Protestant Residues in Corporate Ethics

In: International journal of politics, culture and society, Band 1, Heft 4, S. 615-623

Abstract

A review essay on Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers (Oxford U Press, in publication [see listing IRPS No. 52]). Themes of corporate morality new to the literature of business ethics & morality are used to show residues of the Protestant ethic in corporate ethics. Seven Protestant motifs are identified in Jackall's description of modern corporations, & elaborated, showing the ultimate outcome of bureaucracy, to be a transvaluation of religious norms, ethics, & morality. Bureaucracy is argued to be a decivilizing process that tends to decrease an individual's spontaneous expressiveness. Bureaucratization also acts as a destabilizing force on individual identity & institutions, thus generating a thanatotic ethos. This idea is explored with reference to the death instinct & its two key mechanisms: inertia & the repetition compulsion. Puritan residues in bureaucracy are explored in the emasculation of heroism in politics, & in the ethic of delegated responsibility, & Goffmanian images of front stage & backstage are applied to corporate analysis. Questions are raised about the expression of self, & the character structure of the modern person. C. Grindle