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Deconstructing organisational politics: a causal layered approach
Futures 34 (2002) 547–559 www.elsevier.com/locate/futures
Deconstructing organisational politics: a causal layered approach Brenda Hall-Taylor Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia
Abstract This study raises some theoretical issues about research methodologies and questions at what level research methods normalise power relations or make unproblematic various respondent accounts of the real. The paper is directed toward the epistemic level of transformation - towards the way we come to know the world. It describes an academic research project designed to elucidate the manner in which a group of executive understand the real, and had as its ultimate goal, the purpose of tracking social change. At one level, that purpose may have been achieved. At a deeper level, however, it illustrates the inadequacy of accepted research methodologies in attempts to identify a single reality or to create alternative futures. It points to the value of causal layered analysis in overcoming some of the problems of methodology. 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
1. Introduction The point of departure of this article is a study of executive perceptions in relation to recent changes within the Senior Executive Service (SES) of a State Public Service. In this article I illustrate the need to “create a new global, civil, communicative society to counter tyrannical and secretive power… at the corporate level or the State level”, as part of a process of creating a fully effective public service [1]. In a first interpretation of the data, a summary from executive discussions illustrates that there are significant differences in the worldview, reality and experience of male and female executives in the SES. Significant differences in male/female
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locus of control, differences in the locus of power, different values, actions and styles of management are identified. All research can, however, be understood from a variety of perspectives and the particular theoretical framework that informs data interpretation can have an outcome, which may or may not be in the interests of those who are the subject of the research. This particular epistemic problem, and what might be a dilemma for feminist researchers, is exemplified in this study by two subsequent interpretations of the same data set. The study concludes that research methodologies, can work in ways that both replicate repressive mechanisms and become further strategies for the domination of women, but also can work in ways which these same mechanisms and strategies suggest the possibility of change. This points up the need to consider engaging in layers of meaning—causal layered analysis—not just to ask questions, but engage in research methods where issues are presented, problematised and deconstructed so that the meaning of both what is and what could be is made not by the researcher, but by the participants.
2. Background to the study Like most large organisations in Australia, Federal and State Government agencies have, over the past years, been the target of successive reviews and reform. These reforms have resulted in major changes to policy, processes and practices, changes that cannot have occurred without a consequential impact on the careers of those who are responsible for change management and implementation. One of the more significant of these changes has been the 1994 restructuring of the second Division of Public Service employment into the SES. This restructuring has subsequently seen the exertion of control over the advisory role of the public sector as well as overtly political appointment of senior executives [2,3]. The erosion of tenure and the move to fixed-term appointment tied to specific performance outcomes; outside appointment; promotion on the basis of merit; abolition of appeal rights; the use of executive search techniques, and negotiated salary packages have now become a characteristic of SES conditions of employment. Although a good deal has been written about SES changes, this does not reveal how senior executives themselves have experienced such changes [4,5]. The literature is written from an ‘outsider’ perspective and there is very little literature, if any, that explores the experience of senior executives from their own perspectives. Given the sweeping nature of these reforms, what are the contemporary concerns, issues and perspectives of members of SES in relation to their careers? How do they construct their subject positions within the SES? Are there gender differences in their experiences within the SES? How does the methodology used to collect such data normalise power relations and make unproblematic executive accounts of the real?
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3. The study My focus for this study is on women and men in a rapidly changing SES and their perceptions of their experience as senior executives. I was specifically interested in the impact of major changes in SES conditions of employment and what senior executives understood to be contemporary career barriers. Two focus groups were held one with a group of 16 male senior executives and another with a group of 12 female senior executives. Although this is a small study, the difficulties of bringing together a larger cohort of senior executives for purposes such as this research might be appreciated. Each group as asked to discuss contemporary career issues and concerns. The ensuing conversation was tape recorded for later analysis. The intervention of the researcher was kept to a minimum and the groups allowed to construct their own narratives without interruption. The analysis was later subjected to a member check to establish and confirm that the data had been correctly interpreted. As a feminist researcher, I was aware of the possibility that there may be gender differences in the experiences of senior executives and that power and gender intersect differently in particular locations. The process of data collection and analysis would need to be sensitive to gendered cultural and social specificities, therefore, separate focus groups were held.
4. Interpreting the focus group data: a grounded theory reading 4.1. Results of the male focus group study During the male focus group, the executives discussed their particular experience in the SES, the impact of change and the issues that are most important to their careers. These narratives have been summarised and illustrate the way in which the men construct their identities as executives and understand the interplay of power relations in the SES. In presenting this data summary, I have deliberately chosen to be descriptive, largely relaying a ‘commonsense’, obvious transcript of the key themes recorded on the tape. Key issues identified by the male group tended to be functional and instrumental in nature and focused on the personal impact of change to fixed-term appointment, the way in which this change had also affected the operations of the agency in which they were located, the political nature of senior executive employment and questions of leadership. On the issue of fixed-term appointments, there was a general consensus that a shift from tenure to fixed terms was a positive change, because it was a sounder management system, with performance indicators tied to rewards and rewards tied to outcomes, everyone pushing in the same direction creating a performance management culture. Fixed term appointment is, however, not without its disadvantages. Without security of contract, talented, experienced staff begin looking for other appointments as their contracts come to an end rather than risk not getting
