Business Masculinity Research Articles

Management accountants—A gendered image

It has been argued that masculinity in the field of accounting is in flux and that new gendered expectations may be emerging. This study takes an important step toward a discussion on management accountants’ gendered image and broadens understanding of masculinity in the field of management accounting. The question it raises is whether the notion of hegemonic masculinity is dominant in the image and whether the image might be expanding. A qualitative case study of a global technology company was conducted, drawing on 100 of its job advertisements for management accountants and 31 semi-structured interviews with its management accountants and operational managers. The findings revealed that even though some caring attributes, such as empathy, were constructed as important, causing the hegemonic masculinity to seem softer, the image of the ideal management accountant predominantly aligns with hegemonic masculinity, more specifically with transnational business masculinity and entrepreneurialism, which emphasize business performance and maximization of the self. The dominance of hegemonic masculinity leads to the colonization of “othered” bodies, namely women in management accounting. The results critique mainstream management accounting research, which considerably lacks gender analysis.

Remaking the Myth of the ‘Trade Warrior’: Searching for South Korean Masculinity in the Philippines

This study explores South Korean middle-aged businessmen, mainly in their 50s and 60s, who migrated to the Philippines to boost their socio-economic status and eventually recuperate their masculine identities. By examining how the Korean men’s assumption about where and how they can redeem their masculine identity was made, this research extends the notion of transnational business masculinity in three ways. First, it demonstrates the emergence of transnational business masculinity does not simply denote the demise of older form of business masculinity, and second, the ascendancy of certain form of business masculinity is not given but can be shaped by one of the primary actors, that is, the state. Lastly, the case of Korean middle-aged businessmen in the Philippines unravels the contemporary business masculinity prompts actual transnational migration as it relates to men’s self-positionality in geopolitical global order.

Nathan Meyer-Rothschild’s Reproduction of Business Masculinity in the Portrait A View from the Royal Exchange. A Historical, Bourdieusian and Visual Semiotic Exploration

Abstract Business Masculinity represents a distinctly English configuration of masculinity that was hegemonic in the City of London’s banking and finance industry until recently. This work uses visual semiotic analysis, historical analysis and Bourdieusian concepts to show how Rothschild reproduced the aesthetics of Business Masculinity in the portrait A View from the Royal Exchange (1817) by using clothing and other symbolic cultural capital. To secure his trajectory, Rothschild needed to align his identity with Business Masculinity and thus Englishness – and disassociate himself from Jewish masculinity – in a culture of antisemitism, as well as deal with the repercussions arising from his alleged manipulation of information about the Battle of Waterloo (1815). In this context, the portrait played a significant part in Rothschild’s public identity-management. Shortly after the portrait’s publication, Rothschild was trusted with key information and opportunities which were conducive to his enterprise growing exponentially. It is suggested that the portrait played a hitherto underacknowledged part in Rothschild’s trajectory, by disassociating Rothschild from Jewish masculinity and associating Rothschild with Business Masculinity.

Geek entrepreneurs: the social network, Iron Man and the reconfiguration of hegemonic masculinity

ABSTRACT In this paper, we argue that the geek entrepreneur is a new hegemonic masculine formation superseding the macho formation exemplified by John Wayne and the global business masculinity proposed as hegemonic by Connell and Messerschmidt more recently. This formation fuses the technological genius and suffering of geekiness with the disruption and innovation of entrepreneurialism. It is the masculinity of the geek entrepreneur that today legitimates both male domination and capitalism. We construct this argument through looking in detail at two cinematic representations of the geek entrepreneur: Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and Tony Stark in Iron Man. We hope to open up a debate about how gendered discursive formations have changed since the 1980s, what masculinity is now hegemonic, and how this can illuminate gender and other power relations.

A new generation of business masculinity? Privileged high school boys in a gender egalitarian context

ABSTRACT While gender equality and new softer masculinity ideals have gained prominence in the Nordic welfare states in recent decades, the top echelons of business seem to constitute a bulwark against these changes. Elite corporate culture preserves more traditional business masculinity ideals, both in terms of gender composition as well as in attitudes toward gender equality. This article analyzes if, and in what ways, central tenets from traditional business masculinities are upheld among the prospective male business leaders of tomorrow. By situating the interviews of young privileged boys within the contexts of both their renowned business high school and the strong gender equality ideals that exist in Norway, this article taps into a vital period of the construction of a ‘business masculinity’. The analyses show that, while softer masculinity traits are expressed when societal issues are at stake, the school context nonetheless seem to provide a ‘safe haven’ for traditional masculinity.

