrated retirement as the ultimate marker of individual success and freedom. Two fractures appeared in this master narrative: the freedom/routine fracture and the individual responsibility/universal expectations fracture. These fractures created tension within the master narrative of retirement. This study has implications for social class as well as implications for the ways in which master narratives are interwoven into the cultural fabric of society.
It is important to rethink sexual harassment by addressing the following question: Because most men do not harass women, why do men tend to be resistant to admitting the breadth and depth of sexual harassment in organizations? The author posits that because men and women do not understand each other’s standpoints on sexual harassment, a gap exists between men’s and women’s understanding of what sexual harassment means. Specifically, men’s power over standpoint and the related fear of marginalization clash with women’s power with standpoint and the related fear of physical harm. The author concludes by suggesting that engaging in a dialogue with the goals of understanding and accepting other standpoints is necessary before sexual harassment can be approached in a humanistic manner.
Our current national policy regarding sexual harassment, expressed through legal, economic, and popular discourses, exemplifies the Foucauldian paradigm in its attempt to regulate sexuality through seemingly authorless texts. Arguing that regulation through such “discursive technologies”; need not lead to the effects of domination that Foucault recognized, I propose a user‐centered approach to policy drafting that values the knowledge of workers as users and makers of workplace policy.
Despite longstanding and explicit legal frameworks for preventing and responding to sexual harassment, only a small proportion of those sexually harassed use legal avenues of redress to seek justice. In contrast to legal cases which constitute the ‘tip of the iceberg’, this study examines extra-legal strategies — the less visible but more frequent, ‘everyday’, formal and informal organizational practices. We report on a national prevalence survey conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission which examined how ‘targets’ use formal organizational grievance mechanisms, and/or other informal methods to redress, resist or avoid workplace sexual harassment. The findings revealed that the majority of targets do not formally report it because of fear of retribution or that nothing will be done, but they sometimes use apparently proactive or assertive alternative strategies, such as seeking informal assistance and ‘dealing with the problem themselves’. These responses occur in the context of extra-legal facets of organizational life which affect the extent to which sexual harassment and other unfavorable and discriminatory acts are tolerated.
When a vehicle maintenance unit of a public transit agency underwent extensive demographic diversification of its work force, original workers escalated the symbolic actions and language patterns traditionally used to establish and maintain hierarchy in that workplace. Taken literally and seen as malicious by new workers, the shoptalk and horseplay became vehicles for internal power struggles that led the organization toward dysfunction and even violence. Management responded by stepping up structural control and punishment. The managers failed to acknowledge and provide for the need of newly diverse discourse communities in this workplace to negotiate a new order in which sufficient shared meaning and agreed-upon language and behaviors could be constructed.
Researchers have approached the study of sexual harassment as though it were dysfunctional. However, a feminist standpoint theory analysis would suggest that it functions differently for men and women. A study using discussion groups and stimulated recall interviews was conducted in a large health care organization. A thematic analysis revealed a primary theme of sexual harassment as a [dys]functional process. For the male participants, sexual behavior served as a coping mechanism for stress, as a form of therapeutic care, and to create and demonstrate camaraderie. For the women participants, sexual behavior tended to be either nonfunctional or dysfunctional. They did not associate it with stress reduction, therapeutic touch, and viewed group camaraderie as a means of prevention. Implications are discussed.
This exploratory study provides an analysis of midlife professional women’s experiences of growing older at work. The master narrative of aging as decline encourages midlife women to experience and articulate growing older in terms of loss, isolation, and diminished material resources. Yet women do not simply reproduce the decline narrative, they also offer resistant stories. Analysis of women’s narratives suggests that increasingly, midlife is represented as a feature of one’s identity to be managed effectively. Specifically, entrepreneurialism has colonized the aging process such that the individual is now positioned as the locus of her own problems and solutions in relation to the seemingly inevitable decline that begins at midlife. In contrast, this analysis attempts to make explicit the economic, organizational, and discursive bases of aging. Finally, the article brings the politics of midlife professional women’s aging to the fore, highlights implications for theory and practice, and suggests directions for future research.
