Shirking, the act of avoiding the demands of one’s job, is generally seen as unethical. Drawing on empirical evidence from the sociology of work, I develop a normative conception of shirking as a form of worker resistance against illegitimate managerial power. In doing so, I present a new approach to the political theory of the firm, which is more adversarial and agent-centered than available alternatives. It is more adversarial as it recognizes the political value of counterproductive and disruptive behavior (...) in capitalist firms. It is more agent-centered because it theorizes the firm from the perspective of workers, asking what pro tanto reasons they have to shirk. I show that shirking under the structural domination of capitalism has diagnostic, agential, and epistemic values. The paper contributes to the wider methodological ambition to tailor political theorizing to the positionality of social actors, by shifting attention from the institutional design of the firm to the methods of worker resistance. (shrink)

A comparative study of business related values among business students was conducted over the last 10 years in two neighbouring countries. Although Estonia and Finland are culturally related, according to an empirical study of managerial values, including the ethical values of business students, the two countries display significant differences. During the last decade, Estonia has changed from being a country characterised by an authoritarian, centralized, totalitarian state socialism, to a democratic country with a free market economy and different attitudes (...) and values. At the same time Finland has experienced almost a century of capitalism and democracy. It is argued that the differences in values exhibited by these two countries could be explained by using the institutional and historical context. The authors propose a model of value hierarchies in relation to institutionalism. (shrink)

The culture conveyed by global firms becomes the perfect tool to embody and strengthen the spirit of our time. Nothing is capable of enhancing and strengthening the values of the individual and his passions as the capitalist company. This is why the words and virtues of ‘business’ are becoming the words and virtues of our social life including politics, health care, education, and so on. Merit, efficiency, competition, leadership, incentives and innovation are now the only ‘good’ words of communal life. (...) In the absence of other safe places capable of producing a different culture and values, the virtues of companies present themselves as the only ones to be recognized and cultivated. This essay discusses virtues that, although not considered important by the current business culture, nevertheless are becoming more and more crucial for the survival and growth of organizations. In particular, work-related suffering shows that there are virtues that are not ‘buyable’. This advances a point about the necessity of welcoming vulnerability in work communities to prevent the systematic destruction of its values, creating a global culture of immunity. Conversely, such destruction will eventually lead to the dismantling of most of the world organizations. (shrink)

Seventy years ago James Burnham (1905–1987) was a well-known American intellectual figure. Burnham’s 1941 book The Managerial Revolution, a cause célèbre, provided some of the conceptual framework for George Orwell’s 1984. Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) at the time was an obscure Greek-French political intellectual, writer and small-group organizer. He co-founded the left-wing Socialisme ou Barbarie in Paris in 1949 while Burnham was already on a rightward intellectual trajectory. The two, though, shared certain traits. Both emerged from Trotskyist milieus as critics (...) of bureaucratic collectivism. Both were anti-communists. Both were gifted writers and thinkers who were distinctly unorthodox in their approach, notably their scepticism about 20th-century managerial society and bureaucratic forms of capitalism. Then there were the divergences. At its inception in 1955 Burnham joined National Review, the principal organ of modern centre-right conservative opinion in the United States. Castoriadis became a leading figure of the French self-management left. Based on his Christian Gauss Seminar at Princeton, Burnham’s 1964 book Suicide of the West offered the most potent intellectual critique of left-liberalism ever produced. In ‘Proletariat and Organization 1’ (1959), Castoriadis referred to Burnham’s ‘pseudoanalysis’ of bureaucracy. Burnham was not a self-management advocate. As he abandoned Marxism his social philosophy drew on Vilfredo Pareto and other Machiavellian social theorists. The paper explores the affinities and the divergent political trajectories of two of the 20th century’s most interesting anti-bureaucratic thinkers. (shrink)

This paper is a cultural studies analysis of the Microsoft computer video game, ZooTycoon™. Through a critical reading using the "circuit of culture," questions of the gamer's subject position, the role of wildlife and implicit and explicit messages about contemporary attitudes toward the environment are explored. Drawing on Susan Davis' book, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (1997), this paper unpacks the virtual theme parks created in Zoo Tycoon™ for their (dis) continuities with Davis's findings. The virtual (...) animals are found to serve as both labor and products in this game that teaches capitalist business strategy and managerial skills. This popular culture text is an example of a product that harnesses the environmental impulse and redirects that impulse back into commodity capitalism. (shrink)

