Dangerous Knowledge: The Political, Personal, and Epistemological Promise of Feminist Research in Management and Organization Studies

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12221
• Date: 01 April 2020
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Author: Emma Bell,Susan Meriläinen,Scott Taylor,Janne Tienari

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 22, 177–192 (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12221

Dangerous Knowledge: The Political,

Personal, and Epistemological Promise of

Feminist Research in Management and

Organization Studies

Emma Bell, Susan Meril¨

ainen,1Scott Taylor2and Janne Tienari3

Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK, 1Universityof Lapland, Rovaniemi 96300, Finland, 2University of

Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK, and 3Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki 00101, Finland

Corresponding author email: s.taylor@bham.ac.uk

Feminism is a theoretical perspective and social movement that seeks to reduce, and

ultimately eradicate, sexist inequality and oppression. Yet feminist research remains

marginal in the most prestigious management and organization studies (MOS) jour-

nals, as defined by the FinancialTimes 50 (FT50) list. Based on a review of how feminism

is framed in these journals (1990–2018), we identify threeoverlapping categories of how

feminism is represented: (i) as a conceptual resource which is used to address spe-

cific topics; (ii) as an empirical category associated with the study of specific types of

organization or organizing practice; and, rarely, (iii) as a methodology for producing

knowledge. While feminist knowledge exists beyond these parameters, such as in the

journal Gender, Work & Organization,wesuggestthattherelativeabsenceofexplic-

itly feminist scholarship in the most prestigious MOS journals reflects an epistemic

oppression which arises from the threat that feminism presents to established ways of

knowing. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s work, we use the ‘sweaty concept’ of dangerous

knowledgeto show how feminism positions knowledgeas personal, introducing a radical

form of researcher subjectivity whichrelies on the acknowledgment of uncertainty. We

conclude by calling forthe epistemic oppression of feminist scholarship to be recognized

and redressed so the potential of feminism as a wayof knowing about organizations and

management can be realized. This, we argue, would enable feminist research praxis in

MOS to developas an alternative location of, in bell hooks’ term, healing that challenges

the main/malestream.

Introduction

Feminism offers a way of understanding, responding

to, challenging, and changing the marginalization,

exclusion, and oppression of women in political,

economic, organizational, and social life (hooks

1984; Walby 2011). Feminist scholarship is char-

acterized by an inherent commitment to social

change, critiquing and challenging established

power relations, including androcentric intellectual

rationalizations of exclusion and violence which are

misogynistic and patriarchal (Manne 2018). It envi-

sions unique theoretical and practical possibilities to

engage in activism in order to try to realize radical

change (Enloe 2017; Simpson 2006; Snitow 2015).

Feminism thereby goes beyond seeking to establish

and maintain the rights of women, to benefit all who

suffer from sexist oppression, regardless of biological

sex or socially constructed gender roles (Rose 2014).

While feminism has a presence in management

and organization studies (MOS), its position remains

marginal, despite the ‘riches’ (Fotaki and Harding

2018, p. 12) offered by feminist theory as a way

of understanding organizations and management.

In seeking to explain this paradox, scholars note

the dominant mainstream or ‘malestream’ (O’Brien

1981) approach to MOS scholarship (Pullen and

Rhodes 2015) that creates a masculinized libidinal

C2020 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Publishedby John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington

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178 E. Bell et al.

knowledge economy (Phillips et al. 2014). The

marginalization of feminism in MOS is also associ-

ated with the privileging of masculine perspectives

and men’s experiences. Consequently, much MOS

theory is founded on incorrect generalizations based

on studies of men, which are assumed to be applicable

to women and women’s experiences (Wilson 2003).

The contemporary rise of (Western) ‘fourth-wave’

feminism, in response to the persistent gendered

and racialized structuring of society, appears to have

had limited impact within MOS (Bell et al. 2019).

This paper seeks to understand the reasons for the

continued marginalization of feminism in MOS by

reflecting on dominant practices of knowledge pro-

duction and the threat that feminism poses to these.

