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Process Ethics and Business: Applying Process Thought to Enact Critiques of Mind/Body Dualism in

Organizations

By Rob Macklin, Karin Mathison, and Mark Dibben

Bios: Rob Macklin, Karin Mathison, and Mark Dibben teach at the Tasmanian School of Business & Economics,

University of Tasmania, Hobart. <Rob.Macklin@utas.edu.au>

Abstract

The study of organizational ethics continues to be the focus of significant academic attention, however it is a

discourse that remains largely informed by “a rational, cognitive and ordered form of morality” (see Pullen,

Rhodes, and ten Bos). Traditional approaches to questions of organizational ethics emphasize a fundamentally

static view of organizations and the people within them, reinforcing notions of mind/body dualism and reifying

ethics as an outcome of human agency, choice, and deliberate intention (see MacKay and Chia). We challenge

this approach and instead argue in favor of ethics research that adopts an ontology grounded in process

metaphysics. Escaping the confines of Cartesian dualism, we reconceptualize organizational ethics as something

that is in fact not held constant, is not a static termination point or an outcome of events, but is rather an input

into the continually reconstituting context of the organization over time (see Langley, et al.). The process ethics

we articulate provides a grounding for moral critique in diverse communities that is not undermined by

relativism. Moreover, it provides guidance to managers and employees facing moral problems without forcing

them to face a tyranny of principles. We consider how a process ethics would be enacted in organizations

through managerial decision-making and in the treatment or employees.

Introduction

The study of organizational ethics continues to be the focus of significant academic attention, however it is a

discourse that remains largely informed by “a rational, cognitive and ordered form of morality” (see Pullen,

Rhodes, and ten Bos). Traditional approaches to questions of organizational ethics emphasize a fundamentally

static view of organizations and the people within them, reinforcing notions of mind/body dualism and reifying

ethics as an outcome of human agency, choice, and deliberate intention (see MacKay and Chia). We challenge

this approach and instead argue in favor of ethics research that adopts an ontology grounded in process

metaphysics (as in Whitehead’s PR).

A growing number of management scholars posit that organizations are characterized by nonlinear,

transitional, fluid, and chaotically dynamic interrelations of phenomena; institutions are in fact “no more than

temporary instantiations of ongoing processes, continually in a state of becoming” (see Eisenhardt; also see

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Langley, et al.; Mackay and Chia; Rescher; Tsoukas, 2005, 2010; Tsoukas & Chia). We extend this thinking to

the realm of organizational ethics and consider the continual interactions between individuals and organizations

as key elements in a dynamic process ethics. Escaping the confines of Cartesian dualism, we reconceptualize

organizational ethics as something that is in fact not held constant, not a static termination point or an outcome

of events, but rather an input into the continually reconstituting context of the organization over time (Langley,

et al.). In support of MacKay and Chia’s (210) recent criticism of contemporary organizational theorizing as

“[overemphasizing] the deliberate actions and intentions of managerial agents or the causal influence of external

environmental pressures,” we suggest that a similar overemphasis pervades contemporary research on

organizational ethics. Grounded in this flawed conception of organizations, the exploration of ethics is narrowly

confined by a theoretical framework that views people, processes, and contexts as substantive and rational

entities at the mercy of external influence.

In this article we acknowledge the underrepresentation of process studies in leading management

scholarship and aim to contribute a distinctive insight into the process of ethics emergence, development,

growth, and enactment within organizations over time. We do this in two parts. First we explain why it is that

yet another normative approach should be entertained in the business ethics discipline, referring to both

academics and also managers and employees in organizations who are called to make moral decisions and

judgments. We argue that an alternative approach is opportune because existing normative approaches to

business ethics do not adequately address widely recognized problems facing the dualist and materialist theories

of mind that underpin them. Next, we describe a process philosophy approach that meets the problems faced by

dualism and materialism by extending “experience” to what dualists and materialists normally take to be

inanimate matter. That is, we adopt Whitehead’s panexperientialism, which extends the capacity to experience

and interrelate down to microscopic and sub-atomic levels, including “non-living” matter. Moral patient status

(if not agency) is extended to the natural world beyond humans. We suggest that a process ethics acknowledges

the right of all sentient individuals to moral respect, while prioritizing humans because we have the potential to

enhance beauty, harmony, and peace beyond the potential of all other individuals. A process approach also

emphasizes process over substance (becoming over being) and thus ontologically highlights change and fluidity

rather than stability and solidity. To be of use to the discipline and practice of business, any approach that offers

moral guidance must suit the context within which it must operate. It must not be idealist or utopian; it must be

practical. To be practical in this context requires that a moral philosophy allows human actors a measure of

moral autonomy and therefore responsibility; provides grounds for critique (and thus avoids relativism) across

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culturally diverse human communities; is capable of providing moral direction for individuals working in

market economies as employees and managers; ensures respect for non-market goods including wild animals

and the biosphere; and is capable of providing direction to individuals facing common moral problems. The

process ethics we describe assumes that people working in organizations in market economies, regardless of

their hierarchical position, always have some level of moral autonomy and can be held morally responsible to

some degree. It also provides a grounding for moral critique in diverse communities that is not undermined by

relativism. Moreover, it provides guidance to managers and employees facing moral problems without forcing

them to face a tyranny of principles.

Finally we consider the enactment of a process ethics within organizations. From a process perspective,

an organization can be understood in terms of:

a dynamic bundle of qualities. Some qualities persist more than others, but there is no substance that

endures unchanged... this is the point at which “process” meets “practice,” since how the past is drawn

upon and made relevant to the present is not an atomistic or random exercise but crucially depends on

the social practices in which actors are embedded (cited in Langley, et al., 5).

