Diversified Organizational Inequality Regimes and Ideal Workers in a “Growth-Driven,” “Diverse,” “Flexible” Australian Company: A Multilevel Grounded Theory

Abstract

Interacting global, societal and organizational contexts produce unique organizational inequality regimes. This paper aims to understand multilevel processes influencing gendered, classed, raced and aged inequality regimes and worker hierarchies within “ComCo”, an Australian subsidiary of a multinational company. Our qualitative critical feminist-grounded theory approach triangulated organizational documentation, employee interviews and open-ended questionnaire responses. The emergent theory suggested that ComCo’s globally and societally embedded neoliberal-capitalist–masculine growth imperative produced no longer simplistically one-sided, but multifaceted and diversified masculine–individual–white and feminine–collaborative–colored growth mechanisms, including ideal workers broadening from quantitatively extreme to qualitatively conformant qualities and practices, to constitute not merely unencumbered masculine, but all workers, as existing for company growth. However, feminine–collective–colored mechanisms, co-opted to supporting growth, remained subordinated to masculine–individual–white mechanisms constructed as more effective at delivering growth, reinforcing ComCo’s inequality regimes and worker hierarchies despite diversity initiatives. Organizations must identify and address processes reinforcing inequality regimes to genuinely promote employment equity and diversity.

1. Introduction

Although modern organizations have been presented as gender, class, sexual orientation, race, age and ability neutral, their underlying inequality regimes reinforce hierarchical power relations and configurations of idealized and stigmatized workers, masculinities, femininities and other socially constructed identities (Acker 1990, 2006; Connell 2006). Acker (1990) and Connell (2006) have identified similar processes reinforcing or resisting organizational inequality regimes. These processes consist of, at the organizational level, power relations including organizational hierarchies, policies, employment contracts and remuneration; culture, symbolism and discourses; and labor divisions; and at the relationship and individual levels, interpersonal relations and individual performances.

Although unique to particular organizations, these processes are influenced by global and societal-level contexts (Connell 2006; Aldossari et al. 2021). At the global level, globalization, increased competition and information and communications technologies have enabled and necessitated work without temporal or spatial boundaries, and increased work intensity and extremity (Cooper et al. 2001; Powell et al. 2019; Tennakoon 2021). At the societal level, Australia’s socially, culturally and discursively reproduced patriarchal, neoliberal-capitalist, white, Western, heteronormative, abled and working-aged power relations construct symbolic hierarchies within workers, masculinities, femininities and other socially constructed identities, which idealize and reward characteristics, practices and qualities reproducing, and stigmatize, sanction and suppress those resisting, overarching power relations (Gramsci 1971; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Schippers 2007). Such hierarchies include hegemonic configurations of neoliberal-capitalist citizen-workers valuing individually responsible full-time working, which interact with pronatalist and maternalist discourses valorizing, rewarding and mandating procreation and mothering (in order to ensure the reproduction of future workers while simultaneously maximizing production by existing workers) to idealize hegemonic (heteronormative, married, white, middle-classed, working-aged and abled) breadwinning, involved (outside full-time working hours) fathering masculinities and part-time working, intensive (self-sacrificing, nurturing) mothering femininities; and subject other qualities, characteristics and practices to progressively greater subordination and stigmatization, including (ignored) inadequately involved, traditional breadwinning fathering; (subordinated) immature and incomplete male childlessness and female involuntary and circumstantial childlessness, configured around citizen-working in children’s absence; and (stigmatized) emasculated less-than-full-time working fathering, and unnatural, selfish, career-oriented full-time working mothering and female voluntarily childlessness (e.g., Bridgman and Davis 2004; Blatterer 2007; Marston 2008; Goodwin and Huppatz 2010; Turnbull et al. 2020). Additionally, Australian culture has been described as valuing (Western, neoliberal-capitalist, individualist, masculine) authority, heroism, achievement, assertiveness and material success, over (non-Western, communal, feminine) relationships, collaboration, modesty and quality of life (Hofstede 2001; Leung and Moore 2003; Jones 2007). Societal contexts such as these can influence, but are not necessarily replicated by, organizational inequality regimes and hierarchical configurations of workers, femininities, masculinities and other identities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Connell 2006).

At the organizational level, Acker (1990) has argued that, despite purportedly applying to all employees, inequality regimes construct an unencumbered abstract worker who exists purely for work, based on societally entrenched masculine working models, including long hours, visibility and availability. Indeed, there is ample evidence that organizational processes idealizing and rewarding socially and discursively masculine unencumbered working practices permeate public and private sector organizations in a broad range of industries in Australia and other countries (see, e.g., Blair-Loy 2003; Charlesworth and Baird 2007; Chesterman and Ross-Smith 2010; Lewis and Humbert 2010; Devine et al. 2011; Cahusac and Kanji 2014; Thornton 2016).

However, Holgersson and Romani (2020) have argued that, beyond unencumbered quantitative working practices, organizational processes also produce qualitatively ideal workers. These mutually reinforcing processes can produce gendered, classed, raced, aged and abled hegemonic worker configurations or defaults, which are valued, rewarded, normalized and constructed as necessary (Cheryan and Markus 2020; Holgersson and Romani 2020). For example, research has suggested that some organizations value and reward stereotypically masculine-white-Western characteristics, such as dominance, aggression, competition, individualism and rationality, and devalue and penalize stereotypically feminine-colored-collective characteristics, such as submissiveness, nurturance and empathy; but penalize those who deviate from stereotypes aligning with their socially constructed identities (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Charlesworth and Baird 2007; Broughton and Miller 2009; Devine et al. 2011; Dodds 2012; Williams et al. 2013; Berdahl et al. 2018; Reynolds et al. 2022). In this respect, Acker (2012) has called for organizational inequality regime research beyond gender. Accordingly, this paper discusses multilevel processes contributing to inequality regimes and quantitative and qualitative worker hierarchies in “ComCo”, an Australian organization. Although we initially focused on gender (including parent-status) and class regimes, the research revealed other power relations’ influence, including race and age.

Before proceeding, it is essential to clarify our perspectives of key concepts, which are contested in theory and the literature (Wright 2005; Bradley 2012). We use terms such as “masculine,” “feminine,” “heterosexual,” “middle/working-classed” and “white” to describe not biological or natural traits, but socially and discursively constructed qualities, attributes, practices and identities which reproduce (or resist) unequal power relations (Bottero 2004; Connell 2005; Wright 2005; Butler 2011). In this respect, terms such as “patriarchy/gender” and “capitalism/class” describe unequal and exploitative power relations which maintain, for example, men’s power over women and capital-owning and employer classes’ power over employee classes (Wright 2005; Connell and Pearse 2015). “Neoliberal” refers to the social and discursive implications of modern revisions of capitalism (put into practice by government policies such as deregulation, reduced government spending and privatization), by removing responsibility for citizens’ welfare from governments and organizations, and expecting and idealizing independent, self-sufficient, economically productive adult citizens who are individually responsible for choices about their own social and economic wellbeing (Lewis and Giullari 2005; Harris Rimmer and Sawer 2016; Runswick-Cole et al. 2016). Although purportedly identity-neutral, neoliberal capitalism interacts with gender, race, class, age, ability and other power relations by creating unequal conditions for meeting such expectations (Connell 1987; Blair-Loy 2003; Lewis and Giullari 2005; Butler 2011).

2. Materials and Methods

The research consisted of a qualitative case study of ComCo, facilitating a deep understanding of unique organizational contexts contributing to inequality regimes (Holgersson and Romani 2020). Employing a critical feminist-grounded theory design (Layder 1993; Fassinger 2005; Corbin and Strauss 2008) incorporating Foucauldian discourse analysis (Clarke 2005), the research enriched existing theory by exploring how statements within organizational documentation and participant narratives about ComCo’s cultures, policies, practices and environments (contextualized within societal-level power relations) represented and gave meaning to processes constituting, normalizing and naturalizing ComCo as an inequality regime, and ComCo’s workers as idealized, valued and rewarded, or stigmatized, devalued and penalized, social categories (Layder 1993; Wuest 1995; Mishra et al. 2014).

Although existing theory informed our sensitizing concepts, understanding ComCo’s unique inequality regime required theory grounded in data, which drew upon the literature as analysis and theory development progressed to interweave organizational discourses and participant narratives with their societal contexts and enable deeper explication of the emerging theory (Wuest 1995; MacDonald 2001; MacDonald and Schreiber 2001; Fassinger 2005; Corbin and Strauss 2008). Accordingly, rather than including a comprehensive literature review in the Introduction (Section 1), such literature is woven throughout the grounded theory (Section 3) to privilege the process (Dunne 2011). Moreover, we acknowledge that we, as researchers, construct knowledge. Accordingly, as white, middle-classed feminists (two childfree women and one mother), we stayed open to others’ knowledge by endeavoring to recruit participants with different backgrounds and analyzing data inductively.

After contacting numerous Australian companies in 2018, ComCo agreed to its involvement, including employees’ working-hours participation, providing company documentation, and consenting to research publications. Although ComCo agreed to “white collar” employees’ participation (those paid by annual salary), it did not consent to “blue collar” and casual employees’ participation (those paid by hourly wage), because it would have been costly and impractical.

In early 2019, ComCo provided a purposive sample of human resources policies and initiatives, which we supplemented with publicly available documentation, including website content, job advertisements and ComCo’s 2018–2019 report to the Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency (“WGEA report”). Also in early 2019, eligible employees were invited, by email and reminder emails from a senior ComCo representative, to complete a self-administered online questionnaire. Forty-seven respondents answered open-ended questions asking them to describe times when they had positive and negative experience working at ComCo, and if they had anything else to add about working at ComCo. Subsequently, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 employees from late 2019 to mid-2020. Six were questionnaire respondents who had provided contact details. Four additional interviewees were recruited using snowball sampling, whereby the original interviewees contacted colleagues who may have been interested in participating, and those who wished to participate contacted the researchers directly. All questionnaire respondents and interviewees were “white collar” employees. Employing iterative data collection and analysis (Fassinger 2005), we interviewed each interviewee twice for around 45 to 90 min per interview. The semi-structured interviews included open-ended questions exploring ComCo’s cultures, values, policies and expectations of employees. For example, participants were asked: what ComCo really valued, what ComCo expected of employees, what kind of leadership they saw in ComCo, and what they thought of workplace policies. We audio-recorded and transcribed interviews verbatim. Three interviewees validated transcripts. After interviews, the interviewer recorded field notes including interviewees’ most salient issues, interviewer insights and reflections, and issues for future interviews. Although we intended to commence with a maximum variation sample and proceed to theoretical sampling (Fassinger 2005), organizational constraints limited us to ten interviewees. However, combined questionnaire and interviewee data provided a broad range of perspectives and augmented categorical saturation (Fassinger 2005). Nonetheless, while there were comparable numbers of participants from ComCo’s different departments, men and women, and childless women, mothers and fathers, few childless men participated, and people who were full-time employees, managers, head office-based, aged 35 years or over, bachelor-qualified, Australian-born, spoke only English at home and heterosexual, dominated.

Data were analyzed using QSR NVivo 12. Following critical feminist-grounded theory (Layder 1993; Fassinger 2005; Corbin and Strauss 2008) and Foucauldian discourse analysis approaches (Parker 1990; Clarke 2005; Garrity 2010; Graham 2011), the lead author engaged in data immersion by validating transcripts against audio recordings and reading and re-reading data; wrote memos on evolving concepts, categories, insights, assumptions, interpretations and reflections; and engaged in constant comparison between new and previously collected data, emergent theory and raw data, and emergent and extant theory and the literature. Data were inductively and iteratively analyzed using open, axial and selective coding. During open coding, data were broken down and questioned for all meanings of what was said, unsaid and unanswered (including identifying “statements” that made ComCo an object of discourse by describing or silencing), and given conceptual labels (for example, inconsistent participant narratives of negatively framed authoritarian and positively framed supportive leadership; compared to positively framed organizational discourses of cost improvement and supportive leadership). During axial coding, concepts were reconstituted into categories (including sets of meaning organizing knowledge about ComCo) which identified, arranged and explained interrelationships and inconsistencies between categories, as well as their relationships with societal power relations, discourses and ideologies (for example, production and growth targets’ immediacy explaining and justifying “effective” masculine authoritarian leadership rather than feminine supportive leadership in parts of ComCo). Selective coding involved identifying a core category and discursive practice which integrated all other categories and discourses, and explicated their relationship to the core category (participants’ narratives and ComCo texts suggesting that ComCo’s growth imperative permeated all other categories). Additionally, the emergent theory was augmented by extant theory and the literature. The authors discussed and refined concepts, categories and their interrelationships throughout analysis.

