Poststructuralism, Organizational Analysis, and Business Ethics

Rendtorff, Jacob Dahl

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-8845-8_7

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff⁴

Part of the book series: Ethical Economy ((SEEP,volume 49))

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Abstract

The chapter presents the poststructuralist philosophical tradition in relation to business ethics and philosophy of management. The poststructuralist tradition involves many philosophers who take their point of departure from a criticism and development of some of the structuralist ideas, but interprete them in their own direction. In particular, poststructuralist approaches combine the transgression of structuralist perspectives with broader analysis of social phenomena and social institutions. These approaches can therefore have important relevance for philosophy of management, business ethics, and the ethics of organizations. Among different poststructuralist approaches, the following philosophies will be considered: Michel Foucault (power and governmentality), Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatteri (capitalism, desire, and control society), and Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy (deconstruction of business ethics and corporate social responsibility). These constitute some important very distinct approaches to organizations and business in society. Foucault developed his own project of analysis that situates structures in historical genealogies and considers power as an important element of the formation of structure. Deleuze and Guattari situated structure from the perspective of a general theory of capitalist society. Derrida and Nancy open the possibility for a deconstruction of the implicit metaphysics of structuralist analysis that focuses on movements of differentiation and dissemination within the systems of structures and signs. Accordingly, the chapter presents these theories and their consequences for business ethics and organizations.

