244–65. equality diversity and inclusion at work
152 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
Competence Center at Berlin’s Humboldt University. The Free University of Berlin has also established a course in gender competence. The Center
of Social Research in Dortmund has founded a Gender Academy. The University of Applied Sciences in Kiel of ers ‘custom-made programmes
of qualifying and training for the implementation of gender mainstream- ing’;
2
on completing the course, the students receive a ‘Gender Expert’ certii cate.
3
There are similar academic approaches in other countries. The Tyrolian University of Applied Sciences in Kufstein, for example,
of ers ‘gender competence training’. The University of Applied Sciences in Solothurn, Switzerland, of ers a gender management course. Not only
academic institutions, but also other organisations are trying not only to meet the demand for gender knowledge, but also to stimulate it: political
foundations and, interestingly, various counsulting i rms. The kind of gender knowledge that is taught varies from institution to institution. I
shall return to this point. With regard to the relationship between gender and profession, there is a further issue that reminds us of processes of
professionalisation in other i elds. With the growing professionalisation of gender politics, the i eld becomes attractive to men. This is similar to
the professionalisation of social work, for example.
4
Professionalisation changes the gender relation in favour of men even in the i eld of gender
politics, which until now has been occupied almost exclusively by women.
GENDER COMPETENCE
The new leading concept in gender politics is ‘gender competence’. The term itself is generally accepted. But what gender competence means, what
it consists of, is an issue that is widely contested. Within this struggle, the women’s movement and female politicians engaged in women’s politics
are only two stakeholders among several competing groups of actors. The dei nitions of gender competence oscillate between two poles: political and
economic. At one extreme, gender competence is dei ned in the tradition of political feminism, that is, i nding ways and means for eliminating the per-
sisting inequalities between women and men. At the other, it is character- ised by a dominance of economic arguments and reasons; the dif erences
between women and men are not so much described in terms of social inequality, as understood as a resource of organisational development.
To outline the political dei nition I refer to the paper by Sigrid Metz-Göckel and Christine Rolof 2002: 8, ‘Gender competence as a key
qualii cation’. Based on a dei nition of gender as a structural category in social analysis, gender competence is understood as the ‘knowledge neces-
sary to recognise social determinations in the behaviour and the attitudes
‘Gender competence’: Germany 153
of women and men and as the ability to deal with these determinations in a way that new options will be opened to both genders’. According to
Metz-Göckel and Rolof , a core element of gender competence is knowl- edge about the social constitution of gender relations and the hierarchies
within these relations.
This critical perspective on power and supremacy is more or less absent in the economic dei nition of gender competence. According to this dei ni-
tion, the target is not so much to eliminate social inequality as to optimise the workl ow in organisations. This is revealed paradigmatically by a
consulting i rm’s explanation of why it is reasonable to engage in gender issues. This i rm of ers an extended vocational training that leads to the
‘Gender-Change Manager’ certii cate.
5
The reasons given are: Equality between women and men makes it possible for an organisa-
●
tion to make optimal use of all human resources. Female customers and decision makers become more and more
●
important. Men are increasingly interested in work–life balance.
●
Equal opportunities between women and men improve the organisa-
●
tional culture and the ei ciency of the employees’ cooperation. A gender-orientated human resources and organisational develop-
●
ment becomes increasingly important as an issue of competition with other enterprises in order to commit qualii ed employees long
term to the organisation.
An economically focused interpretation of gender competence and gender management is not limited to the private sector of consulting i rms. It is
also present in public administration, in universities and in state politics. The former German Women’s Minister, Renate Schmidt, places particular
emphasis on the entrepreneurial approach of gender mainstreaming:
According to the entrepreneurial approach, to make use of individual compe- tences as intensively as possible, it is beyond all question to discriminate against
one gender, for this would thwart the objective of utilising human resources as ef ectively as possible. There were wasted opportunities, and this would be on
the organisation’s account.
6
The state government of Schleswig-Holstein, one of the German federal states, sees gender mainstreaming as a ‘modern control mechanism of
quality improvement’.