The remainder of this paper outlines the grounded theory of ComCo’s societally embedded inequality regimes (Section 3), including its overarching growth imperative (Section 3.1), growth mechanisms (Section 3.2) and hierarchical worker configurations (Section 3.3), our discussion of the grounded theory’s implications (Section 4), and conclusion and recommendations (Section 5). Throughout the paper, we have broadly identified ComCo’s industry, not specified its number of employees and briefly quoted ComCo documentation, to protect ComCo’s confidentiality. Additionally, we have edited participant quotations to protect confidentiality but maintain meaning, and do not identify quotations, as in other organizational research (Connell 2006). In the following sections, “documentary discourses” refers to discourses emerging from ComCo documentation, and “participant narratives” or “narratives” refer to participants’ descriptions of ComCo’s values, leadership, policies, cultures and expectations of employees.

3. Diversified Organizational Inequality Regimes: A Multilevel Grounded Theory

ComCo was an incorporated private company and multinational subsidiary, which manufactured consumer goods. Reproducing historical gendered, classed, raced and aged labor divisions (Connell 2006), employees were based in what participants described as “white, straight, middle-classed” head office dominated by “white collar” and “younger” employees aged up to 45 years; “blue collar” or “working class” factories dominated by men aged over 50 years, but “Anglo-Saxon” in some locations and “culturally diverse” in others; the field, where casually employed junior sales roles were female-dominated, and permanently employed senior roles were male-dominated; and state offices. Employees worked in three broad areas: “male-dominated” operations (research, development, quality, manufacturing, logistics, supply chain), commercial (“male-dominated” sales and “female-dominated marketing) and support (corporate affairs, legal, finance and “female dominated” human resources). Additionally, ComCo was, as one participant described it, “a bit of a pyramid system” of at least seven levels: company head, department heads, associate heads, senior managers, managers and experienced to entry-level non-managers. Such hierarchies have been described as not only masculine (Maier 1999; Berdahl et al. 2018), but also normalizing (gendered, raced and aged) class hierarchies within employees (Acker 2012). In that respect, ComCo’s WGEA report revealed gendered management divisions bestowing greater power upon men (Connell 2006): although the percentage of females across all management levels (42%) was proportionate to the percentage of female employees (41%), females constituted only a quarter of the top three management levels.

The multilevel grounded theory of diversified organizational inequality regimes enriched existing theory that interacting global, societal and organizational contexts influence unique organizational inequality regimes and worker hierarchies (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Connell 2006), by exploring multilevel influences on inequality regimes in ComCo’s unique context. In ComCo, the most visible and salient process (emerging from organizational documentation and participant narratives) was ComCo’s neoliberal-capitalist–masculine growth imperative, which cascaded to multifaceted mechanisms reinforcing growth, including leadership, manager, team and workplace practices, cultures and behaviors, and configurations of ideal workers as not only quantitatively extreme (Acker 2006), but also qualitatively conformant (Holgersson and Romani 2020), workers for growth. These organizational processes were embedded in global and societal-level power relations (Section 1) which, although invisible to most participants, contributed to ComCo’s inequality regimes by rendering such processes gendered, classed, raced and aged.

Importantly, however, in the context of globalization and societal and organizational-level neoliberal-capitalist citizen-worker discourses, ComCo’s organizational-level processes had diversified beyond one-sided masculine–individual–white cultures, qualities and practices, to co-opt feminine-collective-colored cultures, qualities and practices, to constitute all employees as extreme and conformant ideal workers existing for company growth. Conflicting processes were evident across different departments, sites and seniority levels depending on their contextual contribution to growth and interlinking labor divisions. However, discourses subordinating feminine beneficent mechanisms to growth, and valuing masculine–individual–white practices and qualities as more effective at delivering growth than feminine-collective-colored practices and qualities, reinforced ComCo’s inequality regimes and worker hierarchies. We discuss the data from which the grounded theory emerged in the following sections.

3.1. The Core (Octopoidal) Category: “Ruthlessly Commercial” Growth

The highly saturated core category that permeated all others constituted ComCo as a “ruthlessly commercial,” growth-driven business. A dominant and overarching, positively framed documentary “growth” discourse normalizing and valorizing ComCo’s driving “agenda” as “accelerating” growth and “exceeding targets,” was reflected in many participants’ sometimes neutral and sometimes negative descriptions of a company and leadership “focus” on “growth,” “targets,” “results” and “profit,” typical of profit-driven organizations (Kugelberg 2006; Abbott and De Cieri 2008).

It’s a ruthless commercial culture … all about financial performance, and meeting—actually, exceeding shareholder expectation.

Although the growth discourse conformed to and reinforced global and Australian neoliberal-capitalist discourses and structures (Thornton 2016), a participant labelled the “numbers” culture as “masculine,” suggesting the growth discourse also reinforced gender relations (Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000).

By masculine, I think it’s just that culture of everything being about … hitting the numbers.

Triangulated documentary discourses and participant narratives suggested that the octopoidal growth discourse produced, and was reinforced by, multifaceted and interlinking growth mechanisms and discursively constituted ideal (extreme and conformant) workers, which are explicated in the following sections.

3.2. Growth Mechanisms

Documentary and participant statements about organizational, leadership and workplace cultures, policies and practices, indicated that multifaceted growth mechanisms cascaded from and reinforced ComCo’s growth imperative. Extant research and participant narratives suggested that such mechanisms contributed to ComCo’s inequality regime.

3.2.1. Expendable “Value-Adding” Employees for Growth: Cost-Cutting, Redundancies, Restructures

A key growth mechanism was, as some participants described it, a “relentless focus” on “cost-cutting” to increase profit, including restructures, redundancies, automation and offshoring, which were both driven and facilitated by globalization (Cooper et al. 2001; Abbott and De Cieri 2008). Although documentation positively framed cost-cutting as cost “improvement,” some participants’ perceptions reflected masculine-capitalist exploitative employment practices (Maier 1999).

The way that the business thinks about it, seems to be along the lines of cutting people, getting more out of people.

However, others pragmatically accepted employment contingent upon “adding value,” revealing growth discourses’ influence on employees’ constructions of themselves as expendable growth mechanisms (Mescher et al. 2010).

[ComCo] definitely … cares about the bottom dollar … They wouldn’t keep you if they didn’t think you were adding value … I don’t see it as a negative … We get paid well for what we do, but at the same point we’re there to add value. It sounds cut-throat, but that’s just the reality.

Participant narratives also suggested that other growth mechanisms were simultaneously cost “saving” measures, whether intentionally or fortuitously. These included the beneficent growth mechanisms of some flexible working arrangements (Section 3.2.6), including inadequately resourced (Teasdale 2013) purchased additional annual leave for which “undoable” targets and workloads were “not adjusted,” and extreme part-time worker expectations in which full-time workloads were expected for “20 per cent less” pay (Section 3.3.1).

There’s nothing in place to cover [paid additional leave] … I don’t get any extra spend to cover what the business is saving ‘cause they’re buying back their leave. I feel like that is a split in the business sometimes, where it’s like, ‘You’ve gotta reach these sales numbers, but here, have 10 weeks off.’

Cost-cutting influenced extreme workload and working hours expectations (Section 3.3.1). Moreover, consistent with Wajcman’s (1998) findings, narratives suggested that cost-cutting was not only a growth mechanism directly, but also indirectly by penalizing failure (Section 3.2.5) and enforcing extreme and conformant worker expectations (Section 3.3).

Often a poor result’s a reason to find a redundancy … rather than help and support.

3.2.2. Fast-Paced Environment to Accelerate Growth

Documentary descriptions of ComCo as a “fast-moving organization” focusing on “speed and agility” to “accelerate growth,” were reinforced by participant narratives of “deadlines” and “urgency” in a “fast-paced” environment.

[It’s] really fast-paced and it’s not for everyone … a lot of people would struggle in the environment, because it’s quite relentless.

This mechanism not only contributed to extreme (relentless) working expectations (Section 3.3.1); deadlines have also been employed to enforce such expectations (Perlow 1998). Furthermore, efficiency-focused management practices have been described as masculine (Maier 1999), again reinforcing masculine–neoliberal–capitalist growth.

3.2.3. Leadership Cultures “Enabling” or “Delivering” Growth

Participants described conflicting leadership cultures in ComCo. Documentary descriptions of “positive,” “supportive,” “capacity-building” and “enabling” leadership sustaining “high standards of excellence,” were reinforced by participant narratives of “supportive,” “caring,” “respectful,” “capability-building” and “people-led” female and male leaders from commercial and support areas and senior levels.

We’ve got some leaders who are really positive and try to build capability and be very open and give feedback and support.

Nevertheless, such narratives suggested that feminine leadership cultures were co-opted to ComCo’s masculine–neoliberal–capitalist ends (Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002) by “empowering” employees to “achieve goals” and “getting more out of” them, thus “motivating” and “enabling” them to meet extreme performance expectations for growth (Section 3.3.1).

Taking the time to lay out, ‘This is how we’re going to achieve your goals, ‘cause when you achieve your goals, we achieve ours.’ That’s empowering.

In contrast, facilitated by ComCo’s gendered and classed organizational hierarchy (Section 3), many participants described “hierarchical,” “controlling,” “aggressive” and “bullying” leaders in areas such as sales and manufacturing, and at senior levels (who were usually, but not exclusively, identified as men).

Constant lying and bullying from the top of the organization.

Some participants attributed masculine authoritarian leadership cultures (Wajcman 1998; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Berdahl et al. 2018) to “pressure” to “deliver” “targets,” “numbers” and “results”.

Manufacturing have to do what they have to do, no exceptions, to deliver … It’s really high pressure … more command and control, hierarchical approach.

Accordingly, it has been argued that, although feminine egalitarian leadership is increasingly perceived as good practice, it remains subordinated to masculine hierarchical management, which is perceived as more effective in delivering growth (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Acker 2012); which, in ComCo, manifested in prioritizing growth over beneficent respect (Section 3.2.6) and exemptions from conformant worker expectations of respectful behavior (Section 3.3.2). Moreover, rhetorically valuing feminine leadership can create management labor divisions glaringly similar to unencumbered masculine workers supported by caregiving wives (Acker 1990): feminine managers perform invisible and undervalued housekeeping, enabling masculine managers to exercise the true power (Ely and Meyerson 2000). Finally, authoritarian and empowering leadership linked with exacerbation or alleviation of extreme quantitative demands (Section 3.3.1) and conformant worker expectations of “toeing the line” and “speaking out” (Section 3.3.2).

3.2.4. Collaborative or Individualistic Cultures for Growth

Akin to conflicting leadership cultures, documentation and narratives also revealed contrasting collaborative and individualistic cultures for growth. In an important divergence from masculine defaults (Cheryan and Markus 2020), documentation emphasized cultures of “teamwork,” “collaboration” and “partnering” to maintain “high standards of excellence”. Similarly, some participants described “collaborative” organizational, departmental and team cultures.

I’ve been with ComCo for [many] years. The last five years have fostered the best, most collaborative and rewarding culture in my career.

Many such participants described collaborative cultures as requisite to “getting things done” and “achieving targets” due to “complex” interlinking projects. Accordingly, both documentary and participant descriptions of feminine collaborative cultures suggested that they were co-opted to achieving masculine “targets” and “high performance” (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002).

No-one in our business can achieve things on their own … We all need each other. We’re like one gigantic matrix.

However, collaboration manifested in “high meeting” and “email-heavy” cultures, thus flowing to not only conformant worker expectations of collaboration (Section 3.3.2), but also extreme workload and availability expectations (Section 3.3.1).

It’s definitely got a high meeting culture … and so much of our business is based around emails, ‘cause there’s so many people from different teams and sites. And everyone gets cc’d on everything … we’re in a very email-heavy culture.

Conversely, aligning with patriarchal-neoliberal-capitalist discourses, participant narratives suggested that individualistic (competitive, confident, extroverted, self-promoting) organizational, leadership and workplace cultures flowed from and reinforced growth. Participants from not only numbers-focused areas such as sales, but also support areas such as human resources, described “competitive” cultures, which some believed ComCo encouraged to promote high performance.

The way our business is set up, you’re pitting [areas] against [areas], you’re pitting [teams] against [teams] in order to foster a competitive environment, in order to foster an excel in performance. What that means is quite often success or excellent performance is at the expense of others.

