Insights and Research on the Study of Gender and Intersectionality in International Airline Cultures

For the first time in a single edited collection, this important body of feminist work traces the relationship between the formation of organizational culture and the development, maintenance and changing character of workplace discrimination. Based on three decades of archival research by Albert J. Mills and his colleagues, the book brings together a series of articles, chapters and hitherto unpublished papers that document the founding and growth of our major international airlines – Air Canada, British Airways, Pan American Airways, and Qantas Airways – to understand the comparative influence of organizational cultures not only on internal organizational processes but also social understandings of gendered practices. The insights generated in this body of work bring to light the complexity of organizational rules, symbolism, language, imagery, storytelling, and `history’ as they impact on the practices and sensemaking of those involved in producing discrimination at work. Feminists and other diversity researchers will find this collection useful not only for insights on the processes of discrimination but also on the various reflections on methodological approaches that are peppered throughout. To that end, qualitative researchers and management and organizational historians with an interest in methodology will also find the book valuable in its reflections on the range of approaches discussed throughout.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: The Gendering of Organizational Culture Over Time  Chapter 1: Introduction to the development of the theoretical framework. Overview of the book  Chapter 2: Organization, gender and culture 2. Mapping out Culture and Gendering Over Time  Chapter 3: The Gendering of Organizational Culture: Social and Organizational Discourses in the Making of British Airways Chapter 4: Rules, Sensemaking, Formative Contexts and Discourse in the Gendering of Organizational Culture   Chapter 5: Studying the gendering of organisational culture over time: concerns issues and strategies Chapter 6: Digging Archeology: Postpositivist Theory and Archival Research in Case Study Development  3. Researching the Past  Chapter 7: When Plausibility Fails: towards a critical sensemaking approach to resistance  Chapter 8: The Gendering of Air Canada: A Critical Hermeneutic Approach Chapter 9: Men on Board: Actor-network theory, feminism and gendering the past Chapter 10: Performing the Past: ANTi-History, Gendered Spaces and Feminist Practice 4. Gendering Over Time   Chapter 11: Strategy, Sexuality, and the Stratosphere: Airlines and the Gendering of Organizations Chapter 12. Duelling Discourses - desexualization versus eroticism in the corporate framing of female sexuality in the British airline industry, 1945- 60 Chapter 13: Cockpits, Hangars, Boys and Galleys: Corporate Masculinities and the Development of British Airways  Chapter 14: Flying in the face of reality: Gender Rules in Trans-Canada Air Lines and the British Overseas Airways Corporation, 1937-1947.   Chapter 15: Masculinity and the making of Trans-Canada Air Lines, 1938-1940: a feminist poststructuralist account Chapter 16: Duelling Discourses at Work: Upsetting the Gender Order   Chapter 17: Pleading the fifth: Re-focusing Acker's gendered substructure through the lens of organizational logic Chapter 18: Organizational logic and feminist organizing: stewardesses for women's rights   5. Towards Intersectionality in Time  Chapter 19: Man/aging Subjectivity, Silencing Diversity: Organizational Imagery in the Airline Industry - The Case of British Airways Chapter 20: Markets, Organizations, Institutions and National Identity: Pan American Airways, Postcoloniality and Latin America Chapter 21: The Junctures of Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Nationality and the Making of Pan American Airways, 1929-1989 Chapter 22: Reading Qantas History: Discourses of Intersectionality and the early years of Qantas’.   6. Lessons Learned  Chapter 23: Lessons Learned Over Time.

About the Author :
Albert J. Mills is the Director of the Sobey PhD Program at Saint Mary's University in Canada. The author of over 40 books and edited collections, his research interests focus on the impact of organization and management on the lives and well-being of people. His most recent publications include 'The Oxford Handbook of Diversity on Organizations' (2015, Oxford University Press); 'The Routledge Companion to Management and Organizational History' (2015), and 'Absent Aviators: Gender Issues in Aviation' (2014, Ashgate). Albert currently serves as the co-chair of the International Board for Critical Management Studies and the co-editor of Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: an International Journal.

Review :
Focusing on international airline companies, business researchers look at the gendering of organizational culture over time, mapping out culture and gendering over time, researching the past, gendering over time, and toward intersectionality in time. Their topics include social and organizational discourses in the making of British Airways, digging archaeology: post-positivist theory and archival research in case study development, flying in the face of reality: gender rules in Trans-Canada Air Lines and the British Overseas Airways Corporation 1919-47, organizational logic and feminist organizing: stewardesses for women's rights, and reading Qantas history: discourses of intersectionality and the early years of Qantas.