Organization development (OD) is an applied field of social science aimed at improving organizational performance and the quality of work life through planned change interventions. OD draws from a wide range of theories and methods such as group dynamics, management theory, and industrial psychology. Many OD professionals consider themselves social change agents who contribute to societal transformation by promoting humanistic and democratic values in organizations. This dissertation proposes, instead, that OD theory/practice is constituted through specific textual strategies and discursive formations which serve to do the opposite--to support relations of domination and to contribute to the sedimentation of current social practices in organizations. Using deconstruction, genealogy, feminist and third world theories, I argue that: (1) OD is the story of the making of a professional class caught in the contradictory purposes of working to produce more knowledge, that is, develop as a social science, and serving as an effective social technology, that is, develop as a practice of management. (2) OD comes to function as a technology of the social and managerial power/knowledge by inventing "the consulting relationship" and deploying a variety of "organization change strategies" to legitimate (through 'science') and sustain (through practice) current capitalist, patriarchal, and racist social relations in organizations. Analyses of three representative OD texts illustrate the credibility of these arguments: Beckhard's (1969) "Organization Development: Strategies and Models;" Lippitt and Lippitt's (1978) "The Consulting Process in Action;" and Weisbord's (1987) "Productive Workplaces: Organizing and Managing for Dignity, Meaning and Community." The texts are critiqued using a variety of deconstructive and feminist strategies and read, in particular, to call attention to the gendered, classed and raced subtexts contained in them. The readings demonstrate that OD is a product of a particular kind of discursive enterprise, yet, a non-unitary and contradictory one. It is because of the precarious nature of this discourse that resistant voices and significant "spaces" can be found which a third world-feminist-poststructuralist theory/practice can exploit to begin to envision possibilities for "organization changing."

Women are conspicuously absent from the top tiers of Corporate America, representing less than five percent of executive level positions. Despite changing family roles and increases in education, workforce participation, and career commitment, women are not assuming organizational positions of leadership and power. Research suggests three theoretical perspectives for causal explanation, each with its own implications for organization development strategies: the person-centered, organization-centered, and gender-organization-centered views. Recent demographic, economic, and social change has altered the face of labor and consumer markets motivating corporate leaders to initiate responses to attract and retain women managers. This study provides a synopsis of the corporate responses of 110 of "The Best Companies for Women" (Zeitz and Dusky, 1988). The purpose of this research is to define the extensiveness and developmental level of programming to promote women manager's upward mobility in these bellwether companies, and to determine organizational characteristics or antecedents that may be conducive to efforts supporting women managers. The research is a quantitative analysis based on responses to a mailed survey consisting of 36 questions addressed to corporate executives. Data analyses include descriptive statistics summarizing and reporting the findings, and correlational statistics testing the hypotheses. Results indicate that the sample organizations are addressing women's underrepresentation in upper-level management through the development of extensive, fairly highly evolved programs. The trend is shifting from exclusively individual-centered approaches toward organization-centered and combination strategies representing integrated, multi-pronged solutions. These organizations recognize the need to alter structural barriers limiting access based on gender, and are accepting their responsibility to change. Findings suggest that programs promoting women's upward mobility are supported by companies tending to: be large and non-unionized, have higher proportions of female workers/leaders, have high levels of EEO accountability and CEO support for women's agendas, maintain a high degree of formalization including EEO tracking systems, and exercise innovative management practices within moderately hierarchical or flattened organization structures. Hypotheses testing indicates significant positive associations between company size, level of EEO accountability, CEO involvement, and formalization of EEO record-keeping systems, and the level of corporate policy development to advance women's status.

Despite the increasing representation of women in the workforce, there continues to exist a gross under-representation of women in senior management. One specific and important aspect of organizational experience that is related to advancement is performance feedback. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between gender and perceptions of the nature and quantity of performance feedback received. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 5 male and 5 female managers regarding the types, amounts and effectiveness of the feedback they receive from their supervisors. From the information acquired through the interviews, a questionnaire was developed and administered to a larger sample of managers, testing five tentative hypotheses and investigating two questions of a more exploratory nature. Consideration was given to both formal and informal feedback processes. The results of the study suggest that although male and female managers do not differ significantly in their perceptions of the quality and quantity of feedback received, there are gender differences regarding what constitutes effective feedback, and what contributes to a sense of fairness in the appraisal process. The amount of feedback received is especially important to women.

