essential-guide-to-qualitative-in-organizational-research

68 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––clearer targets to achieve. The issue of constant change was very important, and being ableto deal with change and implement it successfully as a manager often emerged as a constructwithin interviewees’ repertory grids.Another major theme that emerged from the repertory grid data within each organizationwas the commitment that individuals were expected to have towards their jobs and publishingas a whole. The notion of a ‘workaholic culture’ was raised frequently. In general, publishingpersonnel were seen as extremely committed to their work, indeed a number of intervieweestalked of loving their work:You get bitten by the bug, people love it and are very dedicated . . .One interviewee suggested that the whole industry was dependent on the fact that individualsloved their work and as a consequence were prepared to work numerous extra hours in orderto do their job effectively. Others suggested that generally the pay was not very good, sopeople would not be there if they did not find the work so attractive. The emphasis oncommitment and workaholism clearly has implications for equal opportunities which arediscussed in more detail later.Barriers to women’s progressionA consensus amongst interviewees was apparent in that all agreed that there were no obviouscases of discrimination against women within their organizations. Issues to do with equalopportunities for women were rarely recognized as important, mainly because they did notemerge as problematic within everyday working life. Additionally, within the sample of 60interviewees there were no clear differences in career aspirations between men and women.There was no evidence to suggest therefore that women did not want to climb the career ladderin the publishing industry, though some individuals set their sights higher than others. Despitethe lack of overt barriers to success there was a clear sense from many of the interviewees thatbarriers did exist to hinder women in the achievement of their career ambitions. These barrierswere perceived as difficult to see and outline, but were nevertheless, highly significant.The most pertinent issue to the female interviewees related to issues around havingchildren, and how that was perceived as fitting into their working lives. The theme ofwork/home split contained more constructs than any other theme, by far the majority comingfrom women. Each of the organizations was seen as having good human resource policies inrelation to women. Women were seen to be encouraged to develop through managementtraining, and a range of policies were available for women who wanted to take time out tohave children. Despite the existence of such policies many of the women interviewedexperienced a clear conflict between the existence of such policies and the culturalassumptions about having children that existed within the organization. In two of theorganizations it was suggested that taking maternity leave was frowned upon. Indeed one maleinterviewee described his organization as having ‘a culture of restricted fertility’, where despitepositive policies ‘people know that having babies is frowned upon’. Women with childrenwere perceived as less effective workers, and as women who came back after leave could findthemselves in worse jobs, they were also effectively punished. These data came from thecomments that were made towards the end of the repertory grid interviews when intervieweeswere reflecting upon the content of the grid they had produced.