The Humanistic Management Network is an international, interdisciplinary, and independent network that promotes the development of an economic system with respect for human dignity and well-being.
The Humanistic Management Network defends human dignity in face of its vulnerability. The dignity of the human being lies in its capacity to define autonomously the purpose of its existence. Since human autonomy realizes itself through social cooperation, economic relations and business activities can either foster or obstruct human life and well-being. Against the widespread objectification of human subjects into human resources, against the common instrumentalisation of human beings into human capital and a mere means for profit, we uphold humanity as the ultimate end and principle of all economic activity.
In business as well as in society, respect for human dignity demands respect for human freedom. Collective decision-making, in corporations just as in governments, should hence be based on free and equal deliberation, participation or representation of all affected parties. Concerns of legitimacy must, in economics like in politics, precede questions of expediency.
We believe that market economies hold substantial potential for human development in general. To promote life-conducive market activities, we want to complement the quantitative metrics which hitherto define managerial and economic success with qualitative evaluation criteria that focus on the human dignity of every woman and every man.
As researchers, we work towards a humanistic paradigm for business and economics, trying to identify and facilitate corporate and governmental efforts for the common good.
As a think-tank, we set out to spread intellectual tools for culturally and ecologically sustainable business practices that have the human being as their focal point.
As teachers, we strive to educate, emancipate and enable students to contribute actively to a life-conducive economy in which human dignity is universally respected.
As practitioners, we act towards the implementation of a humanistic economy on an individual, corporate, and governmental level.
As citizens, we engage our communities in discourse about the benefits of a human-centred economy.
Titles Include
BUSINESS SCHOOLS UNDER FIRE
BANKING WITH INTEGRITY
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN BUSINESS
HUMANISTIC ETHICS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALITY
HUMANISTIC MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
HUMANISTIC MARKETING
INTEGRITY IN ORGANIZATIONS
THE CHARACTER OF THE MANAGER
WORLD HUMANISM.
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Monika Kostera • Michael Pirson Editors
Dignity and the Organization
Editors Monika Kostera Jagiellonian University Kraków, Poland
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Notes on Contributors
Ricardo Aguado is a faculty member of Deusto Business School, University of Deusto, Spain, in the economics department. He is also senior researcher in the Basque Institute of Competitiveness (IVC-Orkestra) and a member of the Basque Agency for Innovation (Innobasque). His research focuses on the economics of innovation, regional and national systems of innovation, and the (micro)economics of competitiveness. He has published articles in national and international journals in his field and in other media.
Leire Alcañiz is a researcher in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Deusto Business School, Spain.
P. Matthijs Bal is Reader in Human Resource Management and Director of Studies in Human Resource Management and Consulting at the School of Management, University of Bath, UK. His research interests concern the employment relationship of workers with their organisations and the role of the aging workforce in the employment relationship, as well as the societal trends that impact employment relationships, such as increasing flexibility in the workplace, democratization and individualization.
Simon B. de Jong is Professor of Organizational Behaviour and HRM at the University of East Anglia, UK. He also serves as an Associate Editor on the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. Before joining UEA, Simon worked as a Human Capital consultant at Deloitte Consulting and held various academic roles at universities and business schools across Europe, including the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), the University of St. Gallen
(Switzerland), EADA Business School (Spain) and the University of Bath (UK).
Lindsay Hamilton is a lecturer at Keele Management School, UK. She is an organisation studies scholar with a particular interest in ethnographic research and is a member of the Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre at Keele (CASIC).
Mike Healy is an independent researcher, formerly a senior lecturer, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, who has published on ethics and ICT, e-government, and alienation and ICT.
Sissi Ingman is a senior lecturer at Malmö University, Sweden. Her research interests focus upon Aristotelian perspectives on agency and organizing, especially how Hannah Arendt’s thinking on human activity illuminates the phenomena of projects and organizing.