: This paper is a cultural studies analysis of the Microsoft computer video game, ZooTycoon™. Through a critical reading using the "circuit of culture," questions of the gamer's subject position, the role of wildlife and implicit and explicit messages about contemporary attitudes toward the environment are explored. Drawing on Susan Davis' book, Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience (1997), this paper unpacks the virtual theme parks created in Zoo Tycoon™ for their (dis)continuities with Davis's findings. The virtual (...) animals are found to serve as both labor and products in this game that teaches capitalist business strategy and managerial skills. This popular culture text is an example of a product that harnesses the environmental impulse and redirects that impulse back into commodity capitalism. (shrink)

Managers in Peru, South Africa, and the United States were classified into four groups along Singhapakdi et al. (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) scale. In Peru and the United States, individuals in the ethics and social responsibility first category reported greater satisfaction with organizational performance than did those in the profits first category. Moral capitalists—individuals who report high emphases on both social responsibility and profits—reported the highest satisfaction with performance in the United (...) States. Managers in the United States are more likely than their counterparts in Peru and South Africa to reject the mutual exclusivity of prioritizing social responsibility and profits simultaneously. Directions for future research are outlined. (shrink)

A dazzling blend of business vision, history, social psychology, and economics, The Support Economy starts with a compelling premise: People have changed more than the corporations upon which their well-being depends. In the chasm that now separates the new individuals from the old organizations is the opportunity to forge a capitalism suited to our times and so unleash a vast new potential for wealth creation. In recent years, many books have offered fixes for this crisis, but they have dealt (...) only with its symptoms. The Support Economy is the first book to critically examine its cause: Managerial capitalism has outlived the society it was once designed to serve. It successfully achieved the efficient production of goods and services, but today's individuals want more. They want to take their lives into their own hands and are ready to pay for the support and advocacy necessary to fulfill that yearning. The next leap forward in wealth creation depends upon developing a new capitalism that speaks to the needs of people today. The Support Economy will be the next "must read" big think book. It speaks to every business and technology leader, as well as every reader interested in the future of the economy and society. (shrink)

This article discusses Alfred Chandler’s intellectual journey, in which he dedicated himself to understanding the role of management in developing and utilizing productive resources. During the first part of that journey, from the 1950s through the 1980s, Chandler viewed the role of management almost entirely in terms of the utilization of productive resources, as evidenced in Strategy and Structure and The Visible Hand. During the 1980s, as Chandler wrote Scale and Scope, his attention shifted from the utilization to the development (...) of productive resources. He delved into organization and competition in the consumer electronics, computers, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals industries. An understanding of the dynamics of industrial capitalism requires, as Chandler ultimately showed, a theoretical analysis of the role of management in ensuring both the development and utilization of productive resources. This dual focus is important for business strategy, organizational structure, and industrial finance. (shrink)

Taking Max Weber's conception of the modern capitalist world system as a classical precedent, and with reference to a series of analytical schemas on capital formation, this essay takes three recent books as a starting point for examining the revival of critical theoretical attention to 'the new capitalism'. The Social Structures of the Economy by Pierre Bourdieu focuses on the erosion of the separation between business and household economies by providing a case study of the construction boom in single-family (...) dwellings which replaced the public housing movement in 1980s France. Also concentrating on recent French history, Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, in their monumental book The New Spirit of Capitalism, argue that the post-industrial restructuring of 'formally free' labour was provoked by countercultural protest in the 1960s and further justified by managerial discourses advocating postmodern 'flexibilization' in the 1990s. Finally, Nigel Thrift's Knowing Capitalism enumerates recent examples demonstrating how the 'rational' accounting of economic capital is increasingly expanded and intensified by commodified cultural circuits which facilitate flows of information between business schools, management consultants and entrepreneurial gurus and in a variety of everyday spaces and ordinary practices. While each of these works convincingly projects the resurrection of 'the spirit of capitalism' on local and global scales, they have less to say about the underlying political dynamics or emerging alternatives to this process. (shrink)

This article explains how the private equity-leveraged buyout type of financial institution (PE-LBO) operates as a form of finance capitalism. PE-LBO capitalism is described and compared with other types of capitalism such as family business capitalism, managerial capitalism, and other forms of finance capitalism such as shareholder value capitalism. Ethical and social issues structurally related to the PE-LBO form are analyzed. Potential reforms and/or solutions are considered.