For Cobb, “most organizations, including businesses, function best when they are also communities... [and] can

be judged by their encouragement of community…. This process will develop best when those who make

decisions appreciate the importance of genuinely human relationships in the whole process” (585). In this

respect, it is the ongoing interactions among people, between individual organizational members and their

organization, and across multiple organizational levels that influence and orient change processes. Questions of

ethics have long been considered central to understanding action and behavior within organizations and we see

such questions as fundamental to understanding the dynamic and processual evolution of organizations. As

specific exemplars of the intersection between process and ethics, we consider the practical implications of a

process ethics for managerial decision-making and employee perceptions of treatment by the organization.

Critiques of Mind/Body Dualism and Organizational Ethics

Perhaps the most difficult problem that orthodox ethical theories face is the bankruptcy of the assumptions

embedded within these theories about the relationship between the mind and body. Griffin (47) provides a clear

description of Cartesian dualism and materialism and a useful analysis of the problems both face:

This doctrine contains a double thesis: (1) that the mind is an actuality numerically distinct from the

brain (the quantitative or numerical thesis) and (2) that it is ontologically different in kind from the

entities of which the brain consists (the qualitative or ontological thesis).

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In brief, the mind and body--or more specifically brain--are not one thing, but two distinct entities or actualities;

there is the mind and there is the brain. Moreover, these two actualities are not just separate but are qualitatively

different; however, this does not mean that they are separate substances. By contrast, Griffin indicates that for

dualists matter is not by necessity or definition temporal in that it can exist in an isolated instant, whereas mind,

composed as it is by thoughts, is by necessity always extended over time. Griffin (48) describes materialism, or

more accurately “materialistic monism,” as containing:

the double thesis (1) that there is only one kind of actual entity, namely, material or physical ones (the

qualitative or ontological thesis), and (2) that what we call the “mind” is somehow numerically

identical with the brain (the quantitative or numerical thesis), so that there is no interaction between

mind and brain.

Thus, “mind” and “brain” are synonyms, not two words describing separate entities that interrelate. To this

Griffin (48) adds a third thesis: for the materialist, because the mind or brain is an actual thing it is “devoid of

any experience.” Here he refers to the notion that while the mind/brain is spatially extensive, it does not extend

temporally; the mind/brain has no “experiential reality”: it just is. Cartesian dualism and materialist portrayals of

reality ultimately emerge as markedly different. Indeed, they have been contending paradigms in the field of

philosophy of mind for over 50 years. For those in the dualist camp, our mind is separate from our brain and

body--it is the “ghost in the machine” and the realm of not only experience but, more importantly, consciousness.

For materialists there is only the brain; humans are mechanical and the ghost, if there is one at all, is just an

epiphenomenon. Dualists have long claimed materialism to be bankrupt and materialists claim dualism to be

fundamentally flawed. However, writers in the field of philosophy of mind increasingly highlight fundamental

problems in both dualist and materialist conceptions. Griffin usefully summarizes these problems, a selection of

which are set out below.

Problems of dualism and materialism

Problems faced by dualism Problems faced by materialism*

Problems common to dualism and materialism

1. Inability to explain how two totally different types of entities can exert causal influence on each other.

Given that the mind and brain are not only numerically separate, but also ontologically different, the notion that they can affect each other is difficult to understand and explain. How can the brain as matter, spatially extensive, temporally void, and without an inside world of thoughts and values exert any direct influence on the mental realm, the nonphysical mind? Moreover, how can the mind, a nonphysical entity without spatial extension, exert any direct causal

1. Inability to explain unity of experience. The brain is composed of over 100 million neurons and with it we experience simultaneously “sight, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, bodily pains, bodily pleasures, bodily hungers, memories and so on while at the time feeling desires and emotions, anticipating the future, making decisions, and so on” (Griffin36). Yet despite this complexity and multiplicity, their experience is somehow unified within our brain. The sheer amount of data the brain must cope with is massive and it must somehow do so in a way that allows us to approach an experiential

1. Inability to exactly draw a line between things that experience and things that don’t.

Descartes, because of where humans are located in his theological system, drew the distinction between humans and nature: humans experience and feel things, but nothing else in the world does. Dogs and cats, for example, do not experience or suffer pain; they are machines. The line between humans and animals came to be seen as an arbitrary place to draw a line. But every other line drawn by dualists and materialists, including that between creatures that

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influence over the flesh, meat, and blood of the brain? Short of supernaturalism, how can a ghost move physical substances and vice-versa?

unity. But how does flesh, meat, and blood do this? The Cartesian dualist is in a better position here because the mind can be taken to be an overarching unifying self-conscious entity. How unification can happen in nontemporally extended matter remains, however, a mystery.

have a central nervous system and those that don’t, has not been able to escape the charge of arbitrariness, either. Most dualists and materialists get around this problem by remaining vague about its placement.

2. Inability to explain how mind as temporally extensive, spatially void, could have evolved from temporally void, spatially extensive material.

Dualism violates the principle of continuity, which holds that any nonsupernatural explanation of the evolution of the universe cannot include any discontinuous, indeed miraculous, emergence of something radically different. That is, dualism assumes that at some point in the evolution of beings something ontologically different from anything that had existed before leapt into existence. Mind seems to have appeared out of matter without the intervention of God or any other supernatural being. This is a breach of the principle of continuity.