7
The University of Applied Sciences in Kiel states that ‘dei ciencies of equal opportunities impede the modernisation of
public administration’ and hamper ‘the appropriate application of human resources potentials within organisations’. This would all lead to ‘a
154 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
reduction in quality, a waste of resources, dissatisfaction, and disadvan- tages in competition’ Liebig, 2004.
Empirical research should be undertaken to establish which under- standing of gender competence will prevail in the course of the profes-
sionalisation of gender politics. Most of the institutions and organisations which participate in this process subscribe to an interpretation of gender
competence that integrates aspects of both dei nitions: the political and the economic. On the occasion of establishing a course of studies in
gender competence at the University of Applied Sciences in Solothurn, Switzerland, Brigitte Liebig 2004, for example, describes gender com-
petence as a ‘double strategy’. ‘Gender competent action’ would be ori- entated ‘equally to the realisation of equal opportunities in society and
to a productive dealing with gender dif erences in the daily routine of organisations’. It is my prognosis that the economic dei nition of gender
competence will increasingly supersede the political one.
None the less, it is obvious by now that, on the level of semantics, the language of modern management has become predominant even among
those who subscribe to the political approach of gender mainstreaming. Gabriele Schambach and Henning von Bargen from the Heinrich-Böll
Foundation – the political foundation of the German Green Party – demand that the objectives of gender mainstreaming should be presented
in a ‘SMART’ language: ‘Specii c’, ‘Measurable’, ‘Ambitious’, ‘Realistic’, and ‘Time phased’ Schambach and von Bargen 2004: 289. According to
an EU project on gender equality, the acquisition of gender competence should take place ‘ingeniously’ genial in German: GENderkompetenz Im
Assessment Lernen learning gender competence in assessment.
8
Semantic aspects are by no means secondary. The semantic changes refer to a
changed relevance in politics.
GENDER AND ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
To steer gender mainstreaming processes in this ‘smart’ or ‘ingenious’ way, an adequate expert knowledge is necessary. Furthermore, among those
who understand gender mainstreaming as a political task, this knowledge is not only related to the structures and relations of social inequality
between women and men, but it also entails knowledge concerning com- petence in management, especially in human resources management, and
in consulting. In most cases, gender competence means the combination of this gender-unspecii c knowledge with a specii c knowledge of gender
relations, and the ef orts to professionalise gender politics are targeted at this combination of knowledge. Thus, gender competence becomes
‘Gender competence’: Germany 155
part of leadership skills in organisations. Within the curricula of gender competence courses and the advertising slogans of those institutions and
i rms which of er gender competence, this is added as a fourth criterion of professional competence to the well-established criteria of technical,
methodical and social competence. According to its protagonists, gender competence is as important for successful quality management as are the
other competences.
The implementation of gender mainstreaming and managing diversity would have far-reaching consequences for organisations since the organi-
sation’s self-observation would change. Gender would become a routine criterion Meuser 2004. This raises interesting questions for the sociology
of organisations that cannot be dealt with here in detail. Following Max Weber and Niklas Luhmann, the mainstream of organisational theory
sees organisations as gender-indif erent or gender-neutral formations Ohlendieck 2003. If gender competence were to become a regular part of
professional competence, the empirical reality that organisational theory is related to would change.
How far gender competence is already implemented in organisations awaits empirical research. The establishment of a gender market where
not only public institutions of education and vocational training but also private consulting i rms of er courses and services lead us to expect that
gender will increasingly become a core parameter in organisational devel- opment.
9
One thing is obvious: due to the economisation that accompa- nies the professionalisation of gender politics, the category gender itself is
subject to a recoding. The notion of gender has tended to change: from a critical category in the analysis of social inequality to a resource of organi-
sational development Bereswill 2004. It is to be expected that with this change social conl icts will tend to disappear from the gender agenda. The
economic perspective on gender as a human resource sees the gendered division of labour, so to speak, as the ‘natural order’; due to the division of
labour, men and women have dif erent competences, and these dif erences should be utilised in favour of organisational development. Not utilising
the dif erences would lead to ‘opportunity costs’. The division of labour between women and men is seen as a resource that human resource man-
agement should rely on positively, whereas previously gender politics tried to reduce the division of labour.