Furthermore, many participants described “confident” and “extroverted” leadership cultures conflated with a “sales-focus,” in “a company that’s quite extroverted”.

[A senior leader] is introverted leaning … but practices an extroverted manner … We have a new [senior leader] arriving, who’s … very outgoing, charismatic, sales-focused … I look at the [senior leadership] team … they’re all more extroverted.

Many participants also described “self-interested” workplace cultures focused on “work” and “making money,” and toxic masculine (Matos et al. 2018; Cheryan and Markus 2020) “self-promoting,” “self-absorbed,” “narcissistic,” “self-glorifying” and “disconnected” leaders prioritizing their own workloads, commercial success, bonuses and careers over supporting and connecting with employees.

Some people … are more about their career and how they are perceived ... And people say it’s not the same company anymore.

End of year, we’re going through a challenging period where we’re working hard to close gaps. Senior leaders are saying … ‘Do the work, do this, do that, boom, boom, boom’ … And the discussion amongst these leaders around where people were working … was about the specifications and add-ons they’re getting for their luxury cars … Talk about disconnected: when everyone’s busting their arse, they’re thinking about how they’re gonna spend their bonus.

Individualistic cultures interlinked with rewarding individual success (Section 3.2.5), and conformant competitive, self-promoting and confident, and resilient worker expectations (Section 3.3.2).

Although collaborative and individualistic cultures served neoliberal-capitalist growth, they also reinforced inequality regimes. Reflecting gendered societal discourses (Leung and Moore 2003; Jones 2007), a participant described “male-dominated” sales as aggressively competitive in getting the “highest sales results” and “female-dominated” marketing as “achieving targets” collaboratively, based on “societal norms”.

You look at sales teams that are traditionally quite male-dominated, you see a very masculine culture … of everything being about hitting the numbers … there’s a bit of competition amongst the team to be the ones that are getting the highest sales results. And the language and way people in sales push to get their numbers is a bit more aggressive … individuals trying to hit their goals at no matter what cost. So, if it’s [team] versus [team] team, they’re probably caring more about their individual numbers … than the overall sales of the business … In [female-dominated marketing], there’s still a lot of commercial commitment in wanting to achieve targets ... but it’s more collaborative between different teams … everyone tries to help each other out … there’s a willingness to work together.

Similarly, research has found that masculine, middle-classed and white individualistic, competitive, confident, status-oriented cultures, can devalue feminine, working-classed and collective relational, interdependent, collaborative and modest cultures (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Hofstede 2001; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Cheryan and Markus 2020). Furthermore, although collaborative cultures can promote gender diversity (Cheryan and Markus 2020), growth mechanisms materially rewarding individuals may have devalued rhetorically rewarded collective success (Section 3.2.5) (Ely and Meyerson 2000).

3.2.5. Rewards and Penalties for Growth

Supporting arguments that companies institute complex reward and punishment systems to influence and control employees, which cater to co-existing self-interested and collaborative cultures nurtured by companies to achieve growth (Casey 1995; Perlow 1998), ComCo documentation and participant narratives suggested that ComCo employed multifaceted growth mechanisms of rewarding success or punishing failure, which reinforced compliance with extreme and conformant worker practices requisite to high performance (Section 3.3).

ComCo appealed to self-interest with individual financial and career rewards (Casey 1995; Perlow 1998). Reinforcing the growth discourse, ComCo’s remuneration policies (individual performance-based salary increases; and “bonuses” for “meeting or exceeding” targets, based on varying proportions of company, team and individual performance depending on seniority) financially rewarded individuals. Additionally, many participants believed that ComCo rewarded “hitting targets,” achieving “results” and “landing” projects, with career development and progression, facilitated by ComCo’s “pyramid” structure (Section 3) and linking with growing employees for company growth (Section 3.2.6) and conformant worker expectations of employee growth (Section 3.3.2).

[People] who get the next roles … they’re people that are doing well in their roles … the projects that you’re working on, the projects that you’re landing, and how well you’re doing that.

However, individual rewards reinforced neoliberal, masculine cultures as well as company growth. Participant narratives suggested that bonuses rewarded and reinforced “hitting numbers” for senior leaders, for whom bonuses were “substantial,” thus reinforcing growth and exacerbating masculine leadership cultures (Section 3.2.3).

It’s quite a substantial amount. So [senior leaders] get very highly invested in the commercials of the business.

The more senior you are, the more your bonus is worth, the more you really, really, wanna hit your numbers … probably where a lot of that pressure comes from.

Similarly, supporting Ely and Meyerson’s (2000) contention that self-interest cultures flow from rewarding masculine heroism, some participants believed that bonuses and competition for promotions created masculine-neoliberal “self-interested,” “self-promoting” and “competitive” organizational and team cultures “driven by targets and bonuses” (Section 3.2.4), undermining feminine-collective supportive leadership (Section 3.2.3) and collaboration (Section 3.2.4) (Casey 1995; Perlow 1998).

The incentive program needs to be appropriate for company values. The current program creates the self-interest culture.

In this respect, some participants’ descriptions of managers and senior leaders’ influences on beneficent employee growth through “pre-determined promotions” (Section 3.2.6) and “subjective” bonus calculations elucidated not only cultures (Section 3.2.4) and expectations (Section 3.3.2) of self-promotion, but also conformant worker expectations to “toe the line,” “not challenge” and curry favor with managers and senior leaders (Section 3.3.2).

Measures in the bonus scheme are subjective to a meeting where all the senior managers review performance gradings of their subordinates. And that is completely subjective and almost like a popularity test … They mark you on a bell curve, which means if five people on the team have done absolutely awesome, only one of them can get the highest rating.

Conversely, ComCo catered to collective and beneficent cultures by celebrating success and euphemizing growth. Some participants described “best ever” organizational cultures and practices of “awarding,” “recognizing” and “celebrating” individual, team and company successes “together”.

This year we got great results. We’ve had people being recognized and … celebrating success together. You’re feeling it’s together, not just the sales guys … it’s support, manufacturing.

Similarly, documentary rhetoric of “doing what’s right” for the environment, consumers and suppliers, ameliorated the otherwise unapologetic growth discourse. “Doing good” fostered some participants’ “passion” for and “pride” in ComCo, its brands and its “purpose”. Accordingly, some participants euphemistically described producing and selling as “creating and sharing our wonderful brands”.

I’m always really proud to tell someone I work for [ComCo] … They’re trying to do the right thing by the environment … there’s a lot they could improve on, but I feel like I can be proud working for them.

Thus, celebrating success and euphemizing growth included and intrinsically rewarded employees motivated by feminine collective success and benefiting others (Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000), reinforcing conformant worker expectations of passionate workers committed to growth (Section 3.3.2). However, such mechanisms were more alienating than inclusive for participants who perceived ComCo’s “purpose” as an “internal public relations exercise” which obfuscated the reality of “doing good” only “if it makes money”.

We’ve launched a new purpose … the story is very much about doing the right thing … and not just about making money … but then in practice, we’re not acting in a way that’s consistent with the story. We’re making choices on projects and initiatives to make more money rather than to live the purpose … Every decision comes down to, how much money are we going to save? Or how much will this cost? If I think about sustainability, it’s generally a culture of, ‘We’ll do sustainability if it helps save us money. We’re not going to do it … because it’s the right thing to do.’

Moreover, some participants felt that ComCo only rewarded areas that “make the money”. Accordingly, despite celebrating collective success, ComCo may have valued and rewarded departments (such as male-dominated sales) that could achieve masculine individual heroism through commercial success, more than areas providing the feminine support that enabled success (such as female-dominated human resources) (Ely and Meyerson 2000).

It would be nice to be rewarded occasionally as a total business … not just sales. I understand sales make the money, but other areas are just as important to assist sales.

Finally, despite some participants’ perceptions of organizational attempts to facilitate employee growth by fostering a “learning culture” in which “it’s okay to fail” (Section 3.2.6), some described “blame cultures” of punishing failure, accompanied by “positivity” cultures of concealing failures and promulgating “good stories,” reinforcing masculine infallibility discourses (Berdahl et al. 2018; Reid et al. 2018).

We’ve still got some issues with a blame culture … when deadlines are tight, things haven’t worked, not heads will roll, but that kind of behavior can sometimes come out.

It’s very much a culture of positivity … Marketing teams will talk to you about their campaigns … But they’ll play with the data and make sure you’re only getting the good stories.

Participants suggested that blame cultures framed “errors” and not “hitting targets,” “growth” or “deadlines” as “failures,” and subjected individuals who “failed” to exclusion from support through “learning opportunities,” and potentially severe consequences, such as contrived redundancies (Section 3.2.1).

You’ve gotta hit your targets, and you’ve gotta hit growth, and you’ve gotta keep your projects on track … And it’s almost seen as a failure if you don’t get there.

It’s important that you talk about what didn’t go well and what you learned from that, ‘cause that can be great learning. And it’s really uncomfortable for people to talk about what didn’t go well … Which is not helpful from a cultural point of view ‘cause it demonstrates that we only want to share our successes and we don’t support learning or failing.

As such, blame cultures punished deviation from, and enforced conformance to, extreme performance expectations (Section 3.3.1).

3.2.6. Beneficence for, but Subject to, Growth

ComCo had laudable diversity and inclusion, fair and respectful workplace behavior, professional development, mainstreamed flexible working, and wellbeing initiatives. However, although ComCo documentation outlined numerous justifications for these initiatives, including legal obligations and doing “the right thing,” the business case was foregrounded, thereby co-opting feminine beneficent mechanisms respecting, including, developing and caring for employees, to masculine neoliberal-capitalist growth (Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000). Accordingly, congruent with research (Casey 1995; Abbott and De Cieri 2008), although some participants appreciated, felt included by, and were proud of beneficent initiatives, others felt that ComCo prioritized growth when it conflicted with beneficence, many felt that ComCo’s growth imperative and worker expectations were inimical to beneficence, and others felt that ComCo was merely paying “lip-service” to “doing the right thing” for employees.

[ComCo] has plenty of policies that give the impression of caring, but sadly don’t live up to them.

The first beneficent growth mechanism facilitated diversity and inclusion. Documentation and participant narratives suggested that ComCo was working towards diversity and inclusion to address management and labor divisions (Section 3) through, for example, gender equality in recruitment, performance reviews, remuneration, development opportunities and senior management; unconscious bias training; recruiting and promoting “diverse talent” (including long-term strategies targeting high school students to counteract social norms); and mainstreaming flexibility. Indeed, documentary and participant descriptions of “working as equals” in ComCo because “diverse” role models had “paved the way,” suggested that diversity initiatives were making inroads, to the extent that some participants felt that ComCo’s “diversity focus” created “advantages” and “disadvantages” in meeting conformant worker expectations of employee growth (Section 3.3.2).

The women who’ve come before me … they’ve been quite strong … And that kind of paved the way … It was like, ‘We’ve got lots of strong women, she must be good because she’s a woman.’

However, in the context of “harnessing” employees’ “diverse” ideas and “different” backgrounds in a multinational company, documentation justified diversity and inclusion as “good for business,” “maximizing corporate goals” and “realizing productivity and success,” thereby co-opting “diverse” identities as economic resources for capitalist growth (Lorbiecki and Jack 2000; Zanoni et al. 2010). Some theorists have argued that, rather than dismantling inequality regimes, diversity strategies can perpetuate inequality by enabling and obliging individually responsible workers constituted as inferior to a male, heterosexual, white, Western, middle/upper-classed, abled norm, to assimilate to organizational structures (Lorbiecki and Jack 2000; Zanoni et al. 2010; Romani et al. 2019). In this respect, participant narratives suggested that diversity was undermined by extreme worker expectations which increased with seniority (Section 3.3.1), creating career barriers for anyone not performing the masculine norm; and conformant worker expectations (Section 3.3.2), which undermined documentary lauding of different “values” and “ways of thinking,” and “being yourself”.

A second beneficent growth mechanism promoted fair and respectful workplace behaviour. ComCo’s corporate values of treating people with “integrity” and “care” were incorporated in its workplace behaviors policy, which espoused “fair,” “respectful,” “welcoming” and “inclusive” workplaces as “good for people and good for business;” flowing to conformant worker expectations of respectful behavior (Section 3.3.2). Similarly, many participants felt that ComCo had nurtured a “family atmosphere” and “welcoming” culture.