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reappointed. There was also a perception that fixed-term appointments had reduced the career opportunities in the SES. Fixed-term appointments were also regarded as having a major impact on the relationship between the SES and lower Grades. Executives argued that there needed to be an extension of fixed-term appointments to middle and lower management ranks in order to eliminate the resentment which had developed over the increased disparities between executive and lower level staff salaries, but also to improve efficiency and effectiveness at those levels. Additionally, Fixed-term appointments did not necessarily attract the widest pool of applicants. While the SES conditions were perceived as attractive to the private sector, the SES did not always live up to their expectations. The political nature of senior executive employment was also an issue for the SES officers, creating a number of dilemmas. Decisions to reduce SES positions, for example, are made to meet political imperatives, but executives are required to present them as being in the best interests of the organisation. Political interference in decision making was also an issue and became frustrating, for example in cases where the principle of performance based rewards was not applied. Lack of Leadership was also a major issue: The executives believed there is too much focus on management, in getting the job done, keeping the lid on things, planning for the next 1–2 years. There is not enough focus on Leadership. Leadership is about pointing the agency in the right direction, avoiding future minefields. This discussion led to a debate on what constituted a leader. A good leader was seen to be a workaholic, one who insists on top effort and was also consistent in the treatment of people. As the focus group was drawing to a close the researcher assistant, aware that the men had not mentioned the position of women in the senior executive, asked how they saw the women faring. There was an agreement that women were worse off than men were and not percolating to the top. Formal contracts were perceived to be a fundamental problem for women because it disallowed time out for maternity leave. 4.2. Results of the women’s focus group The preoccupations of the women’s group were of a quite different nature to that of the males. One important factor that may account for some of this difference is not only the gendered culture of organisations [6,7,8,9,10,11] but that half of the women were all in the lower levels of the SES, thus having a different set of responsibilities. Their primary concerns were grounded, not in external political influences on their careers, but in internal political influences. Internal SES issues centred around the personal and professional difficulties involved in being women in a predominantly male culture. This difficulty manifested in restricted access to information; exclusionary practices which produce and reinforces an outsider status; lack of acceptance of women’s preferred management style, different communication styles and the culture of the organisations where they worked. Leadership and professional development were also part of their concerns. A major issue for the women was restricted access to information that they regarded as important to their performance and careers. They believed that they often
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lacked information that could make a significant difference to the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of their work practices, the management of careers and the advice and support they were able to give others. Women in the SES commonly encountered exclusionary practices that they believed disadvantaged them while at the same time reinforcing their outsider status, feeling of isolation and lack of support. The lack of acceptance of women’s preferred management style was perceived by the women as placing them in a less valued situation, especially when the preferred management style is male. Women were seen to be not tough enough. One example was given. Where staff are not performing up to scratch, women will generally take the load themselves, rather than taking it out on the person whom is not doing the job properly. Women take a more supportive role in the management of poor performance and try to use strategies that actually do work, but are seen as being soft when in fact it is the better way to get results. Men, by contrast, are much more task oriented, whereas women are more concerned with process. Women seem to take an approach of developing the person’s weaknesses whilst at the same time reinforcing their strengths, but this is not seen as a good way to go. The conflict between managing and managing-up which the women identified, poses some dilemmas for women who are less concerned with the pre-eminence of the individual CEO and more concerned with team based approaches to goal attainment and power through shared decisions making. Different communication styles also appear to create a good deal of misunderstanding and confusion between males and females. The fundamental difference for women was that whereas women talk about their feelings, things which affect them, the need for collaboration and consensus, male executives generally do not and or are not comfortable with doing so. On the issue of leadership, the women also noted some difficulty. There are patterns of behaviour that are regarded as the things that make top leaders. All these traits are more male dominated traits, and there is a tendency to judge women according to the male traits. If women don’t measure up to the masculine traits, then they are seen as not having all it takes to get there. In a discussion on what constitutes a good leader, the women said that leadership was a matter of style and capability. The women agreed that the CEO is a critical figure in determining the culture of the organisation. People take their reference point from the behaviour of the CEO. The male dominated culture of the SES is also a key issue for women. This culture is one that men have created and in which they feel comfortable and may not notice the discomfort of ‘outsiders’. The masculine culture of the SES often suppresses conflict in ways that make it difficult for women. There is no value placed on ‘telling it like it is’, asking for help or discussing problems. The women agreed that men do not appear to be comfortable working with women, although there was an agreement that women felt comfortable working with both men and women. There were mixed feelings among the women on the issue of professional development. Interchange as a major professional development strategy appears to get a lot of support as an idea, but when it is offered women don’t want to move. One reason
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is that they find it hard to give up, even temporarily, hard won gains in relationships or in processes that make the organisation more effective.
5. Interpreting the focus group data: a feminist reading Reflecting on the above summary of male and female executive discussions, what is striking to the reader is the difference in their subjective experiences. A feminist Standpoint reading [12] (and there are other possible feminist readings) of the accounts of female senior executives illustrates the effect of different standpoints. Women remain systemically and systematically excluded from full participation in the SES which is characterised by gendered power relations and in which women are disadvantaged. Women’s issues and concerns are not new. They have been discussed at length in all types of media and that they are still the main concerns of women, illustrates how little progress has been made in addressing them. Their issues and concerns related to restricted access to information, male behaviour which excludes them from full participation, a failure to appreciate women’s relational management style, and their insistence of the importance of process over task. In addition, the women argue that leadership is a male construct and that as leaders they are measured against this masculine image of a leader and found lacking. The women were quite resistant to casting themselves into a male role or to become honourary men and value the feminine characteristics that they bring to the SES. This value for consensus led to the guarding of any improvements they had made in developing more collaborative ways of working, to the extent that they were prepared to give up important development opportunities to ensure its survival. In summary and according to these women, the SES is an alienating place, a place where they are prevented, largely by an entrenched masculine culture, from achieving their full potential. By these accounts women share the feeling that they are excluded, ignored, and misunderstood. When juxtaposed with the male narratives, it is easy to see why the women should feel this way, as the male narratives are ‘woman irrelevant’. The women’s experiences, constructed within an oppressed group, are not shared or understood by the dominant male group who “don’t know if it is because of discrimination, the organisation, or choices not relating to work factors”. Within the women’s group their experience is normative, but it is far from normative within the male group. The position of women in the SES is echoed in a large volume of literature loosely collected under ‘Women in Management’ [13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. This literature points to the under representation of women in senior management across western industrialised nations, and reports the existence of the same problems for women executives identified in this study, by women in most large organisations. Despite a plethora of government programs and initiatives by women over the last decade [20] and this study have shown that the problems of women’s marginalisation at senior levels continue. Affirmative Action legislation, on which many of these programs have relied, has not led to the changes that might have been expected when introduced in 1986. This point will be elaborated later.