This article explains how the private equity-leveraged buyout type of financial institution operates as a form of finance capitalism. PE-LBO capitalism is described and compared with other types of capitalism such as family business capitalism, managerial capitalism, and other forms of finance capitalism such as shareholder value capitalism. Ethical and social issues structurally related to the PE-LBO form are analyzed. Potential reforms and/or solutions are considered.

Ethics for Capitalists offers an accessible, comprehensive statement of the Market Failures Approach to business ethics. While the competitive context of the market economy provides economic actors greater freedom to pursue their interests, it also imposes moral constraints on the range of strategies they may employ. The pursuit of profit must be consistent with the overall objective of market institutions, which is to promote efficiency in the production and allocation of goods and services. Ethics for Capitalists draws out the implications (...) of this view for business strategy, corporate governance, managerial authority, and shareholder primacy. (shrink)

There are several different types of capitalist political-economies and business organizations. Consequently, the implications for business citizenship behaviors are also quite different. In the older “large family owned business” and “managerial capitalism” forms there are important structural opportunities for a social contract and balancing of the needs of various stakeholder groups. In the “investor capitalist” form which emerged in the 1980s and has come to dominate the U.S. political-economic system, there is a dominant priority toward optimization of the (...) shareholder wealth criterion which makes it very difficult for such business organizations to engage in authentic citizenship behaviors. (shrink)

There are several different types of capitalist political-economies and business organizations. Consequently, the implications for business citizenship behaviors are also quite different. In the older “large family owned business” and “managerial capitalism” forms there are important structural opportunities for a social contract and balancing of the needs of various stakeholder groups. In the “investor capitalist” form which emerged in the 1980s and has come to dominate the U.S. political-economic system, there is a dominant priority toward optimization of the (...) shareholder wealth criterion which makes it very difficult for such business organizations to engage in authentic citizenship behaviors. (shrink)

Cette note entend faire une critique constructive de la thèse du « mode de production managérial », due à Gérard Duménil et Dominique Lévy. Tout en reconnaissant les mérites de leurs travaux, la note essaye de montrer qu’il existe une disproportion entre leur proposition théorique, de grande ampleur, et sa base empirique, trop faible pour la soutenir. Trois contre-arguments sont développés en ce sens. D’abord, les auteurs ne se fondent pratiquement que sur le constat de la montée de la part (...) des salaires dans les hauts revenus aux États-Unis, une évolution qui peut être remise en cause en catégorisant correctement les revenus des cadres dirigeants. Ensuite, ils négligent des données et des indicateurs alternatifs qui donnent des images fort différentes de l’évolution historique. Enfin, ils n’étudient pas l’évolution des formes organisationnelles qui sont au fondement des théories sur l’évolution de la structure de classe, qui relativisent l’importance de la bureaucratie. Deux contreexemples sont données à l’encontre de la thèse du managérialisme : les associés des fonds de capitalinvestissement constituent des nouveaux capitalistes financiers ; les dirigeants des plus grandes entreprises multinationales sont des dirigeants actionnaires. (shrink)

Businesses have long been admonished for being unduly focused on the pursuit of profit. However, there are some organizations whose purpose is not exclusively economic to the extent that they seek to constitute common good. Building on Christian ethics as a starting point, our article shows how the pursuit of the common good of the firm can serve as a guide for humanistic management. It provides two principles that humanistic management can attempt to implement: first, that community good is a (...) condition for the realization of personal good, and second, that community good can only be promoted if it is oriented towards personal good. To better understand which community good can favor personal good and how it can be achieved, we examine two recent humanistic movements—Conscious Capitalism and Economy of Communion—that strive to participate in the common good. From the analysis of these two movements, we identify a shared managerial willingness to adopt the two principles. Moreover, we also reveal that Conscious Capitalism and Economy of Communion present different ways of linking community good and personal good, and therefore, different means exist for firms to participate in the common good. (shrink)

