Informalism’s gendered effects : interrogating the normalisation of informal sport organisation recruitment and selection practices

![CDATA[Building on the work of gender sport management scholars such as Shaw and Slack (2002) and Hoeber (2007, 2008), and drawing on a poststructural feminist conceptual framework, this research problematises how staff in different employment positions and departmental areas identify and explain gaps between espoused organisational values and enacted sport workplace practices as they shape how gender is understood and normalised in sport organisations. The research is a response to academic claims that dominant values and entrenched privileges can remain hidden (Lewis & Simpson 2010, 2012), and that they can reproduce workplace cultures where gender inequities linger in practices that are woven into organisational cultures (Meyerson & Fletcher 2000). These practices can be ‘subtle and insidious’ (Ely & Meyerson 2000a, p. 105) and privilege some and disadvantage others (Claringbould & Knoppers 2012; Kolb & Merrill-Sands 1999; Martin 1990; Shaw 2006a, Shaw 2006b). Drawing on the experiences of employees from four Australian national and state sport organisations the research explores how women and men negotiate and resist the gender power relations behind unsanctioned hiring practices and answers the research question: How do women and men interpret the influence of informal sport organisation recruitment and selection practices and interactional dynamics on their sport management careers? Problematising the tensions and gaps between managers’ interpretations of formal hiring practices and employees’ experiences of the gendered informal practices enacted to appoint sport personnel can draw attention to ‘knowledges that have been disqualified’ (Foucault 1980b, p.82). For Foucault (1980b), it is through the re-emergence of ‘low-ranking knowledges… even directly disqualified knowledges … that criticism performs its work’ (p.82) and so my research examines the ambiguities and gaps between espoused and enacted recruitment and selection practices so that they might be challenged and reimagined in different and more equitable ways.]]