Monika Kostera is Professor Ordinaria and Chair of Management at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, as well as Professor and Chair in Management at the Durham University, UK, and Guest Professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She holds several visiting professorships. She has authored and edited over 35 books in Polish and English, including her last book, Management in a Liquid Modern World with Zygmunt Bauman, Irena Bauman and Jerzy Kociatkiewicz (Polity), as well as and a number of articles published in journals including Organization Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management and British Journal of Management. She is associate editor of Management Learning and is serving on several editorial boards. Her current research interests include archetypes, narrative organization studies, ethnography and the humanistic turn in management. Her website is at: www.kostera.pl.
Greg Latemore is an Industry Fellow at The University of Queensland, Australia, and organisational and management consultant with over 25 years of consulting experience. He specialises in strategy, change, management development and team building.
Lorissa MacAllister is a member of the Peopledesign Lab and founder of Enviah, an evidence-based consulting firm that uses a people-centered approach that is both multidimensional and multidisciplinary.
Delia Mannen is currently a PhD candidate in Management Science at ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University. Her research focuses on organizational sense-making and the meaning employees derive from positive experiences.
Aneta Milczarczyk is an International Research Projects Specialist at the Institute of Electron Technology. Her research interests include social entrepreneurship, social economy, innovative social initiatives, and corporate social responsibility.
Laura Mitchell is a lecturer at Keele Management School, UK. She is a fellow of the HEA, a member of the British Sociological Association and a fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).
Ralitza Nikolaeva is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing, Operation and Management at ISCTE Business School, Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, Portugal.
José Luis Retolaza is a senior research fellow at Deusto Business School, University of Deusto, Spain, President of the European Business Ethics Network, Spain, and a Visiting Professor at La Universidad del País Vasco.
Silvia Dello Russo is an assistant professor in the Department of Human resources and Organizational Behaviour at ISCTE Business School, Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, Portugal.
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Main elements of the integrative social contracts theory
Fig. 5.2 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applied to human dignity in the firm
Fig. 11.3 Adjacent quite room with views of nature 237
List of Tables
Table
Table 2.2 Dignity related to labor, work and action
Table 8.1 Selected African descriptors for the person at work (Latemore 2015b)
Table 8.2 Selected Australian descriptors for the person at work (Latemore 2015c)
Table 10.1 Ambient factors and their effects based on Sundstrom (2001) and Vischer (2007)
Table 10.2 Physical environment trade-offs and their relationship to dignity based on Elsbach and Pratt (2007) and Sayer (2014)
Table 11.1 Role of design practices in promoting the dignity of the human being
1Introduction to Dignity and Organization
Michael Pirson and Monika Kostera
Humanistic management is a paradigm focusing on organizational practices that protect human dignity and promote human well-being. It differs from the economistic paradigm in that it embraces the distinction between goods that can be exchanged and those things in life that are priceless and cannot be (Pirson and Dierksmeier 2014; Pirson and Lawrence 2010). Kant would say the latter possess dignity and are intrinsically valuable (such as love, character, human rights), but these elements of life also escape the most prominent research paradigm we have in organizational contexts: the exchange paradigm. The humanistic management perspective as such challenges a foundational principle of modern organizational science: the focus on the market, efficiency and exchange. While the humanistic perspective clearly embraces the
M. Kostera, M. Pirson (eds.), Dignity and the Organization, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55562-5_1
1
exchange perspective, it sees exchange as a reductionist approach to social and organizational science. The humanistic management perspective also questions one of the prevailing, paradigmatic pillars of what we organize for, by suggesting that the aim of organizing should be a contribution to the common good, or the creation of well-being. This aim contrasts with one of the primary organizational goals of the business world: material wealth creation, i.e. shareholder value. (Pirson and Lawrence 2010).
In this book we focus on dignity, which stands as the primary pillar of the humanistic management perspective. From the start, the editors were interested in examining the role of dignity in organizational contexts. Peter Drucker has long suggested that we live in a society of organizations, a seemingly obvious description of modern human interaction. However, the role of dignity in the context of organizations has been largely neglected. The notion of human dignity as that which bestows intrinsic value to human life, however, has been central to societal progress since the Middle Ages. The quest for freedom from slavery and other forms of societal repression, the growth of democracy, the establishment of modern governance, and the twentieth- century development of an international human rights regime all bear witness to the central role of dignity in the modern political era. (Kateb 2011; McCloskey 2010; Pirson et al. 2015).
