Suchergebnisse

This paper relates Zygmunt Bauman's admonitions of the 'bureaucratic mentality' to business ethics. Although I am not in agreement with everything Bauman has to say, I will argue that business ethicists, consultants and others who claim to be able to do the moral thinking for others should take Bauman's worries about the moral autonomy of people working in our organizations very seriously. As long as business ethics does not enhance this moral autonomy but instead proffers a ratio nalized and rule-governed ethics, it may very well undermine the moral nature of people working in organizations.

This highly polemical and Dutch‐rooted article is intended as a contribution to the debates in both popular and academic literature about business process redesign and similar change programmes. Describes BPR and its logical successor, the "holonic" organization, as operational and technocratic instruments which endanger the well‐being of employees (and are therefore morally disreputable) and which undermine the organization's strategic potential.

Organizations often motivate their environmental efforts by arguing that 'good ethics is good business'. Though instrumental arguments of this nature put environmental concerns firmly on the corporate agenda, it comes at a price. Such reasoning relies on age-old fact-value distinctions, from which perspective rational subjects must gather the facts on how to treat the environment as a useful object. According to this logic, means-to-an-end relationships are the primary motivation for all action. Drawing on the insights of Martin Heidegger, we show how the preoccupation with gathering facts to justify environmental initiatives on the basis of 'efficiency' impoverishes our thinking about what is essential to our existence. Heidegger's thinking allows us to appreciate how our belonging to a particular ethos orientates us in the world in meaningful ways. We therefore advocate an approach to organizational environmentalism that goes beyond 'the business case', without appealing to abstract normative principles. This approach also provides new perspectives on what notions such as 'ecological citizenship' may entail.