The theories of Locke, Hume and Kant dominate contemporary philosophical discourse on property rights. This is particularly true of applied ethics, where they are used to settle issues from biotech patents to managerial obligations. Within these theories, however, the usual criticisms of private property aren’t even as much as intelligible. Locke, Hume and Kant, I argue, develop claims about property on a model economy that I call “Frontier Town.” They and contemporary authors then apply these claims to capitalist economies. (...) There are two problems with this application: First, we’ll be considering the wrong kind of property: The only property in Frontier Town are means of life. Critics, however, object to property in concentrated capital because they associate only this kind of property with economic coercion and political power. Second, the two economies differ in central features, so that very different claims about empirical consequences and hence about fairness and merit will be plausible for each. This second problem, I argue, is a consequence of the first. I conclude that Frontier Town theories are more likely to distort than to illuminate property issues in capitalist economies. (shrink)

John Paul IIs prescriptions for humanizing the world economy are not likely to have the impact of Leo XIIIs Rerum Novarum because the reception accorded reform proposals depends on opportunity and circumstances as well as the ethical soundness and the logic of the principles advanced. Because of historical circumstances, Thomas Mores critique of the emerging agricultural capitalism of his time was ignored while Catholic Social Teaching inspired by Kettelers work, endorsed and publicized by Leo, strongly impacted the industrializing world (...) of a century ago. Whereas More defended a church seen as an impediment to economic progress by leading-edge Protestant entrepreneurs, Catholic Social Teaching was propagated at a time when Catholicism was enmeshed in the spread of industrialization. In our current world economy, increasingly dominated by non-Catholic regions of the East and a resurgent liberalism in the West, John Pauls recommendations currently seem more likely to meet the fate of Mores critique than of Leos. Implications for stakeholder theory are also discussed. (shrink)

According to the main theories of the knowledge-based economy (KBE), the recent transformations of capitalism are the origins of a general societal change. Managerial theories consider KBE to be a series of win-win mechanisms that simultaneously favour firms, workers and consumers. The cognitive capitalism theory perceives in the development of cognitive capitalism signs of the formation of a post-capitalist economy. This article discusses the main features of these two theoretical orientations and identifies some core ambivalences in (...) KBE. The relationship between the market and society in KBE is marked by a dialectical process. The former incorporates mechanisms of potential economic valorization generated by informal social relationships. To this end, it must internalize actors, practices and cultures that are partially in conflict with it, given that it must make ever greater attempts to bring the overall process back within the ownership regime. One thus witnesses a reduction of the barriers between firms and society, that can simultaneously engender a more subtle dominance of the former over the latter, or the growth of autonomy, self-organization and peer cooperation among social actors. This second possibility relies entirely upon politics and collective action. (shrink)

Any fundamental examination of managerial practices must consider a philosophical conundrum at the heart of market exchange. Economically, the opportunity for profit seems to demand somebody else’s loss, and ethically, we must not take advantage of others’ misfortune. In a market system involving a multiplicity of stakeholders, profit opportunities may arise in which relationships between winners and losers are distant, indirect, or even nonexistent; their motives are multivalent; and their market participation may be intentional or accidental. Reflecting two decades (...) later upon several cases arising from the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, this paper describes several examples of profiting from loss that demonstrate the ubiquity and variety of the problem. It also invokes numerous bodies of literature that demonstrate the inherent complexity and interdisciplinarity of the problem and the absence of determinative principles to answer the question of when it is justifiable to profit from loss. The paper positions casuistry, the ancient philosophical art of case analysis that resembles modern business pedagogy, as a complement to ethical theory. The Loss Agency-Division of Benefits framework developed in the paper demonstrates the value of philosophy to managerial practices when economic theory is insufficient for ethically classifying and evaluating forms of profiting from loss. (shrink)