Globalization and Business Masculinities in South Korea: Top Managers in the Industrial Sector

Along with the growing globalization of business, discussion concerning the “transnational business masculinity” has gained importance in recent years. Previous research on the transnational masculinity has argued for the convergence of business masculinity in a global level. This results partly from the fact that previous studies have concentrated largely on the West. Focusing on the Korean transnational corporations, this paper contributes theoretically by suggesting that the configuration process of business masculinity is neither linear nor straightforward towards convergence. Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with top managers in the industrial sector in South Korea (hereafter Korea), this paper clarifies that the construction process of the business masculinity is plural, multi-faceted, and divergent despite the emergence of convergence in combination with socioeconomic and political factors in the local, national, and global level.

Married to Anatolian Tigers: business masculinities, relationalities, and limits to empowerment

ABSTRACTThis paper examines business masculinities and relationalities of empowerment in the everyday life experiences of male entrepreneurs and wives of entrepreneurs in three urban centers in Turkey: Gaziantep, Konya and İzmir. We take gendered power inequalities as structural and relational, and empowerment as a complex, multifaceted process. Based on a relational understanding of gender roles, we scrutinize men’s and women’s decision making areas in an attempt to understand normalized and internalized patriarchal values and assumptions, as well as explicit or implicit challenges against such values. We argue that gendered experiences of entrepreneurs and women married to entrepreneurs offer a complementary analysis of nuanced empowerment strategies in the background of seemingly contradictory currents such as economic globalization, transforming masculinities, rising conservatism and reinforced gender hierarchies.

Well-earned respectability or legitimation of masculinities? Powerful and publicly celebrated men in pre- and post-collapse Iceland

Masculinities are continuously renegotiated, reflecting tensions between various forms of male power. This paper focuses on how events leading up to the international financial crises after 2008 crystallized relationships among different kinds of masculinities, with Iceland as a critical example. To examine the relationships between political and financial elites, we make use of a materialist-discursive approach and Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital. Data on celebrated men in Icelandic society, primarily based on the Man-of-the-Year Award in Icelandic print media from the 1970s and onward, is analyzed. We discuss the transformation of power and how the media contributes to legitimizing the symbolic capital of certain masculinities. We suggest that the political elite had the upper hand from the 1990s onward but lost their hold prior to the collapse, to the benefit of the business elite. Political masculinity had a short comeback after the collapse. We suggest that the era of strong and decisive political and business masculinities has come to an end in Iceland. Further shifts in masculine power in global capitalism should be researched.

Áhættusækni í útrásargleði: Karlar og konur í bönkum og fjármálafyrirtækjum

Feminist scholars have long emphasized the masculine culture of the financial sector, where a certain gendered structure is created and sustained. The capitalistic economy and the culture of multinational corporations play a leading role in creating and promoting new patterns of masculinity - the transnational business masculinity - on both global and local levels. It is thus important to analyze how this takes place in a local context. Following the economic collapse in Iceland, a strong emphasis formed in the public discussion on a changed gender dynamic in financial firms and in general. This article focuses on the experience of those working within the financial sector in relation to the position of men and women, contextualized within a scholarly discourse. It is based upon interviews with employees of financial institutions, where they reflect on their experience and views masculinity, essentialism and equality.

Mark Carney and the Gendered Political Economy of British Central Banking

In this article We account for Mark Carney’s role in the naturalisation of gender in finance and explain how this depoliticises important questions of gendered finance. We demonstrate Mark Carney’s ability to embody a successful combination of ‘transnational business masculinity’ and ‘traditional bourgeois masculinity’. We sketch how the current monetary and financial stability concerns of the Bank of England appear to reproduce the uneven and exploitative effects of gendered finance. In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British central banking. We document the gendered narratives surrounding Carney around the time of his appointment as Governor of the Bank of England, suggesting that they worked to naturalise certain gender constructions in finance. We show how Carney seemingly had the ability to successfully embody a combination of two ideal-types of masculinity: both ‘transnational business masculinity’ and ‘traditional bourgeois masculinity’. We argue this contributed to three depoliticising moves, each of which gain their strength in part from the naturalisation of masculinities in finance, while obfuscating important questions of gendered finance. To elucidate the latter, we highlight some of the gendered outcomes that are obscured by the furore surrounding Carney’s character, suggesting that the monetary and financial stability concerns of the Bank under his stewardship are likely to reproduce the uneven and exploitative relations of gendered finance.

The Reconstruction of Masculinities in Global Politics

The concept of masculinities has been central to the analysis of private security as a gendered phenomenon. This research has either focused on the identity constructions and practices of security contractors as men or on masculinity as a theoretical and ideological framework for making sense of security outsourcing. This article aims to overcome this dualism by developing a relational, strategic, and discursive understanding of masculinities and focusing on the gendering strategies that create them. These strategies are identified as masculinization of the market and feminization of the state, feminization and racialization of (some) security work, hypermasculinization as a critical or affirmative discourse, romanticizing the autonomous male bond, and militarization of private security. It is argued that private security as well as critical discourses on it integrate business, humanitarian, and militarized masculinities in a way that ultimately legitimizes masculinism and reconstructs masculinity as a privileged category in international politics.

