Introduction

Sexuality has traditionally been seen to be the very antithesis of what organizations are about-which tends to be constructed as control, instrumental rationality and the suppression of instinct and emotion. Sex and work, it is argued from this perspective, don’t mix. However, more recent arguments have suggested that this is in fact a denial of the obvious-that sexuality pervades every aspect of organizations, but that this is not conventionally acknowledged. In this book we explore this claim in detail by analysing the interconnections between sex and work in two different ways: the first looks at the channelling of sexuality in organizations, exploring how work may be seen as sexually organized; the second at how sexuality is commercially commodified, and how sex work itself becomes organized. Thus we read sex into organization in the first part of the book, and organization into sex in the second part of the book.