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‘The Ethics of Managerial Subjectivity’

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Abstract

This paper examines ethics in organizations in relation to the subjectivity of managers. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault we seek to theorize ethics in terms of the meaning of being a manager who is an active ethical subject. Such a manager is so in relation to the organizational structures and norms that govern the conduct of ethics. Our approach locates ethics in the relation between individual morality and organizationally prescribed principles assumed to guide personal action. In this way we see ethics as a practice that is powerfully intertwined in an individual’s freedom to make choices about what to do and who to be, and the organizational context in which those choices are situated, framed and governed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jefe del Departamento de Estudios Institucionales, UAM-Cuajimalpa, Mexico

    Eduardo Ibarra-Colado

  2. School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

    Stewart R. Clegg, Carl Rhodes & Martin Kornberger

Authors
  1. Eduardo Ibarra-Colado
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  2. Stewart R. Clegg
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  3. Carl Rhodes
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  4. Martin Kornberger
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Correspondence to Eduardo Ibarra-Colado.

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Ibarra-Colado, E., Clegg, S.R., Rhodes, C. et al. ‘The Ethics of Managerial Subjectivity’. J Bus Ethics 64, 45–55 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-005-3325-z

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