Managerial Control of Employees’ Intercorporeality and the Production of Unethical Relations

This paper aims to contribute to intercorporeal ethics studies by enlarging their political understanding. Intercorporeal ethics revolve around the idea that, within organizations, our embodied interaction with each other is a conduit to enact genuine ethical relations of autonomy, mutual recognitio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2022-10, Vol.180 (2), p.393-406
Main Authors: Paring, Géraldine, Pezé, Stéphan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomy
Business administration
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Deployment
Dominance
Education
Ethics
Humanities and Social Sciences
Management
Management styles
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1908-1961)
Organizations
Original Paper
Philosophy
Prescription drugs
Quality of Life Research
Understanding
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Summary:This paper aims to contribute to intercorporeal ethics studies by enlarging their political understanding. Intercorporeal ethics revolve around the idea that, within organizations, our embodied interaction with each other is a conduit to enact genuine ethical relations of autonomy, mutual recognition, respect, care and responsibility. However, how intercorporeality can also be a means for organizations to shape and control their members’ ethical relationships in pursuit of corporate interests remains to be examined. We explore this political perspective on intercorporeality by combining insights from Merleau-Ponty and Nussbaum. We analyze how the deployment of a lean management program in a financial institution produces unethical relations of objectification between employees by influencing their embodied interactions. Our study thus enlarges the political understanding of intercorporeality by showing the processes through which the embodied experience of one another is conditioned not only by our corporeal sensibility but also by managerial prescriptions. This provides a more nuanced understanding of intercorporeality as a basis to counter control and domination in organizations.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-021-04907-z