Recalibrating Management: Feminist Activism to Achieve Equality in an Evolving University
| Date | 01 April 2014 |
| Author | Regine Bendl,Angelika Schmidt,Mary Ann Danowitz |
| Published date | 01 April 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12008 |
Recalibrating Management: Feminist
Activism to Achieve Equality in
an Evolving University
Regine Bendl, Mary Ann Danowitz2and Angelika Schmidt1
Gender and Diversity Management Group and 1Change Management and Management Development,
Department of Management, WU Vienna, Austria, and 2College of Education, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, USA
Email: regine.bendl@wu.ac.at, mdanowi@ncsu.edu, angelika.schmidt@wu.ac.at
In this paper we examine the process of incorporating gender equality into a higher
education institution as it evolves into a managerial university. The case illustrates the
ongoing processes between structure, activism and features of gender equality, and
provides insights into how activists adapt to changes in governance and influence mana-
gerial responses to equality. Tracing the interaction of employee activism with new
managerialism over nearly two decades, four phases of change are identified. These
provide a basis for generating two concepts – managerial recalibration and individual
activism – while challenging the social abeyance hypothesis of social movements.
Introduction
In this paper we examine how equality agendas
are advanced through grassroots collective activ-
ism as institutional governance and authority
structures shift with the ascendency of new mana-
gerialism. Focusing on a case of collective and
individual feminist activism in one university, and
the incorporation of equality measures within this
institution, we show that activism, working both
within and outside the formal organizational
processes, can recalibrate managerial responses
and organizational policies and practices, in
alignment with external social and political
shifts.
We take a social movements approach in this
paper, with a view to both understanding the
neglected aspects of organizational change and
suggesting new elements for improving the under-
standing of employee activism. A social move-
ments approach highlights the role of the external
environment in shaping organizational activists’
equality-based concerns, as well as the legitimacy
of their concerns, the language used to express
these concerns (Scully and Segal, 2002, p. 126)
and the organizational changes towards manage-
rialism. Our approach builds on the work of Snow
and Benford (1988), Taylor (1989) and Benford
and Snow (2000). We link closely to Scully and
Segal’s (2002) theoretical approach to employee
activism, which explores the concepts of diversity
and inequality in the workplace, in order to
explain how activists pursue changes that ques-
tion power relationships and how their involve-
ment changes over time. In so doing we introduce
the concept of ‘managerial recalibration’, to focus
attention on how employee activism, in our case
feminist activism, reshapes the agendas of mana-
gerialism. This leads us to address a fundamental
but overlooked question: what happens when new
managerialism is institutionalized while feminists1
are working to incorporate gender equality meas-
1In this context we consider ‘feminist activism’ to be
theory-driven political engagement aimed at gender
equality, gender equity and self-determination of women.
‘Feminism’ refers to the heterogeneity of approaches that
thematize the rights and interests of women from different
perspectives (e.g. Harding, 1987; Tong, 1989).
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 320–334 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12008
© 2013 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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