eduardo ibarra colado-“the ethics of managerial subjectivity”

7/28/2019 Eduardo Ibarra colado-The Ethics of Managerial Subjectivity

1/11

The Ethics of Managerial Subjectivity

Eduardo Ibarra-ColadoStewart R. CleggCarl Rhodes

Martin Kornberger

ABSTRACT. This paper examines ethics in organiza-

tions in relation to the subjectivity of managers. Drawingon 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 powerfullyintertwined in an individuals 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.

KEY WORDS: ethics, Foucault, power, subjectivity

Eduardo Ibarra-Colado is Head of the Department of Institutional

Studies at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, Campus

Cuajimalpa and professor of Management and Organization

Studies. He obtained his Ph.D in Sociology with Honors at the

Universidad Nacional Autonomade Mexico. He is a NationalResearcher of theMexican National System of Research-

ers, and regular member of the Mexican Academy of Sci-

ences. One of his best recognized books is La universidad en

Mexico hoy: gubernamentalidad y modernizacion [The

Mexican University Today: Governmentality and

Modernization], which won theAutonomous Metropol-

itan UniversityAnnual Research Competitionfor the best

research in Social Sciences and Humanities in 2003. He has

published a large number of contributions in the fields of

Organization Studies and Higher Education Studies in

Mexico and Internationally. He is currently working on a re-

search Project on Corporate Ethics, Corruption andGovernance,paying particular attention to the case of Mexico.

Stewart R. Clegg completed a first degreeat theUniversity of Aston

(1971) and a Doctorate at Bradford University (1974).

Stewart is currently a Professor at the University of Technology,

Sydney, and Director of ICAN Research (Innovative Col-

laborations, Alliances and Networks Research), a Key Uni-

versity Research Centre. He also holds Chairs at Aston

University, University of Maastricht and Vrije Universiteit,

Amsterdam. He has published extensively in many journals

and has contributed a large number of books to the literature,

including the award-winning Handbook of Organization

Studies (London: Sage, second edition 2006, co-edited with

Cynthia Hardy, Walter Nord and Tom Lawrence). His most

recent book is Managing and Organizations: an intro-

duction to theory and practice (London: Sage, 2005, with

Martin Kornberger and Tyrone Pitsis), and he has a number of

volumes in press at present.

Carl Rhodes is Associate Professor in the School of Management atthe University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He has

researched andwritten widely on issuesrelated to ethics, learning

and culture in organizations. Within this he has explored at

length research methodologies based on narrative and discourse

approaches. Current research projects focus on the practice of

ethics in management, and the relationship between organiza-

tions in popular culture. Carl is author of Writing Organi-

zation: (Re)presentation and Control in Narratives at

Work (Benjamins, 2001), co-author of Reconstructing

the Lifelong Learner (Routledge, 2003) and co-editor of

Research and Knowledge at Work (Routledge, 2000).

His next book Management Ethics-ContemporaryContexts (co-edited with Stewart Clegg) will appear in 2006.

He has published in journals such as Organization,

Organization Studies, The Leadership Quarterly, and

Qualitative Inquiry.

Martin Kornberger received hisPhD from theUniversity of Vienna

and the University of Innsbruck. After enjoying two years as

postdoctoral research fellow he is currently working at the

University of Technology as Senior Lecturer in the School of

Management and the School of Design. He is also a lecturer at

the School of Management at the University of St Andrews,

Scotland. His current research interests include business ethics as

practice, strategy, and creative professions such as architecture,

design, and digital production.

Journal of Business Ethics (2006) 64: 4555 Springer 2006

DOI 10.1007/s10551-005-3325-z


2/11

Introduction

Being ethical has emerged in the early 21st centuryas one of the major challenges for organizations. In

addressing this challenge, for researchers and man-

agers alike, it is important to understand the way that

ethics are constituted in organizations. There is a

relationship between the actions of individuals and

the ethicality of organizations. Sometimes this rela-

tionship is understood in terms of ethical norms and

rules (formal and informal) and the way that the

members of the organization adhere to them. Seen

this way being an ethical individual means acting in a

way that is detached from personal privileges, pas-sions, and emotions (du Gay, 2000) and adhering to

agreed ethical standards that can be managed.

Such an ethics focuses on how prescriptions (should)

govern everyday actions (see Beyer and Nino, 1999;

Jackson, 2000; Stevens, 1994; Warren, 1993). Other

writers see management that uses ethical rules and

norms as, perversely, antithetical to the possibility of

business ethics (Barker, 1993; Sims and Brinkmann,

2003; Thorne and Saunders, 2002). Instead, ethical

conduct is seen in such situations to emerge directly

from the individual (Soares, 2003). Here, being eth-

ical requires being a person whose individual moralresponsibility leads one to be morally assertive so

as to mediate corporate priorities (Watson, 2003).

The individual is responsible for ethical behaviour

and so organizations should avoid restricting indi-

viduality through rules and instead create an

empowering ethics that enable people to realize

and meet their ethical responsibilities (Kjonstad and

Willmott, 1995; Styhre, 2001).