The study focuses on the perceptions of women who are managers in the Executive Branch of Massachusetts State Government. In particular, several formal and informal organizational systems that help or hinder the career advancement of women into upper level positions are explored. Three questions were addressed: (1) How do female managers gain familiarity with various aspects of the workplace such as organizational culture and access to resources? (2) What sorts of flexible work options and benefits would be particularly important or useful to career-oriented female managers? and (3) What steps do organizations take (or should organizations take) to insure the existence of and appreciation for workforce diversity and the equitable treatment of all employees? A representative sample of 500 research participants was randomly selected from the total population of women who are managers in the Executive Branch of Massachusetts State Government. A mailed questionnaire was distributed to each of the women in the sample. A return rate of 68 percent was achieved. Some of the highlights are: the research participants' view of their place of employment is regarded as cooperative, flexible, and empowering; the availability of supportive people is perceived as emanating from the workplace; and an informal source of information about their workplace is available. There was also evidence of a willingness to help, support, and mentor others, especially women, and a high degree of compliance and support of affirmative action and antiharassment policies by employees in their workplace. The data also indicated a need for: more women in top executive positions; a more systematic use of training to encourage professional growth and enhance career mobility; a more systematic use of and evaluation of flexible work options and support mechanisms; and a greater use of and refinement of male/female mentoring, role modeling, and support.

The practice of affirmative action, while controversial, permits organizations to realize an important employment objective: to establish an integrated workplace by hiring, training, and promoting a diverse workforce. Affirmative action programs redefine an organization's culture by explicitly acknowledging a managerial imperative to sustain such integration, thereby refocusing organizational assumptions about white women, minority women, and minority men as employees. This dissertation reports on an empirical investigation of a federal agency's values and beliefs concerning affirmative action, underscoring the multiplicity of basic assumptions that constitute organizational culture. Informed by the interpretive perspective on organizational communication, this study explores issues raised during a participatory research program sponsored by the agency. It also challenges the managerial focus of much scholarship on organizational culture. This study addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the values and beliefs concerning affirmative action espoused by a particular government agency? (2) To what extent are the espoused values and beliefs concerning affirmative action shared by various employee groups within the agency? Do women and men articulate similar views? Do minority employees and white employees? Data were collected by examining pertinent cultural artifacts: namely, 13 documents representing the agency's official stance on affirmative action during a particular era; plus, employees' views on the localized practice of affirmative action as recorded on a Needs Assessment survey. Official documents contain three themes, presenting a consistent message disseminated to several audiences. Affirmative action befits the agency; cultivates a diverse workforce; and improves the representation of all women and minority men. Despite efforts at strategic management, the espoused ideology is not adopted by all employees. Analysis of survey data reveals varying perceptions of affirmative action's role in the agency. Ways of knowing and acting in relation to localized priorities are often gender-specific and race-specific. There appears to be no singular pattern of basic assumptions for conducting organizational life as a distinct agency of the federal government. Results are discussed in the context of the paradigmatic shift toward an interpretive perspective on organizations, as well as the shifting demography of the U.S. workforce. The research provides suggestions for revising notions of organizational culture.

<p> Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972 has significantly improved women&rsquo;s access to previously male-dominated areas of education in the United States, but few of these studies have focused on the experiences of women currently in the higher education field. This study explored female head athletic trainers&rsquo; perceptions of the role of U.S. higher education institutions in preparing and supporting their achievement of leadership positions in U.S. collegiate sports: it also explored their views on potential changes in current higher education curricula and certification processes. This phenomenological study used Ridgeway&rsquo;s status construction theory as its theoretical lens for examining the role of higher education in participants&rsquo; career progressions. Data were collected from a purposeful sample of 9 female head athletic trainers from various intercollegiate schools in the United States. The trustworthiness of findings was increased through use of the constant comparison data analysis method and sharing transcripts and excerpts of findings with participants. The study findings showed that the participants perceived higher education program preparation and support as limited in both helping women achieve collegiate leadership positions and overcome barriers to professional advancement. Suggestions for improving athletic training educational programs included adding mentorship and role models, experiential learning and interactions with sport personnel, networking opportunities, leadership training, and courses in gender roles and biases. This study promotes positive social change by identifying underlying gender biases inhibiting women&rsquo;s promotions into sport leadership roles and by providing policy and curricular suggestions for addressing these, thereby promoting greater social equality.</p>

