Conceptualizing and Disrupting Heteronormativity as Performative in Management Education: Speech Acts and LGBTQ* Injurious Language.

A slowly expanding body of literature has examined the problem of heteronormativity in management education. Scholars have begun to agree that heteronormativity is constituted in and through management education, reproducing heteronormative binaristic notions of sexuality and gender in management curricula, teaching activities, academic scholarship, and business schools. Research has demonstrated the negative outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer* (LGBTQ*) people, but questions remain about how heteronormativity is constituted as normative in management education. Addressing this, we demonstrate how heteronormativity is performatively constituted as normative through language, and what management educators can do to disrupt it. Analytically, Judith Butler's (1990) theory of performativity, which emphasizes the constitutive power of language and repetition of speech acts, is pivotal to conceptualizing heteronormativity as performative. We interrogate the performative effects of LGBTQ* injurious speech acts, which have been lamented by scholars as ubiquitous and harmful, and show how they constitute and sustain heteronormativity as normative in management education. As a remedy, we derive insight from Butler's ideas about reworking the power of injurious speech to inform management educators how they can disrupt the performativity of heteronormativity. The essay contributes novel theoretical ideas about conceptualizing and disrupting the performativity of heteronormativity in management education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]