The company has been consistent about nurturing this kind of behavior … they recruit people who care about the way they work, not just results … then they come in and the existing people who are in the culture, they value welcoming and making people part the family… So, they bring other people into the fold and create that welcoming culture that passes on.

However, many participants also believed that commercial performance, indelibly linked to masculine authoritarian leadership (Section 3.2.3), was prioritized over respect, manifesting in commercially successful leaders’ exemption from conformant worker expectations of respectful behavior, which in turn produced conformant worker expectations of resilience (Section 3.3.2).

[A new senior leader] is quite chauvinistic and has a history of inappropriate behavior with female employees. This appointment … is an example where financial performance … is the thing held in highest regard.

A third beneficent mechanism enabled employee “growth”. Organizational documentation espoused employee “growth” through learning and development, as not only enabling employees to reach their “full potential” and have “enriching careers,” but also contributing to “long-term [company] success” and “achieving our goals”. Similarly, many participants described ComCo as “valuing” and “focusing” on “personal development” and “building careers”. Although this supportive environment for employee growth made “people feel valued,” it culminated in a conformant worker expectation of employee growth (Section 3.3.2).

One thing that excites me about [ComCo] is … they’re really into promoting from within and providing opportunities from within.

ComCo’s masculine employee growth focus (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Berdahl et al. 2018) was bolstered by its hierarchical structure (Section 3), and career development policies and initiatives supporting external qualifications and workplace learning and development, such as graduate programs, networking, mentoring, on-the-job learning and “learning cultures”. Arguably, “career planning” represented the apotheosis of employee “growth”. In this respect, a manager described a process whereby ComCo planned “everyone’s” careers “years in advance” with “well-structured next steps,” resulting in “pre-determined” promotions.

Managers rate teams once a year ... on a scale of the next steps in their career … whether you shift to another category to do the same role to get your breadth of experience up, whether you’re ready for promotion, or whether you go outside [department] … There’s a wider forum … where we plotted people [in our teams] with [managers] at your level … Then you walk out and [your managers] talk about you, and once they’re done … it ends up with [department heads], I guess.

Accordingly, managers were integral to career planning, elucidating participants’ perceptions “you’re not set up to succeed” without manager support, as in other studies (Wood 2006; Ezzedeen and Ritchey 2009). In turn, some participants felt that promotions could be influenced by manager “favoritism,” or based on “perceptions,” wanting “people you know you work well with” or being “well-liked in the company”.

A couple of managers seemed to favor certain people … if you weren’t that person or that group of people … you were never going to progress further.

Research finding that white, male-dominated senior managers have promoted employees in their own image, suggests that such practices can increase conscious and unconscious bias’s influence and undermine equality and diversity (Broughton and Miller 2009; Reynolds et al. 2022). Moreover, extreme and conformant characteristics (Section 3.3) of “well-liked” employees who were rewarded with pre-determined promotions (Section 3.2.5), contributed to organizational inequality regimes.

Additionally, some participants felt that commercial growth was prioritized over employee growth, resulting in employees being treated as business “resources” in conflict with career plans.

[Highly performing colleague] had a development plan … But [department head] said, ‘We need your expertise, doing [current] role … in [another] team, because it’s very weak … After six to eight months, we’ll put you into the role you want for your development.’ And they wouldn’t let him out. He’s been in that role for 18 months … and he’s not learning anything.

Similarly, cost cutting (Section 3.2.1) limited promotion opportunities and perpetuated “broadening” by “wiping out” middle management, consistent with Moss et al.’s (2005) study.

Eleven is middle-senior, you’ve got a bridging stone at 12, and 13 is a significant step up. There’s about four roles at 12. They just don’t exist. And they don’t allow people to jump. So, people are stuck, moving sideways, hoping one day a 13 will leave.

Other growth mechanisms undermined “learning cultures:” the fast-paced environment hindered “reflection” (Section 3.2.2) and penalizing failure stifled acknowledgement of and “learning” from mistakes (Section 3.2.5).

The reflection afterwards, you don’t often have time to do it if you jump to the next thing.

Mainstreamed flexibility constituted a fourth beneficent growth mechanism. ComCo’s flexibility initiatives included a formal policy reproducing Australia’s legal entitlement for parents or people with responsibilities for children, carers and other defined employees, to request flexible working arrangements, which could only be rejected on reasonable business grounds. However, during the research, ComCo introduced a flexibility initiative enabling all employees to request flexible working arrangements, which encompassed part-time and flexible hours and locations, and leave addressed in existing policies (purchased additional annual leave; gender-neutral paid parental leave of 12 and two weeks for primary and secondary carers respectively; 10 paid personal leave days combining sick and carer’s leave; family violence leave; volunteer leave; and community service days).

Many participants greatly appreciated these benefits. However, it has been argued that flexibility initiatives which, in ComCo’s case, purported to “support,” “help” and “allow” employees to make “choices” and “find” ways to “balance” and “achieve” work and life “responsibilities” and “goals,” constitute employees as neoliberal workers individually responsible for finding balance between life and extreme work demands, thus perpetuating organizational and societal constraints upon individual agency (Toth 2005; Hoffman and Cowan 2008; Kornberger et al. 2010). Moreover, congruent with research (Hoffman and Cowan 2008; Kornberger et al. 2010; Murthy and Guthrie 2012), flexibility’s overarching documentary justification was being “good for business” and “driving financial performance and productivity,” which influenced discourses of what flexibility was for, prioritizing growth, and who flexibility was for.

Three discourses emerged on what flexibility was “for”. The most prominent documentary discourse of flexibility for life, including “different challenges” faced by “all employees,” such as “parenting,” “pets” and “commuting,” was reflected in many parents and fewer childless people’s effusive descriptions of ComCo as “accommodating,” “understanding,” “supporting” and “caring about” employees’ lives through flexibility.

It’s the best company I’ve worked for, because it does care about your work and home life.

Conversely, a flexibility for work discourse emerged from documentation and narratives about working flexibly to “get the job done” or for “headspace;” framing flexibility as choosing when and where to meet unchallenged job demands (Kornberger et al. 2010).

At the end of the day, we’ve gotta get the job done … in terms of facetime in the office or working in the evening … as long as you meet your goals and expectations, however you do that is fine.

Finally, a reciprocal flexibility for work and life (where life “loses”) discourse emerged from documentation and narratives framing flexibility as “working both ways”.

If you want … the company to be flexible with you, you also need to be flexible. So, if there’s an important meeting in two weeks … organize a babysitter or a friend to pick up the kids … flexibility needs to be two-sided.

A prominent documentary example of reciprocal flexibility, combining careers and parenting while “compromising” neither, was reflected in some participants’ perceptions that flexibility produced not only an ability to do both (although not necessarily without compromises) as in other research (CohenMiller et al. 2022), but also an “expectation you can do both”.

The way that we culturally are … parenthood is celebrated, and there’s a lot of flexibility … the expectation is that you can do both.

However, reflecting part-time employees’ absence from documentary flexibility examples, some participants believed that ComCo’s “focus” was on “flexibility over part-time” because part-time hours were incompatible with extreme work expectations (Section 3.3.1).

The focus is on flexibility over part time … I don’t think asking to go part-time is encouraged … You could work a day from home a week; I don’t think that would be frowned upon … I think working part-time hours would be, rather than a flexible day here and there.

The business driving for growth each year … means a lot of time and work … You can’t see how [part-time] would look.

Consequently, part-time workers were disqualified from meeting the “expectation” of “doing both” work and life while “compromising” neither, exposing it as an expectation that employees with external responsibilities work long full-time hours flexibly. In this respect, although part-time hours’ incompatibility with extreme work expectations likely contributed to part-time workload, financial and career penalties and stigmatization (Section 3.3.1 and Section 3.3.2), ComCo’s flexibility benefits may have aggravated such stigmatization. That is, rather than having to “choose” between committed full-time working and sacrificing parenting, or uncommitted part-time working and compromising extreme working, the “focus” on full-time flexibility normatively obliged employees to “choose” to meet extreme working and parenting responsibilities by working long full-time hours flexibly, and may have exacerbated penalties and stigmatization of those who “chose” to work part-time hours. It has accordingly been argued that flexibility benefits are designed not to challenge working structures underpinning capitalist growth and inequality regimes, but to impose masculine working expectations upon all employees, by obliging employees with external responsibilities to meet work expectations flexibly (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Hoffman and Cowan 2008; Kornberger et al. 2010). In this respect, participant narratives unmasked “flexibility for work and life” as negotiating “compromised” life-contexts around extreme work expectations (Section 3.3.1)—a negotiation in which employees’ lives “probably lose”.

There’s so much work you do after hours … and you’re always available and logging on and [overseas] calls … So, it’s gotta work both ways … I think overall, you probably lose. You’re not working a 40-h week.

Accordingly, work overrode life in “working both ways” discourses (Hoffman and Cowan 2008), congruent with flexibility’s “growth” justification and growth’s prioritization over flexibility. In this respect, participant narratives suggested that ComCo’s masculine growth culture (Section 3.1), cost-cutting mechanisms (Section 3.2.1), and expectations of extreme workloads, hours and availability (Section 3.3.1), and conformant commitment and going “over and above” (outside working hours) for career growth (Section 3.3.2), necessitated and rewarded flexibility for work; but conflicted with and were prioritized over flexibility for life, similar to research (Pini and McDonald 2008; Walters and Whitehouse 2015; Berdahl et al. 2018).

ComCo has made it more difficult to access flexibility … people made redundant, cut to fewer people. So, you might not have another person to cover for you … To then say, ‘We offer [flexibility],’ is just a fiction.

However, some participants accepted that conflicts between flexibility and “getting the job done” flowed from ComCo’s “need to grow,” naturalizing neoliberal capitalism’s growth mantra (Walters and Whitehouse 2015).

End of the day, they’re a business and they need to grow … so they say, ‘We’re all about flexibility,’ but … we also need to get the job done, so those two don’t always match up.

Flexibility’s growth justification and subordination to growth meant that growth-related prerequisites controlled flexibility for life (Hoffman and Cowan 2008). Documentation required flexibility to meet “business needs,” as well as pre-established “trust” based on “performance,” “outputs” and “results;” reflected in many participants’ narratives of flexibility as “earned” and “deserved” based on “results,” “performing” and “delivering,” similar to Thornton’s (2016) findings.

It’s all about the results really … if you’re performing and you’re delivering then it goes hand-in-hand.

Finally, despite documentary “flexibility for all” discourses, participants perceived different types of flexibility as being “for” and “used by” different categories of people, creating gendered, tenured and class-based flexibility availability and consequences, consistent with research (Swanberg 2004; Charlesworth and Baird 2007; Pini and McDonald 2008). Narratives suggested that mothers had the most, and fathers and childless people the least, access to flexible hours, parental leave and part-time hours, in ascending order the most stigmatized and penalized forms of flexibility (Section 3.3.1 and Section 3.3.2).

If you’re a mother, I think this opens the flexibility door … whether it’s part time or leaving early.

However, almost “anyone” could use “accepted” and “embraced” remote working “for work”.

Working from various locations is very much encouraged … [ComCo] has really adapted and embraced that style.

Conversely, junior and new employees, who had not “earned their stripes,” were disqualified from being “trusted” to use flexibility.

I haven’t seen anyone new … it’s always people coming back from maternity leave that have that kind of flexibility. So, I don’t know if … you need to have earned your stripes before you get it.

Moreover, documentation excluded roles that “by their nature” were not amenable to flexibility, which participants identified as operations, factory and customer-facing sales roles that “needed to be available” to meet “unforgiving” targets.

In operations you need to be available … it makes it really hard for people who have families. Then the business puts out how fantastic [ComCo] is that you have to have these options. And my first thought is, yeah, if your job allows you at all to be like that.

Such narratives reinforced societal mothering, fathering and childlessness discourses, and gendered and classed ideal worker practices underpinning neoliberal-capitalist organizations’ growth (Amstutz et al. 2021): mothers were constituted as carers who were enabled to participate in life, but risked stigmatization and penalties for deviating from extreme and conformant worker configurations; while fathers, childless people, junior and newer employees, and employees in working-classed and male-dominated operations and factory roles and female-dominated customer-facing sales roles requiring availability, were constituted as workers at the expense of delegitimized non-working lives.