Dans cet entretien consacré à leur livre Managerial Capitalism : Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production (Pluto Press, 2018), G. Duménil et D. Lévy reviennent sur les implications de leur analyse du capitalisme managérial pour l’étude du capitalisme historique, de ses structures de classes fondamentales, et de ses alliances de pouvoirs variables. La thèse du marxisme traditionnel identifiant les managers à une fraction de classe capitaliste s’en trouve critiquée, de même que les présupposés véhiculés par (...) le concept de « capitalisme d’État ». Invités à revenir plus précisément sur leur distinction entre modes de production et « ordres sociaux », comme configurations variables de hiérarchies de pouvoirs et d’alliances de classe, les auteurs clarifient les raisons pour lesquelles ils introduisent une nouvelle catégorie de mode de production managérial qui impose de repenser le mode de production capitaliste lui-même suivant une logique de « l’hybridité ». Celle-ci permet de complexifier les tendances du capitalisme historique sur la longue durée, d’approfondir l’analyse de classe du capitalisme managérial, et d’y spécifier différentiellement, par rapport au « compromis » d’après-guerre (caractérisé par une alliance entre managers et classes populaires sous la direction des premiers), le dernier ordre social en date caractérisé par une alliance « au sommet » entre managers et capitalistes (au détriment des classes populaires) : le néolibéralisme. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 2 Heft: 2 Seiten: 219-252.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of managerial capitalism is well known, with some arguing that MacIntyrean thought is antithetical to contemporary capitalist business. Nevertheless, substantial efforts have been taken to demonstrate how different business activities constitute MacIntyrean practices, which points to an incoherence at the heart of MacIntyrean business ethics scholarship. This article proposes a way of bridging these perspectives, suggesting a reimagined MacIntyrean approach to business that is thoroughly ‘practice-led.’ A detailed comparison of accounting and management shows that while (...) neither are practices in ‘good order,’ they differ in significant ways: where management does not meet the criteria for a MacIntyrean practice, accounting is a ‘distorted’ practice. This leads to a categorisation of practice-led business activity, whereby the traditional tasks of management are subsumed, shared or subordinated to practices and practitioners. Insights on how this can be implemented are drawn from the ‘communities of practice’ literature and a consideration of professions. (shrink)

The main purpose of this second article devoted to T. Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (the first was published in the previous issue of Actuel Marx) is to introduce our alternative reading of history. The tendencies manifest during the last decades of the 20th century and the early 21st century are not, it is argued, the replication of the tendencies which prevailed prior to World War I. The starting-point for our analysis is the beginning of the 20th century, a (...) moment characterized by the dynamics of a “managerial capitalism” built around the “tripolar” class pattern of capitalists, managers, and popular classes. The main quantitative manifestation of these trends was the steady rise in the share accounted for by wages (compared to capital income) in the income of upper classes (notably the top 1 percent). In place of Piketty’s impact of shocks, we focus on the chain of successive configurations of class domination and alliances, in a succession of “social orders” marking the historical advance of managerial capitalism : the first financial hegemony, in the years leading up to the Great Depression ; the postwar social-democratic compromise ; and its successor, neoliberalism, involving a new alliance to the right, between the managerial and popular classes. (shrink)

The ArgumentAs the American economy became more complex and differentiated in the post-1850 decades, so too did the demand for manufactured products, creating wide markets for both mass-produced standard goods and batch-produced specialties among consumers and producers alike. These developments conditioned the emergence of distinctive work cultures within the two broad spheres of manufacturing, as well as distinct approaches to technological selection and use, labor, marketing, and management. As the mass production dynamic has been well documented, this essay focuses principally (...) on elaborating the practices of industrial specialists for comparison with those of “managerial capitalism.” Conditions and controversies in the textile, woodworking, and metalworking trades provide an in-depth example of larger patterns among batch-oriented sectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including issues of the politics (i.e., power relations) in production and the recording of masculine identity and values. The role of public policies in facilitating the universalization of mass production rhetorics and practices is considered at the close. (shrink)

After defining the essential elements of Aristotelian citizenship, the article proposes to apply these criteria in its search for the equivalent of a citizen within the corporate polis. It argues that shareholding managers are the best positioned among a firm's constituents or stakeholders in fulfilling the role of corporate citizens. Greater participation by management not only in the control but also in the ownership of firms brings about benefits for the firm as a whole and for the managers themselves, as (...) organizational citizenship behavior literature, among others, suggests. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the case made by Christopher McMahon for managerial democracy. Specifically, I examine the extent to which McMahon’s account is able to address a series of objections against the case for managerial democracy as articulated by Thomas Christiano. Christiano articulates two sets of objections. First, Christiano argues that McMahon does not succeed in ruling out the possibility that managerial authority is best understood as promissory in its basis, in which case there is no (...) presumption in favor of its democratic exercise. Second, Christiano raises a series of objections to the effect that even if we accept McMahon’s account of the nature of managerial authority, the conclusion for the democratic exercise of that authority by workers at the level of individual economic enterprises does not follow. In the end, I argue that McMahon’s account contains the resources to address these objections if one adopts a specific view about the moral limits to relationships that involve the submission of the will on the part of one person to another. Adoption of this view, however, appears to come at the expense of what I take to be the account’s commitment to liberalism. As such, what I understand this paper to reflect more generally is the apparent difficulty for liberals in arguing that there is something inherently morally troubling about capitalist work relations. (shrink)

Attention is brought upon certain reali ties of contemporarty developed capitalism,concerning the new modali ties of linkage between scientific knowledge, technical developments, their technological insertion, and the military, political, managerial, economic and cultural sectors with the aim of o..