Looking at the recent discourse in business studies we can observe a narrowed understanding of gender in a further sense. When speaking of
gender as a human resource, this discourse implicitly focuses on women, not on women and men. Gender is perceived as a human resource of
women only. While aiming at strengthening the position of women in the labour force, an equation is reproduced that is well known from the
156 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
history of the cultural construction of gender in modern Western thinking: to see only women as gendered beings.
The search for underutilised potentials is not restricted to gender. According to the managing diversity approach that is related to gender
mainstreaming, other relations of social inequality are set on the agenda of organisational development: class relations, ethnicity, age groups, sexual
orientations. But dif erent from the ‘gender–class–race debate’ in social sciences and gender studies that focuses on multiple relations of social
inequality, managing diversity is very often understood in a way that mul- tiple competences are looked for and exhausted for organisational devel-
opment. The focus changes from – negatively connoted – social inequality to – positively connoted – cultural dif erences.
CONCLUSION
The professionalisation of gender politics takes places within this context of stressing the importance of dif erences. Here, ‘professionalism’ means
managing dif erences in favour of organisational development. To do this ef ectively, a specialised expertise is required. Whereas formerly gender
competence was authenticated by a strong commitment to and an active involvement in women’s politics, it tends now to be authenticated by a
certii cate or a diploma. The women’s representative tends to be replaced by the ‘gender-change manager’ who is competent to do a ‘gender budget
analysis’ and a ‘gender impact assessment’. Once again the changes in semantics refer to a changed relevance. Under the auspices of profes-
sionalisation of gender politics, competences other than political ones are increasingly required. It is my thesis that the more gender politics is profes-
sionalised, the more it will be de-politicised. The women’s movement loses its power of dei nition concerning gender issues in favour of the new gender
experts. From the perspective of the sociology of profession this is not sur- prising. It is part of the dynamics of professionalisation or, so to speak, the
usual price that has to be paid when the issues of a political movement are transformed into the dynamics of ‘successful’ professionalisation.
NOTES
1. Gender mainstreaming was the subject of one issue of the association’s journal in 2004:
Sozialwissenschaften und Berufspraxis, 27 3.
2. See www.frauenforschung.fh-kiel.deGenderKompetenzGenderKompetenz.htm retrieved: 1 October 2004.
3. See www.weiterbildung.fh-kiel.de3_01.php retrieved: 15 October 2004.
‘Gender competence’: Germany 157
4. In Germany, social work was formerly an almost exclusively female occupation. In the i rst half of the 20th century, vocational training took place in the so-called ‘Soziale
Frauenschule’ social women’s school, a non-academic institution. After the Second World War vocational training was reorganised, and since the end of the 1960s, social
work has become an academic discipline. Since then the proportion of male students has increased by up to one-third Pfaf enberger 2001.
5. See www.isa-consult.de retrieved 23 April 2004. 6. See
www.bmfsfj.deKategorienreden.did512064.html retrieved 27 April 2004. 7. See
landesregierung.schleswig-holstein.decoremediageneratorArchivordnerMJF Dokumente_20MJFRedeGender_20II.html retrieved 1 October 2004.
8. See www.life-online.dedeutschprojektegenial.html retrieved 1 October 2004. 9. Note that the present state of gender politics enables the sociology of profession to
observe the development of a new occupation and its professionalisation from status nascendi on, instead of reconstructing it in retrospect.
REFERENCES
Bereswill, M. 2004, ‘“Gender” als neue Humanressource? Gender Mainstreaming und Geschlechterdemokratie zwischen Oekonomisierung und
Gesellschaftskritik’, in M. Meuser and C. Neusüß eds, Gender Mainstreaming: Konzepte, Handlungsfelder, Instrumente, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische
Bildung, pp. 52–70. Bock, St., Matthies, H., Riegraf, B. and Zimmermann, K. 2004, ‘Gender
Mainstreaming – ein neues Taetigkeitsfeld für Sozialwissenschaftlerinnen?’, Sozialwissenschaften und Berufspraxis, 27: 239–54.
