'What do you Want from Me?' A Poststructuralist Feminist Reading of Middle Managers' Identities

Pullen, A; Thomas, R

'What do you Want from Me?' A Poststructuralist Feminist Reading of Middle Managers' Identities

Pullen, A Thomas, R

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Publisher:: Routledge
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Culture and Organizations, 2002, 8 (1), pp. 1 - 21
Issue Date:: 2002-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Pullen, A	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Thomas, R	en_US
dc.date.issued	2002-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Culture and Organizations, 2002, 8 (1), pp. 1 - 21	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1475-9551	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/1118
dc.description.abstract	This paper explores the processes of identity construction of four male and female middle managers within one restructured organization, Larts, to illustrate how these individuals draw on different gendered discourses to construct and legitimize their generic roles and identities as middle managers. Drawing on earlier research (Thomas and Linstead, 2002) that argued for a socially constructed view of identity to explore middle managers' identity construction, this paper conducts a poststructuralist feminist reading to move beyond existing studies of managerial identities which regard those identities as changing but relatively stable, towards the recognition of identity construction as a form of first-order accounting (Garfinkel, 1967) which is characterized by paradox, fluidity, inconsistency and emergence. Identities are constructed in terms of the conjunction of reflecting on past and future experiences, as an explanation of previous events in a way that positions the constructor of the account advantageously for future episodes. The paper presents accounts of four middle managers, drawn from interview material, to illustrate and explore issues of identity construction in one organization. We offer here the conceptualization of identities as masks that are created as resources for participation in an ongoing masquerade. More specifically, the gender mask is analyzed to account for the ways in which middle managers restructure their sense of 'self ' by managing the tension between the often contradictory demands posed by unfolding answers to the continuously posed, yet often implicit, questions "What do you [the organization] want from me?" and "What do I want to be in the future?"	en_US
dc.publisher	Routledge	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Culture and Organizations	en_US
dc.title	'What do you Want from Me?' A Poststructuralist Feminist Reading of Middle Managers' Identities	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	1	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	8	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Business
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	false	en_US
pubs.issue	1	en_US
pubs.volume	8	en_US

Abstract:

This paper explores the processes of identity construction of four male and female middle managers within one restructured organization, Larts, to illustrate how these individuals draw on different gendered discourses to construct and legitimize their generic roles and identities as middle managers. Drawing on earlier research (Thomas and Linstead, 2002) that argued for a socially constructed view of identity to explore middle managers' identity construction, this paper conducts a poststructuralist feminist reading to move beyond existing studies of managerial identities which regard those identities as changing but relatively stable, towards the recognition of identity construction as a form of first-order accounting (Garfinkel, 1967) which is characterized by paradox, fluidity, inconsistency and emergence. Identities are constructed in terms of the conjunction of reflecting on past and future experiences, as an explanation of previous events in a way that positions the constructor of the account advantageously for future episodes. The paper presents accounts of four middle managers, drawn from interview material, to illustrate and explore issues of identity construction in one organization. We offer here the conceptualization of identities as masks that are created as resources for participation in an ongoing masquerade. More specifically, the gender mask is analyzed to account for the ways in which middle managers restructure their sense of 'self ' by managing the tension between the often contradictory demands posed by unfolding answers to the continuously posed, yet often implicit, questions "What do you [the organization] want from me?" and "What do I want to be in the future?"

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/1118