The Careless Rules of the Game: Pregnancy, Child Care and Management

Abstract

As noted in Chapters 1 and 2, there has been a significant shift to corporatization and new managerialism in the Irish public service over the past two decades (Collins et al., 2007). While the pace and intensity of the managerialist movement in education is most visible in the higher education sector, it is operating at all levels and over a long period of time. Under the influence of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), human capital theory replaced the theocentric paradigm as the official ideology of Irish education in the late 1960s, mutating into what O’Sullivan has called ‘mercantilism’ in recent decades (2005: 180–223). This ‘modernist’ development was a global trend (Marginson, 2006). It was represented as egalitarian and gender inclusive, yet it was also a way of reshaping the power of capital and instituting new forms of male power within organizations (Bottomore and Sachs, 2007; Davies, et al., 2006; Whitehead, 2001). The focus on performativity, a core principle of new managerialism, not only created gender exclusions, it also marginalized people on disability, ethnicity, race and social class lines within organizations, something that has often been ignored by organizational studies (Holvino, 2010; Lumby, 2009).