Reflections on the evolution of a long-term study of airline cultures: an interview with Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-09-2021-0237
• Published date: 12 April 2022
• Date: 12 April 2022
• Pages: 469-479
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Vanessa Sandra Bernauer

Reflections on the evolution of a

long-term study of airline cultures:

an interview with Albert J. Mills

and Jean Helms Mills

Vanessa Sandra Bernauer

Helmut Schmidt University –University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg,

Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Purpose –The aim of this paper is to provide insights on Albert J. Mills’and Jean Helms Mills’lifelong

methodological journey in the airline culture. The interview offers a retrospective and reflective insight of their

research into organizational culture and the airline industry, reasons for this research, their methodological

journey, challenges they faced and ways forward.

Design/methodology/approach –This article is based on an interview with Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms

Mills, which was virtually conducted for a professional development workshop (PDW) at the 2020 Academy of

Management Meeting.

Findings –Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills provide insights and reflections on their lifelong

methodological journey, focusing organizational culture, discriminatory practices, and the impact of this on

what constitutes men and women’s work.

Originality/value –This paper draws from Albert J. Mills’and Jean Helms Mills’lifelong experience in

studying gender, intersectionality and historiography in airline cultures. Scholars will be encouraged by their

insights on how to start a long-term study, potential challenges, impacts of current trends and how to deal

with them.

Keywords Gender, Intersectionality, History, Archival research, Airlines, Discriminatory practices

Paper type Viewpoint

Introduction

The airline industry provides services to tourists and business travelers and is a major source

of employment (ILO, 2013). Aviation and especially the lives of cabin crew members has

always been a source of excitement and fascination that got attention from media, writers and

also academic scholars from the early days of commercial flights in the 1920s until today.

Beside a bright side of “glamorous’work”(Baum, 2012, p. 1,185), they found extremely

discriminatory recruitment criteria, e.g. in terms of class, ethnicity and gender (Binder, 1971;

Weigand et al., 2014;Whitelegg, 2005), and high emotional (Hochschild, 1983), aesthetic and

sexualized labor requirements (Warhurst and Nickson, 2009;Witz et al., 2003). Two

particularly prominent authors in the field of workplace discrimination in the airline cultures

are Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills. They have studied the airline industry extensively

with a focus on organizational culture. Notably, focusing on the airline industry, Mills and

Helms Mills set out to understand how organizational culture influences the development of

discriminatory practices and how those practices are maintained and change over time (Mills,

1988;Helms Mills and Mills, 2000).

I understand this viewpoint article as a professional insight –a retrospective and

reflective piece that offers insights on Albert’s and Jean’s methodological journey and their

reflections on it; into how a long-term study gets started, what challenges arise from archival

studies, how they are dealt with, and how current trends impact on what gets studied and

how it gets studied. They tell us what led them to initially study workplace discrimination,

Studying

international

airline cultures

469

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 20 September 2021

Revised 20 December 2021

31 January 2022

Accepted 21 March 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 4, 2023

pp. 469-479

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-09-2021-0237