Transforming Managers

Engendering Change in the Public Sector

Roy Moodley, Stephen Whitehead, Roy Moodley, Stephen Whitehead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135358556
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

In the 1990s, considerable changes in the political and social world have impacted on the character of both public and private organizations. At a time of increased uncertainty and insecurity in these organizations, new ways of managing and being managed have emerged. Recognising that organizational life is part reflective and determined by dominant social discourses, factors of gender will inevitably be central to the dynamics of organizational change. This book addresses theoretical ideas and mythologies in the examination of gendered organizations. The need to examine men in relation to family, law and society in general is growing, and this book extends this interrogation to work and organizational life. It will be of interest to students in management studies, public sector management and those involved in public policy making as well as students and academics within gender studies and sociology.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction: locating personal and political transformations

Stephen Whitehead & Roy Moodley

It is increasingly apparent that the end of the twentieth century marks an epoch of change, transformation and discontinuity. What once appeared “solid” has indeed now “melted into air”. Whether one perceives this to be merely characteristic of the information society, post-industrialization, late modernity or similar end-of-millennium phenomena, the sense of ending—and new beginning—is acute. And no area of life is immune. In politics pragmatism replaces ideology; religions compete like products on a supermarket shelf; cultural relativism displaces cultural supremacy; heroes and heroines, few as they are, have only their Warhol-inscribed “15 minutes”; and new managerialism asserts its eminence over the charismatic leader. While all are affected by these social shifts, it is, arguably, those in employment, or seeking employment, who feel the cold draught of insecurity most. For whatever certainties and securities organizational life once held are now long gone. Organizational change has become ceaseless, unpredictable and remorseless, especially in the so-called “public services”. No one is immune from “downsizing”, no one is safe; certainly few feel safe. Thus it is one of the great ironies of the age that modern management has achieved something of a cult status at a time when social phenomena—and individuals—appear increasingly amorphous, complex and unfathomable. For men and women are not only grappling with organizational transformation; their very identity as gendered beings is also subject to question and scrutiny. What it means to be a man or a woman has never been less distinct nor more fluid. As traditional gender codes flounder in the face of social movement, new and multiple ways of being male or female have surfaced, an experience that some find exciting, and others disturbing. For of all the rocks on which we build a “core identity”, gender and sexuality can appear the most solid, the most fixed, the most secure. Moreover, gender identity is, for many, reinforced by the gendered constitution of organizational life itself; the codes and orthodoxies of the workplace providing, albeit tentatively, the opportunity to fashion our identities in the public sphere—to “confirm” who we are. Organizationally, we may be managers, cleaners, secretaries or technicians, but when we walk into a room what do others see? Is it not the gender of the subject, and the colour if you happen to be black, that marks you out, that labels, categorizes and distinguishes—all before a word is spoken or a deed is done? Thus the turn of the millennium is not only a time of social transformation; for many it is simultaneously a time of profound personal disruption.

As critical gender theorists have long noted, to be a woman or a man is to be a culturally embodied signifier of a collective identity, to exist in a gendered landscape in which notions of femininity and masculinity appear static—and often invisible. Yet it is also apparent that notions of gender are under constant revision; they shift, albeit slowly, but shift nonetheless. But what, if any, is the drive, the reasoning, the logic, behind these transformations? And how do individuals experience these movements? Masculinity and femininity may be spatially and temporally located tools in identity work, but are they tools that we choose in any rational or reasoned way? Moreover, despite the impermanence of being, the dominance of men and masculinism in organizations appears to be particularly resistant to change of either a micro- or macro-variety. Indeed, as this volume stresses, there is as yet little evidence to support the notion of a post-feminist era, certainly in so far as management is concerned. Given this, how are individual women and men working through these political and personal tensions? What sense do individuals make of this managerial and organizational landscape?

These are the key questions that inform this volume. In the process, an important debate is engaged concerning gender, change, dominance, resistance and management: in short, the critical study of the often random, generally unpredictable, yet political (gender) transformations that occur in public-sector management and, importantly, how individuals experience, “manage” and in part determine these movements. Although empirically based in the public sector, the writings speak to all institutional sites and, indeed, beyond the institutional setting.