Ideal theory has been extensively contested on the grounds that it is ideology: namely, that it performs the distorting social role of reifying and enforcing unjust features of the status quo. Indeed, a growing number of philosophers adopt a nonideal methodology—which dispenses with ideal theory—because of this ideology critique. I argue, however, that such philosophers are confused about the ultimate dialectical upshot of this critique even if it succeeds. I do so by constructing a parallel—equally plausible—ideology critique of nonideal methodology; (...) specifically, I argue that capitalist and managerial social attitudes have commodified people’s conception of justice and induced suspicion of ideal theory, which is not construed as having direct practical value. Consequently, nonideal methodology performs the distorting role of reifying and enforcing the hegemonies of capitalism and managerialism. Ideal theory and nonideal methodology are, therefore, in symmetrically bad positions. (shrink)

The central issue in this paper is the overtaking of neoliberalism by a possible new “social order”, a new phase in the history of capitalism. In contemporary capitalism, the “upper classes”—capitalist classes, the classes of managers and officials—jointly ensure the control of the means of production. Their common hegemony in neoliberalism is supported by the alliance at the top of the social hierarchies, under the leadership of capitalist classes. This hegemony could be continued beyond neoliberalism, though under new (...) forms. A first such potential social order is similar to neoliberalism, which it prolongs, a “third financial hegemony”. (Neoliberalism represented the “second financial hegemony”; the first prevailed before the Great Depression of the 1930s). The other social order can be described as a “neomanagerialism”. While the same alliance would prevail at the top, the leadership would here be that of the managerial class, and would involve much stronger state intervention. (Another opportunity, albeit one which we unfortunately deem unlikely, would be the alliance between popular classes and managers, a “social-managerialism”). A comparison between the United states and China highlights the relevance of neomanagerialism. The strong neomanagerial features of China show the potential efficiency of this social configuration. A turn to neomanagerialism would probably be the only way of preserving what can be saved of U.S. international hegemony. (shrink)

In recent years the humanities, social sciences and neuroscience have witnessed an 'affective turn, ' especially in discourses around post-Fordist labor, economic and ecological crises, populism and identity politics, mental health, and political struggle. This new awareness would be unthinkable without the pioneering work of Gilles Deleuze, who replaced judgment with affect as the very material movement of thought: every concept is an affective experience, a becoming. Besides entirely active affects, the highest practice of thought, there is no thought without (...) passive affects or passions. Instead of a calm and rational philosophy of passions, Deleuzian thought is therefore inseparable from "isolated and passionate cries" that deny what everybody knows and what nobody can deny: "every true thought is an aggression." This inseparability of reason and passion is by no means an anti-intellectualist or irrationalist stance. Rather, it is critical, since it protects reason from its self-imposed stupidity (betise) by relating it to the unthought forces that condition it. And it is clinical, because thought becomes possessed by a power of selection. The purely active, i.e. free-floating, unrecorded desire, is never enough to produce a consistent relation to the future, which is why we need the passions to give us an initial orientation, to force and enable us to think. Passions are the beliefs, perceptions, representations, and opinions that attach us to the world; they make up the very material of which our lives and thoughts are composed. Instead of truth as the ultimate criterion of judgment, the only principle according to which affective becomings can be selected and evaluated is the extent to which they proliferate joy. Spinoza and Marx show how the recruitment of desire traditionally takes place through the tyrants and priests who inspire sad passions in us. Similarly, the work of Deleuze and Guattari on capitalism and schizophrenia can be read as an encyclopedia of the passions that constitute the affective infrastructure of the socius of contemporary capitalism. If it takes a lot of inventiveness or imagination to be able to diagnose our present becomings, this is because becomings are always composites of joyful and sad passions. Capitalism could not exist if it did not also inspire happiness, love, courage, and perhaps even beatitude. That is why, today, we witness "the spectacle of the happily dominated" (Frederic Lordon) of the self-entrepreneur, the managerial class, the flex worker, the citizen-consumer, the bean-roasting hipster, and the self-managed team. It is within this field of contradictory and heterogeneous passions that the authors of this volume pursue the diagnosis of our past and present becomings. Their contributions add up to a systematic taxonomy of the passions and indicate their importance for a thinking that reaches beyond itself. (shrink)