Council of Europe 1998, Gender Mainstreaming: Conceptual Framework, Methodology and Presentation of Good Practices, Strasbourg: Council of Europe
EG-S-MS 98 2. Goode, W.J. 1957, ‘Community within the community: the professions’, American
Sociological Review, 22: 194–200.
Goode, W.J. 1969, ‘The theoretical limits of professionalization’, in A. Etzioni ed., The Semi-Professions and their Organization, New York: Free Press,
pp. 266–313. Liebig, B. 2004, Innovation durch Gender-Kompetenz, Eroef nungsvortrag
an der Tagung ‘Gender-Kompetenz’, Olten: Fachhochschule Solothurn Nordwestschweiz, 14 May.
Macdonald, K.M. 1995, The Sociology of the Professions, London: Sage. Metz-Göckel, S. and Rolof
, Ch. 2002, ‘Genderkompetenz als
Schluesselqualii kation’, Journal für Hochschuldidaktik, 13 1: 7–10.
Meuser, M. 2004, ‘Von Frauengleichstellungspolitik zu Gender Mainstreaming: Organisationsveraenderung durch Geschlechterpolitik?’, in U. Pasero and B.
Priddat eds, Organisationen und Netzwerke. Der Fall Gender, Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 93–112.
Ohlendieck, L. 2003, ‘Gender trouble in Organisationen und Netzwerken’, in U. Pasero and Ch. Weinbach eds, Frauen, Männer, Gender Trouble, Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 171–85. Parsons, T. 1968, ‘Professions’, in D.L. Sills ed., International Encyclopedia of
the Social Sciences, Vol. 12, London: Macmillan and New York: Free Press, pp. 536–47.
158 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
Pfaf enberger, H. 2001, ‘SozialpädagogeSozialarbeiter, Sozialpädagogin,
Sozialarbeiterin’, in L. Roth ed., Pädagogik. Handbuch für Studium und Praxis, Munich: Oldenbourg, pp. 1126–40.
Schambach, G. and von Bargen, H. 2004, ‘Gender Mainstreaming als Organisationsveränderungsprozess – Instrumente zur Umsetzung von Gender
Mainstreaming’, in M. Meuser and C. Neusüß eds, Gender Mainstreaming: Konzepte, Handlungsfelder, Instrumente, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische
Bildung, pp. 274–90.
159
12. Queering the principles: a queer intersectional reading of Frederick
W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientii c Management
Alexander Fleischmann
INTRODUCTION
Discrimination of various groups such as women, immigrants and older people continues . . . Additionally, various kinds of programmes aimed at remov-
ing inequality, such as gender equality or managing diversity programmes, may actually promote it by making dif erences visible and stabilizing them.
Management, under such circumstances, comes to refer to the management of appearances which substitutes for other more radical acts. Czarniawska and
Höpl , 2002, p. 1
What could these ‘other’ more radical acts look like? How is discrimination embedded in the principles of management? How is this rel ected in con-
structions of manager identities? The aim of the present text is to approach these questions by deconstructing a highly inl uential text in management,
Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientii c Management, from a queer and intersectional perspective. This approach stands in line with
others that treat management theory as texts to be analysed. For example O’Connor 1996 analysed Taylor’s authority as ‘self-authorized’ and his
legitimising of management ‘by associating it with science’, and Monin et al. 2003 identii ed moralistic elements echoing Christian morality implied
in Taylor’s ‘rationality’. But until now, a deconstruction of Taylor’s work from a queer or intersectional perspective is missing.
Within organisation studies, discriminations on the basis of gender have been studied by various scholars during the last few years for overviews,
see, for example, Hearn and Parkin, 1983; Alvesson and Billing, 1997; Calás and Smircich, 1999, 2006; Gherardi, 2003. Also the role of organisa-
tion theory in reproducing gender inequalities has been examined Acker, 1992; Bendl, 2005. But, as Acker 1998, p. 196 notes, we have to concep-
tualise organisations as ‘sites in which we i nd class, and often race, as well
160 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
as gender’. In both organisation studies as well as organisational practices, diversity management highlights that there are various dif erences other
than gender for example, Gardenswartz and Rowe, 1994; Kandola and Fullerton, 1998; Konrad et al., 2006. However, programmes for gender
equality, anti-racism and diversity management have been accused of reproducing the dif erences they try to overcome for example, Lorbiecki
and Jack, 2000; Czarniawska and Höpl , 2002; Litvin, 2002. Martin 1990 has already proposed a more substantial way to approach these issues by
deconstructing gender conl icts in organisations. In her conclusions she notes, however, that she ignored class relations, ethnicity, disability and
sexual orientation in her work. Those gaps form the starting-point of my work in which I use queer theory and intersectionality as a theoretical
framework to further the understanding of discriminatory management discourses. Therefore, I shall now introduce important aspects of queer
theory and intersectionality, followed by an exploration of deconstruction. After my analysis of Taylor’s text I shall present i nal conclusions.