In this paper, we turn to the ethical theorizing of

Michel Foucault and relate it to a consideration of

ethics in organizations. Specifically, we use Fou-caults work in order to develop an understanding of

ethics and management in a way that mediates

between an understanding of ethics as an individual

responsibility and ethics as organizationally deter-

mined. The means through which a manager acts in

relation to both ethics and organizations are the

central issue. Thus, in this perspective, the subjectivity

of managers is located at the centre stage of ethical

discussion. Subjectivity is a means through which to

think of individual people not as being distinct or

self-contained but as necessarily social; however a

person might consider themself to be an individ-

ual, such a consideration is always done in relation

to others (Mansfield, 2000) and to social institutions,

such as organizations. It is in this sense that we seekto theorize ethics in terms of what it means for a

manager to be an active ethical subject. Being active

entails managing subjectivity as an ethical enterprise

in relation to organizational structures and norms.

Thus, ethics are not the property of the individual,

despite the organization, nor something that orga-

nizations control either formally or informally

instead they are a complex and mutually constituting

relationship between the two.

Foucaults work is valuable because his concern for

ethics is principally about how people constitutethemselves as moral subjects of their actions (Fou-

cault 1984d) while, at the same time, being disci-

plined by institutions into being particular types of

people (Foucault, 1975). For Foucault ethics is a

conscious practice of freedom (1984a: 284)

through which people develop a notion of self that

can be considered ethical. Such practice, however, is

not free in the sense that it is done in the absence of

constraint, but rather in the sense that the ethical self

emerges in relation to (or even against) those social

and organizational rules and norms which seek to

determine or dictate what a person should or shouldnot be. On this basis, our approach seeks to locate

ethics in the relation between individual morality and

organizationally prescribed principles assumed to

guide individual action (Chan and Garrick, 2002;

Kelemen and Peltonen, 2001). We argue that a

complex interaction exists between these elements

an interaction through which individual managers

must negotiate their own ethical conduct. The paper

examines the manager as a moral subject in relation to

subjectivity at work. Such an ethics involves re-

imagining and re-inventing the different ways inwhich people are self-constituted in relation to the

institutions and procedures within which they

operate (OLeary, 2002).

Foucaults ethics

In turning to Foucault as a means to understand

ethics and organizations, it is worth noting the

intellectual context and lineage in which his work is

situated. In this sense, Foucaults work can be

regarded as a response to the traditions of Marxism

46 Eduardo Ibarra-Colado et al.


3/11

and phenomenology that dominated French intel-

lectual life in the immediate post Second World War

period. In relation to Marxism, this was a response toa teleological conception of history unfolding to a

predetermined outcome. In terms of phenomenol-

ogy, it was a response to a notion of truth as existing

prior to the human subject (Danaher et al., 2000). In

this context Foucaults work, following the philo-

sophical lineage of Nietzsche and the methodologi-

cal/historical legacy of Bloch, (Delacampagne,

1999), provides a historical critique of the presumed

objectivity of scientific truth, and examines how

subjectivity is created through the relations between

language and power (Mansfield, 2000).Foucault is also part of an intellectual lineage back

to Kant while he breaks from Kantian transcen-

dentalism, he retains a privileging of critique in

relation to knowledge. As he puts it: criticism is no

longer going to be practiced in the search for formal

structures with universal value, but rather as a his-

torical investigation in to the events that have led us

to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as

subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying.

(Foucault, 1986: 46)1. It is in Foucaults later work

that this concern with critique and subjectivity

emerged in relation to the analysis of the self for-mation of an ethical subject (Rabinow, 2000). In

this context, that Foucaults work can be brought to

bear on a consideration of business ethics, because he

provides a way of thinking about the very means

through which people at work constitute them-

selves, as subjects, in relation to ethics.

For Foucault, ethics is centrally about what it

means to be a person in the world it is understood

in terms of how we constitute ourselves as moral

subjects of our own actions (Davidson, 1994: 118).

As Foucault himself defined it, ethics is:

a process in which the individual delimits that

part of himself that will form the object of his

moral practice, defines his position relative to

the precept he will follow, and decides on a

certain mode of being that will serve as his

moral goal. And this requires him to act upon

himself, to monitor, test, improve, and trans-

form himself. There is no specific moral action

that does not refer to a unified moral conduct;

no moral conduct that does not call for the

forming of oneself as an ethical subject; and no

forming of the ethical subject without modes

of subjectivation and an ascetics or prac-

tices of the self that support them (Foucault,1984b: 28)

Following such a definition, we can see a close

relationship between ethics and being a person in the

world. Foucault alerts us to ethics as an active process

through which people assert particular moral prin-

ciples and then act to follow them. The important

distinction that Foucault makes is that moral action

requires a person to regard themself as a particular

type of ethical subject whom s/he wishes to

become and is free to try to become. As Foucault

explains: For what is ethics, if not the practice of

freedom, the conscious practice of freedom? ...

Freedom is the ontological condition of ethics. But

ethics is the considered form that freedom takes

when it is informed by reflection (Foucault, 1984a:

284). Foucaults ethics provides an invitation to a

practice of freedom that seeks to open possibilities

for new relations to self and events in the world

(Bernauer and Mahon, 1994: 154).