2. Inability to explain how bodily behaviour is unified.

Somehow pure matter in the form of neurons is capable of coordinating and controlling bodily actions as well as thoughts and emotions, etc., such that healthy individuals can engage in stunningly complicated movements and actions. For example, in some way the brain of the elite gymnast can pull the rest of his or her body together to perform intricate abductions, extensions, twists, and dismounts. Equally amazing, the brain of skilled craft workers, such as glass-blowers, or manual laborers, such as riggers, are capable of controlling their hands and flexing their bodies in order to complete very complex tasks and produce pre-planned ends. How nontemporal matter without a clear coordinator, such as a distinct mind, controls muscles, bones, and limbs over time thus also remains mysterious.

2. Inability to explain the great exception of conscious experience.

An appeal to the principle of simplicity or

parsimony leads many materialists to argue

that it is more reasonable to assume that eventually purely physical explanations

will be found for consciousness. That

conscious experience is not a great exception to the explicability of a universe

in physical terms. But this critique also

turns back on materialists. Important philosophers of mind, including Nagel and

Searle, agree that the existence of

consciousness in humans (and arguably

some other animals) cannot be explained

physically. Given this, it would be

surprising if the rest of the universe can be explained. That is, the appeal to parsimony

can be used in favor of both materialism

and dualism.

3. Dualism violates the principle of the conservation of energy

The principle of the conservation of energy holds that the amount of energy within any physical system always remains constant; that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. Dualism, however, posits that a nonmaterial realm affects the body, spurring it to action or causing it to rest, thereby creating or reducing the expulsion of energy and thus breaching the principle of the conservation of energy.

3. Inability to explain freedom Perhaps most problematic of all, if the materialist conception is correct, if the mind and brain is one and is just brute physical matter composed of neurons, synapses, meat, and blood encased within bone, how can freedom be possible? If freedom is the capacity to make nondetermined decisions and judgments, how is it possible for humans to exercise it if all they are is matter without a separate mind? And even if it turns out to be a chimera, how is the deception of freedom produced in that its reality is, for most of us, a hard-core common sense notion? Virtually all materialists deny freedom, and it can be suggested, therefore, that materialism must portray it as a grand delusion regardless of how real it seems to be.

3. Inability to explain how experience evolved over time from brute matter, given that time is a purely experiential concept.

Time presupposes experience and to experience is to have temporal extension. Given this, how can it be that experience emerged over time?

Assuming this necessary connection between time and experience, those who believe that experience arose historically must also hold that time arose at some point in the evolutionary process….The problem with this position, of course, is that it is circular, because evolution itself presupposes the existence of time. (Griffin 62-63)

4. Inability to explain how conscious experience can be reduced to wholly material beings.

Akin to the issue of freedom: Conscious experience, with all its features, evidently has to be portrayed as somehow reducible to, or somehow resolvable into, purely material stuff, entities, processes, structures, functions.. (Griffin 54)

That is, how can consciousness and with it thoughts, attitudes, and values, etc., be reduced to the entirely physical, to something that although immensely complex remains in essence a machine? Most materialists in response to this question have, evidently, decided not to provide an explanation, but have rather ruled consciousness “out of court,” intimating that it is, as with freedom, to be

4. Inability to explain how experience emerges out of nonexperiencing entities.

As mentioned under problems of dualism,

dualism faces the difficulty of explaining

how experience (including thoughts, attitudes, and values) emerges from the

purely physical. And there is an analogous

problem with materialism. If we are purely physical beings, as the materialist holds,

how is it the case that we have even an

appearance of mind? That is, it is difficult to deny that healthy human beings

experience and moreover understand

themselves to be thinking, developing attitudes, and adopting values. Given this, if

such phenomena are not real, how is our

fleshy, meat and blood brain and body capable of such grand delusions?

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eliminated as something that a theory of mind must adequately explain. Consequently, if we adopt the point of view of many materialists, we must ignore the role of consciousness no matter how influential it appears to be in our everyday life.

5. Epistemological commitment that disallows hard-core commonsense understandings of the world.

Materialism is underpinned by an epistemology that holds that we can only accrue knowledge through the senses – sight, smell, touch, and hearing. If this is correct, we cannot know, despite our strong commonsense understandings, what is a cause and what is an effect in any relationship between physical bodies; whether there is an actual reality to which our senses refer; whether the past and therefore time is real; and, how to explain “objective norms, such as truth, goodness, and beauty.” (Griffin 58)

It might be thought that the problems of dualism and materialism are side debates that are interesting

and important only to those caught up with arcane topics of little practical value. However, this not the case; the

major moral philosophies used in business ethics are underpinned in one way or another by mind/body dualism

and thus are undermined by the problems that curse dualism. In order to appropriately situate an alternative

philosophical approach, we critique now the dualist/ materialist foundations of some of the major moral

philosophies used in business ethics: Kantianism, Utilitarianism and Aristotelian ethics.

Kantianism

We turn our attention first to Kantiansim. Kant reinforced the Cartesian split between mind and body by

associating reason, freedom, and morality with the mind. He did this by identifying a dichotomy between mere

appearance, or the phenomenon, and what is really there, or the noumenon. Kant’s objective in doing this was

apparently to ensure a place for personal freedom and therefore morality. Kant had committed himself to a view

of the world articulated by thinkers such as Newton that held that the laws of nature are fully deterministic. For

Kant this posed a problem for morality: if nature is deterministic, akin to a mechanical clock, what becomes of

human freedom? Surely it must be just an illusion. If this is the case, then the idea that humans are moral agents,

responsible for their actions, becomes difficult to defend rationally (see Bubner; Guyer).

