Turning to Glitter in Management Studies – Why We Should Take ‘Unserious’ Glitter Serious to Understand New Management Practices

In this article, author Jette Sandager reflects on the inspiration behind her research article, “The sensuous governmentality of glitter: Educating managing women scientists with gleaming STEM Barbies,” published in Management Learning.

Glitter is a ubiquitous substance, surrounding us everywhere, all the time. Glitter gleams from the different makeup products, we powder on our bodies; it dazzles from the jewelry and clothing, we wear; it radiates from paint on cars, bikes, and boats; it sparkles from shop decorations, especially in seasons of celebration; it shines from the packaging of fancy food; and it glows from the tech products, we cannot exist without in modern life.

Despite glitter undeniably playing a big role in most people’s lives, the literature on this sparkly substance is scarce. Except for a minor group of environmental scholars, arguing that glitter causes danger to nature, only few scholars have paid attention to glitter. However, in this essay, I argue that academia should take glitter seriously – and indeed Management Studies should, as glitter can be theorized as a materialized sensuous governmentality and thus as a serious ‘tool of management’.

In the essay, I explain glitter as shiny surfaces, sparkling as they attract and reflect light. Further, I contend that with its light-catching character, glitter has the ability to illuminate and thereby manage attention. But the managing performativity of glitter is complex. Because in managing attention to what it touches, glitter simultaneously distracts attention away from everything it does not touch, hiding in the dark shadows of glitter’s alluring beam and ray. To put it in other words, glitter manages attention by producing vision along with blindness.

To illustrate the serious implications of using glitter to manage attention, I analyze three gleaming artifacts in the form of gleaming STEM Barbies^®, all covered in glitter to manage girls’ attention to STEM. Women have long been low represented in STEM, and governments as well as STEM businesses express a critical need for increasing women’s representation in these work fields asap.

In theorizing glitter as a materialized sensuous governmentality, the essay discusses how the glitter of the STEM Barbies^® manages girls’ attention to STEM. But also how the glitter manages girls’ attention to certain stereotypical ways of acting as a woman in STEM, making them blind to alternative ways of acting. Consequently, the essay concludes that the glitter of the Barbies^® is as likely to decrease as increase the representation of women in STEM. So, research shows us that:

•  Most girls will not be able to identify with stereotypical images of women behavior, and such stereotypical images will thus manage girls’ avoidance of rather than attraction to STEM.

•  If girls adopt a stereotypical way of acting in STEM, they are likely to suffer discrimination and ultimately exclusion from STEM.

The essay is an initial, provocative exploration of glitter, and with glitter’s strong associations to frivolity – and not unimportant, femininity – it is probably not going to enter the mainstream of Management Studies any time soon. But I still hope that the essay’s theorization of glitter can inspire new and critical ways of studying the seriousness of the ‘unserious’ in new management practices.