Foucault concern with freedom is not in relation

to a self-contained individual who can do as s/he

pleases, but rather a subject whose freedom is bothlocated and constituted in relations of power. It is this

focus on power that enables a relation to be estab-

lished between individual morality and organiza-

tional ethics. Foucaults work has been concerned

with how particular social discourses (including

ethical ones) discipline the self into particular modes

of being. To this end, one of the significant effects of

Foucaults work has been a consideration of how, in

late modern times, we can still consider ourselves to

be free beings in a world that, despite its dominant

rhetoric, seems on close and lucid inspection so often

to deny the reality of that freedom (Fillion, 2004:

115). Reading Foucault this way suggests a need to

contribute to the creation and construction of

spaces where we can be free within and against the

constraints of the particular regimes of truth we

inhabit (ibid, p. 122). In Foucaults own words,

these regimes can be understood as the systems of

ordered procedures for the production, regulation,

distribution, circulation, and operation of state-

ments (Foucault, 1980a: 132). Such procedures

provide the discursive architecture through which

different ways of understandings the world are

The Ethics of Managerial Subjectivity 47


4/11

sanctioned through statements which include

ethical positioning. Thus, while persons necessarily

operate within powerfully determining and institu-tionalized regimes of truth, Foucault concerns him-

self with the possibilities of freedom, not outside of

those regimes, but rather in relation to them and in

relation to their intersections (Dumm, 1996).

By drawing on Foucault, we suggest that an

important issue for a consideration of ethics and

management is how managers constitute themselves

as the moral subjects of their own actions within

those regimes of truth in which they find them-

selves at work (Foucault, 1980a). Management, as a

practice, has built-in moral technologies (Foucault,1975) that attempt to govern the dispositions making

up managerial identity (Chan and Garrick, 2002).

Such a conception does not involve grand claims

about business ethics or corporate morality, but in-

stead concerns itself with how a manager defines

their ethical position in relation to everyday practice

(Bernauer and Mahon, 1994; Chan and Garrick,

2002; Keleman and Peltonen, 2001). The moral

predicament that managers face concerns the way

that they bring morality to bear on their interaction

with organizational rules and requirements (ten Bos

1997). The processes of self formation at work showhow the identity of the manager might be ethically

constituted. Indeed, one interpretation would have

Foucault saying that by actively seeking to control

the ethical behaviour of individual managers, orga-

nizations unwittingly restrict freedom and hence the

possibilities for ethics.

Following Foucault (1984d, see also Davidson,

1994), the ethics of management emerges through

four interrelated questions the answers to which

can be thought of as forming the basis of ethical

subjectivity.

Ethical Substance Which aspects of manage-

rial behaviour are considered to be con-

cerned with ethical judgement?

Mode of Subjection In what ways do manag-

ers establish their relationships to ethical rules

and obligations?

Practices of the Self In what practices do

managers engage in order to consider them-

selves ethical?

Aspirations for the Self What are the ethics of

the idealised managerial that managers aspire to?

How such questions might relate to a particular

manager can be expected to vary just as they will

between organizations. Further, one might expectthat in the name of ethics, organizations will seek to

answer these questions on behalf of managers. In this

sense, when ethics is invoked in organizations as an

attempt to govern the behaviour, comportment, or

even attitudes of employees, such an invocation is

less about ethics and more about attempts to deter-

mine (or at least limit) individual opportunities to

think and act. Or, to put it differently, individual

ethical action is undertaken in relation to power as it

is instantiated in the relations between people. These

issues of the relationship between organizationalattempts to govern ethics and their effects on indi-

vidual ethical conduct are central to understanding

how ethical conduct gets played out. Such rela-

tionships can best be understood in terms of Fou-

caults concept of governmentality (Foucault,

1978; Chan and Garrick, 2002, 1981, 1984a).

[...] governmentality implies the relationship of

the self to itself, and I intend this concept of

governmentality to cover the whole range of

practices that constitute, define, organize, and

instrumentalize the strategies that individuals intheir freedom can use in dealing with each

other. Those who try to control, determine, and

limit the freedom of others are themselves free

individuals who have at their disposal certain

instruments they can use to govern others.

Thus, the basis for all this is freedom, the rela-

tionship of the self to itself and the relationship

to the other. [...] the concept of governmentali-

ty makes it possible to bring out the freedom of

the subject and its relationship to others

which constitutes the very stuff [matiere] of eth-ics (Foucault, 1984a: 300).

The value of the concept of governmentality lies in

the possibilities it offers for examining the connec-

tions between power and ethics, which enable a

connection between a political component (the

governing of others, i.e. management) and a sub-

jective component (the governing of oneself).