According to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), humanity, being capable of morality and agency, can be described in terms of dignity, rather than value, because human beings are not relative to the observer’s judgment and are, instead, intrinsic ends in themselves. As Kant famously stated, “everything has either a price or a dignity. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity” (Kant [1785] 1997). In other words, dignity represents the apex of all human norms and values. As some economic historians argue, the quest for dignity has been so relevant that it has become a key success factor of social and economic development in the West (McCloskey 2010).
Economics and by extension management research, however, have long since neglected the notion of dignity, possibly due to a utilitarian and reductionist legacy (Dierksmeier 2011; Pirson and Dierksmeier 2014). The predominant economic anthropology (centered on homo
oeconomicus), exemplified by noted economists and management scholars Jensen and Meckling (1994), holds that we all have a price: “Like it or not, individuals are willing to sacrifice a little of almost anything we care to name, even reputation or morality, for a sufficiently large quantity of other desired things; and these things do not have to be money or even material goods” (pp. 9–10).
Karl Marx (1844) regarded unalienated (and thus not devoid of dignity) work as an important part of human emancipation. According to the dignity of labor is central to the good life. Only work allowing reflection and the use and development of skill and professionalism befits the dignity and moral well-being of the worker.
The humanist turn in management is an approach to both organizing and organizations, focusing explicitly on dignity as the foundation for all activity. As the Humanistic Management Manifesto states:
The Humanistic Management Network defends human dignity in the face of its vulnerability. The dignity of the human being lies in her or his capacity to define, autonomously, the purpose of her or his existence. Since human autonomy realizes itself through social cooperation, economic relations and business activities can either foster or obstruct human life and well-being. Against the widespread objectification of human subjects into human resources, against the common instrumentalization of human beings into human capital and a mere means for profit, we uphold humanity as the ultimate end and key principle of all economic activity.
(Humanistic Management Network 2014)
Humanistic management can thus be defined by three key characteristics (Kostera forthcoming). Firstly, it is defined by its focus on the human condition, needs, and rights. The aim of humanistic management remains the concern for the good, dignity, emancipation, and development of the human being (Humanistic Management Network 2014; Nierenberg et al. 2015). In this way, it is based on the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant ([1785] 1997), which holds that the human being should never be regarded as a means to any end, but should only be seen as an end in her or himself. Secondly, humanistic management often seeks inspiration and guidance from the humanities (Gagliardi and Czarniawska 2006;
Orzechowski 2009), in order to gain knowledge and cultural sensitivity. Thirdly, humanistic management adopts the perspective of the human condition and experience (Hopfl 1994; Kociatkiewicz and Kostera 2013). As a compassionate practice and academic discourse it seeks to understand organizational realities from the point of view of the feeling, thinking, embodied human, of all hierarchical levels and social roles.
In the call for contributions we invited authors to submit chapters connected to existing discourses of dignity in areas such as philosophy (Kant [1785] 1997; Rosen 2012; Sen 2001), political science (e.g. conflict resolution) (Hicks 2011), legal studies (e.g. governance and corporate charters) (Kateb 2011; Meyer and Parent 1992), religious studies (Duffy and Gambatese 1999), economics (e.g. poverty alleviation) (McCloskey 2010; Nussbaum 1998), sociology (e.g. alienation) (Bolton 2007; Hodson 2001; Lamont 2002), or psychology, (e.g. motivation) (Harris 1997).
In the following volume, you will find ten contributions from scholars of global provenance that draw on a wealth of disciplinary perspectives to examine the conceptual nexus of dignity and organization.