The final beneficent mechanism promoted employee wellbeing. Similar to Murthy and Guthrie’s (2012) study, ComCo documentation linked employee wellbeing with “productivity,” “efficiency,” “retention” and company “success”. However, documentation attributed poor wellbeing to “things going on” in employees’ “personal lives,” with “high-pressure” working environments only affecting wellbeing in combination with personal “stress;” reinforcing neoliberal discourses by making individuals responsible for their own wellbeing and excusing ComCo from addressing growth mechanisms and expectations that reduced wellbeing (Hoffman and Cowan 2008). Accordingly, ComCo’s wellbeing initiatives “empowered” employees to enhance mental health, nutrition and physical activity through information, gym memberships, counselling services and apps.

Although some participants felt “positive” about ComCo’s wellbeing “focus,” many felt that ComCo’s growth imperative, mechanisms and expectations were prioritized over, and inimical to, wellbeing. For example, authoritarian leadership (Section 3.2.3) made people feel “bullied” and “intimidated;” and extreme workloads and working hours (Section 3.3.1) not only hindered participants from participating in encouraged wellbeing activities, such as “taking lunch breaks,” but pushed people to “breaking points” and were not “sustainable for health or wellbeing,” consistent with research (Trudel et al. 2009). Accordingly, some participants perceived wellbeing programs as “tokenistic”.

It needs to be a manageable level, rather than trying to do 12-h days. That’s just not sustainable long-term for people’s health or wellbeing, or just enjoying work.

This new program focuses on mental health, physical health and workplace environment … But people don’t have the capacity to even think about these things when they’re getting hammered for financial results … If we were serious, you’d not do some commercial initiatives to give people space to engage.

3.3. Constituting Extreme and Conformant Workers for Growth

ComCo documentation and participant narratives suggested that, cascading from ComCo’s growth imperative (Section 3.1) and mechanisms (Section 3.2), were “expectations” of employees which idealized, valued and rewarded extreme and conformant workers for growth, and penalized and stigmatized deviant workers, as in Kugelberg’s (2006) research. Although documentary expectations were framed neutrally, participant narratives suggested that they interacted with societal-level gender, parent-status, class, age and race discourses, and societally and organizationally embedded interpersonal interactions and individual contexts, to influence employees’ actual or assumed capacity to meet such expectations; thereby reinforcing ComCo’s inequality regimes.

3.3.1. Quantitatively Extreme Workers

ComCo documentation and participant narratives suggested that parallel to, and flowing from, the overarching growth imperative (Section 3.1), was an overarching extreme performance expectation, which produced workload, intensity, hours and availability expectations that conflicted with ComCo’s beneficent growth mechanisms (Section 3.2.6). Similar to research (Trudel et al. 2009), such expectations made some participants feel ComCo viewed “people” as “numbers” or “just employees” who existed solely for company growth, thereby constituting workers as capitalist growth mechanisms.

Stop expecting the incredibly long hours our team put in … Allow people to be more than just an employee of ComCo. Recognize all the different roles people have in their lives.

Participant narratives suggested that extreme quantitative expectations not only flowed directly from ComCo’s growth imperative, but also through the conduit of authoritarian and self-interested leadership (Section 3.2.3 and Section 3.2.4): “pressure flowed down” from “hierarchical,” “self-interested” leaders who wanted to “hit the numbers” to receive their “substantial” bonuses, for employees to “get everything done,” “constantly deliver” and “give [leaders] what they want … this very instant,” congruent with research (Cooper et al. 2001; Pocock 2003; Trudel et al. 2009).

Everyone beats their chests about good results, because that’s what gets them their bonuses. But the way they get the results … by ordering other people to do things … it’s somewhat disheartening.

Conversely, participant natives suggested that extreme quantitative expectations could be alleviated, if not eradicated, by feminine supportive leaders (Section 3.2.2) who “take on as much as they can,” “restructure” workloads, “readjust” goals and “respect” their work–life boundaries, as in Todd and Binns’ (2013) study. However, the specter of being penalized with “a smaller bonus” could negate such support (Section 3.2.5).

[Manager] said, ‘There’s gonna be years when you’re operating at a really high level … other times you won’t get a high-performance rating, but you’ll be able to take your foot off the pedal.’ But that didn’t sit comfortably with me, because if I’m not getting a high-performance rating … then I get a smaller bonus. [Mother, manager]

Extreme worker expectations, discussed in turn below, reinforced intractable societal and organizational-level discourses of ideal, unencumbered masculine workers supported by full-time wives, excluding fathers and childless people from non-working lives and responsibilities, and mothers from careers (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Pocock 2003; Swanberg 2004).

The overarching extreme worker expectation was of high performance. Documentary expectations that employees “deliver,” “drive,” “achieve” and “exceed” “targets,” “results” and “high standards of excellence,” were mirrored by participant narratives of a “huge expectation” for employees to “over-deliver” and achieve “unreasonable” and “nearly undoable” targets simultaneously with “high standards of quality,” to contribute to “results,” “success” and “growth on growth on growth on growth”.

The expectation is really, really high. We’re always getting ramped up … to improve on last year, drive bigger, greater performance.

Simultaneously, some participants acknowledged they were there to “grow ComCo,” thereby constituting themselves as growth mechanisms.

I know your job is your job and we’re all here to perform at our best and help grow ComCo … I understand that business is business and we all are required to place equal effort to ensure we succeed and deliver great results. I do however feel that more reasonable targets should be implemented as some targets are not achievable.

Growth mechanisms rewarding high performance and penalizing failure (Section 3.2.5) reinforced masculine high performance expectations (Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000). In turn, high performance expectations flowed to other extreme quantitative demands.

First, many participants felt that ComCo expected “unbalanced,” “unfair,” “unreasonable” workloads of employees, which made people “really, really busy, all the time”.

The demands are huge … while we say we should only do what’s possible, there’s an expectation you do it all.

Similar to Thornton’s (2016) study, some participants attributed such workloads to cumulative global and local growth “priorities” and “initiatives” (Section 3), ComCo’s “aggressive” culture of “doing all these things, all at once” to achieve growth (Section 3.1), cost-cutting requiring people to “start double hatting, take on bigger and busier roles” (Section 3.2.1), and collaboration requiring “back-to-back” meetings and emails in addition to “real” work (Section 3.2.4).

ComCo consistently makes decisions that end up unbalancing the workload … it wants to achieve a lot of things. We’re looking for … big targets in operational savings … so many new products … large programs to be rolled out … But in a lot of ways, it’s just been about cutting out people, and the remaining people are left to carry the load.

[Meetings and emails are] a full-time job, if you just did that and didn’t do any work.

As in Doyle et al.’s (2013) research, some participants described assumptions and expectations childless people and fathers were more able than mothers to meet workload (and other) expectations.

There’s probably a desirability by some managers, that having no children … could be beneficial in terms of flexibility, workload, output and no distractions.

[Childless man]

Second, participant narratives suggested that ComCo expected employees to work “extremely hard,” “fast,” “efficiently,” “relentlessly” and to “unreasonable deadlines” to “make it happen,” flowing from excessive workloads and the fast-paced environment (Section 3.2.2).

They expect you to work hard. They expect you to be running your projects and workload efficiently and making it happen and hitting your timelines … If you’re not hitting results or you’re missing some deadlines … there’s an expectation that you work your guts out to hit those.

[ComCo] expects a lot from employees … things go quick … you have to be on your toes and multiple projects on the run.

Although ComCo’s flexibility documentation framed mothers as the “most productive employees,” participant narratives suggested that there were contrasting assumptions about whether flexibility for “life” or “work” (Section 3.2.6) met “hard-work” expectations. Although employees working flexibly “for work” were “accepted” as working “productively,” encumbered mothers working flexibly “for life” to manage childcare responsibilities could be judged as “wanting to slack off” or “lazy,” while childless employees, particularly men, could be stigmatized as illegitimately working remotely to “get drunk and sleep in”.

A lot of the people [working flexibly] were senior leaders, human resources and new parents, and various departments would shun that and go, ‘That’s just people wanting to slack off.’

Additionally, societal-level discourses of less productive older employees (Posthuma and Campion 2009), lazy Aboriginal Australians (Balvin and Kashima 2012) and hard-working Asian Australians (Ho 2017), suggest that hard work expectations may also contribute to organizational age and race regimes.

Third, many participants described expectations, contractual obligations and necessities for employees to work “incredibly long,” “extreme,” “excessive” full-time hours, whether traditionally or flexibly, to manage excessive workloads, consistent with research (Bittman et al. 2004).

We are flexible, but … the performance expectations are really high … so that would mean people working really, really long hours.

Moreover, senior leaders’ “enormous” hours reinforced perceptions that long-hours expectations increased with, and were a prerequisite to, seniority. Indeed, research has found that senior managers’ persistently masculine working practices (Chesterman and Ross-Smith 2010; Thornton 2016) undermine gender diversity initiatives (Van Vianen and Fischer 2002) by creating insuperable career barriers for employees (disproportionately mothers) who are unable or unwilling to perform all-encompassing senior management (Devine et al. 2011). ComCo’s senior leaders’ gendered working patterns exacerbated such barriers: participants described a father working “24/7” with little, if any, flexibility; and a mother working “enormous” hours with ad hoc flexibility, made possible by masculine reliance on domestic support (Wajcman 1998; Pocock 2003; Devine et al. 2011).

[Male leader’s] amazing … he works 24/7. He’s in a meeting every single minute of every day … He’s got an older family. I have no idea how he manages it … I’d hate to know where he actually gets his work done outside of meetings … I can only assume it’s in his own time.

[Female leader] works 7 a.m. to 9–10 p.m. But she does prioritize [school activities] in her diary and [children’s activities] on weekends … [She] is open to say the only reason she can do her job … is ‘cause her husband is at home full-time.

Similarly, some participants observed gendered patterns in how employees met long-hours expectations.

A lot of mums leave on time or earlier to pick up kids … I don’t feel like guys tend to leave the office early. Guys probably do more of those … later hours at work. I’m sure everyone else catches up after hours and works later. They just do it more flexibly.

Such narratives reinforced flexibility as a growth mechanism obliging people with external responsibilities to perform extreme work flexibly (Section 3.2.6), marginally counteracting unencumbered ideal worker configurations (Thornton 2016). Nevertheless, in the context of a masculine, unencumbered, middle-classed (Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000; Berdahl et al. 2018) “late culture,” in which ComCo and some senior leaders “rewarded” and praised visibly late unencumbered workers, long working hours contributed to ComCo’s gender regime (and its inequitable work and life consequences for presumed encumbered mothers and unencumbered fathers and childless people) despite flexibility (Lewis and Humbert 2010).

[Colleague] was announced [role] of the year. And something that was specifically rewarded … in the speech by [department head] was, ‘No-one works as late as this person, he’s always the last person to leave.’ If you look at messaging and reinforcement, that’s probably not the best thing to do, especially from a mental health perspective. He’s a young guy, he doesn’t have a family or anywhere else to be.

Fourth, reflecting documentary descriptions of “flexible,” “24/7” jobs, participants described expectations of being “always on,” “connected,” “available” and “flexible” for work “all day and night,” which dissolved temporal and spatial work–life boundaries (Thornton 2016). Reinforcing flexibility for work and life discourses (Section 3.2.6), some participants framed flexibility and availability for work as a reciprocal requirement of, and conflicting with, flexibility for life.

We’ve got a culture that doesn’t expect people to physically be there, which is great … but there is the expectation you’re always connected electronically.

[There was] routine flexibility … The only thing was the expectation … that work hours could be anything the team needed … all day and night.

Expectations to be “always on” linked to global influences, particularly in ComCo as a multinational subsidiary (Section 3), and cultures and expectations of collaboration (Section 3.2.4 and Section 3.3.2) requiring attendance at afternoon meetings that “ran over,” were scheduled after 5 o’clock, or with international colleagues “at different times of night”.

Despite ComCo’s flexibility documentation endeavoring to counter “biases” that flexible workers were less available than traditional workers, some participants believed that it was “harder” for mothers to meet availability expectations, than fathers or people without children, whom ComCo assumed to be “flexible” for work. Similarly, research has found that oppressively masculine availability expectations (Ely and Meyerson 2000) disadvantage women in the context of disproportionate domestic and caring responsibilities (Lewis and Humbert 2010).

It’s harder for women with children to … fulfil over and above commitments. Being able to work longer hours and being available enables other people to be more recognized for promotion.