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to suggest that at least one strain of what has come to be called “stakeholder theory” has roots that are deeply libertarian. We begin by explicating both “stakeholder theory” and “libertarian arguments.” We show how there are libertarian arguments for both instrumental and normative stakeholder theory, and we construct a version of capitalism, called “stakeholder capitalism,” that builds on these libertarian ideas. We argue throughout that strong notions of “freedom” and “voluntary action” (...) are the best possible underpinnings for stakeholder theory, and in doing so, seek to return “stakeholder theory” to its managerial and libertarian roots found in Freeman (1984). (shrink)

Corporate Social Responsibility is a label covering managerial checks and institutional balances introduced against the background of ethical values. Values are clearly formulated and organizational processes are designed with the inclusion of stakeholders and their voice in mind. In case of the post-communist societies designers of CRS cope with an additional level of complexity. Original sin of market reforms after the political fall of the communist regimes is the corrupt take-over of markets and democracies. Social institutions of capitalist markets (...) and democratic states have been subverted and invaded by the unpurged networks of the post-communist power elites. They privatized the wealth of state enterprises becoming new owners of economic resources and they drifted towards the top functions in state institutions becoming post-communist power brokers. Their long-term monopoly of the media left them in command of the mainstream PR communications long after their absolute political power was gone. Democratic institutions, and the right to free speech are daily challenged by influential image and market competition. They cannot be taken for granted. Some democratic institutions are undermined by subversive networks of the corrupt mafias often formed by ex-functionaries of the communist party and her secret services. Their tacit power is explicitly legitimized by media-clusters of cultural representatives of the communist ex-power elites exploiting leftist bias of media mainstreams. (shrink)

It has become an intellectual commonplace to claim that we have entered the era of 'postmodernity'. Three themes are embraced in this claim the poststructurist critique by Foucault, Derrida and others of the philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment the supposed impasse of High Modern art and its replacement by new artistic forms and the alleged emergence of 'post-industrial' societies whose structures are beyond the ken of Marx and other theorists of industrial capitalism. Against Postmodernism takes issue with all these (...) themes. It challenges the idealist irrationalism of post-structuralism. It questions the existence of any radical break separating allegedly Postmodern from Modern art. And it denies that recent socio-economic developments represent any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation. Drawing on philosophy and history, Against Postmodernism takes issue also with some of the most forthright critics of postmodernism -- Jurgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson, for example. But it is most distinctive in that it offers a historical reading of the theories of such currently fashionable thinkers as Baudrillard and Lyotard. Postmodernism, Alex Callinios argues, reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the porfessional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that at least one strain of what has come to be called “stakeholder theory” has roots that are deeply libertarian. We begin by explicating both “stakeholder theory” and “libertarian arguments.” We show how there are libertarian arguments for both instrumental and normative stakeholder theory, and we construct a version of capitalism, called “stakeholder capitalism,” that builds on these libertarian ideas. We argue throughout that strong notions of “freedom” and “voluntary action” (...) are the best possible underpinnings for stakeholder theory, and in doing so, seek to return “stakeholder theory” to its managerial and libertarian roots found in Freeman. (shrink)

While mainstream CSR research has generally explored and argued for positive ethical, social and environmental performance, critical CSR scholars argue that change has been superficial—at best, and not possible in any substantial way within the current capitalist system. Both views, however, only address the role of business within larger systems. Little attention has been paid to the everyday material CSR practice of individual managers. We go inside the firm to investigate how the micro-level acts of individual managers can aggregate to (...) drive transformation of the macro-level business logic. We draw on the strategy-as-practice approach to organize our research. The study reveals two orientations towards the integration of personal ethics into the workplace: abdication and activism. These orientations are supported by managerial practice such as reproductive and coping tactics and covert and overt tactics ; and, three enabling conditions of activist practice: empowerment and psychological safety, moral shock, and morality praxis. While our findings illustrate the tremendous challenges managers face when attempting to influence organizational practices towards their ethical and environmental aspirations, we also show that under specific conditions, individual managers can become fully engaged advocates and drivers of positive change from the inside. In so doing, our individual-level analysis of intrapreneurship provides a more complex picture of the possibilities for positive change than have been previously put forth by mainstream and critical CSR research. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. (...) Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s (1921) approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment (whether risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity) they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation (such as prototyping and market research) in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

