Coding military command as a promiscuous practice? Unsettling the gender binaries of leadership metaphors
Abstract
Despite abundant scholarship addressed to gender equity in leadership, much leadership literature remains invested in gender binaries. Metaphors of leadership are especially dependent on gender oppositions, and this article treats the scholarly practice of coding leadership through gendered metaphor as a consequential practice of leadership unto itself. Drawing on queer theory, the article develops a mode of analysis, called ‘promiscuous coding’, conducive to disrupting the gender divisions that currently anchor most leadership metaphors. Promiscuous coding can assist leadership scholars by translating the vague promise of queering leadership into a tangible method distinguished by specific habits. The article formulates this analytical practice out of empirical provocations encountered by the authors: namely, a striking mismatch between their experiences in military fields and the dominant metaphor of leading as military command. Ultimately, the article seeks to move scholarly practices of leadership toward queer performativity, in the hopes of loosening other leadership practices from a binary grip and pointing toward new relational possibilities.
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Biographies
Karen Lee Ashcraft is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. Her research examines organizational and occupational form, identity, and affect, particularly as these entwine with gender, race and other relations of difference and power. Her work has appeared in such venues as Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization and Communication Theory; and her book with Dennis Mumby, Reworking Gender (SAGE, 2004), received a Book of the Year award from the National Communication Association. Her latest book with Tim Kuhn and Francois Cooren, The Work of Communication (Routledge, forthcoming), examines working and organizing amid advanced capitalism through multiple perspectives on relationality. [Email: [email protected]]
Sara Louise Muhr is Associate Professor at the Department of Organisation, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Her research focuses on critical perspectives on managerial identity and HRM, especially in relation to issues around coping with diversity and expectations in modern, flexible ways of working. Following this broader aim, she has worked with various empirical settings such as management consultancy, prisons, the military and police force, pole dance studios and executive networks, where she has engaged with issues such as power, culture, gender, ethnicity, leadership and work–life balance. Sara’s work has materialized in several published books and has appeared in journals such as Organization Studies, Organization, Gender, Work and Organization and Journal of Business Ethics. [Email: [email protected]]
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Article first published online: August 8, 2017
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