[Childless woman]

Fifth, participant narratives suggested ComCo expected, but nonetheless penalized, extreme part-time workers. Although ComCo flexibility documentation sought to dispel “myths” that “productive,” “ideal” and “available” workers were unencumbered full-time workers, documentary examples rebutting the myth excluded part-time hours. Many participants’ beliefs that part-time hours were incompatible with extreme worker expectations of “getting better results” and thus penalized with “blocked growth” (Section 3.3.2), elucidated this documentary silencing of part-time hours. However, consistent with research (Pocock 2003; Kugelberg 2006; Lewis and Humbert 2010), such incompatibility was negated, particularly at senior levels, by expecting unadjusted full-time targets, workloads, working hours and availability, while “not getting paid for it,” producing part-time workload and financial penalties.

I’ve never been part of a conversation where we say, ‘How do we make a role part time? What work do we take away? What structures do we have to support someone, so they don’t have to be always on, on their day off?’

Part-time workload, financial and career penalties reinforced ComCo’s inequality regimes by penalizing ComCo’s mostly female part-time workers and enforcing masculine extreme working.

3.3.2. Qualitatively Conformant Workers

In addition to ideal quantitative working practices (Acker 2006), ComCo documentation and participant narratives suggested that ComCo expected, valued and rewarded qualitative values, behaviors and qualities which flowed from, contributed to and mirrored ComCo’s growth imperative and mechanisms, thereby constituting conformant workers in ComCo’s image as neoliberal corporate selves committed to growth. Such processes were redolent of corporate colonization of the self (Casey 1995), in which corporations select and shape employees to conform to and internalize values, cultures and characteristics promoting company goals by valuing and rewarding desired qualities, and suppressing and penalizing qualities hindering company goals. Beyond promoting growth, such characteristics contributed to inequality regimes in complex ways.

First, documentation and narratives suggested that ComCo expected, valued and rewarded employees who “think like them” by “assimilating” to ComCo goals and values, including “drive,” “commitment” and “passion”.

There is a [ComCo] way of thinking. To get ahead you must think like them.

In this respect, documentary descriptions of employees who, like ComCo, were “energized for,” “driven by,” “enthusiastic” about and “dedicated” and “genuinely committed” to “achieving growth,” were reflected in participants’ perceptions that ComCo valued and rewarded employees who were “driven” and “committed” to achieving results, consistent with research (Casey 1995; Reid 2015). Unsurprisingly, conforming to these masculine qualities (Berdahl et al. 2018) necessitated prioritizing work and its extreme quantitative expectations (Section 3.3.1) as the “most important thing” in life.

Performance-driven business … numbers-based … results-driven. People that can assimilate into that culture are better equipped to succeed.

I think they value commitment and hard work.

Additionally, linking with the mechanism of intrinsically rewarding euphemized growth (Section 3.2.5), documentation described employees who were “passionate about,” “loved” and had “pride in” their jobs, ComCo and its brands; supporting research that has found ideal workers have expanded to incorporate identification with and fervor for their work, the company and its products (Casey 1995; Williams et al. 2013; Reid 2015). Although no participants described such an expectation, some described themselves in ways that uncannily mirrored the company discourse.

I do feel like I belong at ComCo … the type of work we do … that love of the brand … I have a passion for the industry as well.

Together, these expected and valued qualities constituted “driven,” “committed” and “passionate” workers who felt included in and intrinsically motivated and fulfilled by, and would prioritize achieving, company success (Casey 1995), reflecting societal-level citizen worker discourses (Section 1) and reinforcing growth and its concomitant inequality regimes. For example, despite documentation linking flexibility to “commitment” and “engagement” and praising highly committed men with “boundaries,” many participants believed that ComCo, some managers and some colleagues, assumed and expected that fathers and childless people were “committed” to and “prioritized” work; but that mothers (particularly those who “put family in front of work” by taking parental leave or working part-time or flexible hours) had conflicting priorities which “diminished their value and capability in the organization,” disqualified them from “dedication” to and “prioritizing” work and, for those taking parental leave or working part-time, could result in career stagnation, demotions or forced resignations, as in Broughton and Miller’s (2009) study (discussed below in relation to employee growth expectations).

[ComCo] is a good example for what is the norm out there, that guys work full-time, guys work big hours, you need to be committed and working five days a week.

I would like to see better investment parents … in the form of promotions prior to and upon returning from parental leave. This will send a clear message that ComCo supports employees even when they choose to become parents and that we believe this choice does not diminish their value and capability in the organization.

Such expectations can also contribute to age regimes. Older employees can be stereotyped as less motivated, driven and passionate than younger employees (Posthuma and Campion 2009; Parry and Smeaton 2018). In this respect, disadvantages for older as well as younger employees may be inferred from some younger participants’ perceptions of a 35 to 45-year-old “age club” (discussed below in relation to employee growth expectations).

Second, documentation and narratives suggested ComCo expected masculine competitive, confident, extroverted and self-promoting workers, reflecting and reinforcing individualistic cultures for growth (Section 3.2.4) and contributing to ComCo’s inequality regimes. Participant narratives revealed that individuals and teams were rewarded with “role” or “team of the year” for “winning” the “competition” with other teams to “grow” and “hit targets,” flowing from rewarding growth (Section 3.2.5). Predictably, masculine competitiveness required masculine extreme work (Section 3.3.1).

Hitting targets … whatever challenges are put in front of us, making sure it happens, going even beyond that, and doing that time and time again

Additionally, consistent with documentation expecting employees who “hit the ground running,” were “confident” and “energetic,” and had “personality,” some participants believed that ComCo expected, valued and rewarded masculine “confident,” “extroverted” and “self-promoting” employees, and devalued and penalized feminine “introverted,” “collaborative” and “quietly achieving” employees, consistent with research (Casey 1995; Ely and Meyerson 2000; Lewis and Humbert 2010; Berdahl et al. 2018).

Confident people are the people that get told they’re ready for promotions … rather than people that are more introverted.

Such expectations contributed to ComCo’s inequality regimes in complex ways. Lewis and Humbert (2010) have argued that self-promotion, extroversion and confidence require visibility, disadvantaging disproportionately female part-time, temporally flexible or remote workers. Research has also found that women are more likely than men to lack confidence in their ability to fulfil professional roles and competencies (Cech et al. 2011) and be averse to self-promotion (Broughton and Miller 2009). Additionally, participant narratives revealed interpersonal gender and race-deviance penalties, consistent with research and reflecting societal discourses of dominant masculinities and submissive femininities (Williams et al. 2013; Berdahl et al. 2018; Reynolds et al. 2022): women who performed masculine competition and confidence could be resented and “not liked,” which may have been exacerbated by stereotypes of submissive, modest or shy Asian women (Dodds 2012); while men could be more stigmatized than women for deviating from masculine confidence and extroversion by performing feminine quietness.

There’s certainly an element of that classic quiet men are weak, whereas quiet women are accepted or it’s their place in society.

Third, documentation and narratives suggested ComCo expected collaborative, relationship-building and networking workers. Linking with collaborative cultures (Section 3.2.4) and collective rewards (Section 3.2.5) for growth, ComCo documentation expected, and promised to reward with career opportunities, “team players” who could “collaborate,” “partner,” “support each other” and build “effective” and “meaningful” relationships. Similarly, many participants felt that ComCo expected “teamwork,” “collaboration,” “networks” and “relationships” as prerequisites for “doing jobs well”.

[People doing their jobs well] is your relationships with different people as well … when you’re working with [other departments and sites] … There’s so many different variables and people that you need to talk to, your relationships with those people make a big difference.

Although feminine collaboration expectations can promote gender diversity (Cheryan and Markus 2020), Casey (1995) has contended that companies rhetorically value teams and relationships because they make employees feel included and emotionally committed to team and company success. Thus, expectations of feminine ways of working were co-opted to constituting all workers as dedicated to masculine, capitalist growth. More practically, collaboration expectations exacerbated masculine extreme workload and availability expectations (Section 3.3.1).

Expectations to build relationships influenced ComCo’s age and gender regimes in other ways. Many participants believed that “the connections you’ve made and people who know you’re interested” were crucial to meeting conformant worker career growth expectations, supporting some participants’ perceptions “tenured” growth opportunities disadvantaged younger and newer employees (further discussed below).

They’re the ones who were in the trenches back in the day, and their tenure and the relationships they’ve built have got them where they are.

Consistent with research (Wilson 2000), narratives also suggested that networking expectations may have disadvantaged feminine encumbered employees, including parents who limited “hanging out … after work hours,” and parents and childless people who prioritized “workload” over socializing during working hours to minimize work–life conflict. Similarly, Lewis and Humbert (2010) have contended that networking requires visibility, disadvantaging flexible workers. More subtly, another participant described money-focused cultures as inimical to building “trusted support networks,” suggesting that employees who met the conformant worker expectation of “assimilating” to the masculine growth culture may have been advantaged in building networks.

It’s an environment that’s so focused on doing work and making money, that if you wanted to pull someone aside … a lot of them would say, “You’re wasting my time. I need to go make some money”. It feels like an organization where there isn’t much heart.

Fourth, ComCo documentation and participant narratives suggested ComCo expected employees to be “ambitious” and to “grow” themselves and their careers. In the corollary of rewarding high performance with career progression (Section 3.2.5) and enabling employee growth for company growth (Section 3.2.6), documentation expected and valued “curious” employees who were “keen” to “learn,” “reach potential” and “grow careers,” and “accountable for [their] own” development. The striking parallel between ComCo’s language of corporate and employee “growth,” constituted workers as neoliberal corporate selves committed to, and individually responsible for, personal and therefore company growth (Perlow 1998). Similarly, participants believed that ComCo rewarded “ambitious” employees who “agitated” to “prove themselves,” making employees individually responsible for securing promotions by visibly performing masculine ambition through meeting masculine confidence and self-promotion expectations (Cheryan and Markus 2020). In this respect, it has been argued that valorizing ambition and career growth values masculine individual success over feminine collective success through collaboration (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Berdahl et al. 2018).

[ComCo] wants to achieve a lot of things, so it expects employees to be ambitious, driven.

People seen as being ambitious … get promoted … You need to be showing that you’re really keen on your career … and be out there agitating to get another role.

Congruent with research (Perlow 1998; Mescher et al. 2010), documentation expected employees to “grow” by “broadening” and “deepening” before progressing, including sideways moves, working in other areas, working internationally and undertaking “challenging” projects. Similarly, many participants believed that ComCo and its leaders expected, modelled and rewarded “broadening” and “deepening,” which required “building up cross-department experience,” and going “above and beyond” and “stepping outside your day job” through “stretching” projects, late night “global working groups,” “double-hatting” two roles simultaneously, and postgraduate qualifications. Conversely, “focusing” could be penalized with career stagnation, reflecting research in which management roles were perceived as requiring generalized experience (Broughton and Miller 2009).

I’m open to taking up opportunities. It might be extra work, but there’s always something to learn from it and widen my scope and experience … That’s really important to show an interest and learn more, so when future opportunities come about, you’re in the right space to be considered.

[Senior leader] spent his early career moving sideways … Other people stayed in one stream and moved ahead of him … but he leapfrogged them later in his career because he built his pyramid early.

However, participants described gender, parent-status, sexuality, race, age, tenure and seniority-based facilitators and barriers to meeting growth expectations. Flowing from diversity for growth (Section 3.2.6), some participants felt that “diverse” (including female, gay and colored) employees were “advantaged” in growing careers based on “merit” and “talent”.

If anything, I think [characteristic] is probably an advantage … [ComCo] is really big on diversity.

However, others perceived diversity targets as “reverse sexism,” “ticking boxes” and “balancing numbers” which disadvantaged young white men, consistent with research (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Wood 2006; Woods et al. 2022). Some negative perceptions resulted from the diversity “focus” interacting with career planning (Section 3.2.6), whereby favored senior women were given management roles in areas in which they were inexperienced, resulting in “nightmares” for teams. Conversely, some participants believed that, although ComCo “valued” women locally, women were less valued in some overseas offices, possibly hindering women’s ability to meet the growth prerequisite of working internationally.

A very smart and powerful woman … people saw her as a leader [in global location] … the position above her went vacant, and she was acting in that role for some time, but they didn’t give that role to her … And they didn’t want to promote her to that role because, it was said by manager at the time … they just don’t want a woman in that role.

Moreover, career penalties and barriers for taking parental leave, working part-time, and temporal or geographic constraints, suggested that “diversity” was an “advantage” only for those able and willing to perform the masculine norm. Some participants described career penalties for taking primary carer’s leave, such as “being demoted upon return from maternity leave,” or managers warning that taking paternity leave would “affect career prospects”. Similarly, many participants believed that part-time employees were stereotyped as not “ambitious” and “blocked” from “growth” and “promotion” opportunities, and that ComCo was “blinkered” about senior part-time roles, reflecting research (Pocock 2003; Thornton 2016).

