Management and Marketing - Research Publications

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Start date: 2010 × End date: 2012 × Type: Journal Article × Author: Ainsworth, Susan ×

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    Subjects of Inquiry: Statistics, Stories, and the Production of Knowledge
    Ainsworth, SA ; Hardy, C (SAGE Publications, 2012)
    Statistics and stories are often equated with different types of knowledge in contemporary western societies: statistics are associated more with the authority of objective, disinterested experts while stories are able to encapsulate subjective, personal experience. In this paper, we explore how both genres were used to produce knowledge in the context of a public inquiry on the problems facing older workers in securing and maintaining employment. Drawing on the concept of power/knowledge relations we examine how statistics and stories were used in different inquiry texts and trace their use across texts over time. Our findings show that to establish their authority as a valid form of knowledge representing the subject of inquiry, statistics and stories both had to be embedded in the appropriate discursive conventions. In the case of statistics, knowledge had to be expressed through discursive conventions that conveyed distance from the subject of inquiry, i.e. independent, objective research. In contrast, stories produced knowledge through discursive conventions that established proximity to the older worker – by being or knowing an older worker. The study shows the effects of these discursive conventions on how knowledge is institutionalized through processes of textual re-inscription, as well as the way in which they constructed a marginalized older worker subject.
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    'A Blinding Lack of Progress': Management Rhetoric and Affirmative Action
    Ainsworth, S ; Knox, A ; O'Flynn, J (WILEY-BLACKWELL, 2010-11)
    In this study we explore how versions of organizational reality and gender are constructed in management discourse and whether such patterns change over time. Specifically, we examine management explanations and accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations through their commentaries on their affirmative action programmes. In Australia private sector organizations with 100 or more employees are required to report to government on their affirmative action programmes for women. In these documents, management representatives outline objectives for the coming year and report on their progress in reducing employment‐related barriers for women. In doing so they account for the ‘problem’ of gender‐based discrimination that affirmative action is designed to address, justify their actions (or lack of action) and reproduce versions of gendered identity. Thus we use affirmative action reporting as cases of management rhetoric to explore how aspects of gender and organization are constructed, taken for granted, challenged or problematized. Comparing reports from the hospitality sector over a 14‐year period, we explore whether there is any evidence of discursive change in management accounts of the gendered nature of their organizations.