Sexualities and/in 'Critical' Management Studies

This chapter explores the hidden but powerful aspects of management and organizations: sexualities and gender. In mainstream studies on management and organization, sex, sexuality and/or gender are still relatively seldom addressed or analyzed. For a long time, the issue of sexuality was neglected within organization and management studies, particularly within the mainstream research but also in critical approaches. This lack of focus on sexualities could be understood as resulting from several reasons. Firstly, there has been little focus on gender, bodies and embodiments in studies of organizations and management. In this sense, sexuality could be seen as one aspect of gender, albeit an aspect that was usually neglected relative to questions of work, authority and formal lateral and hierarchical organizational divisions (Hearn & Parkin, 1983). A second perspective on this neglect can be traced mainly due to the frequently cited, and indeed gendered, divide between private/public, defining sexuality as something belonging to the private life and thus not relevant for analysis and understanding of organizational life. A third approach to explanation is in terms of the assumed distinction of, on one hand, organizations as rational and, on the other, sexuality as part of the irrational, sometimes emotional and carnal that does not affect working life.