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6. Doing gender: a second feminist reading From a poststructuralist feminist perspective, the women’s narratives can be read in another way. From this perspective, the women in this study position themselves as victims of patriarchal systems and oppressive practices that they are powerless to change. They are convinced that knowledge is power and that lack of knowledge is a barrier—a barrier to women in executive employment is lack of information. If more knowledge was provided to them they would be, therefore, in a more equal position to the men. When one looks at the male narratives, the site of the apparent location of this knowledge and power, what is apparent is that men are also subjected to the exercise of power which produces oppressive, coercive behaviour as the following data illustrates—Senior Executive employment has become a bit of a political football. Decisions to reduce SES positions are made to meet political imperatives then we have to lie to those in the positions about the interests of the organisation. It can be seen that neither male nor female executives escape the effects of power. Increasing access to the kinds of knowledge women believe is available to men, will not necessarily improve their unequal status in the SES. One example of this can be found in the following extract where men know something that women do not. Quite ordinary everyday information that men automatically know is simply not available or is available only when you have proved your worth to the men. Take for example the grievance mediation procedures for appeals concerning promotion. Grievance mediation procedures are what Foucault [21] refers to as a disciplinary practice—a practice where one willingly submits to further interrogation, confession, and inspection, and which further disciplines those who believe they have already been unfairly treated. There is an assumption that knowing about grievance procedures will benefit women, without recognising that all appeal or similar legalistic processes subject both the offender and the offended to further discipline and regulation. In another example a woman has knowledge that her CEO does not—consensus approaches to management. I put a lot of effort into educating the CEO in a consensus approach, those little gains are minute but important, I can’t walk away from them and expect them to be here when I return—if I’m not here they get lost. The woman’s knowledge does not work in her favour because the knowledge prevents her from the seeking professional development that is in her interests. As Foucault argued, knowledge is not power, but knowledge can never be separated from power. Where there is knowledge there is power, and power never works in ways that are entirely positive or entirely negative. In the following extract, where some women are said to know about ‘managing up’ while others do not, the positive and negative effects of knowledge can be seen. There were good hardworking women in my agency, but their contribution got them nowhere because they were not putting all their energies into managing upwards. When they did they were seen to be having an affair. The women in the focus group positioned themselves as unequal, oppressed by a patriarchal system that is not of their making. In addition to providing an opportunity for female executives to tell their stories, one effect of the focus group conducted
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along gender divisions was to produce an opportunity to reinforce normative processes, rather than disrupting them. The strength of the narratives as they were in production had the effect of compelling the women to hear their narratives as ‘normal’. Hence, the way in which they had positioned themselves as an oppressed and marginalised group was reinforced. At the same time, the normalising process denied them an opportunity to question either that process of normalisation or the outcome. Nor did the gendered focus group provide access to the disconnected ‘reality’ constructed and maintained by the interconnected binaries of female/male. As one of the women remarked “there is no interactive process which facilitates women and men discussing problems with each other”. Hence this type of gendered research restricts each to their own view of reality and does little to connect the gender divide, provide opportunities to explore normalising processes and thus to think of other ways of changing the status of the marginalised. This is not to suggest that if women understood how some men behave and interact in order to maintain their privileged status, and acted accordingly, that women’s career barriers would dissolve. While the men are pleasant they talk incessantly about sport, and not only do they talk about those things but it is done deliberately and consciously to put me down - they make fun of me and one of our CEOs recently carpeted a team about a poor performance, shouted, threw a table over and told them they were hopeless! Indeed the women strongly resisted such a proposal. It does suggest however, that far more attention needs to be paid to the discursive production of management as a practice and to the way in which the discourse and practice is gendered. As the following quote implies, much more attention needs to be paid to validating women’s practice of management through interrupting the dominant discourse: The problem is that men are much more task oriented, whereas women are more concerned with process, and that is not seen to have much validity. In the first reading I pointed to the way in which EEO and Affirmative Action had made few inroads into resolving some of the difficulties of women in senior management. I want to argue that a feminist poststructuralist perspective is important in providing new ways of thinking about this issue. Our attention needs to focus on the discourse of management and the manner in which it functions to produce the effects that are so vividly encapsulated in narratives of both male and female executives. I am not arguing that EEO and Affirmative Action are a spent force. Both strategies have been important influences in improving the numbers of women in the SES. The literature produced by women over the last two decades and this research, however, suggests little has changed in the day to day experience of this greater number of women in senior positions. We need to look far more deeply into the ways in which we constitute ourselves and are constituted by discursive practices.
7. Into the epistemic minefield As I have illustrated above, research can be read from a number of different reading positions and the consequences of such readings can have quite different outcomes, particularly in the ways in which we theorise problems and solutions.
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If a positivistic, empiricist, realist interpretation is made of the narratives provided above, then which version of reality is true? How can the issues and concerns for executives in the same organisations be so different? How can we explain such diversity in perception? As a researcher reading the data from a realist position, I can choose to ignore the gendered dimensions of emotion and reason, power relationships, and the intersection of politics and epistemology. I could detach myself from the data and claim neutrality and objectivity; simply reading the narratives and treating them as replicable, self-evident accounts requiring no more than a ‘commonsense’, obvious explanation or interpretation. A Grounded Theory interpretation illustrates how men cast themselves in situations that are largely ‘women irrelevant’ while women cast themselves in roles that are largely ‘male dependent’. For the males, their career issues and concerns are related to the external environment of the SES, to the ‘real’ world where structures are purely functional and instrumental, a world that cannot be separated from political expediency and political power and influence. Women’s career issues are related to the internal gendered politics of the SES, to a world not understood by men and where structures are oppressive, alienating, and discriminatory. This is a world where men are involved in tasks. Women on the other hand are more concerned with the processes. The rational male voice can be heard as being concerned with ‘hard issues’, ‘the big picture’, with ‘real issues’ and is somehow privileged. The voices of the women, on the other hand, can be heard as complaining, emotional and irrational and therefore, somehow discounted, unconcerned with many of the issues identified by the men. Males and females appear to differ considerably in whether or not they feel in control of the things that happen to them. Males appear to have an internal locus of control and give the impression that they are responsible for what happens to them, that they are captains of their own life’s ship. Their effort seems to be directed toward modifying the external reality by attempting to change other people, situations or events and taking a ‘fighting back’ approach. Women appear to have an external locus of control and to believe that they are helpless victims or beneficiaries of male behaviour. They appear to have adopted an attitude of learning to live with or work around existing problems and situations. Code [22] points out that the epistemological position that underpins this type of reading: ... appeals to a taken-for-granted normality, achieved through commonality, aligned with all of the positions of power and privilege that unthinkingly consign to epistemic limbo people who profess ‘crazy, bizarre, or outlandish’ beliefs and negate their claims to the authority the knowledge confers. If realism and relativism are incompatible then how can these two views of reality exist side by side? This question, which thus far has been lurking in the shadows of this research needs to be fore-grounded and addressed, since if one reads the narratives as a