Governmentality concerns the government of the

self by oneself in its articulation with relations to

others (Foucault, 1981: 88) it breaks the com-

promise that is set up in the proposed duality



5/11

between individual and organizational ethics. This

concern with governmentality is contrasted with

that of sovereignty that is the juridical right toexercise legal authority over a particular state or

territory. With governmentality, the focus shifts

towards how thought operates within our

organized way of doing things, our regimes of

practice, and with its ambitions and effects (Dean,

1999: 18). Importantly this proposes a mode of

governing that exceeds formal authority. In terms of

organizations it also suggests that the ethical conduct

of people at work is not limited to formal regulatory

regimes, but is also governed by particular knowl-

edge structures which seek to define moral characterand conduct in particular ways. Thus, it is through

governmentality that we can anlyse the politico-

cultural relations woven by individuals, groups,

organizations, systems of organizations and institu-

tions in order to produce these spaces of practices

and mentalities under certain modes of rationality.

Self creation

Freedom, in the context of governmentality, is

important to the Foucaldian notion of what it meansto be a self in the world. For Foucault, ones relation

with oneself, and thus to the operations carried out

in relation to ones body and soul, is a practice of

conscience and knowledge as secularized practices of

self-knowledge (Foucault, 1976, 1981, 1982a); in

other words, the modes through which one acts

upon oneself to carry out transformations in ones

behaviour, with the aim of situating oneself and

achieving ones personal realization. Foucault writes

of the forms and transformations of morality and

the moral practices that lead to the arts of existence.These assume the establishment of certain modes of

conduct through which individuals become partic-

ular types of people by assuming certain ways of

life (Foucault, 1984b, 1984c). Foucault refers to

these processes as the technologies of self that enable

individuals to produce themselves, govern their own

behaviour and that of others. It is in this way that

governmental regimes are not necessarily restrictive,

but can also enable the emergence of particular types

of self.

For Foucault, technologies of self determine ways

of being, both in the individual sphere as well as at

the level of work, politics and society (Foucault,

1982b). Among these ways of being, there are two

that are especially relevant for understanding thegovernance of conducts in modern times: first, self-

examination, as an effort at self-acknowledgement

and the objectification of oneself in relation to

oneself; second, the confession that, supported by the

will to know as expressed in the first, assumes the

obligation of verbalizing to others the truth regard-

ing oneself (Foucault, 1980b; 1982c). For instance,

the role of confession in organizations has been

operated by personnel counseling and group

dynamics technologies that facilitate the re-fabrica-

tion of identities. It is by considering such practicesthat Foucault is able to consider the self not as being

singular and determined but rather as something that

is actively and creatively produced in a reflexive

relation to one-self, to others and to society.

Foucaults notion of the selfs relation to the self

can be seen in the contemporary spread of consul-

tation practices, best represented as psy[sci]ences

(Rose, 1989, 1996) psychology, psychiatry, psy-

chotherapy and so forth. Foucault argues that the

development of these disciplines provide practical

advice to guide oneself, achieve success and find

happiness. Such texts are certainly a key part ofmanagement theory and practice from its early

inception as a science of engineering design, oriented

to the new men of modernity, the disciplined factory

workers (e.g. Foucault, 1982b, 1984b; Taylor, 1911).

As Foucault pointed out, these are

[...] texts written for the purpose of offering rules,

opinions, and advice on how to behave as one

should: practical texts, which are themselves

objects of a practice in that they were designed

to be read, learned, reflected upon, and tested out,and they were intended to constitute the eventual

framework of everyday conduct. These texts thus

served as functional devices that would enable

individuals to question their own conduct, to

watch over and give shape to it, and to shape

themselves as ethical subjects... (Foucault, 1984b:

1213)

The selfs relation to itself is one whereby people are

able to reflexively consider themselves as selves

that can be modified or even improved. In this sense,

various forms of self-reflection are geared to enable a



6/11

person to define both who s/he is and who s/he

aspires to be. In this sense, the individual is consti-

tuted as a moral subject on the basis of self-orderingknowledge that permits one to discover oneself as

responsible for ones own acts, and consequently, as

a free individual that may shift the limits that define

ones being, modifying certain behaviours in order

to constitute oneself in another way. Such a form of

self-subjection is also assisted by highly diverse

expert knowledges, especially those centring their

attention on individual behaviour and interior con-

duct. Their recommendations assist individuals to

find themselves, providing rules of conduct with

which to act as they should. Without the existenceof such knowledge outside of the individual, no

notion of self would be possible. Conduct is guided

through a certain moral code that establishes basic

norms for judging ones vocation and aptitude, and

for understanding intentions and actions.

In terms of the notion of subjectivity described

above, contemporary management practices, such as

teamwork and empowerment, are illustrative cases

in point (Styhre, 2001). Teamwork, for example, is

not commonly considered to be a mechanism of

power, although, recent theory has suggested the

contrary (Barker, 1993; Sewell, 1998). As Sewellnotes, teamwork is usually associated with the

rhetoric of empowerment, trust and enhanced dis-

cretion and sometimes it is thought of as giving

away power. There is, indeed, a flood of popular

management books whose message is cast in terms of

this normative rhetoric, as analysis by Barley and

Kunda (1992) demonstrates, texts often espousing

single-answer solutions for harried managers. These

include TQM (Total Quality Management), BPR

(Business Process Reengineering), kaizen, organiza-

tional learning and lean production. What all ofthese methods have in common, Sewell (1998)

suggests, is a reversal of the highly individualistic

approach to the employee that earlier perspectives

such as scientific management had championed.