Kant’s solution was to postulate that appearances might be deceiving. His doctrine of “transcendental

idealism” posits that we come to understand the laws of nature with certainty because these laws do not describe

things independently of our perception; they are “rather the structure that the laws of our own mind impose upon

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the way things appear to us” (Guyer 5). This did not mean that Kant was a simple idealist; he did not claim that

a world beyond our perceptions does not exist, only that our mind imposes a given structure upon the world

which prevents us from knowing that realm. This allowed him to reserve a place within the universe for human

reasoning, human freedom, and thus the capacity to act in accord with moral law. Kant was aware of the

problem created by a radical distinction between mind and body and addressed this in his third critique by

claiming that humans are the “authors of the most basic laws of nature and for that reason can know them with

certainty” (Guyer 5). However, he failed to present a solution to all the problems of dualism articulated above.

For example, he did not demonstrate in nonsupernatural terms how mind, which has no spatial extension, can

influence matter, which is purely spatial; nor how mind, as temporally extensive, could have evolved from

temporally void and spatially extensive material. We argue that because Kantianism is fundamentally dualistic,

it is compromised by the problems that beset dualism in the philosophy of mind.

Kant’s work led to a variety of Kantianisms, prime among which is John Rawls’ social contract theory.

It is now an approach that is the stock-and-trade of many ethics textbooks and ethics classes. Rawls’ theory did

not stick with the metaphysics outlined by Kant. Rawls argued that Kant’s approach was obscure and could not

in any nonarbitrary way result in principles of justice or show “how in any case the legislation of such a subject

would apply to actual human beings in the phenomenal world” (Sandel 13). But Rawls did not reject Kant’s

deontological stance. Instead he substituted transcendental idealism with an approach that saw reasoning

operating to articulate principles of justice that are prior to any particular person’s interests or conception of the

good. This approach involved establishing principles via a hypothetical choice where one envisages moral actors

being able to make their decisions behind a veil of ignorance that conceals their circumstances, interests, and

conceptions of preferred ends. By dint of clear reasoning, Rawls put himself in this position and came up with

his two principles of justice as fairness that he held any reasonable person similarly placed would also derive.

Despite the logical appeal of Rawls’ approach, his approach was heavily criticized by authors who

adopt a communitarian perspective. These writers argue that Rawls’ picture of the self is an impossibility. They

point out that Rawls’ liberal self is a self who can think in ways completely unencumbered by his or her

background, culture, values, interests, age, race, gender, etc. This, communitarians argue, ignores the relational

nature of the human self and the reality that what constitutes the self is a function of one’s embeddedness in

society and the world. Humans, it is argued, cannot un-encumber themselves from their background because

they are constituted by their background. They can never successfully reason behind a hypothesized “veil of

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ignorance.” Thus, Rawls’ principles are not the outcome of his clear and objective reasoning, but rather outputs

of a man located in a particular place and time and influenced ultimately by the liberalism of his own society.

The importance of the preceding discussion in the context of this paper is that, despite its appeal to

some measure of empiricism, Rawls still relied on a picture of the self that points to a mind that could be

radically indifferent to its lived circumstances. Thus his approach was ultimately dualistic, as was Kant’s. The

communitarian retort is not a retreat to materialism, however, nor does it offer a solution to the mind/body

problem. Nevertheless, it does point towards something with which any moral philosophy should be able to

contend: the reality that the constitution of the self is cultural, historical, and embodied and that mind cannot be

understood in abstraction from this encumbered self.

Utilitarianism

Turning our attention to utilitarianism, it appears that many business ethics textbooks start with a broad brush

view of utilitarianism firmly embedded in the works of Mill, generally focusing on establishing norms that will

result in the “greatest good for the greatest number.” Utilitarianism is appealing because it appears congruent

with a modern, naturalistic view of the world as physical and mechanistic (see Mandle). It is arguable that

utilitarianism favors more materialist conceptions of the mind/brain over more dualist conceptions. For example,

Sidgwick set out the free will debate in the following terms:

Is the self to which I refer my deliberate volitions a self of strictly determinate moral qualities, a

definite character partly inherited, partly formed by my past actions and feelings, and by any physical

influences that it may have unconsciously received; so that my voluntary actions, for good or evil, is at

any moment completely caused by the determinate qualities of this character together with my

circumstances, or the external influences acting on me at the moment - including under this latter term

my present bodily conditions? – or is there always a possibility of my choosing to act in the manner

that I now judge to be reasonable and right, whatever my previous action and experiences may have

been?

Sidgwick argues that the deterministic view has great force and is supported by all competent thinkers with

regard to all types of events, with the exception of human volitions. Moreover, he argues that the question of

free will is not of much importance because “the adoption of determinism will not – except in certain

exceptional circumstances or on certain theological assumptions – reasonably modify a man’s view of what is

right for him to do or his reasons for doing it.” He thus can be seen as associating utilitarianism with a

determinist view. While determinism does not equal materialism, he does seem to be endorsing this view in the

moral sphere.

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Similarly, Singer holds that utilitarianism is consistent with biological-based explanations of ethics that

have been given weight by recent research. He cites as examples the results of functional magnetic resonance

imaging which show that certain parts of the brain activate when people are asked to make moral judgments. He

also argues that ethics can be explained in socio-biological and evolutionary terms. While he is careful in this

context not to infer value from facts, he nevertheless clearly portrays ethics and morality in nondualist terms; his

approach seems to be clearly aligned with a materialist viewpoint. Parfit also argues against the necessity to

adopt a morality of free will in the Kantian sense. He argues instead that “[t]he kind of freedom that morality

requires is... compatible with determinism” (226). Although Parfit does not explicitly claim that utilitarianism is

directly compatible with materialism, he clearly rejects idealism and dualism and thus is arguably aligning

himself with a form of determinism that is amenable to materialism.

