Guest editorial
Professor Jim BarrySociologist specialising in Gender and Organisation Studies based in the University of East London (UEL) Business School, UK and Guest Professor at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. He holds a PhD in political sociology. He is an Editorial Advisory Board member of the journal Equal Opportunities International, Associate Editor of the journal Gender, Work and Organisation, and Editorial Board member of the journal Local Governance Dynamics based in Mumbai, India. He is also Co-Director of the UEL Organisation Studies Research Group, co-founder of the Organisation Studies Network and a founding member of the European Network on Managerialism and Higher Education, as well as Co-Chair of the annual Dilemmas in the Public Sector International Research Conferences. He has published on gender, politics and governance, gender and organisations, gender, postcolonialism and public service in India and the UK, gender and work-stress, gender, managerialism and higher education, gender and identities, gender and business ethics and lone parenting and employment. He co-edited Gender and the Public Sector: Professional and Managerial Change (2003) Routledge, London, jointly with Mike Dent and Maggie O'Neill. His work has appeared in journals such as Gender, Work and Organisation, Public Administration, Human Relations, Organisation, Public Management Review and the Journal of Management Studies. E-mail: j.j.barry@uel.ac.uk
Elisabeth BergProfessor in Sociology in the Department of Human Work Sciences at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of East London, UK. Her earlier research considered organisation, gender and social politics. Her later research concerned women in female dominated organisations where she explored the ways in which they handled their careers. Some of her findings are published in her book Kvinna och chef i offentlig förvaltning (Woman and Management in Public Service) Liber (2000). More recently her research has involved gender and organisation in academia and in social work in Sweden, England and The Netherlands and Information and communication technology in social work from a gender perspective. Her work has appeared in journals such asGender, Work and Organisation, Organisation, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Public Administration, Public Management Review andInformation Technology and People. She is a member of the European Network on Managerialism and Higher Education. E-mail: elisabeth.berg@ltu.se
Dr John ChandlerSociologist teaching Organisation Studies in the East London Business School at the University of East London, UK. His current research interests include gender and managerialism in the public sector and the "new careers". He is a Co-Director of the Organisation Studies Research group in the East London Business School and a member of the European Network on Managerialism and Higher Education. His publications includeOrganisation and Identities (1994) International Thomson, edited with Jim Barry and Heather Clark, and Organisation and Management: A Critical Text (2000) Thomson Learning, edited with Jim Barry, Heather Clark, Roger Johnston and David Needle. His work has appeared in journals such as Gender, Work and Organisation, Human Relations, Organisation, Public Administration, Public Management Review and the Journal of Management Studies. E-mail: j.p.chandler@uel.ac.uk
The intention of this special issue is to provide leading-edge work on gender, management and governance in the public sector. It is the result of a call for papers that emphasised the need for a focus on gender, inequality,disadvantage, diversity and inclusion, in relation to recent management reforms and shifts in public sector governance, with reference also made to social movement activity and the importance thereby of civil society in the perpetuation and mediation of inequalities both in and through organisations in the public sector. The call for papers reflected the recent growth of a so-called "new" management in the public sector and a new emphasis on governance, following economic restructuring and political realignment in the wake of a pervasive neo-liberalism, arguing that there was relatively little work that had been developed that made connections between diversity, gender,new public sector management and governance, which often appear as separate fields of enquiry.
Management in the public sector, or the new public management as it has been dubbed, has played a pivotal role in recent changes in many public sectors around the world, albeit to varying degrees, attracting international academic and practitioner interest. Recent research has identified a number of shortcomings, with topics such as performance management receiving critical attention. There has also been some acknowledgement of the importance of local and regional as well as national factors at work, though there has been little that has developed analyses from a perspective that takes account of gender and diversity. There has been some acknowledgement of the problematic concept resistance, both formally (for example through Trade Unionism) and informally(through networks, individual action and symbolic challenge), and there has been some research on gender identity and the part it plays in propagating and/or mediating the new management regimes. Other work, which has taken scarce account of gender, has acknowledged "new" modes of social and political interaction and looked beyond the new public management, pointing to the increasing significance of non-traditional, flexible, loosely connected networks, and the importance of governance.
Yet there has been little consideration given to the part played by civil society and those who operate outside recognised institutions, or bring women's movement values from civil society into the organisational arena. In this,external influences have affected organisational processes, calling into question the work/life balance and the significance of organisational boundaries, as well as drawing attention to the complex interplay of identities enacted and negotiated within public sector organisations. All this suggests the need for the development of these lines of enquiry and for critical analyses of public sector management and governance. A range of issues including identity,equal opportunities, diversity, and race and ethnicity were identified, and submissions invited as they related to management and governance in the public sector as a way of advancing our understanding of this field as an area of research. This special issue is the result.
The papers contained here represent different disciplinary perspectives, yet what they all have in common, in line with the original call for papers, is a focus on new public management and/or governance from a perspective that takes account of gender, with one paper focusing more specifically on diversity through ethnicity, race, culture and religion. Moreover, the papers adopt a welcome critical approach, with gender and/or diversity centre stage to enrich our understanding of what are by now post-new public management and governance studies. Considered together, all the papers in this special issue serve to enhance our understanding of both internal and, importantly too, external influences that have affected organisational processes in social and political context.