There needs to be a mind-shift among senior management. Women going on maternity leave should not be penalized for leaving the workplace to look after their children and family.

Part-time females are provided with less promotion opportunities and personal growth, as senior roles are not set up to be performed part-time. We need to review this and stop blocking career opportunities.

Accordingly, predominantly female employees who took primary carer’s leave or worked part-time faced barriers meeting “ambition” and career “growth” expectations, reinforcing societal caregiving, career-sacrificing mothering discourses (Section 1). However, some participants felt that fathers would be more stigmatized and penalized than mothers for deviating from gender norms by working part-time, reinforcing societally stigmatized caregiving fathering and excluding fathers from life and parenting (Section 1).

I think [working part-time] would limit [a man’s] career … It’s so different to what everyone else is doing that it would definitely be noticed … I don’t think [women] stand out so much.

Supporting Perlow’s (1998) argument, narratives also suggested that “above and beyond” career growth prerequisites, which compounded already “unreasonable” workloads, working hours and after-hours availability expectations (Section 3.3.1), created career barriers for temporally constrained employees with non-work responsibilities and needs, including parenting responsibilities, maintaining mental and physical health or simply getting “enough sleep”. Additionally, senior leaders’ “ridiculous hours” (Section 3.3.1) imposed “limits” on meeting career-growth expectations for employees with “outside interests,” such as children, friends, hobbies or wellbeing.

I’ve got a full life. I couldn’t imagine [department head’s] role … I would put a limit on my career at [ComCo] before I got that role.

Similarly, narratives suggested that career “killing” or “limiting” barriers for geographically constrained employees were created by ComCo’s geographic mobility growth prerequisites, including training opportunities requiring travel, and career growth requiring relocation to other sites or state, national or international offices.

Growth’s [in head office] … because of the way the company’s set up, that’s just the way it is.

It’d be career-limiting to say I wasn’t willing to go overseas.

Given that women are more likely than men to be geographically constrained by, for example, being unable to travel, needing to work close to schools, relying on extended family support, or partners’ employment (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Pocock and Charlesworth 2017), geographic mobility promotion prerequisites reinforced ComCo’s gender regime.

Finally, some participants described an “age club” in which employees aged “between 35 and 45” who had “waited in line,” “been there for a while” and “followed the career plan,” had “privileged” access to training, development and promotion opportunities, regardless of performance. Similarly, some participants described a “culture of looking after senior leaders,” including “pooling” financial resources for training and leadership programs “at the top,” and “monopolizing” senior roles in different areas “to give them more experience”.

There’s a culture of looking after senior leaders with cross-department moves, to give them more experience in other areas … A senior sales guy who had no marketing experience [moved] to quite a senior marketing manager role … they said the business sees him as a senior leader, but he needs experience outside sales to get into the leadership team. But other people, they’ve been in their roles for a while … they’d probably have been resentful that someone with no marketing experience got that role and they weren’t considered.

Age, tenure and incumbent seniority privilege, which coincided with having “kids” and “mortgages,” meant some participants believed that less senior, younger or early-career employees were deprived of opportunities and expected to “broaden” ad infinitum despite their abilities, equating to career and remuneration stagnation.

Even if on a merit level, you might be performing higher than them, tenure is … very challenging to overcome.

Accordingly, some participants believed that younger employees were expected to “earn their stripes” through “tangible results” over lengthy tenures; with no “fast-tracking” or leadership programs for highly performing younger employees.

Age should not be a defining factor on when people are given opportunities in the organization. I have been told I am ‘very young’ and will be a ‘very young manager’ should my professional development plan play out. I do not believe age has any bearing on my ability to perform my tasks and to coach junior staff members.

What did they used to say to me? “You need to earn your stripes”. And what that means is, you might have some really great ideas, but you also need to be able to back that up with tangible results … You’re looked down upon as a young person.

Moreover, not only young, but childless people, felt stereotyped as incapable of “managing people”.

Being single … and not having kids, you’re not seen as being capable of being a mature leader. Because you don’t have a family, therefore you don’t understand, therefore it’s harder for you to manage people.

Accordingly, some participants believed that management roles for younger employees were rare, based on “luck,” caused “uproar” for deviating from “waiting in line,” and paid based on “years of experience” rather than capability and responsibility, reinforcing perceptions that ComCo valued and financially rewarded tenure over ability. Beyond the “age club’s” upper limits, older employees, who can be stereotyped as having less learning ability and development potential (Posthuma and Campion 2009; Parry and Smeaton 2018), may also have been disadvantaged in meeting “growth” expectations.

Fifth, ComCo documentation and participant narratives indicated that ComCo expected employees to be “adaptable” and “agile” to “make things happen fast,” consistent with Casey’s (1995) research.

You have to be … adaptive in your thinking … deal well with ambiguity … don’t mind change.

Although not stereotypically gendered, adaptability and agility expectations cascaded from and reinforced the masculine fast-paced environment for growth (Section 3.2.2). Such expectations may also contribute to organizational age regimes: older employees have been stereotyped as less adaptable and open to change than younger employees (Posthuma and Campion 2009; Parry and Smeaton 2018).

Sixth, mirroring respectful workplaces subordinated to growth (Section 3.2.6), participant narratives qualified documentary expectations that employees treat others with “care,” “dignity,” “courtesy” and “respect”. Many participants believed that ComCo had “strong values” expecting feminine respectful behavior (Cheryan and Markus 2020). However, some believed that commercially successful senior male managers were exempt, “untouchable” and rewarded despite masculine bullying, aggression (Section 3.2.3), “chauvinism” and sexual harassment (Berdahl et al. 2018).

I’ve spoken about the way some of our senior managers [bully and belittle people] … so I feel like we’ve got some strong values in what we expect from employees, but we don’t always put it into practice.

Such perceptions suggested that masculine extreme performance (Section 3.3.1) was valued and rewarded over feminine care and respect (Wilson 2000). Moreover, respectful behavior expectations have applied to women more than men (Wilson 2000), reinforcing societal-level caring femininity discourses (Section 1), and penalizing women for gender-deviant “aggressive” leadership (Berdahl et al. 2018), for which men were rewarded because it “delivered” results (Section 3.2.3).

Seventh, documentation and narratives suggested workers were expected to be resilient. Some job advertisements required “resilient” employees in the context of working with a “driven” sales team, which was perhaps a euphemism for masculine “aggressive” and “competitive” sales cultures (Section 3.2.4). Similarly, flowing from masculine authoritarian leadership (Section 3.2.3) and commercially successful leaders’ respectful behavior exemption, narratives suggested that resilience was necessary to “work out how … to manage” some managers’ “bad” behavior.

Some people that you … feel not comfortable working with … The fact they’re still promoted, still encouraged in their ways of working, rather than being corrected or taught to be better. So, it’s up to the team to figure it out as you go along.

Resilience expectations made individuals responsible for “managing” such behavior, and excused ComCo from “correcting” manager behaviors and cultures constructed as crucial to growth, reinforcing masculine exploitative class relations within organizational hierarchies.

Finally, documentation and narratives revealed conflicting expectations of “speaking out” and “toeing the line”. Documentary expectations that employees “challenge the status quo,” “speak up,” “voice opinions,” “innovate” and “take initiative,” were reflected in some participants’ perceptions ComCo “promoted” employees who were “willing to have opinions”.

That category of promotion … if you’re willing to have opinions in meetings … that’s how people see and perceive you.

Although feminine-enabling leadership cultures (Section 3.2.3) may have supported employees in meeting such expectations (Maier 1999), individuals’ conformance to conformant worker expectations of masculine confidence may also have facilitated masculine assertive speaking out (Berdahl et al. 2018; Cheryan and Markus 2020).

Documentation also expected employees with “positive mindsets” and “can do” attitudes who “never give up”. However, when interacting with masculine authoritarian leaders’ expectations of unquestioning respect for authority (Section 3.2.3) (Maier 1999), narratives suggested that “can do” expectations mutated into expecting and rewarding feminine, submissive “toeing the line” and telling leaders “what they want to hear;” while saying “no” or challenging leaders was “shut down” and discredited as lacking “belief”.

[Senior leader] was getting pushback [from subordinate] to say, “That’s not a good approach”. … And she did not want to hear that. She just wanted to hear someone selling, “Yes, it’s gonna be great. Let’s try these things. Let’s keep going”. And that reflected badly on his … reputation with her, and then she influenced others to say his heart’s not really in it. So, you have to toe the party line.

Participant narratives suggested that such expectations reinforced gender, class and age regimes. For example, a male leader was described as rewarding tenured females who were “easy to control” and did not “challenge” him, but seeing outspoken younger employees as “threats,” reinforcing gendered and tenured class hierarchies within employees manifesting in masculine leadership and feminine subordination (Maier 1999). Other participants described gendered and classed penalties (including being judged as “aggressive” or given poor performance ratings) for women who failed to toe the line or who spoke out in a “rough around the edges” or inadequately “nice” manner; suggesting that women were expected perform feminine and suppress working-classed qualities when speaking out, to avoid penalties for gender-deviant or working-classed masculine assertiveness (for which men were praised and rewarded); reinforcing societally idealized middle-classed, submissive femininities and dominant masculinities (Berdahl et al. 2018; Cheryan and Markus 2020).

4. Discussion

The multilevel organizational inequality regimes grounded theory suggests that globally and societally embedded organizational power relations, cultures, discourses, labor divisions, interpersonal interactions and performances, socially and discursively constituted ComCo as a growth-driven company, which cascaded to and was reinforced by wide-ranging growth mechanisms and expectations of ideal workers, illustrated in Figure 1.

The growth imperative’s octopoidal influence on ComCo’s inequality regimes becomes apparent in the complex, interlinking and pervasive mechanisms and expectations emanating from and supporting growth, the sheer complexity of which is illustrated in Figure 1. Growth mechanisms include organizational, leadership, manager, team and workplace values, cultures, policies, processes, environments, practices and behaviors understood by participants as supporting growth, which global and societal contexts render gendered, classed, aged and raced. Such mechanisms include prioritized and normalized (neoliberal, masculine, Western, classed and aged) cost-cutting expendable employees, a fast-paced environment, authoritarian leadership cultures, individualistic cultures, individual rewards for success and penalties for failure, and beneficent processes enabling employee growth; and co-opted but deprioritized (feminine, collective) supportive, empowering leadership cultures, collaborative cultures, collective rewards and penalties, and beneficence in the form of diversity and inclusion, respectful workplaces, flexible working arrangements for work and life, and employee wellbeing. The growth culture and supporting mechanisms in turn flow to discursively constituted ideal workers that extend beyond quantitively extreme working practices (Acker 2006) to qualitatively conformant practices and attributes (Holgersson and Romani 2020), and subordinated, stigmatized and penalized deviant workers, which global and societal contexts again rendered gendered, classed, raced and aged. Idealized quantitative practices included masculine extreme performance, workload, hard work, working hours, availability and flexibility expectations of valued and rewarded full-time workers and stigmatized and penalized part-time workers. Idealized qualitative expectations encompassed co-existing but sometimes conflicting qualities and behaviors, such as masculine drive, commitment and passion; masculine-neoliberal competition, confidence, extroversion and self-promotion, which conflicted with feminine-collective collaboration and relationship-building; masculine-young ambition and personal growth; masculine-young adaptability and agility; resilience within masculine aggressive leadership and competitive workplace cultures; feminine respectful and caring behavior (from which commercially successful autocratic, aggressive leaders were exempt); and navigating between acceptably middle-classed masculine speaking out and feminine-submissive toeing the line. Interestingly, Figure 1 shows that masculine growth mechanisms tend to flow to idealized masculine-individualistic quantitative and qualitative working expectations and can inhibit deprioritized feminine-collective mechanisms and working expectations. However, although some feminine-collective mechanisms tend to flow to feminine-collective qualitative expectations, they can also exacerbate masculine expectations (such as cultures and expectations of feminine collaboration and flexibility for work and life increasing masculine workload and availability expectations), reflecting their co-option to growth. In the opposite direction, idealized qualitative working expectations can inhibit the growth mechanism of feminine diversity regardless of whether they are feminine or masculine.