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Notes

1.
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2.
Renate E. Meyer and Eva Boxenbaum: “Exploring European-ness in Organization Research” Organization Studies 31(06) 737–755, p. 745.
3.
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4.
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5.
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6.
Trent H. Hamann: “Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics”, Neoliberal Governmentality, Foucault Studies, No. 6, pp. 37–59, February 2009.
7.
Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique, Gallimard 1972.
8.
Michel Foucault: Les mots et les choses, Gallimard Paris 1966, p. 13.
9.
Ibid., p. 15.
10.
Michel Foucault: Les mots et les choses, Gallimard, Paris 1966, p. 12.
11.
Ibid., p. 107.
12.
Ibid., p. 67.
13.
Ibid., p. 104.
14.
Judy Motion and Shirley Leitch: “A toolbox for public relations: The oeuvre of Michel Foucault”, Public Relations Review 33 (2007), pp. 263–268.
15.
Aurélie Leclercq-Vandelannoitte: “Organizations as Discursive Constructions: A Foucauldian Approach”, Organization Studies 32(9), pp. 1247–1271.
16.
Michel Foucault: Les mots et les choses, Gallimard, Paris 1966, p. 237.
17.
Ibid., p. 324.
18.
Ibid., p. 337.
19.
Ibid., p. 330.
20.
Ibid., p. 335.
21.
Michel Foucault: Histoire de la sexualité 1, La Volonté du savoir, Gallimard, Paris 1976, p. 18.
22.
Ibid., p. 27.
23.
Ibid., p. 30.
24.
Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique, Gallimard, Paris 1972.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Michel Foucault: Surveiller et punir, Gallimard, Paris 1975, p. 28.
28.
Ibid., p. 34.
29.
Ibid., p. 31.
30.
Michel Foucault: Naissance de la clinique, PUF, Paris 1963, p. 36.
31.
Ibid., p. 37.
32.
Michel Foucault: Histoire de la sexualité 1, La Volonté du savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1976, p. 28.
33.
Ibid., pp. 89–90.
34.
Ibid., p. 86.
35.
Ibid., p. 121.
36.
Ibid., p. 123.
37.
Ibid., p. 123.
38.
Richard Rorty proposes in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, to determine Foucault as a “liberal ironist”. This expresses very well this relation between strict power society and the search for another social practice as proposed by Michel Foucault.
39.
Andrew Crane, David Knights, and Ken Starkey: “The conditions of our freedom: Foucault, organization and ethics”, Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 18, Issue 3. 2008, pp. 299–320.
40.
Mollie Painter-Morland and René Ten Bos: Business ethics and continental Philosophy, Cambridge 2011, p. 83.
41.
Michel Foucault: Histoire de la sexualité II, L’usage des plaisirs, histoire de la sexualité, tome II, Gallimard, Paris 1984, p. 19.
42.
Ibid., p. 70.
43.
Ibid., p. 203.
44.
Ibid., p. 105.
45.
Ibid., p. 57.
46.
Ibid., p. 57.
47.
Ibid., p. 67.
48.
Ibid., p 69.
49.
Ibid., p. 108.
50.
Michel Foucault: Histoire de la sexualité III, Le souci de soi, Paris, Gallimard, 1984, p. 140.
51.
Ibid., p. 116.
52.
This for example the criticism of Luc Ferry in his book Homo Esthéticus and of Habermas in his book about the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988.
53.
Michel Foucault: Histoire de la sexualité III, Le souci de soi, Gallimard, Paris 1984, p. 135.
54.
Jim Jose: “A (con)fusion of discourses? Against the governancing of Foucault”, Social Identities, Vol. 16, No. 5, September 2010, pp. 689–703.
55.
Peter Triantafillou: New Forms of Governing. A Foucauldian Inspired Analysis, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2012.
56.
Caroline Lambert and Eric Pezet: “Accounting and the Making of Homo Liberalis”, Foucault Studies, Special Issue on Foucault and Accounting, No. 13, pp. 67–81, May 2012.
57.
Michel Foucault: Histoire de la sexualité III, Le souci de soi, Paris, Gallimard, 1984, p. 144.
58.
Campbell Jones: Foucault’s inheritance/inheriting Foucault, Culture and Organization 2002, vol 8 (3), pp. 225–238.
59.
Terry Flew: “Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism”, Thesis Eleven 2012 108(1), pp. 44–65.
60.
Bent Meier Sørensen: “Immaculate defecation: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in organization theory”, The Sociological Review. Special Issue: Sociological Review Monograph Series: Contemporary Organization Theory, edited by Campbell Jones and Rolland Munro. Volume 53, Issue Supplement s1, pages 120–133, October 2005.
61.
Ibid., p. 122.
62.
Stefano Harney: “Why is management a cliché?”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting 16 (2005), pp. 579–591.
63.
Bent Meier Sørensen: Gilles Deleuze and the intensification of social theory, Ephemera 2003, Volume 3 (1):50–58.
64.
Gilles Deleuze: Qu’est-ce que la philosophie ?, en collaboration avec Félix Guattari, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1991.
