Organizational Reforms, `Ideal Workers' and Gender Orders: A Cross-Societal Comparison

In this article, we put forth a comparative study of gender distinctions and relations within the processes of organizational reform in a German and a Finnish bank. We demonstrate how these processes are interwoven with assumptions about the `ideal worker' (cf. Acker 1990; 1992) that organizational members are measured against in management. We argue that the `ideal worker', even though, in general, a masculine notion, should not be perceived as a universal or as a static category. We suggest that notions of the `ideal worker' not only vary within different models of work organization, but that they vary across societal contexts. These notions are based on different gender orders (cf. Connell 1987) which penetrate organizational life and become incorporated in different, though predominantly masculine, conceptions. `Ideal worker' is also not a static category. If we consider gender distinctions and relations in organizations as produced, reproduced and redefined through continuously ongoing social interaction, there is a need to analyze how the notion of the `ideal worker' evolves in time — when organizations become subject to change efforts through reforms.