Re-coding Leadership Legitimacy in Gendered Organizations: MAN+ as a Counter-Script to Masculinity Contest, Ideal-Worker, and Unequal Conditions of Authority: Review Article

Ignacio Bonasa Alzuria

doi:10.58372/2835-6276.1384

Authors

Ignacio Bonasa Alzuria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58372/2835-6276.1384

Keywords:

masculinity scripts, masculinity contest culture, gendered organizations, ideal-worker norm, leadership legitimacy, psychological safety, ethical leadership, intersectionality, burnout, organizational culture

Abstract

This theory-building article advances MAN+ as a counter-script for re-coding leadership legitimacy in gendered organizations. The article starts from a persistent blind spot in leadership scholarship: influential theories explain ethics, motivation, authenticity, and trust with growing sophistication, yet still under-specify the gendered conditions under which leader behaviours become recognizable as credible authority. In many organizations, leadership is tacitly authorized through a legacy masculine script that prizes invulnerability, domination, relentless work devotion, emotional restriction, and exemption from repair. Drawing together feminist organization theory, hegemonic masculinity, masculinity contest culture, ideal-worker scholarship, role congruity, status beliefs, precarious manhood, psychological safety, ethical leadership, engagement, and burnout research, the article conceptualizes these legacy scripts as legitimacy regimes rather than merely personal styles. MAN+ specifies four mutually reinforcing dimensions of an alternative script: Mindful authority, Accountable power, Nurturing standards, and Purposeful stewardship. The article makes six contributions. First, it theorizes masculinity as an organizational script operating at the interface of culture, legitimacy, and control. Second, it clarifies why legacy scripts remain sticky even when they are costly. Third, it identifies the discriminant theoretical surplus of MAN+ relative to adjacent leadership frameworks by centring the gendered recognizability of authority. Fourth, it specifies mechanisms linking counter-scripting to voice, learning, repair, inclusion, ethical restraint, and sustainable performance. Fifth, it develops propositions, moderators, and boundary conditions through which the model can be critically examined rather than normatively celebrated. Sixth, it integrates intersectional cautions and risks of managerial co-optation so the framework is not misread as either a men-centred remedy or a substitute for structural reform. The result is a more precise bridge between gender-and-organization scholarship and leadership development, offering a vocabulary for analysing how organizations might de-authorize harmful norms of strength without romanticizing care, privatizing inequality, or depoliticizing power.

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