65.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 62.
66.
Ibid., p. 78.
67.
Ibid., p. 79.
68.
Gilles Deleuze: Le Bergsonisme, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1966.
69.
Gilles Deleuze: Nietzsche et la philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1962. Gilles Deleuze: Nietzsche, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1965.
70.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, pp. 97–98.
71.
Ibid., pp. 100–102.
72.
Gilles Deleuze: Différence et répétition, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1968. Gilles Deleuze: Logique du sens, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1969.
73.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 110.
74.
Gilles Deleuze: Différence et répétition, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1968.
75.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 131.
76.
Gilles Deleuze: Spinoza et le problème de l’expression, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Arguments”), Paris 1968.
77.
Gilles Deleuze: L’Anti-Œdipe – Capitalisme et schizophrénie, en collaboration avec Félix Guattari, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1972.
78.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 150. Anti-Œdipe, p. 36.
79.
Gilles Deleuze: L’Anti-Œdipe – Capitalisme et schizophrénie, en collaboration avec Félix Guattari, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1972.
80.
Ibid.
81.
Ibid.
82.
Ibid.
83.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 162.
84.
Ibid., p. 162.
85.
Gilles Deleuze: L’Anti-Œdipe – Capitalisme et schizophrénie, en collaboration avec Félix Guattari, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1972.
86.
Ibid.
87.
Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari: Mille Plateaux – Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2, en collaboration avec Félix Guattari, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1980.
88.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 190.
89.
Ibid., p. 191.
90.
Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari: Mille Plateaux – Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2, en collaboration avec Félix Guattari, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1980.
91.
Ibid.
92.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 210.
93.
Ibid., p. 212.
94.
Ibid., p. 215.
95.
Mollie Painter-Morland and René Ten Bos: Business ethics and continental Philosophy, Cambridge University Press 2011, p. 24.
96.
Xavier Deroy and Stewart Clegg: “When events interact with business ethics” Organization, 18(5), pp. 637–653.
97.
Mollie Painter-Morland: Rethinking Responsible Agency in Corporations: Perspectives from Deleuze and Guattari, Journal of Business Ethics (2011) 101:83–95.
98.
Ibid., p. 90.
99.
Ibid., p. 94.
100.
Gilles Deleuze: Logique de la sensation, 2 tomes, éd. de la Différence, 1981; réédité sous le titre Francis Bacon: logique de la sensation. Paris, Editions du Seuil (coll “L’ordre philosophique”), 2002.
101.
Arnaud Bouaniche: Gilles Deleuze. Une introduction, Agora, Paris 2010, p. 228.
102.
Gilles Deleuze: L’image-mouvement. Cinéma 1, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1983.
Gilles Deleuze: L’image-temps. Cinéma 2, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique“), Paris 1985.
103.
Gilles Deleuze: Le Pli – Leibniz et le baroque, Les éditions de Minuit (coll. “Critique”), Paris 1988.
104.
Gilles Deleuze, “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle”, in L’autre journal, n° 1, mai 1990.
105.
Bent Meier Sørensen: “Defacing the corporate body, or Why HRM deserves a kick in the teeth”, Tamara. Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, Vol 3 (4) 2005, pp. 8–11.
106.
Gilles Deleuze, “Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle”, in L’autre journal, n° 1, mai 1990.
107.
Ibid.
108.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2000.
109.
Campbell Jones (ed.): “Derrida, Business, Ethics. Special Issue”, Business Ethics: A European Review. Volume 19. Number 3. July 2010.
110.
Campbell Jones: “As if Business Ethics were possible, “Within such limits”….”, Organization, Volume 10 (2), 2003, pp. 223–248.
111.
Ibid.
112.
Ibid.
113.
Ibid., p. 240.
114.
Jacques Derrida: Force de Loi, Gallimard, Paris 1995.
115.
Jacques Derrida: La voix et le phènomène, Gallimard, Paris 1967. Derrida, Jacques: Politiques de l’amitié, Gallimard, Paris 1994.
116.
Jacques Derrida: Glas, Gallimard, Paris 1974.
117.
Jacques Derrida: La voix et le phènomène, Gallimard, Paris 1967.
118.
Jacques Derrida: De la grammatologie, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 173.
119.
Jacques Derrida: La voix et le phènomène, Gallimard, Paris 1967.
120.
Jacques Derrida: Épérons. Les styles de Nietzsche, Gallimard, Paris 1978.