Rather than isolate, observe, and individually mea-

sure the times taken by individuals for doing stan-

dardized tasks and discouraging them from

communicating with others while doing so, the new

approach encourages communication and sociability.

In so doing, teamwork does not abolish politics but

relies on what Barker (1993) terms concertive

control a horizontal mode of surveillance.

Following Foucault, this new form of govern-

mentality constitutes subjectivity in different ways

(Foucault, 1983; Knights and Vurdubakis, 1994;Townley, 1993, 1994), and frames possible ethics

differently. According to Sthyre (2001) such man-

agement techniques represent technologies of the

self that shape individuals striving to be empowered,

intelligent and creative employees. Such govern-

mental techniques do two things: they constitute

subjectivity and they frame the limits in which ethics

is discussed and enacted. Thus, while such practices

are not a form of domination from which workers

might be liberated, they still enact forms of gov-

ernmental power that no longer involve a coercivepractice, but a practice of self-formation of the

subject (Foucault, 1984a/1997: 282). As Sthyre

(2001) shows, kaizen, for example, triggers a work

ethic that values creativity, flexibility and coopera-

tion. Whether individual conduct is ethical or not is

a question that can only be answered within the

(discursive) frame developed by empowering man-

agement techniques. A bureaucratically ethical

subject (see du Gay, 2000) adhering to rules would

look unethical in this new context. Thus, it is

power relations and their embeddedness in man-

agement techniques (including techniques to resistthem) that first frame possible ethical positions for an

individual. For a manager operating in such a con-

text, the possibilities for them to be regarded as (and

to regard themselves as) ethical are circumscribed by

the practices and relationships that they find them-

selves in organizationally even when those prac-

tices might be resisted or subverted.

Culture and ethics

To be a person imbued with subjectivity means

relating ones self to some form of self-knowledge

as well as knowledge by and of others. As we have

illustrated in our discussion so far, a key part of this

concerns how a person comes to regard themself as

a subject. Importantly, however, being able to

think of oneself as a subject is not done indepen-

dently, but in relation to others who also have a

self-regard as subjects and who might seek to

influence ones own subjectivity. In this sense,

power is extremely important for clarifying the

ethical relations between different people. Such



7/11

relations are typically associated with behaviour in

the workplace, a field of force delimited by the

rules of calculation and the procedures that governthe behaviour of individuals and delimit their col-

lective action in such contexts. Power is exercised

over subjects in order to manage their conduct and

govern their action within an organized space. But

its focus is not so much on the individual subjec-

tivity as on the relation between people and how

to shape these relations. In other words, ethics not

only constitutes the subject in relation to itself but

also through governing possible relations between

subjects.

In contemporary times, a key way in whichorganizations have sought to govern relationships

between members is through culture. Peters and

Waterman (1982), for example suggested that

organizations should be governed by a shared, clear

and compelling normative order that they referred

to as a strong culture. Such an approach, how-

ever, is problematic because it does not account for

the possibility of an active ethical subjectivity, in-

stead always assuming that individual action is

(over)determined by the organization. Thus the

language of corporate culture programmes appears as

a means of controlling the choices and identitiesopen to employees (Willmott, 1993). At one ex-

treme, this suggests that everything must be subor-

dinated to the greater good of the corporate culture

and that only within its frame can organization

members find freedom and value. Despite such

claims of what organizational power might aspire to

be, in practice, the relationships between people and

organizations are more complex. Chan (2003), for

example, stresses the contingent character of power

relations in which there is no place for determinism

because history is written daily by the relations,events, and accidents that characterize everyday life

activities. Thought of in this way, strong culture are

not easily engineered, and function mainly as an

argument(the power of saying) to question actions of

the other, those abnormals who do not accept the

values of the organization. In practice, culture

consists of loosely negotiated, tacit ways of making

sense that are embedded in specific situations in the

organization rather than an all enveloping structure

that somehow contains all who are members. Being

a member doesnt necessarily mean accepting the

formal rhetoric of an organization; indeed, one can

imagine few people whose acceptance of organiza-

tionally sanctioned cultural values is complete and

unquestioning as empirical case studies of dividedmangers have shown (Knights and Murray, 1994).

Despite the constraints that organizations might

place on peoples ethical conduct, these never totally

determine an individuals personal stance. As Bevir

(1999) explains, because different people adopt

different beliefs and perform different actions against

the background of the same social structure, there

must be an undecided space in front of these struc-

tures where individual subjects decide what beliefs to

hold and what actions to perform for reasons of their

own (p. 358). Ethics are located within such aspace, we suggest. In this sense we each regulate a

position within the cultural spaces created for and

around us. Because culture is overwhelmingly situ-

ational, it will usually be quite fragmentary, forming

around certain emergent issues and then dissolving,

unfolding in process. Ethical judgements are always

situated, and, as such, rarely accord with either

formal rules or strong cultures as their surrogate,

except perhaps in ideological or values inspired

organizations, such as those with faith-based reli-

gious values or sectarian political ideologies. Orga-

nizations present people with boundless opportunities toreinvent themselves ethically (Schwartz, 1999), even if

the accomplishment is somewhat more difficult. In

organizations, the power exercised through net-

works of relations among people is not something

separate from the ability to fashion oneself as an

ethical subject.

