Management, Masculinity and Manipulation: From Paternalism to Corporate Strategy in Financial Services in Britain*

Abstract

This article is concerned to demonstrate that paternalism and strategic management as forms, styles or 'techniques' of managing people and organizations, are both constitutive of and embedded in what we term a 'discourse of masculinism'. Within the context of the UK financial services industry, we examine how this discourse reflects and reproduces management practices, and reconstitutes individuals in accordance with masculinist priorities. This has the effect of privileging men uis-2-vis women, serves to rank some men above others, and maintains as dominant certain forms and practices of masculinity. We identify two of these as 'paternalistic masculinity' and 'competitive masculinity' respectively, regarding them as concrete manifestations of the interplay between historically shifting forms of management and masculinities in operation.

The Organizational Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity: The Case of the US Navy

“…You can't do that stuff.' Having to be 'a gentleman' around women invokes a patriarchal masculinity (Kerfoot and Knights 1993) and differentiates men from women, furthering the sense that women are 'soft' and need to be protected from the 'hard' rudeness and incivility that the other men can tolerate. Engaging in 'improper' behavior is a socially differentiated staging area that constitutes friendship, status, and self-identity.…”

“…Messner's (1992) study of professional athletes and Klein's (1993) enthnographic study of professional body builders reveal that men produce a variety of masculinities as they struggle toward the hegemonic ideal that few of them can attain, and even fewer can sustain, in the face of such obstacles as competition, failure, injury, or retirement. Kerfoot and Knights (1993) demonstrate how paternalistic and competitive masculine discourses within the UK financial service industry reproduce a variety of masculinizing practices and identity maintenance strategies. Messerschmidt (1993) studies how criminal actions are one form of accomplishing masculinity that.…”

“…This includes the study of men and crime (Messerschmidt 1993); men in the printing press industry (Cockburn 1983); men in financial service institutions (Kerfoot and Knights 1993); male engineers on the shop floor (Collinson 1988) and studies of sports and masculinity C\!essner 1992; Messner and Sabo 1990;Klein 1993). …”

Men, Masculinities, and Gender Relations

“… social dynamics within men's leadership and management Hearn, 2005, 2014);  managerial and professional identity formation processes (Kerfoot and Knights, 1993;Kerfoot and Whitehead, 2000);  managerial homosociality and circuits of desire (Roper, 1996);  men managers' routine (and potentially unlawful) discrimination against women in selection (Collinson et al, 1990);  pay and reward systems, with the largest pay gaps sometimes at managerial levels (Chartered Management Institute, 2016)  (mis)management of sexual harassment cases (Collinson and Collinson, 1989);  how certain masculinities can bring danger and disaster (Messerschmidt, 1995;Maier and Messerschmidt, 1998;Collinson, 1999).  men and masculinities in relation to diversity management (Hearn and Collinson, 2006); and  possibilities for men's non-oppressive, even profeminist, management and leadership (Hearn, 1989(Hearn, , 1994.…”

“… the shifting impacts of financial crisis and the gendering of capital and finance (Elson, 2010;Bettio et al, 2013;Griffin, 2013;Pollard, 2013;Steans, 2013;Walby, 2013);  gender regimes of stock exchanges, investment banking, and financial institutions (Kerfoot and Knights, 1993;McDowell, 1997;Jones, 1998;Ho, 2009);  sexism, misogyny, and face-to-face encounters between male analysts and male brokers producing 'female-discriminating discourse' (Blomberg, 2009: 203;Enloe, 2013);  the proliferation of conditions in the financial sector for privilege, performance and performativity in discourses of masculinity (Knights and Tullberg, 2014), and what might be called "financial masculinities"; and  gendered impacts of financial organizings on domestic economic life (Conley, 2012;Fawcett Society, 2012;Warren, 2014).…”