Seminar: Balls, barbecues and beach parties: Staging the gendered organization at social events

Balls, barbecues and beach parties: Staging the gendered organization at social events

On January 14, 2016 the Public-Private Platform's Diversity and Difference cluster hosts a seminar with Professor Renate Ortlieb on Balls, barbecues and beach parties: Staging the gendered organization at social events. Sign-up via email and join us for an inspiring talk and debate.

Seminar abstract

Social events, such as outings, barbecues and parties, are important parts of organizational life. This seminar will focus on the analysis of ways in which an organization’s social events carry and reinforce values, norms and habits woven into the organization’s gender regime—that is, the complex system of gender-related differentiations and hierarchisations in that organization. The analysis is grounded in Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations and specify four symbolic anchors of social events that link with manifold gendered meanings: gender images, status differences, gendered body and sexuality. Drawing on data from 216 accounts, Renate Ortlieb will in her talk at the seminar demonstrate how both entire organizational events and single elements of such events (re-)produce or change organizational gender regimes. The analysis extends and refines the theory of gendered organizations for the case of social events. In addition, she will discuss ways in which social events might break the vicious circle of reproducing traditional gender regimes.

Bio

Renate Ortlieb has been a Full Professor of Human Resource Management at the University of Graz, Austria, since 2009. She completed her doctoral thesis on employee sickness absences in 2002 and her „habilitation” in 2009 at Freie Universität Berlin. After graduation in Business Administration and Economics at the Technische Universität Berlin in 1995 she worked as a research and teaching assistant at the universities of Konstanz, Essen, Flensburg and at Freie Universität Berlin. She was an Assistant Professor at Freie Universität Berlin, a visiting lecturer at the Berlin School of Economics, Fern-Universität in Hagen, the Institute of Electronic Business Berlin and the Hamburg Media School and an interim Full Professor at the University Konstanz. Renate Ortlieb’s research interests are in human resource strategies, especially with a focus on migrant employees, gender and power relations in organizations, employee absenteeism, and empirical research methods. Her publications appeared in journals such as Journal of the Royal Statistical Society – Applied Statistics, Management Revue, Schmalenbach Business Review, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Feminist Economics and Group & Organization Management.

Registration

Participation is free of charge and open to all interested. Seats are limited. SIgn-up by email to publicprivateplatform@cbs.dk