Juncture

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Albert J. Mills introduced the idea of the juncture in his initial study of how the cultures of organizations become gendered (i.e., develop and privilege practices that are perceived as either male or female associated) and how gendered practices change over time. To answer these questions, Mills began with a major case study of a single organization that had been in operation for at least 50 years, was still in business, and whose history could be tracked through archival materials, written histories, and interviews with past and present employees. To that end, he began his research with a study of British Airways and its predecessors. The immediate problem was twofold: One, what to focus on as exemplars of gendered practices and, two, how to conceptualize organizational change, as selected gendered practices (i.e., allmale flight crews) gave way to new practices over time (i.e., the advent of the stewardess).

The answer for Mills was to focus on (a) the hiring and imaging of women, and (b) periods where there was a marked difference between British Airways' hiring/imaging practices. This generated eight distinct periods, or junctures:

• The development of an all-male organization (1919–1924)
• The introduction and growth of female employment (1924–1939)
• The war years and the rapid expansion of female employment (1940–1954)
• The consolidation and normalization of female employment (1946–1960)
• The eroticization of female labor (1960–1974)
• Equity struggles (1974–1981)
• The development and consolidation of professionalized female labor (1982–1991)
• The emergence of a new juncture focused on female management and leadership (1991)

In the search for different periods of time, Mills became convinced that each period was not a peri-odization of one continuous flow of time but rather evidence of alternative explanations centered on the distinct ways of making sense, or the ongoing sensemaking, of those involved and of the researcher. For example, the period from 1919 to 1939 not only witnessed a change in hiring practices at British Airways, but also a different way of thinking about “women's work”; the distinct periods also provided the researcher with a heuristic for studying gender over time. Thus, instead of period, Mills developed the term juncture to capture the [Page 510]idea that organizational change may not simply be a substantive change to but also of those involved. This became clear as Mills found that airline officials didn't simply suddenly decide to open up employment to women in 1924 but that the decision represented a fundamental shift in thinking within the company of the relative worth of men and women and their appropriate work tasks. In contrast to notions of linear progress—where period A leads to B and B is seen as an almost inevitable advancement of A, or progress—the notion of the juncture focuses on actors' ways of thinking about change over time and how earlier periods are reframed through changed narratives.

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