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positivist/realist the normative experiences of the dominant group are privileged views of reality, while those of the oppressed group are somehow seen as unreal or unreliable. In this study, and as I have suggested, this privilege could be achieved through a failure to reveal the norms by which female/male accounts are judged or to consider how these norms have been developed in particular locations and reflect particular affective orientations. The study raises, therefore, some interesting ontological and epistemological questions about the nature of reality and research demonstrated in the particularity of this research that suggests two quite different views of the reality of a single workplace. If a realist position is taken then is one view of reality be privileged? Perhaps we need to acknowledge that while situations may be socially constructed and therefore not ‘real’, the experience of those structures is certainly real. Rather than seeking to claim that one group in the research ‘knows’ and the other does not ‘know’ reality, it is more productive to examine the general conditions and structures within the SES that accounts for their knowledge claims and to consider alternative futures. There is danger in asserting empirical knowledge claims especially where these claims are experientially grounded. However, the epistemic dilemma that emerges is that if we occupy the relativist position then how can the feminist liberatory project proceed when we need to occupy the realist position and accept as ‘true’ the women’s narratives? Are we not merely replacing one privileged narrative with another, thereby duplicating the epistemological problematic of positivistic research that women have so strongly criticised? For the women in this study it is important to accept their narratives as real, otherwise their lived experience in the SES becomes resistant to transformation and change. On the other hand, a constructivist, poststructuralist feminist would want to reject any realist interpretation, arguing nothing is real, everything is subjective. Alcoff and Potter [23] suggest: it is necessary to achieve some match between ‘knowledge’ and ‘reality’, even when the reality at issue consists primarily in social productions such as racism or tolerance, oppression or equality of opportunity. A reconstructed epistemological project has to retain an empirical-realist core that can negotiate the fixities and less stable constructs of the physical-social world, while refusing to endorse the objectivism of the positivist legacy or the subjectivism of radical relativism. Foucault [21], in talking about knowledge and systems of representation said that everything is dangerous. One of the dangers of this research is that the narratives can be read in ways that degrade the experience, actions and attitudes of subjects. There is a desire to concentrate on the narratives themselves without paying the same attention to the context in which the narratives occur. To focus entirely on the narratives produces an inability to reveal the other side of the equation—the context of the SES. The possibility of exploring the gap between diverse gendered experiences through examining the way in which the context is constructed, may be deconstructed and reconstructed in ways that lead to a preferred future is, therefore, lost.
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8. Towards a communicative future Although it is clear that both male and female executives desire specific changes to their experience and reality of the executive service, it is doubtful if the situation in the SES has changed in any way as an outcome of this research. It is, in all probability, ‘Business as Usual’. One reason for this can be attributed to the research methodology itself and its lack of a future, values-oriented approach. How socio-political structures are understood, constructed and maintained is critical to developing strategies to change them. This is especially the case in this study where the narratives of each group are presented separately then made to speak to one another. But how different might the outcomes of this research have been if it had attempted to bring these embodied subjects together in other than text using future methodologies? To date, researchers have paid scant attention to futures methodologies and their potential for thinking, visioning and empowerment. Slaughter [24] argues that futures methodologies embrace a range of specific human capacities and perceptions, utilising concepts and methods that are more productive in studying the processes of continuity and change. Such methodologies, however, are not unproblematic and are subject too and face all the dangers of dominant voices, an issue at the heart of feminist research. According to Slaughter, the value of such methodologies for this research, both to the researcher and the participants would be in providing a forum for reflection, visioning how the Senior Executive Service could be, and empowering executives to create the kind of future they desired. Slaughter [24] says: The power of the human mind to range at will across a vast span of past, present and future provides us with a powerful means of controlling which end we pursue. If we become aware of something we want to avoid, we can take appropriate action. Similarly, if we can imagine something we want to create, we can set in motion the means to create it. This is as true of a relationship as it is of a new model car or airport. Slaughter takes an overly liberal view towards agency— that humans can transform institutions—avoiding the politics of bureaucracy. This is especially so when seen in the context of the Senior Executive Service. The nature of the gender and power relationships articulated above and the impact those different agendas would have in any attempt to even share the multiplicity of experience is critically important. There is a wealth of research illustrating that who gets heard, who sets the agenda, whose ideas are carried forward, who discloses and so on, is strongly related to the gender of the speaker [25,26]. Futures methodologies appear to give scant attention to gender and power and, therefore, it may be idealistic to assume that bringing these two groups of people together in a Futuring Workshop, would have overcome these central and defining issues. There is nothing inherently protective about futurist methodologies that would prevent this situation from occurring.
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Causal layered analysis among other poststructural methods that seeks to identify power, offers the potential to cut through these problems since it acknowledges the many levels and dimensions of constructed realities. Inayatullayah [1] argues that causal layered analysis aims at uncovering cultural, gendered and spiritual specificities: There are many levels and dimensions of transformation, responses and alternative futures. One level is the epistemic level…changing the ways we know…changing the categories that define what we know. Part of this is creating new myths, new stories of meaning, that inclusively and rationally speak to the many selves … we must inquire into futures from … other’s perspectives… We must ensure that new technologies include women’s concerns… create a global community that is multicivilisational …[and] on a more personal level is alchemical transformation…achieved through spiritual practices. While a causal layered analysis ideally reveals layers of meaning, we do not live and work in an ideal world. To create a shared future, a truly transformational society, requires a sharing of current concepts, values and attitudes. Sharing realities assumes shared power or at least a situation where insight does not lead to institutional punishment and banishment. If it does most ‘others’—those who are marginalised—prefer to just do their job or find ways in which to exercise more power within the existing system of power. For many of the executives involved in this study, sharing realities or searching for layers of meaning is as risky as it is dangerous. It may be disadvantageous for women in particular, and can damage or threaten current or future job prospects. When the researcher has left the scene people still have to live and work together. Creating a truly transformational society requires a deep level of trust, uncommon in most organisations, and a willingness to reveal ones vulnerability. As this study has demonstrated, this requirement appears to be the antithesis of the current social milieu in contemporary workplaces and particularly the SES.
9. Conclusion This research illustrates how research can work in ways that both replicate repressive mechanisms and become a further strategy of domination. Different social positions produce different perspectives of the world. The social positions of men and women in this study exemplify the ways in which both are limited and enabled by the specificities of their locations and conventional research methodology. The study points up the danger of attempting to analyse epistemic agency from the perspective of a single knower and the way in which narratives are constructed and are always historical and contingent. It also demonstrates the incompatibility of competing narratives and how this incompatibility is exemplified when attempting to describe a single reality rather than identifying different issues and themes, unpacking values, or giving expression to a range of human capacities.
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A casual layered analysis illustrates how deconstruction and reconstruction of the SES, and specifically its gender relations, gives voice to multiple realities. At the same time, it avoids researcher appropriation and interpretation of data. Like all research methodologies, however, it is not entirely without its problems.