Eating, Cooking, and Shanghai’s “Less-than-Manly Men”: The Social Consequences of Food Rationing and Economic Reforms

This study examines some social consequences of food rationing and economic reforms in Shanghai by considering the notion of “Shanghai little men” (a broader translation of which is “Shanghai less-than-manly men”). Male Shanghainese are notorious for doing household labor and being obedient to their wives, which has earned them the nickname Shanghai little men. This study indicates that their grocery shopping and cooking were first inspired by fundamental changes in food distribution and the power structure during the 1950s and 1960s. It treats Shanghai little men as both a special group and a symbol of certain changes in gender roles at home and the redefining of gender norms in the larger society. It examines the shifting discourse concerning Shanghai little men in the era of economic reforms and analyzes a recent popular discourse about “seeking real men” and “being real women.” Finally, it deconstructs the current cultural nostalgia for traditional gender-defined divisions of labor, reflecting a parallel developmen—the “transnational business masculinity” that one sees in China.

Masculinities of drinking as described by Swedish and Finnish age-based focus groups

This article deals with masculinities in drinking by analysing how focus groups from Sweden and Finland discuss male and female drinking in diverse drinking situations. It argues that women's strengthened independency in working life, their increased drinking in domestic and public settings, and their entrance into drinking situations that used to be male dominated have challenged the cultural domination of traditional masculinity in drinking and made drinking styles a more diverse and heterogeneous phenomenon within and across gender groups. The analysis shows that the focus groups construct masculinities in which manhood is associated with creativity, depression, violence, virility, flâneurism, nurture, homosociability, business masculinity and weakness. These masculinities oppose, interlace or intermingle with femininities and change the shape depending on the situation, drinking company and the perspective of the viewer. Their broad spectrum shows that, in Finland and Sweden, there are multiple independent and strong drinking masculinities and femininities, none of which is given a self-evident hegemony over the others. Thus, the study points out that the masculinities and femininities of today are not reducible to any single hierarchy of dominant and subordinate masculinities. For the current hegemonic masculinities, it seems to be typical that they vary locally, regionally and globally, intersect in specific ways with class, age and generation, and form multidimensional, paradoxical and tension-driven relationships with each other and with femininities.

Eternal Interns: Kathrin Röggla’s Literary Treatment of Gendered Capitalism

In today’s Germany, university graduates and first-time job seekers find themselves in a different position than did those of previous generations—for many, obtaining a secure, full-time job has become a dream of the past. To boost their résumés, many enter a loop of internships and other similarly precarious states of employment. This article examines the way in which author Kathrin Röggla treats these insecure economic times in her 2004 novel Wir schlafen nicht, with a focus on sex and gender in the New Economy. Are jobs gendered, and what are the resulting effects for both men and women? I discuss the continuum of business masculinity and femininity and argue that business masculinity (as performed by men or women) creates, and ultimately depends on, a feminization of the workforce. By personifying the New Economy and presenting her female characters as the losers of capitalism, Röggla unmasks grievances in contemporary Germany, revealing the entire economy’s process of feminization and its effects, which are borne more heavily by women than by men.

Hegemonic Masculinity and Globalization: ‘Transnational Business Masculinities’ and Beyond

