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In this article, we adopt a critical perspective to study how executive search practices reproduce particular understandings of the ‘ideal’ executive body. We show how this disadvantages not only women but also men who are considered not to fit the ‘ideal’, and further demonstrate how search practices are embodied: how aesthetics, the senses and a sensorial way of knowing permeate the practices through which candidates are evaluated. We identify discourses on embodied co-presence, capabilities and voice in search consultants’ talk, and specify how notions of the ‘ideal’ executive body and embodied search practices become intertwined. We offer this contribution to the discussion on the body, gender and management and to research on executive search practice.

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We argue that the healthy, fit and athletic body plays an essential role in the way contemporary managerial identities are construed. Drawing on insights from Judith Butler, we study these bodily identities as a form of regulation in organizations. We identify the cultural basis of regulation, show how it operates through specific norms, and detail how it implies gender. Based on an empirical study of men and women in management who are passionate about their healthy and fit bodies and athletic lifestyles, we demonstrate how norms set by managerial athleticism – understood as a particular regulative regime – operate through three discursive practices: perfecting the body, advocating against non-fit bodies, and becoming a role model. We show how the norms operate in both explicit and abject fashion and how they are implied in masculine language and materialized in physical (athletic) bodies. We offer new insights on how bodily identity regulation occurs and elucidate the gendered complexity and contradictions inscribed in managerial athleticism.

This paper is a contribution to sensory‐aware cultural consumer research. It suggests that while the audio‐visual domain is unquestionably a crucial ingredient of contemporary consumer culture, there is a pressing need to explore the role of the other senses as well. The study works towards a practice‐based culturalist approach to sensory ethnography, a perspective that allows consumer scholars to empirically account for the cultural aspects of the senses. Through an empirical case study on sport fishing, the paper scrutinizes the challenges and opportunities related to conducting sensory ethnography. In addition, it discusses the benefits of this approach in consumer research.