Jones--Agents of Change

I thought that Bullis and Stout provided an interesting analysis of the assumptions in traditional research on organizational socialization and how a feminist standpoint would respond to those assumptions with a different orientation toward socialization. What assumptions do you think Bullis and Stout would identify in DiSanza and Myers? How do you think Bullis and Stout would recommend shifting these articles to become more from a critical feminist standpoint?

I was also struck by Bullis and Stout's discussion of individuals and organizations as active agents. In traditional organizational socialization research, many have moved away from the tabula rasa to approach this area in terms of assimilation: "the processes through which the organization attempts to socialize the individual newcomer and the processes through which the individual newcomer personalizes the role taken in the organization" (p. 51). The authors argue that we should not isolate individual agency because it moves attention away from power differentials and power relationships (seep. 66). While I agree that we need to tend to these dynamics, how are we supposed to understand organizational change and the negotiation that occurs between individuals and organizations without considering organizational and individual agency? They then went on to argue that from a feminist standpoint approach "research is conducted to improve women's lives by enabling them to make active choices about how they encounter their worlds" (p. 70). For me this is the very essence of individual and organizational agency. From this frame, I think we can conceive of ways in which individuals and organizations are constrained and also have opportunities to make choices. It is a dialectical relationship. So, looking back to traditional approaches to assimilation and the feminist standpoint approach to agency, how do these two differ? Is there just a clearer emphasis on reflexivity in the feminist approach?