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Deconstructing organisational politics: a causal layered approach Brenda Hall-Taylor Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia
Abstract This study raises some theoretical issues about research methodologies and questions at what level research methods normalise power relations or make unproblematic various respondent accounts of the real. The paper is directed toward the epistemic level of transformation - towards the way we come to know the world. It describes an academic research project designed to elucidate the manner in which a group of executive understand the real, and had as its ultimate goal, the purpose of tracking social change. At one level, that purpose may have been achieved. At a deeper level, however, it illustrates the inadequacy of accepted research methodologies in attempts to identify a single reality or to create alternative futures. It points to the value of causal layered analysis in overcoming some of the problems of methodology. 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
1. Introduction The point of departure of this article is a study of executive perceptions in relation to recent changes within the Senior Executive Service (SES) of a State Public Service. In this article I illustrate the need to “create a new global, civil, communicative society to counter tyrannical and secretive power… at the corporate level or the State level”, as part of a process of creating a fully effective public service [1]. In a first interpretation of the data, a summary from executive discussions illustrates that there are significant differences in the worldview, reality and experience of male and female executives in the SES. Significant differences in male/female
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locus of control, differences in the locus of power, different values, actions and styles of management are identified. All research can, however, be understood from a variety of perspectives and the particular theoretical framework that informs data interpretation can have an outcome, which may or may not be in the interests of those who are the subject of the research. This particular epistemic problem, and what might be a dilemma for feminist researchers, is exemplified in this study by two subsequent interpretations of the same data set. The study concludes that research methodologies, can work in ways that both replicate repressive mechanisms and become further strategies for the domination of women, but also can work in ways which these same mechanisms and strategies suggest the possibility of change. This points up the need to consider engaging in layers of meaning—causal layered analysis—not just to ask questions, but engage in research methods where issues are presented, problematised and deconstructed so that the meaning of both what is and what could be is made not by the researcher, but by the participants.
2. Background to the study Like most large organisations in Australia, Federal and State Government agencies have, over the past years, been the target of successive reviews and reform. These reforms have resulted in major changes to policy, processes and practices, changes that cannot have occurred without a consequential impact on the careers of those who are responsible for change management and implementation. One of the more significant of these changes has been the 1994 restructuring of the second Division of Public Service employment into the SES. This restructuring has subsequently seen the exertion of control over the advisory role of the public sector as well as overtly political appointment of senior executives [2,3]. The erosion of tenure and the move to fixed-term appointment tied to specific performance outcomes; outside appointment; promotion on the basis of merit; abolition of appeal rights; the use of executive search techniques, and negotiated salary packages have now become a characteristic of SES conditions of employment. Although a good deal has been written about SES changes, this does not reveal how senior executives themselves have experienced such changes [4,5]. The literature is written from an ‘outsider’ perspective and there is very little literature, if any, that explores the experience of senior executives from their own perspectives. Given the sweeping nature of these reforms, what are the contemporary concerns, issues and perspectives of members of SES in relation to their careers? How do they construct their subject positions within the SES? Are there gender differences in their experiences within the SES? How does the methodology used to collect such data normalise power relations and make unproblematic executive accounts of the real?
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3. The study My focus for this study is on women and men in a rapidly changing SES and their perceptions of their experience as senior executives. I was specifically interested in the impact of major changes in SES conditions of employment and what senior executives understood to be contemporary career barriers. Two focus groups were held one with a group of 16 male senior executives and another with a group of 12 female senior executives. Although this is a small study, the difficulties of bringing together a larger cohort of senior executives for purposes such as this research might be appreciated. Each group as asked to discuss contemporary career issues and concerns. The ensuing conversation was tape recorded for later analysis. The intervention of the researcher was kept to a minimum and the groups allowed to construct their own narratives without interruption. The analysis was later subjected to a member check to establish and confirm that the data had been correctly interpreted. As a feminist researcher, I was aware of the possibility that there may be gender differences in the experiences of senior executives and that power and gender intersect differently in particular locations. The process of data collection and analysis would need to be sensitive to gendered cultural and social specificities, therefore, separate focus groups were held.
4. Interpreting the focus group data: a grounded theory reading 4.1. Results of the male focus group study During the male focus group, the executives discussed their particular experience in the SES, the impact of change and the issues that are most important to their careers. These narratives have been summarised and illustrate the way in which the men construct their identities as executives and understand the interplay of power relations in the SES. In presenting this data summary, I have deliberately chosen to be descriptive, largely relaying a ‘commonsense’, obvious transcript of the key themes recorded on the tape. Key issues identified by the male group tended to be functional and instrumental in nature and focused on the personal impact of change to fixed-term appointment, the way in which this change had also affected the operations of the agency in which they were located, the political nature of senior executive employment and questions of leadership. On the issue of fixed-term appointments, there was a general consensus that a shift from tenure to fixed terms was a positive change, because it was a sounder management system, with performance indicators tied to rewards and rewards tied to outcomes, everyone pushing in the same direction creating a performance management culture. Fixed term appointment is, however, not without its disadvantages. Without security of contract, talented, experienced staff begin looking for other appointments as their contracts come to an end rather than risk not getting
