Abstract
Based on extensive and intensive interviews with managers as well as rank-and-file employees and part-timers in one of the largest supermarkets in Japan, this paper attempts to analyze gender relations in work organization.
To realize gender fairness, it is necessary not only to explain why and how unfavorable gender relations are reproduced but also to discover the dynamics that can potentially and actually effect change in gender relations. Focusing on communication, miscommunication and “negotiations” between supervisors and their subordinates, this paper investigates both formal and informal aspects of work organization.
The major findings are as follows. (1) Men-centered organizational culture is deeply entrenched among managers and evident in everyday communication. (2) There is a sense of unity among rank-and-file employees, who are mostly women, and part-timers, which consist of only women, against managers-a world divided between “them and us.” In this setting, it is too simplistic to say that supervisors only pass orders and subordinates only obey. Rank-and-file employees and part-timers exercise their autonomy through misinterpreting orders intentionally, doing something that they have not been instructed to, or even ignoring orders that appear to them to be ridiculous. (3) Despite the suspicion among men managers that “ordinary women” are being promoted to store managers by top level management for the sole purpose of publicizing the company's progressive policy toward women, women store managers have displayed exceptional performances by lowering the wall between “them and us.” Although their careers were varied before they become store managers, as managers they hold a common strategy, approaching and respecting the opinion of rank-and-file employees and part-timers. Women store managers represent an immense potential for change in the corporate culture to one that adopts gender-neutral management.