Seeing people as active and ethical subjects

operating through power and governmentality,

rather than as being at the mercy of organizationally

dictated ethics, enables a consideration of organiza-

tional ethics in relation to both individuality andorganizational control. The ability of a person to be

regarded, and to regard themselves as an ethical

subject depends on their relationship to others as

well as the ways in which regimes of governmen-

tality constitutes these relations in organizations. For

instance, Taylorism produced subjects who saw

themselves as possessive individuals vying against

others regarded the same, competing to maximize

production bonuses. Thus, ethics is part of both the

history of subjectivity and the history of govern-

mentality (Davidson, 1994). On the basis of our

discussion, we suggest that ethics cannot be con-



8/11

sidered as being either organizationally driven or

individually driven; rather, the individual (regarded

as such) is a result of the governmental conjunctureof self, others, and organizations. As such, ethics are

not a result of the actions of a self-contained human

essence that is restrained by organizations. Such a

view would, itself, be an effect of a specific ethical

constitution by a particular regime of governmen-

tality. Instead, the ethical subject is one who seeks

creative relations in the world (Bernauer and

Mahon, 1994), especially those that enable them to

be reflexive about their own and others constitution.

Concluding comments

The approach to Foucaults ethics we have discussed

in this paper has important implications for the study

of ethics in organizations. Ethics cannot be consid-

ered only in terms of the organization but must be

considered in terms of the relationship between

governmental practices and the way they enable

people to fashion themselves into being particular

types of subjects. Further, understanding ethics is

concerned with the ways that people exercise free-dom in relation to those practices. In this sense,

business ethics becomes a practice of re-forming

structures of recognition constitutive of subjectivity

and uncovering new ways of acting and being ... [by]

... engaging with organizational realities of power

(and possibly of change) (Chan and Garrick, 2002:

693).

Ethics are not something controlled by organiza-

tions through rules, codes of conducts and govern-

mental practices, because that control will always be

mediated through at least a modicum of freedom tobe reflexive as one constitutes ones self as a governed

subject. Conversely, relying solely on a notion of

absolute or transcendental ethical freedom is no way

to view ethics because individuality can only ever be

achieved in relation to others and to the possible

disciplinary and governmental regimes socially

enacted. It is in the relationship between the indi-

vidual and the organization that persons, as they are

constituted organizationally, become organization-

ally ethical. Of course, they may bring extra-

organizational learning to the situation (Bible class,

Koranic teaching, the Torah, or whatever). This

situatedness of practice has important implications

for understanding the ethics of organizational man-

agement. Indeed, this suggests a research programthat abandons analyses of whether management and

managers are ethical or unethical, per se, and that

eschews a theory that uses ethics as a mechanism of

power that passes judgment on the ethics of others.

Instead, what can be imagined is a research agenda

that is concerned with understanding the present,

and with appreciating how people make sense of

situations as ethically charged and to which spheres

of knowledge they make reference to in so doing.

The issue to be raised, we suggest, is powers

constitutive effect on ethics. Thus, we argue thatpower be considered as central in any discussion of

ethics in organizations; not in terms of whether

powers exercise be judged as ethical or not, but

rather in terms of how power enables different forms

of ethics. Thus, power should not be regarded as

something to which ethics can be analytically ap-

plied, but rather ethics should be considered as being

embedded in the power relations that constitute

organizations. Here ethics is powerful in that it

influences, and is influenced by, peoples sense of self

and ethicality. We are not dealing with a meta-

physical ethics that floats, transcendentally, highabove the mundane world of practice; instead,

through Foucault, we suggest an approach that res-

olutely sees ethics as a form of practice enacted by

managers and embedded in organizations. We pro-

pose that ethics resides in what people actually do

when they engage with ethics and how that doing is

manifested in relationships between self, others and

organizations. Ethics are a socially constructed real-

ity, and it is through an analysis of the process of

construction that we might reveal the practice of

ethics. By understanding ethics as practice we seek tounderstand how this ethical reality is actually fabri-

cated.

By way of conclusion, we suggest that Foucaults

theorization of ethics vis-a-vis freedom and gov-

ernmentality has the potential to open up new pos-

sibilities for theory and research since it makes it

possible to consider administration as an act of

government, and organizations as spaces for relations

between forces in which diverse modes of existence

and ethical projects confront each other (Clegg et al.,

2002; Pitsis et al., 2003). Rather than considering

ethics as being locked in a confrontation between



9/11

individuals and organizations, it enables a consider-

ation of ethics in terms of the mutually constitutive

relationship between the two. Ethical practice, forFoucault, concerns an aesthetics of existence in

this sense to be an ethical subject requires a practice

of the self a procedure of self-creation and self-

transformation. It is this shift of attention away from

an ethics discourse grounded in maxims and

practical reason (ethical saying) to an ethics discourse

premised on human existence as an aesthetic phe-

nomenon (ethical showing) (Chan and Garrick,

2002: 695, italics in original) which is important. A

person exercises critical judgment in relation to those

beliefs and practices that s/he encounters includingthose beliefs and practices that others might claim as

moral. As management practices in organizations

have demonstrated so long, such claims have no

transcendental basis, however.