QUEER THEORY AND INTERSECTIONALITY
Both queer theory and intersectionality have been highly inl uenced by post-structuralist thought. Major contributions to queer theory have come
from Sedgwick 1990 or Butler 1993, 1999. In particular, Butler’s notion of the ‘heterosexual matrix’ has been inl uential. Butler uses it to highlight
that a stable identity with i xed sex and gender, positioned in a heterosex- ual hierarchical dual opposition of male and female, is a founding princi-
ple of Western thinking. It is reproduced in everyday inter actions through ‘performativity’ Butler, 1999. Sexuality can, accordingly, be conceptual-
ised as a set of social rules and possibilities that regulate not only sexual but also social practices Boudry et al., 1999. Landström 2007 highlights
that queer theory makes it possible to question if ‘femininity and mascu- linity are mutually exclusive’ p. 10 and to see gender as a ‘heterosexual
coupling of opposites’ p. 12. Instead of seeing gender as divided into two distinguishable notions of femininity and masculinity, queer theory
focuses on the construction of the very border between the two and the connected construction of i xed and stable identities. Summing up and
drawing on my earlier work Fleischmann, 2005, queer theory challenges i xed and essentialist notions of identity that are discursively reproduced
in binary terms, highlighting the positioning of sex, gender and desire in a hierarchical matrix and the privileging of heterosexuality connected to it.
There also exist i rst steps that rel ect queer theory in organisation studies Parker, 2002; Bendl et al., 2007a, 2007b.
A reading of F.W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientii c Management 161
While queer theory highlights the importance of heterosexuality, important criticisms of identity conceptualisations within feminist theory
have also come from feminists of colour, who claimed that ethnicity was not taken into account for example, hooks, 1984. At the same time, post-
structuralist criticism questioned the very basis of categorisation – what emerged from this criticism is now labelled ‘intersectionality’ McCall,
2005. Intersectionality is now widely discussed in dif erent areas of the social sciences and humanities see, for example, Knapp, 2005; McCall,
2005; Søndergaard, 2005; Verloo, 2006; Yuval-Davis, 2006 and also in organisation studies Acker, 2000; Eriksson-Zetterquist and Styhre, 2007.
Intersectionality can generally be dei ned as follows:
[It signii es] the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable ef ects which ensue when multiple axes of dif erentiation – economic, political, cultural, psychic,
subjective and experiential – intersect in historically specii c contexts. The concept emphasizes that dif erent dimensions of social life cannot be separated
out into discrete and pure strands. Brah and Phoenix, 2004, p. 76
Using this dei nition and combining it with queer theory, my intention is to deconstruct the categories themselves.
DECONSTRUCTION
For Martin, deconstructing means looking at what a ‘story . . . says, what it does not say, and what it might have said’ Martin, 1990, p. 339. Central
to deconstruction, a notion coined in its post-structuralist understanding by Jacques Derrida, is seeing the censoring ef ects of ‘centring’ moves in
language Cooper, 1989. This centring occurs in binary oppositions in ‘a violent hierarchy’ as ‘[o]ne of the two terms governs the other’ Derrida,
1981, p. 41. Hence, the i rst step in a deconstruction is the identii cation and the overturning of dichotomies.