If this leaning towards materialism is accepted, it would seem that utilitarianism is open to the three

major problems that can be associated with a materialist conception of the brain/mind: an inability to explain, or

more likely perhaps a disinterest in exploring, the unity of experience and how bodily behavior is unified; an

inability or disinterest in explaining how conscious experience can be reduced to wholly material beings; and an

inability to adequately explain freedom. It might be argued that disinterest in the problems regarding mind is a

strength of utilitarianism. However, in pushing for a form of determinism, significant writers in the utilitarian

tradition have, by default, adopted a strongly materialist view. Consequently, their resultant theory lacks the

power of an ethical theory that avoids the problems of materialism.

Aristotelian Ethics

In the Western history of the mind/body debate there have been three broad paradigms at play: the Aristotelian

paradigm, the Cartesian paradigm, and the scientific materialist (or physicalist) paradigm (see Crane and

Patterson). Because the Aristotelian paradigm precedes the other two, it is difficult to identify it as either

thoroughly dualist or materialist. In this respect, Crane and Patterson and others (see Nussbaum and Rorty)

argue that the soul or mind cannot be reduced to body or material stuff and also that mind and body cannot be

separated such that we can speak of a soul as independent of the body or the body as living without a soul. The

soul by definition is embodied, and the body by definition is ensouled. The most well-known neo-Aristotelian

approach is the functionalist conception of the mind-body relation. At its most basic, this view seeks to avoid

the problems associated with either dualism or materialism by arguing that Aristotle is agnostic about both of

them (see Crane and Patterson). However, ultimately functionalism fails in making this argument and the

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Aristotelian theory of mind is ultimately revealed as materialistic. Physicalist functionalism (see Nussbaum and

Putnam) holds that while soul or mind is always embodied or en-mattered, it is nevertheless possible to talk of

the soul as having a kind of autonomy. Here Langton suggests that for physicalist functionalists it is possible to

abstract the soul apart from the body in the same way that we can abstract what it is to be, for example, spherical

from a particular sphere that is made from wood or bronze:

Sphericality is separable from matter, whether bronze or wood, by an effort of abstraction; and the

mathematician need not study bronze or wood in order to study sphericality (Langton 29).

In this view, the soul or mind supervenes over the body and the soul is conceptualized as having a kind of

abstract autonomy. There is thus a kind of dualism in these accounts, with the relationship of mind to body

being a functional one akin to the relationship between sight and the material flesh of the eyeball.

Crane and Patterson argue that, regardless of whether it succeeds to bypass the problems of dualism

and materialism, physicalist functionalism is not true to Aristotelianism. They argue that Aristotle rejects any

abstraction of the soul in the sense akin to mathematical abstraction and instead claims that en-souled things are

necessarily en-mattered, so much so that any definition of the mind or soul must include matter or materiality as

an essential aspect; the functionalist hoped-for autonomy of the soul or mind is essentially repudiated by

Aristotle. Aristotelian virtue ethics is ultimately exposed to the very same critiques that blight materialism,

including an inability to explain the unity of experience and how bodily behavior is unified, an inability to

explain how conscious experience can be reduced to wholly material beings, and an inability to adequately

explain individual freedom.

In Response: An Applied Process Thought Approach

We must now confront the aforementioned “misconception of Cartesian mind-body dualism” (Neesham and

Dibben 72) that is evident in the widely-held belief that consciousness precedes experience. To do this, we rely

for the most part, and purposefully, on that body of work that has as its basis not organization or management

theory--even insofar as this body of literature looks to use process ideas--but rather process philosophy and

theology, as these may be applied to topics in the sciences and social sciences (see Weber and Desmond; Dibben

and Kelly; and Dibben and Newton). Process philosophy proposes, in contrast, that “consciousness presupposes

experience, and not experience consciousness” (PR 83). From a temporal perspective, process thought does not

propose that everything is continually in process, nor that process is some kind of momentary hiatus in an

otherwise stable continuum of reality. Rather, it suggests that “to be ‘actual’ is to be a process: anything which

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is not in process is an abstraction from process, not an actuality” (Neesham and Dibben 72). Primarily

associated with the work of Whitehead, process philosophy is based on the principle that existence is dynamic

and that this should be the primary focus of any comprehensive philosophical account of reality and our place

within it (see Gunter). Process philosophy is also known as “the ontology of becoming.” Grounded in relativity

physics, it describes the fundamental entities in nature as “events” or “occasions” and proposes that they interact

with, change and are changed by, each other in a continual process of transformation (see Gunter; Neesham and

Dibben; also Whitehead’s PNK, SM, and PR). From a process perspective, the language of “development” and

“change” are therefore considered more appropriate descriptors of reality than the language of static being.

From Whitehead’s process philosophy perspective there is no ontological dualism in the fabric of

reality; no spatially extensive material without temporal extension and no temporally extensive mind or spirit

(no “ghost in the machine”) without spatial extension. Humans, animals, plants, rocks, water, molecules, atoms,

electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, and God are ontologically related. Everything is interrelated, so much so

that metaphysically speaking there are no separate substances in the Newtonian sense; no separate humans,

animals, rocks, billiard balls, molecules, quarks. Everything is part of a flow or movement of energy. However,

this does not mean that reality – the flow of energy- is an undifferentiated unity. There are “individuals” in the

flow, but they are series of events, rather than ontologically distinct and separate things (see Henning).

