Enlarging the moral community: Engaging with non-human animals’ subjectivities in organization studies

The moral status of animals is growingly debated in society; notably, they are more and more claimed as subjects rather than objects. In contrast, organization & management research hardly includes animals as subjects if research, partly owing to the lack of theoretical framework adapted to shifting societal perspectives. The research explores a new notion - that of the humananimal organization - which draws on Jacques Derrida, to explore new processes for inclusive organizations to be less anthropocentric and include animals viewpoint

I am Neo in the Matrix? Organized intercorporeality and dehumanization process

International audienceThis paper explores the dehumanising processes arising from organizational control within the internal consulting department of a large European service organization. Our argument emerged from the participant observations and embodied experience of one of the authors as a former internal consultant. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s problematization of the human world in the Phenomenology of Perception (1962), we propose to consider organizational control as an organized intercorporeality, that is, a way to shape intersubjectivity through organizing bodies’ encounters and commingling. Through the narrative of a co-produced autoethnographic case example, we explore a range of sociomaterial practices that organize intercorporeality and find they are dehumanising to the extent they restrain the possibility to experience others and oneself as selves. We contribute to dehumanisation studies in three ways: 1/analytically, by bringing in a selfhood approach that does not rest upon an essentialist view of what it is to be human, or upon an analysis of objective conditions of work; 2/ theoretically, by exploring the role of organized intercorporeality in dehumanising processes; 3/ empirically, by studying dehumanising processes within a homogeneous group of individuals, and not between a powerful group and a powerless one

Managerial Control of Employees’ Intercorporeality and the Production of Unethical Relations

This paper aims to contribute to intercorporeal ethics studies by enlarging their political understanding. Intercorporeal ethics revolve around the idea that, within organizations, our embodied interaction with each other is a conduit to enact genuine ethical relations of autonomy, mutual recognition, respect, care and responsibility. However, how intercorporeality can also be a means for organizations to shape and control their members’ ethical relationships in pursuit of corporate interests remains to be examined. We explore this political perspective on intercorporeality by combining insights from Merleau-Ponty and Nussbaum. We analyze how the deployment of a lean management program in a financial institution produces unethical relations of objectification between employees by influencing their embodied interactions. Our study thus enlarges the political understanding of intercorporeality by showing the processes through which the embodied experience of one another is conditioned not only by our corporeal sensibility but also by managerial prescriptions. This provides a more nuanced understanding of intercorporeality as a basis to counter control and domination in organizations

Am I Neo in the Matrix? Organized intercorporeality and dehumanization processes

This paper explores the dehumanizing processes arising from organizational control within the internal consulting department of a large European service organization. Our argument emerged from the participant observations and embodied experience of one of the authors as a former internal consultant. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s problematization of the human world in the Phenomenology of Perception (1962), we propose to consider organizational control as an organized intercorporeality, that is, a way to shape intersubjectivity through organizing bodies’ encounters and commingling. Through the narrative of a co-produced autoethnographic case example, we explore a range of sociomaterial practices that organize intercorporeality and find they are dehumanizing to the extent they restrain the possibility to experience others and oneself as selves. We contribute to dehumanization studies in three ways:1/analytically, by bringing in a selfhood approach that does not rest upon an essentialist view of what it is to be human, or upon an analysis of objective conditions of work;2/ theoretically, by exploring the role of organized intercorporeality in dehumanising processes; 3/ empirically, by studying dehumanizing processes within a homogeneous group of individuals, and not between a powerful group and a powerless one

I am Neo in the Matrix? Organized intercorporeality and dehumanization process

International audienceThis paper explores the dehumanising processes arising from organizational control within the internal consulting department of a large European service organization. Our argument emerged from the participant observations and embodied experience of one of the authors as a former internal consultant. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s problematization of the human world in the Phenomenology of Perception (1962), we propose to consider organizational control as an organized intercorporeality, that is, a way to shape intersubjectivity through organizing bodies’ encounters and commingling. Through the narrative of a co-produced autoethnographic case example, we explore a range of sociomaterial practices that organize intercorporeality and find they are dehumanising to the extent they restrain the possibility to experience others and oneself as selves. We contribute to dehumanisation studies in three ways: 1/analytically, by bringing in a selfhood approach that does not rest upon an essentialist view of what it is to be human, or upon an analysis of objective conditions of work; 2/ theoretically, by exploring the role of organized intercorporeality in dehumanising processes; 3/ empirically, by studying dehumanising processes within a homogeneous group of individuals, and not between a powerful group and a powerless one