I shall therefore conduct a queerintersectional close reading of The Principles of Scientii c Management Taylor, 1911 [1998], searching
for ‘subject positions’, which I dei ne as parts of the text where an indi- vidual or groups of individuals are discursively constructed for example,
workers, managers, scientists and so on. I then explore how these subject positions are constructed in dichotomous terms. But for a success-
ful deconstruction a second step is needed, as ‘the hierarchy of dual oppo- sitions always reestablishes itself’ Derrida, 1981, p. 42. This second step
is called ‘metaphorisation’ and it implies that the process never ‘degrades’ into a structure in order to emphasise the ongoing process of dividing
Cooper, 1989, p. 488.
162 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
I consider deconstruction to be a highly subjective method and agree with Martin that ‘[d]econstruction cannot and does not claim to reveal the
truth about what the author of a text intended to communicate’ Martin, 1990, p. 342. Thus, someone else deconstructing the same text, even with
the same theoretical framework, would probably come to dif erent con- clusions. Last but not least, although my intersectional approach would
call for overcoming the traditional categories of social divisions gender, class, raceethnicity, sexuality and so on, in order to keep the text com-
prehensible, I shall still use those categories to group my i ndings and try to connect them to other categories as often as possible.
Class
For Acker 2000, p. 200 class inequality and exploitation in general have more legitimacy than, for example, gender- or race-based discrimination.
Also, Taylor’s text uses a class distinction. Right in the beginning Taylor makes clear that although he has worked as a foreman, he has advantages
that enable him to do scientii c research:
The writer had two advantages, however, which are not possessed by the ordi- nary foreman, and these came, curiously enough, from the fact that he was not
the son of a working man. Taylor, 1911 [1998], p. 23
So the distinction between workers and managersscientists on the basis of class forms an important basis for scientii c management. Connected to
that are stereotypes on intelligence, as the next excerpt shows:
This work [pig-iron handling] is so crude and elementary in its nature that the writer i rmly believes that it would be possible to train an intelligent gorilla so as
to become a more ei cient pig-iron handler than any man can be. Ibid., p. 18
Inscribed in this quotation is a hierarchy based on class and, connected to it, on the position in the organisation. The hierarchy is clearly established,
as in contrast to those gorillas the text speaks of ‘one type of man’ ibid., p. 16 who stands at the other end: the manager. Indeed, Monin et al.
2003, p. 391 also argue that Taylor’s text signii es ‘the Victorian hierar- chy of class and birthright’.
Ethnicity
Nkomo 1992 has already claimed that race has been largely excluded from organisation studies. However, there is now some work, mainly from
a post-colonial perspective for example, Cooke, 2003; Prasad, 2003.
A reading of F.W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientii c Management 163
Interestingly enough, aspects of race or ethnicity are never explicitly an issue in Taylor’s text, except once:
He was a little Pennsylvania Dutchman who had been observed to trot back home for a mile or so after his work in the evening, about as fresh as he was when he
came trotting down to work in the morning. . . . This man we will call Schmidt. Taylor, 1911 [1998], p. 20
The last sentence in particular is a perfect example of the discursive pro- duction of otherness. Who is this ‘we’ who calls ‘this man’ Schmidt? Is it
the managers who have the right to label their ‘little’ employees? Is it the scientists by virtue of their scientii c knowledge? Taylor’s representation of
Schmidt can accordingly be read as ‘childlike’ Jacques, 1996, p. 81 or as adopting an ‘infantilizing slavers’ voice’ Cooke, 2003, p. 1912.
Gender
Taylor’s text shows a binary understanding of gender, where men are posi- tioned in a hierarchy above women, as the following quotations will show.
The text refers in almost its entirety to ‘men’, women are mentioned in only two parts of the text. First as consumers and hence outside paid work life:
now almost every man, woman, and child in the working-classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year. Taylor, 1911 [1998], p. 5
Interestingly, this quotation implies not only a division between men and women, but also a division between adults and children referring to age as
well as a division between working and non-working class. This quotation highlights the usefulness of an intersectional approach, as the ‘complex,
irreducible, varied, and variable ef ects’ Brah and Phoenix, 2004, p. 76 in the creation of subject positions become visible. The second time women
are mentioned, they are part of the workforce but referred to as ‘girls’.
There are instances, however, in which the ‘scientii c selection of the workman’ counts for more than anything else.