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reappointed. There was also a perception that fixed-term appointments had reduced the career opportunities in the SES. Fixed-term appointments were also regarded as having a major impact on the relationship between the SES and lower Grades. Executives argued that there needed to be an extension of fixed-term appointments to middle and lower management ranks in order to eliminate the resentment which had developed over the increased disparities between executive and lower level staff salaries, but also to improve efficiency and effectiveness at those levels. Additionally, Fixed-term appointments did not necessarily attract the widest pool of applicants. While the SES conditions were perceived as attractive to the private sector, the SES did not always live up to their expectations. The political nature of senior executive employment was also an issue for the SES officers, creating a number of dilemmas. Decisions to reduce SES positions, for example, are made to meet political imperatives, but executives are required to present them as being in the best interests of the organisation. Political interference in decision making was also an issue and became frustrating, for example in cases where the principle of performance based rewards was not applied. Lack of Leadership was also a major issue: The executives believed there is too much focus on management, in getting the job done, keeping the lid on things, planning for the next 1–2 years. There is not enough focus on Leadership. Leadership is about pointing the agency in the right direction, avoiding future minefields. This discussion led to a debate on what constituted a leader. A good leader was seen to be a workaholic, one who insists on top effort and was also consistent in the treatment of people. As the focus group was drawing to a close the researcher assistant, aware that the men had not mentioned the position of women in the senior executive, asked how they saw the women faring. There was an agreement that women were worse off than men were and not percolating to the top. Formal contracts were perceived to be a fundamental problem for women because it disallowed time out for maternity leave. 4.2. Results of the women’s focus group The preoccupations of the women’s group were of a quite different nature to that of the males. One important factor that may account for some of this difference is not only the gendered culture of organisations [6,7,8,9,10,11] but that half of the women were all in the lower levels of the SES, thus having a different set of responsibilities. Their primary concerns were grounded, not in external political influences on their careers, but in internal political influences. Internal SES issues centred around the personal and professional difficulties involved in being women in a predominantly male culture. This difficulty manifested in restricted access to information; exclusionary practices which produce and reinforces an outsider status; lack of acceptance of women’s preferred management style, different communication styles and the culture of the organisations where they worked. Leadership and professional development were also part of their concerns. A major issue for the women was restricted access to information that they regarded as important to their performance and careers. They believed that they often
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lacked information that could make a significant difference to the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of their work practices, the management of careers and the advice and support they were able to give others. Women in the SES commonly encountered exclusionary practices that they believed disadvantaged them while at the same time reinforcing their outsider status, feeling of isolation and lack of support. The lack of acceptance of women’s preferred management style was perceived by the women as placing them in a less valued situation, especially when the preferred management style is male. Women were seen to be not tough enough. One example was given. Where staff are not performing up to scratch, women will generally take the load themselves, rather than taking it out on the person whom is not doing the job properly. Women take a more supportive role in the management of poor performance and try to use strategies that actually do work, but are seen as being soft when in fact it is the better way to get results. Men, by contrast, are much more task oriented, whereas women are more concerned with process. Women seem to take an approach of developing the person’s weaknesses whilst at the same time reinforcing their strengths, but this is not seen as a good way to go. The conflict between managing and managing-up which the women identified, poses some dilemmas for women who are less concerned with the pre-eminence of the individual CEO and more concerned with team based approaches to goal attainment and power through shared decisions making. Different communication styles also appear to create a good deal of misunderstanding and confusion between males and females. The fundamental difference for women was that whereas women talk about their feelings, things which affect them, the need for collaboration and consensus, male executives generally do not and or are not comfortable with doing so. On the issue of leadership, the women also noted some difficulty. There are patterns of behaviour that are regarded as the things that make top leaders. All these traits are more male dominated traits, and there is a tendency to judge women according to the male traits. If women don’t measure up to the masculine traits, then they are seen as not having all it takes to get there. In a discussion on what constitutes a good leader, the women said that leadership was a matter of style and capability. The women agreed that the CEO is a critical figure in determining the culture of the organisation. People take their reference point from the behaviour of the CEO. The male dominated culture of the SES is also a key issue for women. This culture is one that men have created and in which they feel comfortable and may not notice the discomfort of ‘outsiders’. The masculine culture of the SES often suppresses conflict in ways that make it difficult for women. There is no value placed on ‘telling it like it is’, asking for help or discussing problems. The women agreed that men do not appear to be comfortable working with women, although there was an agreement that women felt comfortable working with both men and women. There were mixed feelings among the women on the issue of professional development. Interchange as a major professional development strategy appears to get a lot of support as an idea, but when it is offered women don’t want to move. One reason
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is that they find it hard to give up, even temporarily, hard won gains in relationships or in processes that make the organisation more effective.
5. Interpreting the focus group data: a feminist reading Reflecting on the above summary of male and female executive discussions, what is striking to the reader is the difference in their subjective experiences. A feminist Standpoint reading [12] (and there are other possible feminist readings) of the accounts of female senior executives illustrates the effect of different standpoints. Women remain systemically and systematically excluded from full participation in the SES which is characterised by gendered power relations and in which women are disadvantaged. Women’s issues and concerns are not new. They have been discussed at length in all types of media and that they are still the main concerns of women, illustrates how little progress has been made in addressing them. Their issues and concerns related to restricted access to information, male behaviour which excludes them from full participation, a failure to appreciate women’s relational management style, and their insistence of the importance of process over task. In addition, the women argue that leadership is a male construct and that as leaders they are measured against this masculine image of a leader and found lacking. The women were quite resistant to casting themselves into a male role or to become honourary men and value the feminine characteristics that they bring to the SES. This value for consensus led to the guarding of any improvements they had made in developing more collaborative ways of working, to the extent that they were prepared to give up important development opportunities to ensure its survival. In summary and according to these women, the SES is an alienating place, a place where they are prevented, largely by an entrenched masculine culture, from achieving their full potential. By these accounts women share the feeling that they are excluded, ignored, and misunderstood. When juxtaposed with the male narratives, it is easy to see why the women should feel this way, as the male narratives are ‘woman irrelevant’. The women’s experiences, constructed within an oppressed group, are not shared or understood by the dominant male group who “don’t know if it is because of discrimination, the organisation, or choices not relating to work factors”. Within the women’s group their experience is normative, but it is far from normative within the male group. The position of women in the SES is echoed in a large volume of literature loosely collected under ‘Women in Management’ [13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. This literature points to the under representation of women in senior management across western industrialised nations, and reports the existence of the same problems for women executives identified in this study, by women in most large organisations. Despite a plethora of government programs and initiatives by women over the last decade [20] and this study have shown that the problems of women’s marginalisation at senior levels continue. Affirmative Action legislation, on which many of these programs have relied, has not led to the changes that might have been expected when introduced in 1986. This point will be elaborated later.