Acknowledgments

This article is part of a larger research project into

the nature of business ethics as practice that is part-

ly funded by the Australia Research Council and

the Austrian Science Fund FWF. Martin would

like to thank Stephan Laske, Silke Seemann and

other colleagues at the University of Innsbruck for

their input on this project.

Note

1 Although not the specific focus of this paper, it is

worth noting that numerous contemporary European

thinkers other than Foucault have reflected on Kants

critical philosophy and developed quite different projects

as a result (e.g. Arendt, Lyotard and Habermas). Amongst

these, it is Habermas Kantian notion of critique that ismost antithetical to that of Foucault. While Foucault

develops a critical ontology of self-formation and self-

legislation, Habermas takes on the Kantian project of cri-

tique more wholeheartedly and uses it to develop his

conception of critical theory (Hutchings, 1995).

References

Barker, J. R.: 1993, Tightening the Iron Cage: Con-

certive Control in Self Managing Teams, Administra-

tive Science Quarterly 38, 408437.

Barley, S. R. and G. Kunda: 1992, Design and Devotion:

Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of

Control in Managerial Discourse, Administrative Science

Quarterly 37, 363399.

Bernauer, J. and M. Mahon: 1994, The Ethics of Michel

Foucault, in G. Gutting (ed.), The Cambridge Com-

panion to Foucault (Cambridge University Press, Cam-

bridge), pp. 141158.

Bevir, M.: 1999, Foucault, Power and Institutions,

Political Studies XLVII, 345359.

Beyer, J. M. and D. Nino: 1999, Ethics and Cultures in

International Business, Journal of Management Inquiry

8(3), 287298.

Chan, A. and J. Garrrick: 2002, Organization Theory in

Turbulent Times: The Traces of Foucaults Ethics,

Organization 9(4), 683701.

Chan, A.: 2003, Instantiative vs. Entitative Culture: The

Case for Culture as Process, in R. Westwood and S.

R. Clegg (ed.), Debating Organization: Point-Counter-

point in Organization Studies (Blackwell, Oxford), pp.

311320.

Clegg, S. R., T. Pitsis, T. Rura-Polley and M. Maro-

sszeky: 2002, Governmentality Matters: Designing an

Alliance Culture of Inter-organizational Collaboration

for Managing Projects, Organization Studies 23(3),

317337.

Danaher, G., T. Schirato and J. Webb: 2000, Under-

standing Foucault (Allen and Unwin, Crows Nest).Davidson, A.: 1994, Ethics as Ascetics: Foucault, the His-

tory of Ethics, and Ancient Thought, in G. Gutting

(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault(Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge), pp. 114140.

Dean, M.: 1999, Governmentality: Power and Rule in

Modern Society (Sage, London).

Delacampagne, C.: 1999, A History of Philosophy in the

Twentieth Century, trans M.B. DeBevoise (The Johns

Hopkins University Press, Baltimore).

du Gay, P.: 2000, In Praise of Bureaucracy: Weber, Organi-

zation, Ethics (Sage, London).

Dumm, T. L.: 1996, Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom (Sage, Thousand Oaks).

Fillion, R.: 2004, Freedom, Responsibility, and the

American Foucault, Philosophy and Social Criticism

30(1), 115126.

Foucault, M.: 1976/1990, History of Sexuality 1(Vintage

Books, New York).

Foucault, M.: 1978/2000, Governmentality, in J. D.

Faubion (ed.), Power. Essential Works of Foucault, 1954

1984 III (The New Press, New York), pp. 201222.

Foucault, M.: 1980a, Power/Knowledge: Selected

Interviews and Other Writings 19721977, in C.

Gordon (ed.), C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham and

K. Soper (Trans), (Pantheom, New York).



10/11

Foucault, M.: 1980b/1999, About the Beginning of the

Hermeneutics of the Self, in J. Carrette (ed.), Religion

and Culture (Routledge, New York), pp. 158181.Foucault, M.: 1981/1997, Subjectivity and Truth, in P.

Rabinow (ed.), Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (The

New Press, New York), pp. 8792.

Foucault, M.: 1982a/2000, The Subject and Power, in J.

D. Faubion (ed.), Power. Essential Works of Foucault,

19541984, Vol. III (The New Press, New York), pp.

326348.

Foucault, M.: 1982b/1997, Technologies of the Self, in

P. Rabinow (ed.), Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (The

New Press, New York), pp. 223251.

Foucault, M.: 1982c/2002, La Hermeneutica Del Sujeto:

Curso En El College de France (198982) (Fondo de

Cultura Economica, Mexico).

Foucault, M.: 1983/1993, Kant on Enlightenment and

Revolution, in M. Gane and T. Johnson (ed.), Fou-

caults New Domain (Routledge, London), pp. 1018.