Multiple narratives about the past are created over time, with some surviving into the twenty-first century and some forgotten or ignored. Deerfield, Massachusetts, is a place where many such histories have been constructed, in large part based on evidence gleaned from a rich array of material culture, ranging from the carefully preserved and interpreted architecture of a house museum of Historic Deerfield, Inc., to an overlooked vest button buried deep in its dooryard. The village has long been a place where inhabitants have much concerned themselves with writing historical stories and curating objects from the past, particularly the late seventeenth and eighteenth century colonial period. Until recently, not as much has been recovered, however, of the narrative about and by the women who, over a century later, helped initiate a vital enterprise—an arts and crafts revival—that set the stage for a stable village economy based, even today, in local cultural and educational institutions. In addition, these women were among the first to restore and renovate houses here and create a house museum for the public. Accordingly, the early growth of several important historical trends can be traced here, including the historic preservation movement and heritage tourism. Further, this dissertation explores insights into how and why the history of the lives and work of these important women has, at various times, become obscured. Artifacts available to help re-create this marginalized history abound. They include not only decorative objects such as embroidered pieces done by women of the Blue and White Society and metalwork by artist Madeline Yale Wynne, but also the latter's broken ceramics, a chance subterranean find, as well as evocative professional photographs by Deerfield sisters Mary and Frances Allen. This dissertation is a study of the materiality, an anthropological archaeology, of several key Deerfield women and their activities at the turn of the last century. It provides entry into and a more nuanced understanding of a gendered world that provided not only important foundations for local economies, but also wider practices of the Colonial Revival, Arts and Crafts, and historic preservation movements.

This dissertation intersects the fields of women and entrepreneurship and gendered organizational studies through an analytical framework that understands entrepreneurship as a socially constructed process embedded within everyday practices, which shape and are shaped in a field of gender relations. By not taking for granted that work and family are two separate spheres, the study refocuses arguments in the literature that consider entrepreneurship an option for women seeking to balance the demands of work and family. Theoretically supported by socialist feminist theorizing, which addresses the historical development of the public/private divide, I consider how individuals engage in routine activities of everyday life such that they can invoke the existence of work and family as separate domains. Methodologically based on ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, I further ask: How do women business owners and the people they interact with create and sustain particular definitions of situations as business/not business and family/not family? How is the 'social fact' of work and family as separate domains produced and sustained? Using these analytical insights as a starting point, I became involved in the everyday life practices of ten women entrepreneurs as they went about doing 'work-family' throughout complex relationships and engagements. Drawing from an ethnographic approach to fieldwork, I witnessed their activities and conversations in the context in which they were happening, and documented the tensions of negotiating and maintaining a distinct divide between work and family, which often devaluated the latter in support of the former. Altogether, the dissertation contributes to re-articulating conventional economic assumptions in organizational theorizing and research about work-family, which in taking for granted that these are separate social domains foster their reproduction as the normal state of affairs. These assumptions end up bestowing primacy to 'the work sphere' even in the most private moments of everyday life. In particular, the dissertation advances alternative understandings about 'work-family balance' in the context of entrepreneurship, and opens a space for reconsidering these notions as part of the complex field of socio-cultural power relations where gender and class intersect.

Assumptions of neo-classical economics have defined most career theorizing and research in management and organizational scholarship. However, over the thirty years following enactment of equal opportunity legislation in the USA, the incorporation of career experiences of women managers within this model has been uneasy. This dissertation, informed by feminist epistemological standpoints, demonstrates an approach for exploring career experiences of women managers outside traditional theoretical models. Assumed splits between organization/individual, career/private life, and objective/subjective experience, common in past scholarship, are abandoned in favor of a holistic view which considers the careers of individuals in relation to the organizational, economic, legal, governmental, and cultural contexts in which they are conducted. Adopting a comparative/polycentric research design, career experiences of women managers in two diverse societies (the USA and Finland) were studied. The inductive, socio-linguistic project was guided by two research questions: (1) How do a group of women managers in two diverse cultures frame the subjective experience of "career"? (2) What can be learned about cultural, institutional, and organizational values and priorities from the subjective expression of individually experienced lives? Using Q-methodologies for data collection in each location, career "scripts" were fashioned which connect the micro (individual) and macro (contextual) levels of analysis. Results support contentions that: (1) scholarship examining career experiences of women managers must, of necessity, include experience in both the world of work and private life; (2) universalizing career concepts are faulty because they ignore the importance of institutional form and practice in molding individual experiences; (3) scripts of career have a parochial dimension and are filtered through values of the wider culture in which they exist; (4) any study of "managerial careers" must distinguish the context in which notions of "management" exist; (5) traditional requirements of objectivity and neutrality in the research process, as well as a distancing relationship between researcher/researched, block collaborative research approaches; collaborative approaches, however, seem necessary in understanding careers in context; (6) it is important to recognize the contextual situatedness of traditional scholarship (mostly developed in the USA) when analyzing the current status of knowledge about "careers."