It is, we consider, an apposite moment to construct such a study, given the rapidity of change in managerial practices and in the lives of those men and women who are managers. As many commentators have observed, the end of the twentieth century appears to be, “feels”, a time of deep-rooted insecurity, if not chaos: the demise of grand narratives, the “end of order”, a time of risk (Lyotard 1984, Giddens 1991, Bauman 1992, Beck 1992, Fukuyama 1997). Correspondingly, it is an era in which managers, most of whom are men, search ever more desperately for systems of control; mechanisms, often covert, that “promise” conclusiveness and closure. This lust for certainty is as much a personal quest for assurance—and identity—as it is an organizational objective. For like the casino gambler, managers are increasingly forced to place their reputations and futures against the unknown and unquantifiable; to carry the risk. Thus the search for the verifiable and the infallible becomes both endless and yet necessary. This inevitably futile quest requires that managers invest much time, energy and effort in the pursuit of objective absolute “truths”. Witness, for example, the increasing use of graphological and psychometrical profiling of applicants and employees; the endless search for “total quality management”; the now ubiquitous, yet oxymoronic, human resource management; and the often banal manifestations of evangelical corporate culture visited on unsuspecting employees. Not surprisingly, across both public and private sectors, these “modern management techniques” have been promoted as the panacea for the chaos and insecurity that lurks behind managerial rhetoric and managers’ expressions of self-belief. Companies, individuals and indeed academia itself have been quick to note the opportunities here. Management consultancy is now a growth area, and academics are increasingly prepared (at a price) to lend an air of professional credibility to the latest jargon or orthodoxy of modern management. Indeed, there are now many academics lucratively employed in devising and promoting “solutions” to the insoluble problems of management and organization. Yet despite recourse to both bizarre and sophisticated managerial practices, permanence and certainty remain ever elusive. Employee resistance continues to manifest itself in the most unpredictable and subversive ways, even (especially?) in the most avidly managerialist cultures.

But what are the consequences and effects of new managerialist practices on individuals? Does not the quest for total control damage many, both inside and outside the organization? In Chapter 4, Lesley Thom suggests that the emergent masculinist managerial culture that is now apparent in secondary education has had an adverse effect on women’s opportunities for advancement. Similarly, Diane Meehan (Ch. 3) highlights the various ways in which a (male-dominated) organizational culture acts as a powerful variable and influence on women managers’ behaviour. But neither are men managers protected from the practices that they invest in so heavily. As Deborah Kerfoot discusses in Chapter 11, one effect of this avid instrumentalism is to encourage many men managers to avoid or displace emotional intimacy, fearing its disruptive consequences for them as masculine/ managerial subjects, an action which only further problematizes their relationship to others.

But why is the fact of change, unpredictability and contingency so problematic for managers and many men? Is it, as Stella Maile (Ch. 9) suggests, because many men managers find change, especially in relation to shifting gender relationships, so threatening, confusing and indeed incompatible with who they are as managers and men? For what is a man, or manager, if not someone in control; a gendered subject “at ease” with himself in his paternalistic perception of women and others? Recognizing this, it is little surprise that the descriptor “arena” fits so comfortably with organizational life; the internal and external competitiveness, combat and calculation all engaged in, to some degree, by the organizational subject. But, paradoxically, it is increasingly evident that this combative approach to organizational life is underpinned for many men managers by a constant and deep-rooted fear of failure—as men and as managers (Deborah Kerfoot and David Knights, Ch. 12). To reiterate, when women and men enter the organizational arena they enter not as neutral individuals but as prior gendered beings; actors in a social and political arena grounded only in its incessant unpredictability.

The chapters in this book are not, however, merely accounts of change, for they are themselves the products of change and personal transformation: the outcomes of political and social upheavals that make a nonsense of any notion of neat and tidy public and private separations, linearity, or fixed, categorical compartmentalizations. Consequently, each chapter marks change, not just in the particular theory or sector of work being researched and described, but also in the writers themselves. It is impossible, indeed inappropriate, to explicate these individual movements precisely, although some—for example, John Clark’s account (Ch. 10) of being a man/manager during a period of organizational conflict—are recounted in some depth. What is evident is that none of the contributors to this volume writes as a disembodied individual. How could they? Their very purpose in writing is to offer a personal/political position or standpoint, born of and sculptured by the often random, yet powerful, experiences of being a woman or man in diverse organizational, social and cultural settings. Consequently, in every chapter there is something of the writer, a residual element which, it is hoped, will reach out to and resonate with the reader—the most important part of this particular intersubjective configuration. It is worth, then, reflecting on this book’s genealogy and our part in that, for in so doing are revealed some of the macrostructural factors and the intersubjective moments that in complex combination constitute the social web in which we all exist.