These organizational-level processes are multifaceted, multidimensional strategies redolent of organizational-level cultural hegemony (Gramsci 1971; Jessop 1997) and corporate colonization of the self (Casey 1995): they manipulate and control employees’ ways of acting and thinking, by exercising power directly through policies, processes, contracts and management hierarchies; colonizing workers’ selves through organizational and working cultures and discourses, which constitute ideal quantitatively extreme and qualitatively conformant workers as motivated and fulfilled by, and existing for, organizational growth; and instituting complex systems of reward and punishment to reinforce idealized practices and qualities. In ComCo, discourses constituting ideal employees as extreme and conformant workers for growth, largely mirror those constituting ComCo as a growth-driven company. Thus, ideal workers are created in the company’s image and exist for company ends. These processes’ power is revealed in many participants’ unquestioning acceptance of ComCo’s growth imperative, mechanisms and expectations, to the extent of constituting themselves as growth mechanisms.

However, inequality regimes are no longer simplistically one-sided. In the context of globalization increasing employee and consumer diversity, and societal citizen-worker discourses configuring universal adult workers in service of growing capitalist economies (Marston 2008), organizational processes have diversified, incorporating masculine–individual–white and feminine-collective-colored cultures and practices to constitute all workers as existing for company growth. It cannot be overemphasized that ComCo’s diversified organizational processes may have increased diversity and made some “diverse” employees feel valued and included (Cheryan and Markus 2020). Nevertheless, even diversified processes can reinforce inequality regimes. For example, some growth mechanisms and expectations (such as cost cutting, authoritarian leadership, extreme working, resilience and toeing the line) reinforce exploitative capitalist class relations by constituting employees as expendable, extreme and subordinated workers for growth. Others align with Western, neoliberal, masculine, middle-classed, white and aged authority, competition, individualism, confidence, assertiveness, agility, ambition, success and unencumbered commitment (Wajcman 1998; Maier 1999; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Berdahl et al. 2018), reinforcing gender regimes through women’s greater likelihood of self-excluding from masculine cultures (Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Matos et al. 2018). However, although some growth mechanisms and conformant worker expectations align with feminine, collective and colored support, empowerment, collaboration, inclusion, flexibility and respect, they are co-opted and subordinated to the growth culture, which itself reinforces masculine–neoliberal–capitalist power relations (Casey 1995; Maier 1999; Ely and Meyerson 2000; Thornton 2016). Accordingly, Western, neoliberal, masculine, middle-classed, white, aged mechanisms and extreme and conformant working practices and qualities, can be constituted as valued, rewarded, normalized, prioritized, necessary, excused defaults that more directly and effectively achieve growth, than feminine, collective, colored mechanisms and conformant worker qualities (Ely and Meyerson 2000; Van Vianen and Fischer 2002; Cheryan and Markus 2020).

These valued and rewarded defaults, and progressively devalued, stigmatized and penalized deviants, provide clues about socially and discursively constituted worker hierarchies in ComCo, aligning with multilevel, multidimensional, intersectional perspectives of symbolic hierarchies of femininities and masculinities, and illustrating multilevel interactions (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Schippers 2007) with Australia’s societal contexts (Section 1). For example, despite involved breadwinning fathering being increasingly societally idealized, and childlessness being subordinated or stigmatized, organizationally hegemonic ideal workers who exist solely for company growth, continue to be configured around masculine, heterosexual, middle-classed, white, aged, abled qualities and practices of quantitative extreme unencumbered performance, workloads, hours, relentless work, availability and flexibility for work (Acker 1990), as well as qualitative ambition, drive, commitment, passion, competitiveness, confidence, extroversion, self-promotion, agility, assertiveness and autocratic, aggressive leadership; many of which quantitatively and qualitatively inhibit involved fathering practices and qualities, reinforce traditional breadwinning fathering masculinities and citizen-working childless femininities and masculinities, which are excluded from delegitimized non-working lives, and reinforce traditionally masculine attributes and qualities. Moreover, conflicting with societally stigmatized pariah (Schippers 2007) full-time working mothering femininities, flexibility discourses configure complicit workers (Connell 1987) around compromised (slightly encumbered, less committed) feminine, flexible extreme and conformant worker practices and qualities, that nevertheless contribute to company growth and qualify for financial and career rewards. However, such rewards are subject to temporal and geographic constraints on going “over and above” for career growth, and qualitative constraints requiring feminine working practices of performing devalued and unrewarded invisible “supporting” labor, freeing those performing masculine working practices to monopolize power and rewards (Ely and Meyerson 2000). Finally, although part-time working intensive mothering practices are increasingly societally idealized for reinforcing patriarchal-capitalist power relations, organizational processes prioritizing capitalist growth, configure pariah workers (Schippers 2007) around stigmatized and penalized feminine, encumbered, uncommitted, unambitious part-time working, as incompatible with growth. These societal and organizational-level nuances (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) can be understood in the context of nuanced societal and organizational-level imperatives. At Australia’s societal level, hierarchical femininities and masculinities reinforce patriarchal-capitalist power relations not only through economic growth, but also through (women’s) reproduction and nurturing of future workers. Conversely, ComCo’s growth imperative sought to subsume all employees within extreme and conformant working for growth.

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

Identifying these societal and organizational-level processes is not merely an academic exercise. Interactions between organizational-level processes and societal contexts impose practical consequences at individual and relationship levels within organizations, which reinforce inequality regimes. Organizational worker hierarchies can make employees falling within socially constructed categories subordinated to idealized configurations, feel excluded and exclude themselves from organizations; create gendered, classed, raced, aged and abled barriers and facilitators to performing, and being rewarded for, extreme and conformant worker practices and qualities; result in recruitment, remuneration, development and promotion decisions based on unconscious bias that employees will, or will not, perform idealized configurations; lead to the double bind of stigmatization of employees who deviate from their own socially constructed identities in order to perform idealized practices or qualities, or who deviate from idealized configurations despite their socially constructed identities falling within them; require employees to suppress authentic performances of individual practices, qualities and identities deviating from idealized configurations, in order to reap the rewards of conformance and avoid penalties for deviation; and impact employees’ mental health and wellbeing (Berdahl et al. 2018; Matos et al. 2018; Parry and Smeaton 2018; Cheryan and Markus 2020; Repchuck 2022; Reynolds et al. 2022). Despite (or because of) these societally and organizationally driven consequences, employees are discursively constituted as neoliberal corporate selves individually responsible for their own work and life successes or failures, thereby absolving organizations of responsibility for addressing inequality processes which promote growth (Toth 2005).

This research’s strengths lie in its critical feminist-grounded theory and Foucauldian case study of a single organization, triangulating qualitative documentary, questionnaire and interview data, which facilitated a holistic understanding of, and enrichment of theory on, multilevel processes contributing to organizational inequality regimes (Martin and Turner 1986; Mishra et al. 2014; Holgersson and Romani 2020). Moreover, although the research cannot be generalized beyond ComCo, the theory may be relevant to other organizations (Lewis and Ritchie 2013). However, the research was limited by the small and relatively homogenous participant sample, which represented the understandings of employees who were exclusively white-collar, and predominantly managerial, full-time employed, located in “middle-classed” head office, university educated, aged 35 years or over, spoke only English at home and heterosexual; and the inability to proceed to theoretical sampling. Nevertheless, interviewees’ deep descriptions, supplemented by qualitative questionnaire data, organizational documentation and previous research, enabled data triangulation that strengthened the emergent theory. However, because we commenced the research focusing on gender, parent-status and class, and included age and race perspectives only as iterative data collection and analysis progressed, the depth of our intersectional analysis was limited, necessitating reliance on the extant literature.

Accordingly, along with Acker (2012), we call for future research to intentionally explore intersectional inequality regimes and their concomitant quantitatively and qualitatively ideal workers. Moreover, we call for organizations such as ComCo, which are committed to diversity, to participate in such research, in order to identify and address processes reinforcing inequality regimes despite diversity initiatives. Most importantly, organizations must address Western neoliberal-capitalist growth imperatives, their reinforcing mechanisms, and entrenched perceptions that hierarchical, individualistic, masculine, white cultures, practices and qualities are most effective in delivering growth, all of which undermine diversity and flexibility, and perpetuate inequitable employee experiences.

Organizations can begin to eradicate inequality regimes such as those identified in this research, and move toward genuinely valuing all employees, by implementing practical strategies to address their underlying processes. For example, organizations can move beyond rhetorically valuing feminine cultures, qualities and practices, to materially rewarding them, by introducing key performance indicators (KPIs) for employees with managerial responsibilities relating to supportive, empowering, respectful and connected leadership, and for all employees relating to collaboration, relationship building and non-core cultural and wellbeing activities. Organizations can also facilitate and include feminine contributions by, for instance, introducing rules on turn-taking and not interrupting in meetings to enable all attendees to contribute, as well as providing environments outside meetings for more introverted and less confident employees to contribute, recording such contributions as an addendum to meeting minutes and circulating before decisions are made. Moreover, organizations can publicly normalize, recognize and award employees who successfully engage in gender, class, race and age non-conformant performances of qualitative and quantitative expectations. Similarly, organizations can endeavor to ensure recruitment and promotion decisions are equitable by, for example, ensuring job descriptions are gender, class, age and race neutral, and engaging in blind recruitment and promotion processes in which decision-makers are unaware of applicants’ irrelevant characteristics, such as sex, age and race (Genat et al. 2012), and introduce fast-tracking and leadership programs for highly performing employees who experience gendered, aged and raced barriers to career progression.

Organizations can also counteract expectations of masculine working practices, such as excessive workloads, working hours, intensity and availability and flexibility for work, by mandating adequate staffing to meet organizational targets and priorities within total full-time equivalent hours of between 35 and 39 h a week, which are associated with the highest job quality and associated health and wellbeing consequences (Charlesworth et al. 2011); incorporating realistic targets and goals in employees’ KPIs, which encompass core job tasks and time-consuming non-core expectations, and equate to total workloads achievable within full-time hours (or part-time equivalent) over a working year of 48 weeks or less (taking into account annual leave and paid additional leave); ongoing adjustment of KPIs and workloads to account for new or changing organizational targets and priorities, and employees’ changing circumstances (such as working part-time); providing teams with adequate financial and human resources, or adjust team targets, to account for staff changes such as secondments, parental leave, part-time hours and paid additional leave; disallowing “double hatting” (simultaneous responsibility for two roles) unless KPIs of both roles are adjusted to be achievable within employees’ contracted working hours, or adequately planning and resourcing cascading vacancies to enable employees to take professional opportunities to temporarily fill senior roles without concurrently performing their permanent role; reducing workload, working-hours and availability-exacerbating meetings and emails by eliminating unnecessary meetings and carbon-copying of emails; ensuring adequate time for meetings to finish during business hours, banning meetings with local colleagues scheduled after business hours unless exceptional circumstances exist, and alternating outside hours meetings with international colleagues (Howe-Walsh and Turnbull 2016; Perlow 1998); and eradicating bonuses, eliminating higher bonuses for exceeding as opposed to achieving expectations (with the former instead being rewarded with career opportunities), or increasing base salaries compared to bonuses for senior leaders, to reduce senior leaders’ financial motivations to take on high workloads and long hours, and pressure subordinates to do so, and reduce employees’ financial motivations to accede to such pressure.

Along with eradicating excessive quantitative job demands (Skinner and Pocock 2008; Moen et al. 2013), organizations can minimize employees’ inability to combine work and life responsibilities by improving equitable access to, use of, and consequences for using, flexible working arrangements (including flexible hours and locations, part-time work and parental, personal and other leave), by ensuring flexible working arrangement requests are an employment entitlement rather than benefit (Walters and Whitehouse 2015); mainstreaming flexibility by entitling any employee, not just those with caring responsibilities, to request flexible working arrangements (Kossek et al. 2010); reducing individual responsibility for managing work and life interactions by including policy requirements for direct managers and human resources representatives to proactively discuss flexible working arrangements with employees for whom they may be helpful (Nowak et al. 2012); reducing manager flexibility gatekeeping (Todd and Binns 2013) by requiring consultation between employees, managers and human resources representatives about flexibility requests; and increasing managers’ motivation to support flexible working arrangements by including in managers’ KPIs targets for team flexible working arrangements applying to mothers, fathers and childless people, and for career development and progression of direct reports working flexibly or part-time or taking parental leave; and reducing geographic barriers to career progression by making full-time remote working in feasible circumstances a formal entitlement. These recommendations are far from exhaustive. However, taking action to address organizational inequality regimes and worker hierarchies, is essential to increasing equitable and inclusive employment experiences among all employees.