Recent organizational research suggests an emerging trend in which some women of color choose to quit their jobs, head smaller firms, or start their own organizations. Other emergent trends reveal a decline of women of color in executive positions. As reasons for this trend, women managers of color often cite pervasive sex- and race-based stereotypes and the inability of organizations to deal with subtle racism. In this study, the author examines Black women's experience of such sexual politics in organizations. Drawing on interviews and written narratives from nine Black women, the author argues that organizational discourse sexualizes Black women through commodification, experiences of invisibility, and tensions of ownership and consumption of their bodies, which consequently elicits a paradoxical dialectic of accommodation and resistance: co-modification. The analysis both explicates current trends of Black women's declining participation and exit from organizations and suggests how organizations might transform their discursive practices.
Life in organizations and society appears to many social commentators as increasingly more demanding and insensitive to the needs of people. In this paper, the "Myth of Management" is explored to investigate some of the key beliefs and images through which contemporary management is practiced. Myth, in this context, is understood as consisting of beliefs and values which serves to provide meaning for human action. The adoption of a particular mythic frame is argued to direct the management of organizations to particular ends and purposes. Central to a "Myth of Management" are the doctrines of Social Darwinism and Function Rationality, and these are briefly evaluated in their impact on organizational life. An archetypal approach, with particular reference to the archetype of the "hero," is employed to explore the depth dimensions which underpin the formulation and exercise of the "Myth of Management." The conclusion reached is that the myth of management exacts a critical cost on people and society which can only be addressed through a reflective consciousness.
Discourse is a popular term used in a variety of ways, easily leading to confusion. This article attempts to clarify the various meanings of discourse in social studies, the term's relevance for organizational analysis and some key theoretical positions in discourse analysis. It also focuses on the methodological problem of the relationship between: a) the level of discourse produced in interviews and in everyday life observed as `social texts' (in particular talk); b) other kinds of phenomena, such as meanings, experiences, orientations, events, material objects and social practices; and, c) discourses in the sense of a large-scale, ordered, integrated way of reasoning/ constituting the social world. In particular, the relationship between `micro and meso-level' discourse analysis (i.e. specific social texts being the primary empirical material) and `grand and mega-level' discourse (i.e. large-scale orders) is investigated.
Organizational discourse has emerged as a large research field and references to discourse are numerous. As with all dominating approaches problematizations of assumptions are important. This article, partly a follow up of the authors’ frequently cited 2000 Human Relations article, provides a critical and perhaps provocative overview of some of the more recent work and tendencies within the field. It is argued that discourse continues to be used in vague and all-embracing ways, where the constitutive effects of discourse are taken for granted rather than problematized and explored. The article identifies three particular problems prevalent in the current organizational discourse literature: reductionism, overpacking, and colonization and suggests three analytical strategies to overcome these problems: counter-balancing concepts — aiming to avoid seeing ‘everything’ as discourse — relativizing muscularity — being more open about discourse’s constitutive effects — and disconnecting discourse and Discourse through much more disciplined use of discourse vocabulary.
While EEOC guidelines for managing sexual harassment prescribe a strong sexual harassment policy and aggressive remedial action following complaints, a communication approach suggests a need for a more complex understanding of sexual harassment as diffused throughout an organizational culture. The present case study uses a sensemaking approach to explore the response of members of an academic department to an alumnus donor's serial sexual harassment of three of its members. Sensemaking proceeded through three phases: the phase of discovery, the debriefing phase, and the dispersal phase. Insights into the role of humor, white men, shared experiences, and responding to sexual harassment are discussed.