Foucault, M.: 1984a/1997, The Ethics of the Concern

for Self as a Practice of Freedom, in P. Rabinow (ed.),

Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (The New Press, New

York), pp. 281301.

Foucault, M.: 1984b/1990, The Use of Pleasure: The His-

tory of Sexuality 2(Vintage Books, New York).

Foucault, M.: 1984c/1988, The Care of the Self: History of

Sexuality 3(Vintage Books, New York).

Foucault, M.: 1984d, On the Genealogy of Ethics: AnOverview of Work in Progress, in P. Rabinow (ed.),

The Foucault Reader (Penguin, London), pp. 340372.

Foucault, M.: 1986, What is Enlightenment?, in P. Ra-

binow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, (Penguin, London).

Foucault, M.: 1975/1979, Discipline and Punish: The Birth

of the Prison (Vintage Books, New York).

Hutchings, K.: 1995, Kant, Critique and Politics (Routl-

edge, London).

Jackson, T.: 2000, Management Ethics and Corporate

Policy: A Cross-cultural Comparison, Journal of Man-

agement Studies 37(3), 349369.

Keleman, M. and T. Peltonen: 2001,Ethics, Moralityand the Subject: The Contribution of Zygmunt Bau-

man and Michel Foucault to Postmodern Business

Ethics, Scandinavian Journal of Management 17, 151

166.

Kjonstad, B. and H. Willmott: 1995, Business Ethics:

Restrictive or Empowering?, Journal of Business Ethics

14, 445464.

Knights, D. and F. Murray: 1994, Managers Divided:

Organizational Politics and Information Technology Man-

agement (Wiley, New York).

Knights, D. and T. Vurdubakis: 1994, Foucault,

Power, Resistance and All That, in J. M. Jermier,

D. Knights and W. Nord (ed.), Resistance and Power

in Organizations (Routledge, London), pp. 167

198.Mansfield, M.: 2000, Subjectivity (St Leonards, Allen and

Unwin).

OLeary, T.: 2002, Foucault: The Art of Ethics (Contin-

uum, London).

Peters, T. J. and R. H. Waterman: 1982, In Search of

Excellence (Harper Collins, London).

Pitsis, T., S. R. Clegg, M. Marosszeky and T. Rura-

Polley: 2003, Constructing the Olympic Dream: A

Future Perfect Strategy of Project Management,

Organization Science 14(5), 574594.

Rabinow, P.: 2000, Introduction, in P. Rabinow (ed.),

Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth, (Penguin, London) pp.

xixiii.

Rose, N.: 1989, Governing the Soul The Shaping of the

Private Self (Routledge, London).

Rose, N.: 1996, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power,

and Personhood (Cambridge University Press, Cam-

bridge).

Schwartz, M.: 1999, Repetition and Ethics in Late

Foucault, Telos 117, 113132.

Sewell, G.: 1998, The Discipline of Teams: The Control

of Team-based Industrial Work Through Electronic

and Peer Surveillance, Administrative Science Quarterly

43(2), 397428.

Sims, R. and J. Brinkmann: 2003, Enron Ethics (or:Culture Matters More Than Codes), Journal of Business

Ethics 45, 243256.

Soares, C.: 2003, Corporate Versus Individual Moral

Responsibility, Journal of Business Ethics 46, 143

150.

Stevens, B.: 1994, An Analysis of Corporate Ethical

Code Studies: Where Do We Go from Here?,

Journal of Business Ethics 13, 6369.

Styhre, A.: 2001, Kaizen, Ethics, and Care of the

Operations: Management After Empowerment, Jour-

nal of Management Studies 38, 795810.

Taylor, F. W.: 1911, Principles of Scientific Management(Harper, New York).

ten Bos, R.: 1997, Business Ethics and Bauman Ethics,

Organization Studies 18(6), 9971014.

Thorne, L. and S. Saunders: 2002, The Socio-cultural

Embeddedness of Individuals Ethical Reasoning in

Organizations (Cross-cultural Ethics), Journal of Busi-

ness Ethics 35, 114.

Townley, B.: 1994, Reframing Human Resource Manage-

ment (Sage, London).

Townley, B.: 1993, Foucault, Power/Knowledge and its

Relevance for Human Resource Management, Acad-

emy of Management Review18(3), 518545.



11/11

Warren, R.: 1993, Codes of Ethics: Bricks Without

Straw, Business Ethics: A European Review 2(4), 185

191.Watson, T. J.: 2003, Ethical Choice in Managerial Work:

The Scope for Moral Choices in an Ethically Irrational

World, Human Relations 56, 167185.

Willmott, H.: 1993, Strength is Ignorance, Slavery

is Freedom: Managing Culture in Modern

Organizations, Journal of Management Studies 39(4),

515552.

Eduardo Ibarra-Colado

Jefe del Departamento de Estudios Institucionales,

UAM-Cuajimalpa,

MexicoE-mail: [email protected]

Stewart R. Clegg

School of Management,

University of Technology,

Sydney,

Australia

E-mail: [email protected]

Carl Rhodes



Sydney,

Australia


Martin Kornberger



Sydney,Australia



eduardo ibarra colado-“the ethics of managerial subjectivity”

Documents