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Double Agents

Gendered Organizational Culture, Control and Resistance

Keele University, b.hawkins{at}mngt.keele.ac.uk

This article presents ethnographic data showing how recruitment consultants negotiate managerial attempts to control workforce culture. I suggest the values which senior managers encourage consultants to embody prioritize so-called`masculine' attributes over `feminine' ones. I attempt to demonstrate the limits of cultural control by outlining three ways in which the consultants engage with this imposed culture: defiance, parody and ritual. These activities contain gendered assumptions similar to those embedded in corporate culture. I discuss the potential such practices have for resisting corporate culture and the gender within it, suggesting that one source of ambiguity within workplace `control' and `resistance' practices is that they employ overlapping cultural resources and assumptions.

Key Words: control • corporate culture • gender • masculinity • resistance • sales work

Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 3, 418-435 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038508088834


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