Managerial work and gender: Ethnography of cooperative relationships in small software companies

This article provides new knowledge on how women manage small companies in the context of the Finnish ICT sector. Adopting a social constructionist perspective on management and gender, and drawing on ethnographic research methodology, the article examines how women owner-managers of small software companies construct gender when working for the establishment and maintenance of various types of cooperative relationships with business partners, customers and employees. The results show that the gendering processes are not dependent on individual traits, behaviour or interaction per se, but relate to the immediate business contexts in which the owner-managers operate. It further suggests that research on management and gender should acknowledge the specific business contexts and their effects on gendering of managerial work in more detail.