In recent years masculinity studies writers, in particular R. W. Connell, have focused on the relationship between globalization and ‘hegemonic’ forms of masculinity. This paper provides an assessment of this scholarship and argues that whilst Connell and others have usefully identified the gendered nature of globalization, masculinity scholars have also provided a somewhat limiting account of the global hegemonic role of a monolithic top-down ‘transnational business masculinity’. By contrast, we suggest a demassification of this notion of hegemonic masculinity. Such a demassification enables the opening up of a dialogue between masculinity studies and feminist and other critical globalization scholars, allowing for a more nuanced analysis that can attend to both the unevenness of globalization in different settings and more detailed awareness of interactions between global and local/cultural/state imperatives. Our aim here is to move away from conceptualizations of globalization and hegemonic masculinity that are exceptionally top-down towards an analysis of the contested and shifting nature of gender identity at the global as well as the local level, to highlight the ways in which different hegemonic masculinities are negotiated, and even resisted. We argue that by understanding ‘transnational business masculinity’ as a discursive ideal that legitimates the workings of global capitalism, there is scope for a greater level of engagement between critical globalization scholarship and gender studies. This might also open the door to an account of globalization that entails more detailed reference to women and femininities. En años recientes, los escritores sobre Los Estudios de la Masculinidad, y en particular R.W. Connell, se han enfocado en la relación entre la globalización y las formas ‘hegemónicas’ de la masculinidad. Este artículo proporciona una evaluación de esta beca y sostiene que mientras Connell y otros han identificado de manera útil la naturaleza del género de la globalización, los académicos sobre la masculinidad también suministraron un reporte de cierta manera limitado, sobre el rol hegemónico global monolítico del más alto al más bajo, de ‘una masculinidad en los negocios transnacionales’. Por el contrario, nosotros sugerimos una desmasificación de esta noción de masculinidad hegemónica. Tal desmasificación hace posible la apertura de un diálogo entre Los Estudios de la Masculinidad y de Feministas y otros académicos críticos de la globalización, permitiendo un análisis más matizado que puede acudir tanto a la disparidad de la globalización en diferentes escenarios como a una mayor conciencia detallada sobre las interacciones entre los imperativos locales/culturales/estatales. Nuestra meta es separarnos de las conceptualizaciones de la globalización y de la masculinidad hegemónica que son excepcionalmente jerárquicas hacia un análisis de los controvertidos y trasladar la naturaleza de la identidad del género tanto a nivel global como al local, para resaltar las formas como las masculinidades hegemónicas diferentes han negociado, e incluso resistido. Sostenemos que al entender ‘la masculinidad en los negocios transnacionales’ como un ideal discursivo que legitimiza el funcionamiento del capitalismo global, existe un propósito para un nivel mayor de participación entre la investigación crítica de la globalización y los estudios del género. Esto también puede abrir la puerta a un informe de globalización que conlleve una referencia más detallada de mujeres y feminidades.

Rethinking Hegemonic Masculinity in a Globalizing World

Our understanding of power relations in domestic and global settings is crucially informed by analyses of the gendered character of contemporary societies and global politics. Hegemonic masculinity is a crucial concept in such analyses. However, this concept has also been the subject of debate. The concept is currently used to stand in for a singular monolithic masculinity, a global hegemonic form on a world scale and is understood to refer to transnational business masculinity to an elite group of socially dominant men. This conceptualization is reconsidered and an alternative approach presented. Rethinking the term hegemonic masculinity is necessary to produce a more nuanced understanding of privileged legitimating conceptions of manhood, and of relations between different masculinities in the global/national nexus. Such a rethinking provides a means to rethink how gendered global politics, how (gendered) globalization may be conceived.

Globalization and Business Masculinities

The idea of “transnational business masculinity” is explored in life-history interviews with Australian managers. Their world is male-dominated but has a strong consciousness of change. An intense and stressful labor process creates multiple linkages among managers and subjects them to mutual scrutiny, a force for gender conservatism. In a context of affluence and anxiety, managers tend to treat their life as an enterprise and self-consciously manage bodies and emotions as well as finances. Economic globalization has heightened their insecurity and changed older patterns of business; different modes of participating in transnational business can be identified. Managerial masculinity is still centrally related to power, but changes from older bourgeois masculinity can also be detected: tolerance of diversity and heightened uncertainty about one’s place in the world and gender order. Some support is found for the transnational business masculinity hypothesis, but a spectrum of gender patterns must be recognized in an increasingly complex business environment.

Masculinities, Change, and Conflict in Global Society: Thinking about the Future of Men's Studies

Contemporary men's studies arises from a history of debates about gender relations, men, and masculinities, yet represents a new departure based on social analysis of gender and close-focus empirical work. This approach is now becoming worldwide and has found important practical applications in areas such as education and health. Problems are increasingly recognized in the field, including dilemmas of research method and debates about ways of theorizing masculinities. New approaches emphasise discursive and situational analysis and demand a clearer recognition of global forces. Gender relations have a global dimension that shapes contemporary masculinities, for instance emerging patterns of business masculinity. The connection between violence and masculinity is a key contemporary issue. Recent research shows both institutional bases and situational triggers of gendered violence, which are important in understanding contemporary global conflict and developing strategies for peace.

Masculinities and Globalization

Recent social science research has made important changes in our understanding of masculinities and men's gender practices, emphasizing the plurality and hierarchy of masculinities, and their collective and dynamic character. These gains have been achieved mainly by close-focus research methods. But in a globalizing world, we must pay attention also to very large scale structures. An understanding of the world gender order is a necessary basis for thinking about men and masculinities globally. We can trace the emergence of globalizing masculinities at different stages of the history of the world gender order. Hegemony in the contemporary gender order is connected with patterns of trade, investment, and communication dominated by the North. A transnational business masculinity, institutionally based in multinational corporations and global finance markets, is arguably the emerging dominant form on a world scale.