Restructuring Organisations, Changing People: Gender and Restructuring in Banking and Local Government

Abstract

This paper contributes to debates about the changing nature of gender relations in employment by re-framing existing debates about economic restructuring and organisational theory. It draws upon research on current changes in British banking and local government to show how restructuring is concerned with changing the qualities of organisational members, and we demonstrate how this recognition offers a corrective to existing views of restructuring. We explore how current forms of restructuring appear to be undermining traditional forms of managerial masculinity and allow some scope for women to move into senior jobs, but also consider how new forms of masculinity are emerging. Thus we illustrate our argument that restructuring is an on-going and human process open to contestation and manipulation. We conclude by emphasising that, since restructuring should not simply be seen as a process administered from the top, there is inevitably a degree of indeterminacy about how gender is implicated in current restructuring processes.