Webegin by reviewing explicitly feminist research

published in MOS journals listed in the Financial

Times 5 01(FT50) list between 1990 and 2018. The

FT50 is important in defining the boundaries of the

dominant epistemic community of MOS because

the theories, methodologies, and empirical contexts

represented in these journals provide the basis for

understanding what is legitimate and appreciated

within the discipline. Rankings like the FT50 provide

temporally specific markers of socio-historical and

geo-political power relations that shape judgements

about what is considered ‘excellent’ knowledge and

the extent to which it is seen as theoretically and prac-

tically useful (Butler and Spoelstra 2014; Mingers

and Willmott 2013). Journal rankings are a key aspect

of the ‘conditions through which we do our work’

as knowledge producers (Fotaki and Harding 2018,

p. 12), illustrating the specific disciplinary and per-

formative effects of audit cultures and professional

metrics. They thus play a key role in shaping estab-

lished norms of knowledge production in MOS, while

positioning work which does not conform to these

normative practices as deviant, abnormal, or other.

We focus on articles published in prestigious

MOS journals that engage explicitly with feminism

to show how feminism has been constrained in this

field. We compare and contrast this with a review of

feminist scholarship in Gender,Work & Organization

(GWO), a journal that has consistently engaged with

feminism. Wethen build on Sara Ahmed’s term ‘dan-

gerous knowledge’ to explore the political (Stanley

1990), personal (Ahmed 2017), and uncertain (Sni-

tow 2015) nature of knowledge production, and to

show how ‘dangerous’ feminist knowledge threatens

1www.ft.com/content/3405a512-5cbb-11e1-8f1f-00144feabd

c0 [accessed 28 January 2019].

to undermine the epistemological resilience (Dotson

2014) of dominant ways of knowing that serve a

minority at the expense of the majority.Through this,

we argue for a feminist research praxis in MOS that

provides an alternative which can help to heal (hooks

1991) a main/malestream which is damaging to

epistemological diversity and the potential of MOS.

Feminist ways of knowing and

epistemic oppression

Philosophically and politically, feminism provides a

way of asking difficult questions that no other way

of thinking can imagine need to be asked, in order

to bring ‘the permanent scandal of a shamefully un-

equal world to our attention’ (Rose 2014, p. 191).

Feminism’s challenge to MOS extends beyond issues

of equity or equality of recognition and reaches into

the epistemological and ontological core of knowl-

edge production processes. Epistemologically, this in-

volves critiquing scientific norms that are constructed

as value-neutral (Harding 1991) yet are inherently

supportive of the gendered status quo. By challenging

prevailing methodological norms, feminism enables

the pursuit of a more transformative research agenda

(Lather 1991). Feminist critiques of the ‘epistemo-

logical monoculture’ that characterizes Western sci-

entific practice draw attention to the partiality of our

ways of seeing how knowledge is made (Code 2006).

The post-positivist tradition of feminist inquiry em-

phasizes the inevitable embeddedness of knowledge

and the impossibility of using the ‘correct’, ‘sci-

entific’ method to obtain ‘unbiased’, ‘true results’

(Lather 1991, p. 51). Understanding feminism as an

approach to knowing extends beyondfemale/feminist

concerns and invites engagement with issues of so-

cial justice and the politics of knowledge produc-

tion (Code 2006). In this way, feminism offers a

way of confronting ‘science as usual’ (Harding 1991)

as maintained through epistemic oppression (Dotson

2014) in order to enable practices of knowledge pro-

duction to be better understood and challenged.

Based on the review of how feminism is charac-

terized in prestigious MOS journals that follows, we

suggest that the dominant epistemic community of

MOS is resistant to feminist ways of knowing. To

explain this, we introduce the idea of ‘dangerous

knowledge’. Dotson (2014) shows how challenging

testimonies may be rejected as ‘nonsensical’ by

members of a dominant epistemic community. This

relies on designating the one who testifies ‘as a

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