This article suggests that Facebook embodies a new logic of capitalist governance, what has been termed the ‘social logic of the derivative’. The logic of the derivative is rooted in the now dominant financial level of the capitalist economy, and is mediated by social media and the algorithmic processing of large digital data sets. This article makes three precise claims: First, that the modus operandi of Facebook mirrors the operations of derivative financial instruments. Second, that the algorithms that Facebook uses (...) share a genealogy with those of derivative financial instruments – both are outcomes of the influence of the ‘cyber sciences’ on managerial practice in the post-war years. Third, that the future potential of Facebook lies in its ability to apply the logic of derivatives to the financial valuation of ordinary social relations, thus further extending the process of financialization of everyday life. (shrink)

At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. Second, (...) RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later. (shrink)

Case teaching occupies a central place in the history of business education and in recognition of its significance, the Journal of Business Ethics recently created a new section for cases. Typically, business ethics cases are used to teach moral reasoning by exposing students to real-life situations which puts them in the position of a decision-maker faced with a moral dilemma. Drawing on a critical management studies' (CMS) critique of mainstream business ethics, this article argues that this 'idealtype' decision-focused case underplays (...) the social, political and economic factors which shape managerial decisions. An alternative 'dark side' case approach is presented, which highlights the structural features of capitalism and the role of government in regulating the market. The 'dark side' approach is illustrated with the case of a New Zealand woman, dependent on an oxygen machine, who died when her power was disconnected by her Stateowned electricity supplier because of an unpaid bill. The case considers the actions of both the company and the industry regulator within the context of a 'light-handed' approach to government regulation. The article concludes with a discussion of how this approach to the case method, which moves beyond managers and their moral dilemmas, can provide students with a deeper understanding of the complexity of business ethics. (shrink)

Since ought implies can, i.e., one cannot be obligated to do what one cannot do, the question of corporate responsibility cannot be discussed intelligibly without an inquiry into the range of corporate or managerial discretion. Hence, the moral relevance of a theory of the firm. Within classical or neo-classical economic theory, for instance, firms which act other than to maximize profit are eliminated. They cannot do otherwise, and thus either have no obligations at all or only the duty to (...) maximize profit. The thesis of the Managerial Revolution, if true, establishes only that management is free from direct stockholder control. By asserting that corporations have responsibilities to do other than maximize profit, philosophers assume a wide degree of managerial discretion, without considering recent developments in the theory of the firm which suggest that new incentives and constraints radically restrict managerial liberty in a capitalist society. (shrink)

In part 1 of the paper, I develop a Platonic business ethic, emphasizing Plato’s Republic. I approach business ethics from a virtue ethics position, and I attempt to show that a Platonic craftsmanship model infuses a corporation with a type of managerial wisdom and justice, molds temperate and courageous corporate characters, and entails a morally fine type of self-interest. I also show that it is basic to two influential management theories.In part 2, I use Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom (...) to show that the craftsmanship model is central to the concept of development. This concept is important in ethical discussions of both globalization and transnational corporations. Thus, I attempt to globalize Platonic business ethics using a craftsmanship model.In my concluding remarks, I attempt to show that the Plato/Sen position on development can be illustrated by both American and non-American capitalist firms functioning in our globalized world. (shrink)

Interest in Aristotelianism and in virtue ethics has been growing for half a century but as yet the strengths of the study of Aristotelian ethics in politics have not been matched in economics. This ground-breaking text fills that gap. Challenging the premises of neoclassical economic theory, the contributors take issue with neoclassicism’s foundational separation of values from facts, with its treatment of preferences as given, and with its consequent refusal to reason about final ends. Contributions critically engage with aspects of (...) corporate capitalism, managerial power and neoliberal economic policy, and reflect on the recent financial crisis from the point of view of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Containing a new chapter by Alasdair MacIntyre, and deploying his arguments and conceptual scheme throughout, the book critically analyses the theoretical presuppositions and institutional reality of modern capitalism. (shrink)