Whitehead calls these events “actual occasions” or “actual entities” and takes them to be the most

fundamental things in the universe: “God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off

empty space” (PR 18). Humans, animals, plants, rocks, water, molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons,

and quarks in any moment of existence are series of actual occasions or events in the ongoing flow of energy;

they are becomings, concrescences – momentary and fleeting. According to Whitehead, fundamental entities in

nature interact with, change and are changed by, each other in a continual process of transformation (see Gunter;

Neesham and Dibben). We suggest that such an approach meets the challenges of Cartesian mind/body dualism

and has the potential to illuminate phenomena across a range of disciplines. We consider now the application of

process philosophy to the study of organizations and the development of a process ethics.

A Process View of Organization as Noun

Although process thinking in management is largely constrained to studying the impact of external relations on

individual managers, Whiteheadian process philosophy is regularly invoked by authors in management studies

in order to reconceptualize a variety of aspects of management theory and practice (see Dibben). We suggest

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that a more prudent interpretation of Whiteheadian process philosophy in management is to be found in an

alternative depiction of organizations as fundamentally dynamic and societal in nature. That is, a depiction of an

organization as “a mini-society, or societal group, in which meaningful interpersonal interactions and exchange

take place in order to achieve the significant advance... that is the aim of the individuals within it” (Dibben 102).

Frisby and Sayer provide a similarly process-oriented definition of a society as a communicative, cognitive

community forming a network of shared understandings that make the actions of the individuals meaningful to

themselves and others. Depicting organizations in this way, we reveal a number of parallels with a broader

process rendering of individuals and society. For example, there are reciprocal interactions between individuals

and their societies, there is the realization of a common purpose, and there exists a notion that the society is a

separate entity, extending beyond the relations of the individuals that comprise it. A familiar reading of

Whitehead would suggest that a society is nothing more than the occasions that constitute it, with no active role

of its own. However, as Bracken (“Continuity”) argues, Whiteheadian societies are probably more accurately

conceptualized as “structured fields of activity” that are at once objectively real and increasingly ordered by the

events occurring within them. An organization in Whiteheadian terms is therefore not a discrete subject of

experience because it is has no agency. However, it does have “causal laws which dominate the social

environment… and is only efficient through [the actions of] its individual members” (Bracken, “Energy,” 156).

Inherent in this view of organizations is recognition that members of the organization can only function

“by reason of the laws which dominate [it], and the laws only come into being by reason of the analogous

characters of the members of the society” (Bracken, “Energy,” 156). The policies, procedures, and guidelines of

an organization (i.e., its laws) are consequently a manifestation of managing. When we conceptualize an

organization as energy, an event, or as a field, “progressively shaped and ordered by successive generations of

occasions [e.g. managerial learning]” (Bracken, “Energy,”155), we are able to understand it in terms of a self-

referential semantic information system:

information patterns generate new information through causal efficacy and, ultimately internal

integration, generating self-organising patterns of relationships that have an intrinsic value inherent in

their self-actualisation and which thereby experience a subjective unity in response to influences from

the totality of their past (Dibben 102).

There emerges an internally-related and self-organizing stream of experiences that exhibits a defining essence of

becoming, of growth, objectively distinguishable in abstraction as organizing activity and exhibiting all the

characteristics of an identifiable organization. In our view, organizations are ultimately not about the

identification of isolated individual structures through externality (the standard view), but the identification of

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related personal individuals through internality; they are event fields within which persons-in-communities

reside (see Bracken 1989, 2002; Clegg, Kornberger, and Rhodes; Cobb; and Dibben).

We suggest this provides for a far richer vision of the nature of embodiment in organizations than is

possible from a perspective grounded in the metaphysics of stasis. Despite a variety of highly original, process-

informed conceptions of management organization topics developed to date in management and organization

studies, we contend that these works are grounded in a false conception of the organization (noun) as static and

wedded to the social science’s axiologically taken-for-granted presupposition of stasis; they arrive at process

solely by focusing on the acts of individual managers through the verb ‘organization’ or the adverb ‘organising’

(Dibben 107). In contrast, we seek to move beyond this by evolving our thinking directly from a process

understanding of the organization (noun) itself, towards a thoroughgoing process view in which we might

understand the extremely small self-organizing process of the occasion buried within the event field of the self-

referential network of societies of occasions of experience, as part of an emerging structure of social order (see

Cahill). If we consider organizations as societies in a Whiteheadian manner, we facilitate a focus not on external

relations (see Cooper) but rather on internal relations. We can now explore how an organization “selects those

aspects of both its environments and its parts that are relevant for its functioning and…lends its own aspects to

what it draws together” (Stengers 131).

The implications of a process approach to questions of business and organizational ethics are, we

believe, potentially profound. Process thought does not clearly support any one of the standard ethical theories

over the others; however, it does suggest a distinctive approach to ethical issues in its own right. It eschews

abstracting one sphere of life and thought from the rest and does not treat ethics as an independent discipline,

separable from aesthetics and science and religion and metaphysics (see Cobb). Of course, by its very nature,

process thought equally opposes treating any of these others in separation from ethics. Although Whitehead did

not develop an ethical theory, arguably he “made it philosophically possible for a Process Ethics to be derived

from the richness of his metaphysical categories...and the non-systematic ethical statements that appear

throughout his work” (Belaief xi). We turn our attention now to the implications of a process view of

organizations for the development and enactment of a process ethics.

