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This paper aims to examine the discursive constitution of leadership identities by senior women leaders working in the City of London. This study draws on postfeminism as a critical concept to explore this constitution, as it has produced the cultural conditions for the reconfiguration of masculine and feminine gender norms in leadership.

In a qualitative study, 13 women leaders in positions of power in the City of London were interviewed. Discourse analysis techniques were used to unpack the postfeminist shaping of leadership identities

At the heart of the leadership identities that senior women leaders construct is a gendered hybridity that is a multifaceted calibration of masculine and feminine attributes and behaviours. Postfeminist discourses of individualism, choice and self-improvement are entangled with discourses of authenticity, relatability and connectivity as particular leadership assets. The gendered hybridity of leadership identities unfolds the possibility for a fundamental makeover of leadership by opening-up space for a transformative change that accommodates women leaders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the very few studies that foreground the leadership identities that women leaders construct within the confines of postfeminist gender regimes. It shows how these women invoke authenticity, unfolding possibilities for the transformational change of and political challenge to traditional gendered leadership in their organizations.

The authors aim to contribute to current knowledge on women's networks in organizations by exploring the strategies employed by members of women's networks, Human Resources (HR) management and senior line management to negotiate the role of these networks in their organizations.

The authors employ the theoretical perspective of micro-politics to analyze qualitative data they collected in an action research project using open-ended interviews and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with network board and active members, and members of their organizations' HR departments and senior management. Participant observation of the interviewees' interactions took place during facilitated workshops.

Adding to the literature, the authors find that members of the different parties employ different micro-political strategies. Many senior HR and management members demand that the networks' activities contribute to the organizations' diversity aims and bottom line. They largely avoid strategic cooperation with the networks. Most network members, in turn, resist the restricted role of the networks as an instrument to realize their organizations' business case. They claim some freedom to independently decide on the networks' strategies and activities. They resist being attributed tasks and responsibilities that they consider to reside with their organizations. Moreover, they try to sustain cooperative relationships with senior HR and management in an advisory role.

The action research approach enabled the authors to contribute to existing knowledge and extend the micro-politics theoretical perspective to include the collective agency of members of organizational groups and cooperation between these groups.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of constructive intercultural contact. This concept refers to intercultural contact in which majority as well as minority participants are intercultural effective, i.e. can perceive themselves as comfortable and successful.

This study is based on exploration and review of intergroup, contact, acculturation and organization literature.

Five input elements of constructive intercultural contact are distinguished: responsibility, deliberate choice to postpone judgment, acknowledging the relative relevance of cultural differences, perspective taking and respect. What participants have to do to make constructive intercultural contact in organizations not only possible between colleagues, but also in hierarchical relationships is elaborated by reflection on the interrelation between majority/minority and manager/employee positions in constructive intercultural contact.

This paper contributes to diversity management literature by introducing a new concept which, focusing on the interaction level, explains how participants can make intercultural contact into a comfortable and successful experience for both. Other contributions are the differentiation between majority and minority actors and the elaboration of the complexity of intercultural employee/manager contacts.

Originating from the USA in the early 1990s, diversity management has been “imported” to Europe to become a fashionable practice in many business organizations. The aim of this paper is to provide further insight into whether and how the diversity management discourse challenges and replaces existing local discourses on equality and diversity, and how diversity management is given content and meaning in a specific local context.

Statements on diversity, diversity management and equality on both the Dutch and the international websites of ten leading companies in the Netherlands are analyzed.

The analysis shows that translations of diversity management may in fact not actually replace existing local discourses, but rather leave the existing local discourse more or less intact and alter the original diversity management discourse to fit into this local discourse.

This paper offers some important lessons for management practice.

This paper aims to examine if the notion of gender subtext is still a useful concept to study the implicit processes of gender distinctions in organizations. It also aims to confront the authors' earlier elaboration of the concept of gender subtext with recently developed insights on how organizational processes produce gender at work.

The paper reviews the literature that was used to develop the notion of gender subtext. Then it turns to the new insights, concepts and theories that should be included in the update of the notion of gender subtext. The discussion focuses on three elements in particular: the entrance of intersectionality, the disappearance of the layered processes and the prevailing persistency of power.

