Purpose – This article examines the relationship between strategic sports metaphors, such as “slam dunk” and “trash talk,” and white middle-class heterosexual masculine embodiment in competitive work environments. Competitive organizations, like sports arenas are contested spaces, and in these environments employees, like athletes, work to “position” themselves to maximize their chances of winning valuable projects and clients from other employees and competing companies.Value of chapter – Unlike previous research which finds that men’s use of sports at work is primarily a feature of male networks and socializing, the argument presented here is that sports tropes are used and enacted by men to structure the production process, including intra- and inter-organizational business meetings, client projects, and committee work. Sports references are also used to construct hegemonic masculinity at work, which results in women, gays and black men being constructed as inferior.Research implications – The issues raised in this chapter will be useful for empirical studies that examine the relationship between the importance of sports at work, and whether groups such as women, gay men and lesbians, the disabled, older, and overweight business professionals identify with sports and whether this destabilizes assumptions of embodied heterosexual able-bodied male superiority.Approach – The data used in this analysis draw upon the my background as a Division I collegiate basketball player and 10 years of experience and observations as a marketing professional and business executive in the financial services industry in the United States.
