Hidden Gendered Assumptions in Mainstream Organizational Theory and Research

This article briefly summarizes work documenting gender inequalities in organizations, and the ways that gender theory and research have been ignored and marginalized in organizational scholarship. It then presents the idea of revisioning, and outlines several techniques for exposing hidden gendered assumptions in ostensibly gender-neutral scholarship. Those techniques are used to analyze the Hawthorne effect, Crozier’s field studies, Weberian bureaucracy, the public/private and work/family dichotomies, field dependence, stress and burnout, bounded rationality and bounded emotionality, and institutional theory. Such analysis explores the level of the individual, group, and organization; different disciplinary roots (sociology, psychology, and political theory); and different methods (experimental, survey, archival, and ethnographic). The results illustrate the range of insights that can emerge from a gendered analysis of apparently gender-neutral ideas.