A case of this type is well illustrated in the very simple though unusual work of inspecting bicycle balls. . . . the one hundred and twenty or more girls who
were inspecting the balls were ‘old hands’ and skilled at their jobs. Taylor, 1911 [1998], p. 43
The illustrations [of girls inspecting bicycle balls] have thus far been purposely coni ned to the more elementary types of work, so that a very strong doubt
must still remain as to whether this kind of cooperation is desirable in the case of more intelligent mechanics, that is, in the case of men who are more capable
164 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
of generalization, and who would therefore be more likely, of their own voli- tion, to choose the more scientii c and better methods. Ibid., p. 49
In analysing the above quotations, the discursive production of dif erences in intelligence, based on a dichotomous and hierarchical understanding of
sexgender becomes visible. It privileges men and denies women intellectual capabilities. Furthermore, in those quotations, dif erent axes of social divi-
sion are used. On the one hand, the term ‘girls’ refers to age dif erences, but also, as I would argue, to sexuality. Especially for ‘the one hundred
and twenty or more girls who were inspecting the balls [and who] were “old hands” and skilled at their jobs’, a sexual connotation seems obvious.
Aspects of implicit sexuality will be elaborated in the next subsection.
Sexuality
Sexuality remains pervasive in organisations through the power of men over sexuality and women, the power of the public sphere over sexu-
ality and reproduction and the power of reproduction over sexuality Hancock and Tyler, 2001, p. 159. Therefore, sexuality has been although
not in the mainstream discussed by organisation studies scholars for example, Burrell, 1984; Hearn et al., 1989; Calás and Smircich, 1991;
Brewis and Grey, 1994; Hearn and Parkin, 1995; Brewis and Linstead, 2000; Brewis, 2001; Ward and Winstanley, 2003. For Foucault 1978 the
connection between the suppression of sexuality or actually what has been read as suppression and the capitalistic economy is crucial. Highlighting
its productive power, the discursive construction of the notion ‘sexuality’ is aimed at positioning sex outside organisations, not repressing it but
pigeonholing it in the reproductive sphere of heterosexuality. This forms a key to understanding both modern sexuality and organisations – the con-
cepts of sexuality and organisation suf use each other.
Sexuality in Taylor’s text is clearly visible in the i rst of his three empiri- cal examples. About pig-iron handlers, Taylor writes:
Now the one man in eight who was able to do this work was in no sense superior to the other men who were working on the gang. He merely happened to be a
man of the type of the ox, – no rare specimen of humanity, dii cult to i nd and therefore highly prized. Taylor, 1911 [1998], pp. 29–30
According to the dei nition provided in the Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus 1993, the term ‘ox’ is dei ned as ‘1. an adult castrated male
of any domesticated species of cattle used for draught work and meat’. The conclusion might therefore be that ideal pig-iron handlers are cas-
trated and domesticated.
A reading of F.W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientii c Management 165
Taylor’s second case study is that of female bicycle-ball inspectors, whom he refers to throughout the text as ‘girls’, at one point even compar-
ing them to children:
The average workman must be able to measure what he has accomplished and clearly see his reward at the end of each day if he is to do his best. And more
elementary characters, such as the young girls inspecting bicycle balls, or chil- dren, for instance, should have proper encouragement either in the shape of
personal attention from those over them or an actual reward in sight as often as once an hour. Taylor, 1911 [1998], p. 48, emphasis in original
In contrast to oxen and girls, it is interesting to see how Taylor charac- terises managers:
Under scientii c management, on the other hand, it becomes the duty and also the pleasure of those who are engaged in the management not only to
develop laws to replace rule of thumb, but also to teach impartially all of the workmen who are under them the quickest ways of working. Ibid., p. 53,
added emphasis Work of this character is intensely interesting to any one who has any love for
scientii c research. Ibid., p. 54, added emphasis
Pleasure and love are the domain of managers and scientists, oxen and girls are denied their sexuality. By comparing women to children, the latter
being in general wrongly considered as having no sexuality, women are deprived of their sexuality, too. Hence, the text depicts girls and oxen as
presenting no danger at all for the sexually able managers and scientists. The power dif erential inscribed in this dichotomy is obvious. Managers
and scientists as subjects possess sexuality. Girls and oxen, however, are tamed and domesticated – not only by hierarchical order but also through
a discursive dichotomy that i xes their object positions within an organisa- tion. This metaphor of sketching workers as oxengirls deprives them of
sexuality and can also be read as a metaphor for depriving them of agency within the organisation.