The special issue opens with Catherine Fletcher's paper, focused on new public management in universities in the UK. She argues that a gendered perspective is often ignored and that new public management has affected all concerned, not just women. She shows, drawing on new empirical data, how changes have led to increasing inequality for women following the audit of research and focus on outputs, with deleterious implications for women's promotion and careers. This is something that the managers in higher education do not seem to comprehend, their explanations for women's lack of promotion tending to individualise the problem and blame the victim rather than implicate structural barriers and informal processes. She identifies a masculinist managerial competitive environment in universities that can cause many women to feel excluded, even if they are simultaneously ambivalent over this. Catherine's paper, which considers various viewpoints and provides a rich analysis of the issue of gender equity and research careers for women academics, will be of interest to an international audience given the global reach of academe.
From a different perspective, but still in a similar vein in its concern with management and gender, Linda Bell explores the views of some of those involved in the "Training to Communicate" initiative in health and social care organisations in London and South East England. Her research reveals how trainers construct their identities as training "experts". Readers will be interested in the trainers' willingness to embrace "new" managerial identities, with the findings showing how management becomes important in the identities of these trainer–managers. Interviewees discussed collaborative processes including networking, managing relationships with other managers within the organisation, and broader "political" awareness, to justify their own positions, responsibilities and performances as "training"experts. Linda's findings extend our understanding of gendered performances from higher education to social care, another part of the public sector.
A different approach, but linked with managerial accountability, is taken by Anne Fearfull and Nicolina Kamenou who contribute to this special issue with a paper that explores tensions concerning race, ethnicity, culture and religion. Whilst they consider these tensions and the ways in which they affect the delivery of quality health care through the UK's National Health Service (NHS),their analysis is likely to be of interest to an audience well beyond the UK given their focus on diversity. This has proven a difficult area to study empirically, leading Anne and Nicolina to draw on their own research as well as secondary sources in order to explore how performance and the meeting of targets in the NHS can affect equality, quality and care. They highlight the role of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the inextricable link between public and managerial accountability, and how these seem inadequate in addressing issues of racism and discrimination by NHS staff and its clients. As this affects both NHS staff and the public it seems likely that problems will be stored up for the future.
The fourth paper, written by Kazem Chaharbaghi, develops a trifocal model,involving professional, managerial and bureaucratic dimensions, and identifies underlying masculinist assumptions. Drawing on a recent public debate about the audit culture, he considers the shift from management to managerialism that has changed its focus from performance, and a concern with results, to conformance,associated with normalising behaviour that has its roots in masculinist ontology. Here managerialism is elevated above professionalism, with the latter portrayed as inferior in solving public sector problems. The result, in this case, is audit, cast as solution, even though it is little more than an aspect or consequence of managerialist practice. Yet notions of audit derive from visions of an idealised public sector that can disappoint in practice. Kazem's contention is that this cannot continue because it is a self-destructive amoral undertaking, his analysis pointing to the need to draw on the strengths of all three of the dimensions identified – professional, managerial and bureaucratic – for the future.
Marion Ellison contributes further to the understanding of shifting governance relationships through a consideration of gender, new public management, citizenship and professional and user group relationships linked to childcare social work practice. Her study draws on recent empirical research from Denmark, the UK and Sweden, within public sector contexts subjected to pressures of neo-liberalism that have been making their mark on social care practises – contexts that have seen the importation of private sector managerial techniques in the guise of the new public management. Her paper illustrates the links between new public management, gender, citizenship and the"contested terrains" within which professional and user group relationships are being shaped, making a contribution to the development of existing theoretical and empirical knowledge within the field of professional childcare social work and practice. A major strength of Marion's paper lies in the interweaving of theoretical insights and empirical data that identify the shifting character of relationships and settlements within three different public sector contexts.
Jim Barry, John Chandler and Elisabeth Berg's contribution to this special issue is a consideration of the adequacy of the concept of abeyance in accounting for women's movement processes in non-social movement organisations during periods (such as the present) that are characterised by apparent quiescence rather than observable protest and insurgence. In this paper, they conceptualise women's movements, with their constituent varieties of feminism,as social movements, drawing on the insights of social movement theory from both the USA and Europe to argue that a focus on visible activism needs to be complemented by an approach that takes account of underlying processes and the experiences, values and affiliations of those involved. The paper is primarily theoretical, arguing for the reorientation of research into organisational change to take fuller account of social movement processes that derive from civil society, questioning thereby the arbitrary boundaries conventionally drawn around organisations. Jim, John and Elisabeth's conclusions suggest that organisational and managerial change in non-social movement organisations needs to take account of women's movements as social movements, and thereby social movement theory, as a way of deepening our understanding of gender and organisational change processes. Their contention is that women's movements,rather than being abeyant, dormant, and slumbering or in some kind of holding pattern, are most decidedly still on the move.
Together these papers represent different ways of making connections between the issues of gender, diversity, management and governance in different national, organisational and service contexts. While they cannot hope to point to a coherent theory of the interrelationship between these factors, they do,individually and together, suggest that thinking about their relationship is important. Taken together they suggest that the identities and experiences of service users and welfare providers alike are, in large measure, the product of these relationships.
Jim Barry, Elisabeth Berg and John ChandlerGuest Editors