The present study extends research of sexual harassment by examining the communicative techniques that are employed in institutional discourse. Sexual harassment is viewed as a discursive practice that can be enacted, tolerated, perpetuated, or rectified through communication. Past studies have examined how the victims of sexual harassment “frame” these events that in turn affect power relations. The current study addresses how universities frame their managerial discourse regarding sexual harassment, which often perpetuates the bureaucratization, commodification, and privatization of sexual harassment. Specifically, a post-structuralist critique and deconstruction of the policies and brochures developed by the Big Ten universities are undertaken to reveal oppressive and/or emancipatory forms of discourse. Three specific forms are addressed. They are taken-for-granted discourse, strategic ambiguity, and exclusionary discourse. A discussion follows that suggests that these forms of discourse contribute to the commodification, bureaucratization, and privatization of sexual harassment in an ironic way.
This study examined the communicative construction of policy knowledge within and across groups. Participants were 100 professionals and parents involved in special education and the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Structurating activity theory guided the interpretive analysis of communication and contradictions as participants developed policy knowledge over time. Results indicate that contradictions emerged as both generative mechanisms for knowledge construction and as hindrances to system transformations that would put that constructed knowledge into practice. Contradictions emerged and were managed in three knowledge construction frames: orientation, amplification, and implementation. The frames occurred in varying sequences that led to different outcomes across groups and issues. Implications are offered for theory, research, and practice regarding policy communication across related groups.
This article outlines a ‘feminist critical discourse analysis’ at the nexus of critical discourse analysis and feminist studies, with the aim of advancing rich and nuanced analyses of the complex workings of power and ideology in discourse in sustaining hierarchically gendered social orders. This is especially pertinent in the present time; it is recognized that operations of gender ideology and institutionalized power asymmetries between (and among) groups of women and men are complexly intertwined with other social identities and are variable across cultures. Gender ideology and power asymmetries in late modern societies also have become increasingly more subtle and, at the same time, as a result of backlash against feminism, have re-emerged with a new blatancy. The article offers a rationale for highlighting a feminist perspective in CDA, and proposes five key principles for a feminist discourse praxis. In concluding, a brief analysis and discussion of some data on postfeminism is provided, illustrating some of the current concerns in feminist critical discourse analysis.
An analysis of 96 employee requests for accommodation revealed the rules and resources that govern the negotiation of work/life issues in organizations. Using Giddens' structuration theory, the authors identified six rules and three resources commonly employed in seeking assistance in achieving work/life balance and identified ways that these rules and resources reproduce and challenge the system. Implications for managers, employees, and researchers are discussed.
Two hundred respondents (103 males, 97 females) completed three measures of feminist orientation, evaluated eighteen situational incidents for the extent of sexual harassment and the offensiveness of behaviors contained in the incidents, and spontaneously produced alternative labels to sexual harassment. Women perceived more behaviors as sexual harassment and rated sexual behaviors as more offensive than did men. Feminists perceived more sexual harassment than did non-feminists. The essay discusses the types of alternative labels provided by men and women and offers sex role socialization and hegemony explanations for discursive reframing practices.
A qualitative study using same-sex and mixed-sex focus groups and stimulated recall interviews was designed to identify and explore gendered constructions of power during discourse about sexual harassment. It was discovered that the men tended to construct power as hierarchically held by individuals with formal authority. Consequently, they tended to view sexual harassers as managers and supervisors. Women tended to view power as a negotiated process in which power was gained and lost through interactions. Consequently, the women tended to perceive all members of an organization as possible harassers. When these men and women were given an opportunity to discuss these issues during mixed gendered interactions, they failed to recognize the gendered constructions of power. Implications are discussed.
The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail, becuase of the nature of these problems. They are wicked problems, whereas science has developed to deal with tame problems. Policy problems cannot be definitively described. Moreover, in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputable public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about optimal solutions to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers.
Male is to female as__is to__: A guided tour of five feminist frameworks for communication studies
- K Cirksena
- L Cuklanz
Cirksena K and Cuklanz L (1992) Male is to female as__is to__: A guided tour of five feminist
frameworks for communication studies. In: Rakow LF (ed.) Women Making Meaning: New
Feminist Directions in Communication. New York: Routledge, 18-44.