Discourses of fatherhood in leadership and organisations

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation study is to increase understanding of men’s work-family relationships by examining fatherhood, especially in leadership and organizations from a gender perspective. In this study, discourse analysis is used. To gain a multidimensional understanding of the issue in question, the study is implemented on three levels: micro, meso and macro. The research material consists of 59 interviews with fathers and 67 media articles concerning fatherhood in organisations and leadership. This thesis consists of an introductory essay and three empirical studies. It is often claimed that in the context of organisations and leadership, fatherhood is generally ignored. According to the critical organisational research perspective, workplaces are gendered and certain masculinities have become represented as the organisational ideal. My results show that on the micro level, father managers continue to construct their fatherhood mainly by drawing on traditional masculine ideology. However, this study also shows that some father managers have broken with tradition and do gender differently. From the meso perspective, my results show that some leadership practices relating to men’s work-family balance are supportive and encouraging, but the traditionally masculine management culture is still alive in many respects in organisations, and that hinders men’s opportunities and willingness to take up involved fatherhood. On the macro level, my findings show that fatherhood in Finnish working life seems to be in transition: although traditional fatherhood is still strongly positioned around men's work-family relationships, involved fatherhood is increasingly present in societal-level discourses, which offer men both the possibility of redoing gender and the possibility of multiple patterns of masculinity. It can be concluded that leadership as well as organisations in general, still tend to value traditional masculine ways of working, and this pressures fathers to pursue masculine ideals and limits their opportunities to have a good work-family relationship.