The paper concludes that the original concept of gender subtext as a power‐based set of arrangements that reproduce gender distinctions can benefit from the recent theorizing on gender in organizations. The new notion gender^plus subtext takes the interference of multiple inequalities into account. Gender is one important part, but not the only, or even the most important, form of inequality at work. To understand the dynamic process of (re)production of these inequalities, the paper points to the interplay between structural, cultural, interaction and identity processes in organizations, and to the hybrid power processes of compliance, accommodation, resistance and counter‐resistance.

The authors hope that this updated version may trigger more debate about the reproduction and, more importantly, about change of gender inequalities in organizations.

The paper reconceptualizes gender subtext, bringing a new perspective to the understanding of the power processes that produce or alter complex inequalities in organizations.

This paper sketches the outlines of a differentiated approach towards the contribution of HRM to organizational change. While departing from a critique on the assumptions of the human resource‐based view of the firm, we develop an alternative approach which has been derived from the core elements of the relational theory of emotions. These elements, which pertain to the complexity of human beings, emphasize the processes and relational characteristics of emotions and the hegemonic power base of emotions. We argue that it is necessary to sensitize HRM to the emotional subroutines entwined in organizational change, and that an empathic and respectful approach towards people's authenticity should be cultivated.

Universities are large, complex and highly hierarchical organisations with deeply engrained gendered values, norms and practices. This chapter reflects on the experiences of two universities in initiating structural change towards gender equality as supported by the TARGET project. A common aspect thereby is the lack of a national policy in higher education and research providing specific support for implementing gender equality policies. The process of audit, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the first gender equality plan (GEP) in each of these universities was conceived as a first step in a long journey, providing a framework for engaging different institutional actors and fostering reflexive, evidence-based policy making. The analysis deals with reflexivity and resistance and seeks to draw lessons from bottom-up and top-down experiences of GEP implementation. It is the result of shared reflection between the GEP ‘implementers’ in the two universities and the team who provided support and acted as ‘critical friends’.

Professor Ruth Simpson has been a key contributor to the field of gender and organization studies (GOS) over the past 25 years. She has influenced debates on women in management, the gender of management education, masculinity and management and the “doing” of gender in organizational life. In this paper i review our joint work – informed by a poststructuralist feminist perspective – which considers the complex struggles around normativity in relation to management and entrepreneurship.

This review is based on a consideration of four pieces of work completed between 2005 and 2012, including (Simpson and Lewis, 2005, 2007) and (Lewis and Simpson, 2010, 2012).

Drawing on the concepts of voice and visibility, the research examines how the ability to exemplify the norm in relation to management and entrepreneurship must be constantly secured and how processes of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the norm are characterised by relentless agitation and turmoil.

We (Ruth and Patricia) developed the conceptual framework of the (In)visibility vortex as a means of connecting the individual to organizational processes, discourses and cultural norms

Purpose: This chapter illuminates the ways in which the coherent arrangements of prisons contribute to variation in implementation, functioning, and consequences of a purportedly gender neutral policy, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), between women’s and men’s prisons.

Methodology/Approach: Guided by grounded theory, two waves of qualitative interviews with inmates, staff, and volunteers at two Midwest women’s prisons were conducted for a total of 61 interviews. Interviews were supplemented with archival data obtained from state historical archives, news outlets, and the Iowa Department of Corrections, as well as participant observation of prisoner advocacy group meetings and the Iowa Board of Corrections’ meetings, and a content analysis of an online discussion forum for correctional officers.

Findings: We find that the gender subtext of prisons shapes the way the PREA is perceived and implemented. Overall, we argue that due to founding logics that differentially shaped the coherent arrangements of men’s and women’s prisons, blanket policies operate differently in these institutions. The gender subtext of prisons, specifically the structural arrangements and cultural processes within women’s and men’s prisons form different landscapes in which the PREA is perceived, enforced, and responded to.

Practical Implications: Given these findings, we call for gender-informed policy that takes gender subtext into account but that also avoids the trap of statistical discrimination present in some gender responsive policies.