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6. Doing gender: a second feminist reading From a poststructuralist feminist perspective, the women’s narratives can be read in another way. From this perspective, the women in this study position themselves as victims of patriarchal systems and oppressive practices that they are powerless to change. They are convinced that knowledge is power and that lack of knowledge is a barrier—a barrier to women in executive employment is lack of information. If more knowledge was provided to them they would be, therefore, in a more equal position to the men. When one looks at the male narratives, the site of the apparent location of this knowledge and power, what is apparent is that men are also subjected to the exercise of power which produces oppressive, coercive behaviour as the following data illustrates—Senior Executive employment has become a bit of a political football. Decisions to reduce SES positions are made to meet political imperatives then we have to lie to those in the positions about the interests of the organisation. It can be seen that neither male nor female executives escape the effects of power. Increasing access to the kinds of knowledge women believe is available to men, will not necessarily improve their unequal status in the SES. One example of this can be found in the following extract where men know something that women do not. Quite ordinary everyday information that men automatically know is simply not available or is available only when you have proved your worth to the men. Take for example the grievance mediation procedures for appeals concerning promotion. Grievance mediation procedures are what Foucault [21] refers to as a disciplinary practice—a practice where one willingly submits to further interrogation, confession, and inspection, and which further disciplines those who believe they have already been unfairly treated. There is an assumption that knowing about grievance procedures will benefit women, without recognising that all appeal or similar legalistic processes subject both the offender and the offended to further discipline and regulation. In another example a woman has knowledge that her CEO does not—consensus approaches to management. I put a lot of effort into educating the CEO in a consensus approach, those little gains are minute but important, I can’t walk away from them and expect them to be here when I return—if I’m not here they get lost. The woman’s knowledge does not work in her favour because the knowledge prevents her from the seeking professional development that is in her interests. As Foucault argued, knowledge is not power, but knowledge can never be separated from power. Where there is knowledge there is power, and power never works in ways that are entirely positive or entirely negative. In the following extract, where some women are said to know about ‘managing up’ while others do not, the positive and negative effects of knowledge can be seen. There were good hardworking women in my agency, but their contribution got them nowhere because they were not putting all their energies into managing upwards. When they did they were seen to be having an affair. The women in the focus group positioned themselves as unequal, oppressed by a patriarchal system that is not of their making. In addition to providing an opportunity for female executives to tell their stories, one effect of the focus group conducted
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along gender divisions was to produce an opportunity to reinforce normative processes, rather than disrupting them. The strength of the narratives as they were in production had the effect of compelling the women to hear their narratives as ‘normal’. Hence, the way in which they had positioned themselves as an oppressed and marginalised group was reinforced. At the same time, the normalising process denied them an opportunity to question either that process of normalisation or the outcome. Nor did the gendered focus group provide access to the disconnected ‘reality’ constructed and maintained by the interconnected binaries of female/male. As one of the women remarked “there is no interactive process which facilitates women and men discussing problems with each other”. Hence this type of gendered research restricts each to their own view of reality and does little to connect the gender divide, provide opportunities to explore normalising processes and thus to think of other ways of changing the status of the marginalised. This is not to suggest that if women understood how some men behave and interact in order to maintain their privileged status, and acted accordingly, that women’s career barriers would dissolve. While the men are pleasant they talk incessantly about sport, and not only do they talk about those things but it is done deliberately and consciously to put me down - they make fun of me and one of our CEOs recently carpeted a team about a poor performance, shouted, threw a table over and told them they were hopeless! Indeed the women strongly resisted such a proposal. It does suggest however, that far more attention needs to be paid to the discursive production of management as a practice and to the way in which the discourse and practice is gendered. As the following quote implies, much more attention needs to be paid to validating women’s practice of management through interrupting the dominant discourse: The problem is that men are much more task oriented, whereas women are more concerned with process, and that is not seen to have much validity. In the first reading I pointed to the way in which EEO and Affirmative Action had made few inroads into resolving some of the difficulties of women in senior management. I want to argue that a feminist poststructuralist perspective is important in providing new ways of thinking about this issue. Our attention needs to focus on the discourse of management and the manner in which it functions to produce the effects that are so vividly encapsulated in narratives of both male and female executives. I am not arguing that EEO and Affirmative Action are a spent force. Both strategies have been important influences in improving the numbers of women in the SES. The literature produced by women over the last two decades and this research, however, suggests little has changed in the day to day experience of this greater number of women in senior positions. We need to look far more deeply into the ways in which we constitute ourselves and are constituted by discursive practices.
7. Into the epistemic minefield As I have illustrated above, research can be read from a number of different reading positions and the consequences of such readings can have quite different outcomes, particularly in the ways in which we theorise problems and solutions.
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If a positivistic, empiricist, realist interpretation is made of the narratives provided above, then which version of reality is true? How can the issues and concerns for executives in the same organisations be so different? How can we explain such diversity in perception? As a researcher reading the data from a realist position, I can choose to ignore the gendered dimensions of emotion and reason, power relationships, and the intersection of politics and epistemology. I could detach myself from the data and claim neutrality and objectivity; simply reading the narratives and treating them as replicable, self-evident accounts requiring no more than a ‘commonsense’, obvious explanation or interpretation. A Grounded Theory interpretation illustrates how men cast themselves in situations that are largely ‘women irrelevant’ while women cast themselves in roles that are largely ‘male dependent’. For the males, their career issues and concerns are related to the external environment of the SES, to the ‘real’ world where structures are purely functional and instrumental, a world that cannot be separated from political expediency and political power and influence. Women’s career issues are related to the internal gendered politics of the SES, to a world not understood by men and where structures are oppressive, alienating, and discriminatory. This is a world where men are involved in tasks. Women on the other hand are more concerned with the processes. The rational male voice can be heard as being concerned with ‘hard issues’, ‘the big picture’, with ‘real issues’ and is somehow privileged. The voices of the women, on the other hand, can be heard as complaining, emotional and irrational and therefore, somehow discounted, unconcerned with many of the issues identified by the men. Males and females appear to differ considerably in whether or not they feel in control of the things that happen to them. Males appear to have an internal locus of control and give the impression that they are responsible for what happens to them, that they are captains of their own life’s ship. Their effort seems to be directed toward modifying the external reality by attempting to change other people, situations or events and taking a ‘fighting back’ approach. Women appear to have an external locus of control and to believe that they are helpless victims or beneficiaries of male behaviour. They appear to have adopted an attitude of learning to live with or work around existing problems and situations. Code [22] points out that the epistemological position that underpins this type of reading: ... appeals to a taken-for-granted normality, achieved through commonality, aligned with all of the positions of power and privilege that unthinkingly consign to epistemic limbo people who profess ‘crazy, bizarre, or outlandish’ beliefs and negate their claims to the authority the knowledge confers. If realism and relativism are incompatible then how can these two views of reality exist side by side? This question, which thus far has been lurking in the shadows of this research needs to be fore-grounded and addressed, since if one reads the narratives as a