A Processual Business and Organizational Ethics

Whitehead not only rejects substance ontology, but also substance axiology and the notion of “vacuous

actuality”-- the idea that there are material substances without any subjectivity. For Whitehead, there is no

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concrete singular that does not experience; every actual occasion experiences, from the quark to God. In moral

philosophical terms, this means that every actual occasion has some measure of autonomy or choice, albeit not a

self-aware, self-reflective choice for the vast multitude of actual occasions. The profound moral implication of

this is that in Whitehead’s process philosophy each actual occasion has intrinsic value because each of these

experiences. Each actual occasion has worth because it is has “existence for its own sake” (Henning 39).

Henning argues eloquently for a process ethics in terms of the individual actual occasion having intrinsic value

because it is not independent from others; rather it is fundamentally and internally related to them. He argues

(60) that “although the ethics of creativity defends the notion of an individual as an end in itself, the notion of

individuality requires essential reference to others.” Thus, to understand value in itself, one can neither be

removed from the value of others nor from the value of the whole.

To be adequate, a moral philosophy must articulate the responsibility of individuals (actual occasions),

yet not all actual occasions have moral responsibility. Humans, as societies of occasions, are uniquely and

sufficiently complex that we can in fact be morally responsible for our actions. A process ethics is therefore

grounded in the conceptualization of humans as nexi of actual occasions and as enduring mini-societies (see

Deroy and Clegg; Dibben). Between human beings and other animals, Henning argues, there is no absolute gap.

The difference between humans and other animals is one of degree, but it is significant all the same: “the

intensity of coordination is so great that conceptual entertainment of possibilities becomes feasible. Humans are

societies that are so complex and intensely coordinated that we are capable of reflecting conceptually; so much

so that speaking of ‘moral responsibility’ becomes explicable” (73).

At this point, process ethics takes a teleological turn. Henning advocates the pursuit of “Beauty,” a

state where there is balance between a harmonious whole and enhanced parts, whose individuality is not

sacrificed. Against the backdrop of the ultimate lure of Beauty and the capacity of humans to choose ugliness,

Henning argues (143) in favor of an “aesthetics of morality”:

Existence … no matter how small, weak, or insignificant, has value in and for itself, for others, and for

the whole. Therefore, as a unique center of intrinsic value, no individual may be excluded from the

scope of our direct moral concern. For if every individual is a unique subject of experience with

intrinsic value, then everything to which a moral agent relates is at least a moral patient.

An ethics of creativity is therefore not about abstract moral laws, but is a situated ethics; what is “right” is

relative to the beauty achievable in the circumstances. Henning argues (145-146) that “if we examine the moral

ideal of a genuine ethical universe through the lens of Whitehead's axiology, aesthetics, and metaphysics, we

arrive at five interrelated obligations”:

15

1. For Beauty: “The obligation always to act in such a way as to bring about the greatest possible

universe of beauty, value, and importance that in each situation is possible”;

2. For Self-respect: “The obligation to maximize the intensity and harmony of one’s own

experience”;

3. For Love: “The obligation to maximize the harmony and intensity of experience of everything

within one’s sphere of influence”;

4. For Peace: “The obligation to avoid destruction (or maiming) of any actual occasion, nexus or

society, unless not doing so threatens the achievement of the greatest harmony and intensity that in

each situation is possible”;

5. For Education: “The obligation to strive continually to expand the depth and breadth of one’s

aesthetic horizons.”

Given that these all turn on the teleology of beauty, we believe that strategies and processes are needed that help

individuals, as moral agents, to work towards the most beautiful whole. We have argued that organizations can

be portrayed as macroscopic objects, nexi of actual occasions and, more particularly, complex structured

societies. Their common form endures in continually emerging actual occasions because of prehensions of

culture(s), technologies, and structures of power that impose conditions on the introduction of novelty.

Moreover, they include a dominant subordinate society – leaders and managers.

However, organizations are different from most other structured societies in that they are composed of

sub-societies that are personal and capable of conceptualizing and choosing either beauty (good) or ugliness

(evil). Therefore, the dominant subordinate society (leaders and managers) must exercise power over sub-

systems that are also conceptualizing and personal (human groups and individuals). If we view organizations as

systems of moral relations between individuals, we conclude that leaders and managers have a moral

responsibility to think about what is good/beautiful for both actual occasions/societies/the cosmos outside the

organizational societies and the individuals within it. Clearly, there are numerous implications for applying this

approach to organizational strategy, policy, and human resource management. In the final section of this paper

we contribute to the organizational discourse in a way that we believe to be in keeping with the pragmatically-

oriented dimension of process thinkers. Specifically, we articulate how a process ethics might be enacted in

organizational practice through managerial decision-making and in the treatment of employees.

Decision-making

We suggest that Henning’s processual model of moral decision-making can be re-formulated as a guide for

managers and leaders. We are called first to educate ourselves for aesthetics judgment, to build an understanding

of the beauty of the individuals involved and the effect of our action on beauty in the widest possible context.

Second, we must pursue the mean between unity and diversity, seeking that neither chaos nor monotony reign

16

and that individual others’ demands are met without destroying the unity of experience. Finally. we should

pursue a balance between complexity and simplicity. For experience to be truly beautiful, and therefore moral, it

must be as inclusive as possible and complex enough to introduce new contrasts “not only to include the greatest

variety possible, but also to seek the most intense whole possible” (Henning 155).