Influences and movements

In May 1995, an undistinguished, medium-sized further education (FE) college in Leeds held an international conference titled, “Men in Management: Changing Cultures of Education”. At a time when the FE sector was experiencing major shifts in work culture and ethos, a small number of people in one FE college created space for the articulation of an alternative discourse; the critical relationship between men, masculinities, organizational culture and education management. Many of the chapters in this volume were originally papers presented at that conference, and most of this book’s contributors had some involvement as speakers, presenters or seminar coordinators. Despite extensive advertising across the education sector, the conference, not surprisingly perhaps, attracted few men managers. Nevertheless, on reflection, we like to think that it was a successful event. It was certainly enjoyable and informative. And clearly, as organizers, the conference was important for us personally, politically and professionally. Yet there was another significance, for unbeknown to us at the time it marked our swan-song from FE. In the autumn of 1995 we both took voluntary redundancy from that FE college, uncertain as to the future but undoubtedly relieved to be out of the Kafkaesque nightmare into which the sector was, by then, fast degenerating. Does this sound bitter? Well, to be fair there is an element of that. Certainly, like many in FE, we found the radical transformations in organizational culture following incorporation in April 1993¹ profoundly disturbing and often depressing, if not threatening and stressful. Yet it had not always been so. Our experience of FE from entering the profession in the late 1980s was of working in a public-sector site which continued to receive some sense of legitimacy from a liberal, humanistic discourse; framed by notions of student empowerment, access for all and educational opportunity. Archaic or simplistic as it may sound ten years on, like many in FE over the years we wanted to put something back into the community, and working in post-compulsory education provided us with a sense of purpose, as well as some significant material comfort. What the students gained is of course for them to say, but—as is so often the case in education—they had, as now, little concrete opportunity to influence events. For to be sure, pre-incorporated FE was no golden age. As one of us has written elsewhere (Whitehead 1999b), the sector was always riven with gender differentials, petty power struggles and vested interests. To be precise, FE was very much like the public sector generally: heavily bureaucratic, unresponsive, at times frustratingly arrogant and self-important, and this despite being characterized by the notion of public accountability and grounded in a public-service ethos. No, it was certainly no golden age. So, you may rightly (cynically?) ask, “What exactly has changed?”

Well, surprisingly, quite a lot. Many of the characteristics that signalled the transformations occurring in education and the public sector generally during the 1980s and 1990s—specifically their relationship to gender dynamics—will be discussed in the following chapters. It is useful though, at this juncture, to identify certain macrostructural influences, for these have had a profound, arguably chaotic, impact on public services in this, and most other European/American/Australasian countries, during the past two decades. These influences or forces include the now ubiquitous, New Right, market-managed ideology (Ball 1990, Tomlinson 1993, Farnham and Horton 1996); new managerialisms imported (not necessarily intact) from the private sector (Pollitt 1993, Warner and Crosthwaite 1995); the variant conditions that mark post-industrialization and post-Fordism (Harvey 1991, Kumar 1995); postmodernity (Bauman 1992, Usher and Edwards 1994); middle England’s culture of contentment (Galbraith 1992); shifting patterns of work and leisure (Hewitt 1993, Rojek 1995); an increasing polarization of poverty and wealth (Hutton 1995); new privileged knowledges (Lyotard 1984); new privileged work skills (Reich 1991, Handy 1994); and, of course, significant shifts in traditional notions of masculinity and femininity. These movements and influences were, and remain, interconnected, indeed often interreliant. However, rather than perceiving them as the predetermined or preordained outcomes of some larger instrumental rational process, we are much more comfortable in locating them as prominent parts of the potpourri configuring the late twentieth century: mostly unplanned, quite unpredictable in their effects and tenuous rather than consistent.

Whether one considers the ori...