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Expansion of global production in the automotive industry has made America's local plants increasingly racially varied but also more financially pressured. However, research on global firms under financial pressure that focuses on the workplace dynamics of managers and production workers of different races and nationalities remains limited. This article examines the organizational processes of masculinity enactment of three groups of men—Japanese managers, American managers, and American production workers—in a financially pressured Japanese auto-parts company. It describes how Japanese managers rationalized account manipulation as a profit recovery scheme and American workers validated this approach as being self-sacrificing and representative of heroic leadership; white American managers asserted their authority over engineers, women, and Japanese men by using intimidation and emasculation; and a production worker displayed his compensated masculinity by forcing his team to engage in hiding defective products. This article discusses the implications of these acts and their legitimization of unethical behaviors with the goal of increasing corporate profits from the perspectives of masculinities and of management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of masculinity have focused on the inequalities among different groups of men, yet they have failed to consider women’s roles in men’s engagement in various positions within hegemonic masculinity. Using life-history interviews with five interracial couples made up of Asian American men and white women, as well as five individuals who either were or had been involved in an Asian American man/white woman interracial couple, this article examines the cross-racial competition in which Asian American men employ multiple strategies to ascend the masculinity hierarchy by seeking white women’s validation of their manhood. Asian American men’s cross-racial competition utilizes four distinct processes: detesting white masculinities; approximating to white masculinities; eschewing white masculinities; and failing in the attempt to maneuver white masculinities. By analyzing these four processes, the author further addresses how the emerging Asian American masculinities that are constructed by Asian American men and white women in the context of intimate relationships challenge or reinforce the current orders of race, class, and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]