Process ethics suggests a three-step approach can be applied to moral decision making in human

resource management. First, leaders and managers should educate themselves and supervisors in order to best

exercise their aesthetic judgment in the management of the creativity of employees. They should attempt to

build an understanding and appreciation of the beauty of all employees and consider the effect of their strategies

on this beauty in the widest possible context.

Second, to the greatest extent possible in the situation, in accord with the pursuit of harmony, mangers

and leader should strive to achieve the mean between unity and diversity in organizational management. This

means neither allowing so much diversity that chaos reigns, such as might be the case with completely laissez-

faire resourcing of innovation teams or individuals, nor becoming so orderly as to be monotonous, such as might

occur with incentive schemes that are incapable of taking into account the different talents, capabilities, and

idiosyncrasies of particular groups and individuals. Moreover, managers and leaders must reflect on whether

they are being respectful of the organization’s constituent groups and individuals to the greatest extent possible

without restricting the capacity of the organization to further broaden social beauty.

Third, to the greatest extent possible in the situation, managers and leaders should strive to balance

complexity and simplicity. For example, organizational structures and technologies should not be so complex

that employees cannot understand their roles and become hyper-anxious; nor so monotonous, trivialized, and

deskilled that employees become completely unmotivated and instrumentalized. For work to be truly

beautiful/moral and therefore innovative, leaders and managers must not only be as inclusive as possible, but

also design work that is sufficiently complex in its organization as to introduce new contrasts and possibilities.

Treatment of Employees

From a process ethics perspective (see D’Arcy and Dibben), leaders and managers always need to bear in mind

three core principles. First, all human beings are a function of and arise from particular contexts. A process

ethics argues that decisions affecting employees are more coherent, educated, and broader-based, in other words

more complete, when the thinking that leads to the decisions has as its starting point the essential human context

of an individual’s work life.

17

Second, a process ethics takes as a basic premise the core recognition that each individual is valuable

not just for the organization, but in and for herself. There is an inherent quality-relatedness to the humanity of

people. We can no longer genuinely see employees purely in means-ends terms, insofar as they are understood

in terms of their contributions to the core objectives of a business. Instead the contribution of the employee to

the business must be set in the wider context of the life of the employee. A process ethics approach thus ensures

a manager thinks not so much in terms of the role which an employee may contribute to the business, but rather

more in terms of the contributive role the business should genuinely play in enriching the life of the employee.

That is, the life of the employee is also an end-in-itself, a value in itself to which the employer must contribute

positively.

Third, a process ethics approach understands human beings as inherently free and open-ended in their

process of experiencing. It is not so much what the manager or the business does that counts (the external

relation), but rather more what employees make of that action for themselves (the internal relation). With this in

mind, a process ethics always holds to the principle of feedback honesty in managing and treating employees as

genuinely responsive human beings, which encourages managers to make decisions that are more likely to lead

to intended behaviors. It thus avoids the common “surprise” of driven behaviors being different from those

intended by the decisions made.

In sum, a process ethics approach to employees is inherently humanistic, not only inviting but

genuinely enabling employees to be involved in the HR discourse, while at the same time looking to apply

policies on a regular, consistent, and fair basis. This provides a positive frame for all employees as the

appropriate way for the business to operate. Taken together this produces a trusting and giving culture

underpinned by a relational understanding of people as both embodying, and embodiments of, change in the

workplace.

Conclusion

This article has developed a view of ethics and organizations that starts from a process basis of: (1)

organizations as somewhat less than structured, ordered, and permanent, but rather more evolving and inherently

changeful; (2) human beings as inherently free and open-ended in their embodied experience; and (3) ethics as

inherently embodied in the individual, as the organization is embodied in the individual, through a processual

experience of becoming. To arrive at this position, we have relied heavily and purposefully not so much on

organization literature, but on the established literature of process philosophy. This is so as to connect with core

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process metaphysical principles, such as panexperientialism; all true individuals, as distinct from aggregational

societies, have at least some iota of experience and spontaneity (self-determination); all enduring individuals

are serially ordered societies of momentary occasions of experience; and all actual entities have internal as well

as external relations.

In this process rendering, embodiment is not simply taking the organization on board passively, but

rather more turning the perceptions of the constituents of the organization and of our work experience to our

own ends, transforming ourselves in the process. A process ethics, as the process philosopher Arran Gare notes,

transforms our understanding of ethics so as to be centrally concerned with the virtues required to develop and

sustain desirable social forms. The incorporation of process-thinking in the ethical decision-making process and

the treatment of employees can have a profound effect on those personnel and the health of the one such

desirable social form, the organization itself. This is because it relies on a concept of inherent freedom that

focuses on enabling people to work in a way that is fundamentally concerned with a quality of life that extends

beyond the organization itself; this involves a holistic view of life as it is lived and experience as it is felt. In this

sense a process ethics rejects traditional dichotomies between ethics and business, between doing good and a

profit motive, and between personal and corporate values.

Embodying a virtue ethics in the organization ultimately concerns a rich focus on allowing people to

“work towards a living whole in which each person plays a part” (Gare 375). As Moore notes, “value,

experience, and subjectivity are always in the process of becoming whereas intellectually complex events like

human consciousness are particularly complex instances of the subjective experience of value” (274). From a

process perspective ethics, embodied in organizations of people, must inherently be concerned with a freely

derived orientation towards the common good (see Daly and Cobb), and should be grounded in holistic forms of

work that set themselves against the fragmentation of culture, life, and work which, we argue, has largely

undermined contemporary ethics in business.

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