Abstract
“Serving two Masters: the contradictory organization as an ethical challenge for managerial responsibility”
This Bible quotation highlights an irreducible contradiction, which echoes numerous organizational settings. This article considers the under-explored ethical implications of paradoxical injunctions created by such a contradiction at the managerial level. Contradictory organizational constraints turn into paradoxant systems, where the organization structurally settles paradoxical injunctions which challenge managerial ethics in practice. We then ask what managerial responsibility means in such contexts and find that managers have then to reshape their practice as a situated construction through constant mediation between different ‘‘masters’’ and bricolage (i.e., tinkering with concepts). An ethnographic case study of an anti-money laundering service in an investment bank illuminates this phenomenon from a practice perspective. The possibility to enact an actual ethical practice within the contradictory organization relies on a new role of the manager. This implies drawing on an approach of responsible management as an enactment of ethics in practice which is situated within the framework of a new conception of both the organization, as a structurally ‘‘paradoxant system,’’ and the manager as a mediator in charge of enacting coherence.
Programme Ph.D. Paris
Soutenances de thèse
Pérezts, M., Bouilloud, J.P., Gaulejac, V., (forthcoming) “Serving two Masters: the contradictory organization as an ethical challenge for managerial responsibility”, Journal of Business Ethics, Special Issue on Responsible Management.
Soutenances de thèse
Mariana MEDVETCHI-DAHAN a soutenu sa thèse le 5 octobre 2011 à l'Université Panthéon Assas et obtenu le grade de Docteur en Sciences de Gestion, avec les félicitations du jury, à l'unanimité.
Titre de la Thèse : "Quenching the Thirst for Innovation: Modeling the Diffusion of Mobile Technologies"
Florence LAW-KHENG a soutenu sa thèse le 30 septembre 2011 à l'Université Paris Ouest Nanterre et obtenu le grade de Docteur en Sciences de Gestion, avec les félicitations du jury, à l'unanimité.
Titre de la Thèse : "La réinternalisation d'activités : une approche processuelle du choix entre faire ou faire faire"
Communications présentées à des conférences
THERON C..(2011). "L'attention du Manager dans les interactions Manager-Collaborateur", XXII° Congrès de l'AGRH, Vers un Management des Ressources Humaines durable et bienveillant ? 26-28 octobre, Marrakech.
Lire l'abstract
27th EGOS colloquium, 6-9 July, Gotenburg, Sweden.
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STEYER V., (2011), "Faire sens avec l'autre, faire sens de l'autre", XXème Conférence Internationale de Management Stratégique, 6-9 juin, Nantes.
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PEREZ T.S. M., (2011), "Ethics or Comfort Zone? Sensemaking implications of the Risk-Based Approach to Compliance. Evidence from a participant observation in a French Investment Bank", ICAM, International Conference on Advances in Management, 13-16, July, Cancun, Mexico.