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positivist/realist the normative experiences of the dominant group are privileged views of reality, while those of the oppressed group are somehow seen as unreal or unreliable. In this study, and as I have suggested, this privilege could be achieved through a failure to reveal the norms by which female/male accounts are judged or to consider how these norms have been developed in particular locations and reflect particular affective orientations. The study raises, therefore, some interesting ontological and epistemological questions about the nature of reality and research demonstrated in the particularity of this research that suggests two quite different views of the reality of a single workplace. If a realist position is taken then is one view of reality be privileged? Perhaps we need to acknowledge that while situations may be socially constructed and therefore not ‘real’, the experience of those structures is certainly real. Rather than seeking to claim that one group in the research ‘knows’ and the other does not ‘know’ reality, it is more productive to examine the general conditions and structures within the SES that accounts for their knowledge claims and to consider alternative futures. There is danger in asserting empirical knowledge claims especially where these claims are experientially grounded. However, the epistemic dilemma that emerges is that if we occupy the relativist position then how can the feminist liberatory project proceed when we need to occupy the realist position and accept as ‘true’ the women’s narratives? Are we not merely replacing one privileged narrative with another, thereby duplicating the epistemological problematic of positivistic research that women have so strongly criticised? For the women in this study it is important to accept their narratives as real, otherwise their lived experience in the SES becomes resistant to transformation and change. On the other hand, a constructivist, poststructuralist feminist would want to reject any realist interpretation, arguing nothing is real, everything is subjective. Alcoff and Potter [23] suggest: it is necessary to achieve some match between ‘knowledge’ and ‘reality’, even when the reality at issue consists primarily in social productions such as racism or tolerance, oppression or equality of opportunity. A reconstructed epistemological project has to retain an empirical-realist core that can negotiate the fixities and less stable constructs of the physical-social world, while refusing to endorse the objectivism of the positivist legacy or the subjectivism of radical relativism. Foucault [21], in talking about knowledge and systems of representation said that everything is dangerous. One of the dangers of this research is that the narratives can be read in ways that degrade the experience, actions and attitudes of subjects. There is a desire to concentrate on the narratives themselves without paying the same attention to the context in which the narratives occur. To focus entirely on the narratives produces an inability to reveal the other side of the equation—the context of the SES. The possibility of exploring the gap between diverse gendered experiences through examining the way in which the context is constructed, may be deconstructed and reconstructed in ways that lead to a preferred future is, therefore, lost.
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8. Towards a communicative future Although it is clear that both male and female executives desire specific changes to their experience and reality of the executive service, it is doubtful if the situation in the SES has changed in any way as an outcome of this research. It is, in all probability, ‘Business as Usual’. One reason for this can be attributed to the research methodology itself and its lack of a future, values-oriented approach. How socio-political structures are understood, constructed and maintained is critical to developing strategies to change them. This is especially the case in this study where the narratives of each group are presented separately then made to speak to one another. But how different might the outcomes of this research have been if it had attempted to bring these embodied subjects together in other than text using future methodologies? To date, researchers have paid scant attention to futures methodologies and their potential for thinking, visioning and empowerment. Slaughter [24] argues that futures methodologies embrace a range of specific human capacities and perceptions, utilising concepts and methods that are more productive in studying the processes of continuity and change. Such methodologies, however, are not unproblematic and are subject too and face all the dangers of dominant voices, an issue at the heart of feminist research. According to Slaughter, the value of such methodologies for this research, both to the researcher and the participants would be in providing a forum for reflection, visioning how the Senior Executive Service could be, and empowering executives to create the kind of future they desired. Slaughter [24] says: The power of the human mind to range at will across a vast span of past, present and future provides us with a powerful means of controlling which end we pursue. If we become aware of something we want to avoid, we can take appropriate action. Similarly, if we can imagine something we want to create, we can set in motion the means to create it. This is as true of a relationship as it is of a new model car or airport. Slaughter takes an overly liberal view towards agency— that humans can transform institutions—avoiding the politics of bureaucracy. This is especially so when seen in the context of the Senior Executive Service. The nature of the gender and power relationships articulated above and the impact those different agendas would have in any attempt to even share the multiplicity of experience is critically important. There is a wealth of research illustrating that who gets heard, who sets the agenda, whose ideas are carried forward, who discloses and so on, is strongly related to the gender of the speaker [25,26]. Futures methodologies appear to give scant attention to gender and power and, therefore, it may be idealistic to assume that bringing these two groups of people together in a Futuring Workshop, would have overcome these central and defining issues. There is nothing inherently protective about futurist methodologies that would prevent this situation from occurring.
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Causal layered analysis among other poststructural methods that seeks to identify power, offers the potential to cut through these problems since it acknowledges the many levels and dimensions of constructed realities. Inayatullayah [1] argues that causal layered analysis aims at uncovering cultural, gendered and spiritual specificities: There are many levels and dimensions of transformation, responses and alternative futures. One level is the epistemic level…changing the ways we know…changing the categories that define what we know. Part of this is creating new myths, new stories of meaning, that inclusively and rationally speak to the many selves … we must inquire into futures from … other’s perspectives… We must ensure that new technologies include women’s concerns… create a global community that is multicivilisational …[and] on a more personal level is alchemical transformation…achieved through spiritual practices. While a causal layered analysis ideally reveals layers of meaning, we do not live and work in an ideal world. To create a shared future, a truly transformational society, requires a sharing of current concepts, values and attitudes. Sharing realities assumes shared power or at least a situation where insight does not lead to institutional punishment and banishment. If it does most ‘others’—those who are marginalised—prefer to just do their job or find ways in which to exercise more power within the existing system of power. For many of the executives involved in this study, sharing realities or searching for layers of meaning is as risky as it is dangerous. It may be disadvantageous for women in particular, and can damage or threaten current or future job prospects. When the researcher has left the scene people still have to live and work together. Creating a truly transformational society requires a deep level of trust, uncommon in most organisations, and a willingness to reveal ones vulnerability. As this study has demonstrated, this requirement appears to be the antithesis of the current social milieu in contemporary workplaces and particularly the SES.
9. Conclusion This research illustrates how research can work in ways that both replicate repressive mechanisms and become a further strategy of domination. Different social positions produce different perspectives of the world. The social positions of men and women in this study exemplify the ways in which both are limited and enabled by the specificities of their locations and conventional research methodology. The study points up the danger of attempting to analyse epistemic agency from the perspective of a single knower and the way in which narratives are constructed and are always historical and contingent. It also demonstrates the incompatibility of competing narratives and how this incompatibility is exemplified when attempting to describe a single reality rather than identifying different issues and themes, unpacking values, or giving expression to a range of human capacities.
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A casual layered analysis illustrates how deconstruction and reconstruction of the SES, and specifically its gender relations, gives voice to multiple realities. At the same time, it avoids researcher appropriation and interpretation of data. Like all research methodologies, however, it is not entirely without its problems.
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