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... 144) argues: All of us, men as much as women, are caught up in modes of self production and self observation... Women are no more subject to this system of corporeal production than men; they are no more cultural, no more natural, than men. Patriarchal power relations do not function to make women the objects of disciplinary control while men remain outside of disciplinary surveillance. It is a question not of more or less but of differential production... In contrast to the traditional arguments that require women to make their organizational way in a man's world, yet also work to sustain the gender dichotomy, several writers have attempted to argue for the development of the "feminine" organization, which would embody characteristics that are supposedly quintessentially female in its structures, rules, and behaviors. One of the world's best-selling organizational behavior texts cites Rothschild's suggested model of the feminine organization (Robbins, Waters-Marsh, Cacioppe, & Millett, 1994, p. 667).
This model encompasses six characteristics-valuing members as individual human beings; being non opportunistic; defining careers in terms of service to others; a commitment to employee growth; the creation of a caring community; and power-sharing. Rothschild argues that this is the model of choice in organizations that are managed by and for women, including rape crisis centers, domestic violence centers, and entrepreneurial firms catering primarily for the female market such as Avon Cosmetics. Rothschild also suggests that this model may be more economically effective per se. Certainly, Rothschild's organizational model encompasses characteristics that have been argued in human relations theory for several decades by members of both genders. Many organizations have indeed embodied some or all of these in their structures, rules, and so on. This established, the collation of such characteristics in the "feminine" organization seems, first, to simultaneously reverse and preserve the positive-negative gender dichotomy, almost demonizing the "masculine" organization.
Second, this model rather opportunistically picks off the most attractive (i. e. , participatory) elements of human resource practice and labels them "feminine. " Third, it simplistically equates these elements of practice with a wider process of organizing which is crucially affected by the nature of the task and mission of the organization, the technology it employs, the type of competitive environment in which it operates, its financial structures and its strategies, among other factors. On the one hand, then, this concept of a "gendered" form of organization both distorts the actual behavior of real subjects of either gender in organizations and creates a myth of feminine virtue (Fillion, 1996). On the other, it distorts the idea of organization itself by overemphasizing the influence of one particular dimension of organized life-gender. In other words, the rhetoric of the feminine organization is itself a representation which caricatures both masculinities and femininities in attempting to "drag up" the organization. Recently, more subtle arguments for the "re-erotic ization" of the workplace have also emerged.
However, it is significant that re-erotic ization arguments often turn around a re-affirmation of the degraded feminine, a "welcoming back" of the feminine and the values and behaviors customarily associated with it-sensuality, caring, openness, play, emotionality, etc. into the public sphere. This tendency, where: "the open and public celebration of sex as a framework for re-energized relationships between individuals" (Brewis & Grey, 1994, p. 67) becomes the core of organizational analysis, is exemplified by Burrell (1992), who argues for the development of a "third face of pleasure" in organizations. He opposes the customary organizational displacement of sensuality such that organizational practice is enriched and individual employees are liberated from the constraints of phallogocentrism. In a similar vein to Rothschild, Burrell (1992, p. 82) argues that alternative organizations such as certain ecological movements, feminist groups, and worker cooperatives embody re-erotic ization in their forms. It is of course possible that a form of feminization / re -erotic ization may be achievable which opens up and challenges the gender divide in ways which parallel those embodied in transgressions of gendered appearance, but the specific organizational arguments made by Burrell and Rothschild seem to delimit this possibility by identifying certain types of organizations as exemplars of their particular models.
Additionally, the gender divide is problematic yet permeable. It co-exists with a conceptual division of labor which defines gender-appropriate characteristics which may be represented, challenged, or re inscribed through different forms of appearance. However, in privileging eros over logos, feminization / re -erotic ization arguments tend to underplay the historical derivation which, at least since Descartes, has associated a particular style of thinking with masculinity (Bordo, 1986). As a result of the embedded ness of this assumption in organizations, people who think differently about organizational problems or forms often find themselves challenged as though they were transgressing the gender divide, which symbolically of course they are. Further, there is a danger that insufficiently reflexive feminization / re -erotic ization arguments under represent the sensitivity, emotionality, and caring capacities of males.
There is increasing evidence that males react to many work situations more emotionally than females, feel more stress, and yet, and this is important, are unable to verbalize or express this. Females often respond emotionally to organizational situations, yet seemingly without undergoing any of the physical and psychological tensions that males experience-women's ability to express their feelings therefore acts as a safety valve. Insofar as feminization / re -erotic ization emphasizes a "welcoming back" of the feminine into organizations, it fails to recognize that organizational men have tended to exist in the uncomfortable position of having feelings with which they have difficulty dealing, given the masculinity to which they are expected to live up. The process of feminization / re -erotic ization only identifies this masculinity as other, as problematic. Consequently, the ambivalence and denial which males experience within masculinity needs to be acknowledged and incorporated into organizational practice, rather than being assumed to be something which only an experience of the feminine provides.
In short, any change in organizations from a gender perspective needs to be driven by the twin needs of finding different ways to relate both to others and to the self. Also, and in specific relation to the re-erotic ization model, organizational purposes seem to disappear in favor of a process without direction. It is argued that "meaning" in organizations is constantly constructed and reconstructed and is achieved in a semantic context in which ideas of structure, purpose etc. are significant. More concretely, there are measures and indicators of organizational performance which, though they might vary considerably from organization to organization, nevertheless act as important constraints on the things people do in those organizations. The gendered dimensions of the derivation of these measures, and the extent to which they establish and support a gendered division of physical and conceptual labor, should of course be challenged, but cannot be removed entirely.
Consequently, people would prefer to see feminization / re -erotic ization, not as a prescription for a new model of organization, but as a means of achieving radical reflexivity-situated, localized, responsive, and critical within those organizations society already has, which expands the repertoires of thought and action as organizational masculinities and femininities emerge and are negotiated and contested. The differential modes of self-production in which both men and women are enmeshed are therefore open to subversion - they cannot be considered always to be codified and predictable. However, the fine line between compliance with and subversion of the gender divide is illustrated by different types of gender-inappropriate behavior; drag and transsexualism, for example. Furthermore, it is certainly not the case that gender difference is an easy imperative to resist-the powerful character of this discourse is visible in the degree to which those who reproduce gender-differentiated behavior report that they have no alternative and the hostility with which gender transgressions are received. If, however, certain transgressions can be argued to have an unsettling effect, where do they lead us in theorizing gender? Some writers have argued for the need to throw off all understandings of gender, all definitions that rely on masculine / feminine , in order that we achieve jouissance - a space in which everyone can be everything: ...
a phantasmic al mingling of men, of males, of messieurs, of monarchs, of princes orphans, flowers, mothers, breasts, gravitating around a marvelous "sun of energy" love, which bombards and disintegrates these ephemeral amorous singularities so that they may recompose themselves on other bodies for new passions. (Cixous, 1988, p. 293). Bibliography HEARN, J. The gender of oppression. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester, 1987 CONNELL, R.
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Volatile bodies: Towards a corporeal feminism St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994 ROBBINS, S. , WATERS-MARSH, T. , CACIOPPE, R. , & MILLETT, B. Organizational behaviour. : Concepts, controversies and applications. Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1994 FILLION, K. Lip service: The myth of female virtue in love, sex and friendship.
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