The Essence of Management
Having looked at dif erent categories of social division, I shall now draw attention to what Taylor calls the ‘essence’ of his work:
These
1
are, however, merely the elements or details of the mechanism of man- agement. Scientii c management, in its essence, consists of a certain philosophy,
which results . . . in a combination of the four great underlying principles of
166 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
management . . . First. The development of a true science. Second. The scientii c selection of the workman. Third. His scientii c education and development.
Fourth. Intimate friendly cooperation between the management and the men. Ibid., pp. 67–8, emphasis in original
Indeed, at the heart of the philosophy of scientii c management lie the selection, education and development of the worker. Thus, as I would argue,
the dichotomy of subjectobject position within organisations is deeply rooted in the concept of scientii c management. As in Taylor’s own words,
labourers are moved ‘very much as chessmen are moved on a chessboard’ ibid., p. 34. But who moves those chessmen?
CONCLUSION
Concluding from the above, the subject in charge of moving the chessmen, of selecting, educating and training the worker, the object, is ‘one type of
man’, namely the manager. Within the text oxen, girls, children, gorillas, a Pennsylvanian Dutchman and so on are visible so that the manager’s iden-
tity as dif erent from these various ‘others’ can be constructed, to show what a manager is not. What remains is that a manager is a white, English,
educated, sexually active, non-working-class male. But these classii cations remain unmarked as the subjects are simply labelled ‘manager’, ‘engineer’
or ‘scientist’.
Applying Parker’s 2002 view of seeing managing as ‘a doing, or a becoming’ p. 159, doing management, becoming a manager means being
unmarked in contrast to various marked ‘others’. Similarly, Cooke 2003 argues in the case of race referring to the management of ante-bellum
plantations that ‘white supremacist racism underpinned the creation of the managerial identity’ p. 1911 and that racism and resistance to it form
a ‘continuing and dei ning strand’ p. 1915 in organisations and organisa- tion studies.
My work provides the i rst step towards a deconstruction and shows how the construction of subject positions in hierarchical dichotomies
are persistent in Taylor’s text. The above deconstruction based on the queerintersectional framework has shown how discriminatory
dichotomies are inscribed into The Principles of Scientii c Management and the construction of the manager identity. I therefore argue that
the discussed power dif erentials based on gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality equally form ‘continuing and dei ning strands’ of management
discourse.
Taking up my initial questions, what could more radical acts look
A reading of F.W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientii c Management 167
like? What about metaphorisation? For Engel 2002, p. 69 the queer political scope cannot merely be the call for a pluralistic multiplication of
subject positions, since power dif erentials will remain. For that reason she demands allowing for ‘bodySubjectivities’ that do not i t into the
dichotomous matrix of eitheror. Indeed, queering the principles, queering organisation studies and management discourse would mean constantly
disrupting theories, like Taylor’s, that construct individuals as having i xed identities that entail exclusion of ‘others’ in binary terms. Hence,
queering, overturning and metaphorising highlights the l uidity of identity and the mechanisms of establishing borders and exclusions in order to
overcome the hierarchical dichotomies of eitheror.
NOTES
I presented an earlier draft of this chapter called ‘Queering organization theory – intersectionality revisited’ at the Gendered Organization Theory track of the 2007
Gender, Work and Organization Conference, Keele University, Staf ordshire, UK. I would like to thank Regine Bendl and Michele Gregory for their support as well as all
track participants for their helpful comments. 1. Immediately before this paragraph, Taylor lists the following: time study, functional
or divided foremanship, standardisation of all tools, desirability of a planning room or department, ‘exception principle’, slide-rules, instruction cards, task idea, bonus for suc-
cessful performance, ‘dif erential rate’, mnemonic systems, routing systems, modern cost system and so on.
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