121.
Jacques Derrida: La voix et le phènomène, Gallimard, Paris 1967. Jacques Derrida: De la grammatologie, Gallimard Paris, 1967. Jacques Derrida: L’Écriture et la différence, Gallimard, Paris 1967.
122.
Michael Porter and Robert Kramer, Robert: “Strategy and society, the link between competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility”, Harvard Business Review, December 2006.
123.
Milton Friedman, Milton: “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”, New York Times Magazine 1970.
124.
Campbell Jones: “Friedman with Derrida” in Business and Society Review 2007: 112(4), pp. 511–532.
125.
Lynn Sharp Paine: Value-Shift. Why companies must merge social and financial imperatives to achieve superior performance, McGraw-Hill, New York 2006.
126.
Jacques Derrida: Politiques de l’amitié, Gallimard, Paris 1994.
127.
Jacques Derrida: De la grammatologie, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 197.
128.
Jacques Derrida: De la grammatologie, Gallimard, Paris 1967, p. 202.
129.
Jacques Derrida: Limited Inc., Gallimard, Paris 1990.
130.
Jacques Derrida: Politiques de l’amitié, Gallimard, Paris 1994, p. 17.
131.
Ibid.
132.
Ibid.
133.
Derrida, Jacques: Voyous, Editions Gallilée, Paris 2003.
134.
Ibid.
135.
Ibid.
136.
Ibid.
137.
Campbell Jones (2007): “Friedman with Derrida” in Business and Society Review 112(4), pp. 511–532., p. 517.
138.
Ibid., p. 523.
139.
Cameron Sabadoz: “Between Profit-Seeking and Prosociality: Corporate Social Responsibility as Derridean Supplement”, Journal of Business Ethics (2011) 104:77–91.
140.
Jacques Derrida: Force de Loi, Gallimard, Paris 1995.
141.
Ibid., p. 67.
142.
Ibid.
143.
Jacques Derrida: Donner le temps, Gallimard, Paris 1991.
144.
Andreas Rasche: “Organizing Derrida. Organizing Deconstruction and Organization Theory”, Philosophy and Organization Theory. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 32, pp. 251–280. Emerald Group Publishing.
145.
Minka Voermann: On the (Im) Possibility of Business Ethics. Critical Complexity, Deconstruction and Implications for Understanding the Ethics of Business; Issues in Business Ethics, Springer Verlag 2013.
146.
Ibid.
147.
Edgar Morin: Introduction à la pensée complexe, Point Essais, Le Seuil, Paris 2005, p. 10.
148.
Ibid.
149.
Ibid., p. 15.
150.
Ibid., p. 49.
151.
Ibid., p. 109.
152.
Ibid., p. 111.
153.
Minka Voermann: On the (Im) Possibility of Business Ethics. Critical Complexity, Deconstruction and Implications for Understanding the Ethics of Business; Issues in Business Ethics, Springer Verlag 2013.
154.
Ibid.
155.
Ibid.
156.
Jacques Derrida: “La pharmacie de Platon” in Marges – de la philosophie, Minuit, Paris 1972.
157.
Minka Voermann: On the (Im) Possibility of Business Ethics. Critical Complexity, Deconstruction and Implications for Understanding the Ethics of Business; Issues in Business Ethics, Springer Verlag 2013.
158.
In that sense, I think that deconstruction is important for critical business ethics, although I would still insist on a more comprehensive view on ethics, organizations, and institutions that I proposed in my book, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: Responsibility, Ethics and Legitimacy of Corporations, Copenhagen Business School Press 2009.
159.
Jean Luc Nancy: A plus d’un titre: Jacques Derrida, Galilée, Paris 2007.
160.
Jean Luc Nancy: L’expérience de la liberté, Galilée, Paris 1988.
161.
Jean Luc Nancy: Les Fins de l’homme à partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: colloque de Cerisy, 23 juillet-2 août 1980, Galilée, Paris 1981 (ed., with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe).
162.
Jean Luc Nancy: La communauté désoeuvrée, Christian Bourgois, Paris 1983.
163.
Jean Luc Nancy: Verite de la democratie. Galilée, Paris 2008.
164.
Alexander Bertland: “The Limits of Workplace Community: Jean-Luc Nancy and the Possibility of Teambuilding”, Journal of Business Ethics (2011) 99:1–8.
165.
Jean-Luc Nancy: L’Équivalence des catastrophes (Après Fukushima), Galilée, Paris 2012, p. 16.
166.
Jean-Luc Nancy: Ibid., pp. 26–27.
167.
Jean-Luc Nancy: Ibid., p. 43.
168.
Ibid., p. 44.
169.
Ibid., p. 53.
170.
Ibid., p. 63.
171.
Ibid., p. 69.
172.
Jean Luc Nancy: Le sens du monde. Galilée, Paris 1993.
173.
Jean Luc Nancy: La création du monde ou la mondialisation. Galilée, Paris 2002.

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Communication, Business and Information, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

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Rendtorff, J.D. (2014). Poststructuralism, Organizational Analysis, and Business Ethics. In: French Philosophy and Social Theory. Ethical Economy, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8845-8_7

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