Gendered positioning?
In this section, we analyse how the business school students position the female CEO, Diana Wilson, and the male CEO, David Wilson, in their stories. The stories highlight the expectations that the students have for the CEOs — what they should do, and what they should not do. The stories also convey the appropriate persona for a female or male CEO — what one should, or should not be like — implying the importance of doing and being in the construction of managerial identities. Overall, the stories are not gender neutral, but reproduce gendered notions of managerial work and gender- role expectations. The stories also highlight the vices and virtues of the local moral order that provides their context. In the following, we provide a brief description of the overall nature of the data set. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the positioning acts taken in two evaluation stories: one written about a female CEO and one about a male CEO. The stories that we have chosen for closer analysis represent common issues in the stories. After closer analysis, we conclude with an overall evaluation of the differences in the two specific stories.
Most of the stories about the female CEO, Diana Wilson, have been written in an appreciative and respectful style. The content authors praise her for her business competence and democratic leader- ship style, combined with appropriate amounts of assertiveness and toughness. Despite valuing the female CEO, the authors also suggest some improvements concerning her methods of acting. These typically concern the human side of the organization, for example, sensitivity and the allocation of time to the needs and wellbeing of the employees. Similar to the stories written about Diana Wilson, those written about David Wilson are mainly written in an appreciative and respectful style. When the authors position David Wilson, they mainly resort to personal positioning. The feedback is mainly focused on the personality and leadership abilities of the CEO rather than on his actions as a business manager. Although little attention is paid to his business decisions, the stories clearly indicate that he has been a very successful business manager as well.
The strategic management course context might have influenced the contents of the stories to a certain extent. However, its bearing on the stories is not dominant, given the rather balanced descrip- tion of strategic as well as human-resource management issues in the stories about the female CEOs, and strategic issues and personal leadership qualities in stories about the male CEOs.