Overcoming Conflict between Symmetric Occupations: How “Creatives” and “Suits” Use Gender Ordering in Advertising

In knowledge-based organizations, conflict among interdependent occupations can be exacerbated by the absence of a clear hierarchical ordering of these occupations within the organization. Moreover, given women's inroads into some traditionally male -dominated occupations but not others, these workplaces are increasingly horizontally gender segregated. In this paper, we study how members of these symmetric and segre-gated occupations manage conflict in U.S. advertising agencies through the case of rela-tionships between "creatives" (copywriters, designers, and creative directors) and "suits" or account practitioners (account executives, strategists, and managers). Crea-tives and suits are at the same organizational level in their agencies. While creatives are primarily men, suits, traditionally also men, are now primarily women. Drawing on par-ticipant observation in five different U.S. advertising agencies and over 100 interviews, we show how creatives and account practitioners use gender ordering to overcome juris-dictional conflict. These practices are grounded in enacting essentialist gender differ-ences that transform symmetric occupational relationships into hierarchical ones by embedding the gender hierarchy. We find that, while gender ordering helps women and men in cross-occupational pairs get work done, it also reinforces women's disadvantage, because, for women, it involves low-status and emotionally taxing scut work that it does not involve for men.