To start the conversation, Sissi Ingman’s chapter locates Hannah Arendt’s position on dignity as a political concept. Ingman focuses in particular on culture and politics as organizing principles, as well as the role of the spectator. In Ingman’s framework, Arendt’s ideas, such as the “inheritance without a testament”, throw light on the theory and practice of organizing that includes dignity as a foundation, wherein human beings can move freely together with equals. Such an orientation represents a sharp contrast to the currently dominant, dehumanizing perspectives focusing on economic value, particularly economic effectiveness or efficiency. Finally, Ingman concludes that the role of the spectator is has important implications for both the study and theorizing of organizations. Thus, she argues, reflectivity is necessary in organization studies.
Next, Laura Mitchell argues that the definition of dignity in organization is problematic on both the ontological and epistemological level. Mitchell focuses on two aspects of the dynamics of participation: membership and accountability. She then shows how both are connected to the construction of dignity within organizations. The chapter delineates membership dynamics, and in particular the role of indexing, spokespersons, and intermediaries, as well as the centralization of
discretion. Finally, the chapter argues that dignity should not be seen as identical with a given organizational role or membership; instead, dignity transcends these, and may be relationally located in the negotiation of meaning with other members of a given organization.
Lindsay Hamilton and Laura Mitchell then explore how the concept of dignity can be expanded from human beings to all species. They suggest how, through adopting specific organizing practices, the dignity of all living beings can be understood, managed, and protected. The idea of dignity as extending beyond human interactions in organizations has been almost completely neglected. And yet, human beings have relied on animals for support in a large variety of organizational and economic activities. The chapter upholds the importance of taking the animal perspective into consideration when studying dignity in organizations; in particular, Hamilton and Mitchell focus on their social status and the dignity of their labor. Finally, the authors propose a re-conceptualization of organizational dignity as something which is not exclusively human, but which pertains to all actors in social networks with multi-directional power.
Ricardo Aguado, Jose Luis Retolaza, and Leire Alcaniz contend that the legitimacy of current organizations is being questioned, and that new ways to think about and enact the strategies of firms are important. They propose that through the lens of Integrative Social Contracts Theory we can derive an embedded notion of the firm. Here, dignity can be seen as the basis of strategy formulation for a wider range of stakeholders in which activities either correct the terms of dignity, improve upon them, or keep them as-is. Based on ISCT, the authors here argue that firm strategy can be universally more acceptable if it respects human dignity. Legitimacy, however, needs to be earned in the specific context in which dignity terms are enhanced for stakeholders in the microcosm the firm operates in.
Michael Healy and Iwona Wilkowska explore the role of alienation and the denial of dignity at work through a renewed Marxian perspective. They develop the conceptual forms of alienation that potentially undermine dignity at work and the dignity of work. They also explore how those categories apply in the current knowledge economy. While Drucker said the knowledge society of the late twentieth century puts an end to
the capitalist forms of work Healy and Wilkowska argue that the problems Marx has analyzed during the nineteenth century still apply even in the highly trained, knowledge-working context of Information and Communication Technology.
Aneta Milczarczyk, adopting the Kantian approach to human dignity, presents organizations whose aim is to fight the violation of dignity and to restore dignity. The organizations she describes are social enterprises with a social mission focused simultaneously at the individual and the social level: they intervene directly in situations where the restoration of dignity is needed and they aim, ultimately, to achieve social change. Through building relationships and supporting learning, they construct on an on-going basis a dynamic structure that both defines human dignity in practice, and reclaims the agency of the social actors, thus equipping them with necessary cultural tools for restoration of human dignity as a fundamental right and social institution.
George Latemore’s chapter investigates the role of dignity in the context of leadership. Whereas one strand of the intellectual history of “dignity” as a concept focuses on rank as a source of dignity which requires certain behavior from formal leaders, Latemore instead explores how leaders may demonstrate respect for the dignity of others. He interrogates the role of language in the context of leading and brings the notion of leadership back to basic ontological questions about who we think people are or what human nature is. Latemore then presents results from an empirical study to highlight how certain language properties are dignitydiscounting and others dignity-declaring.
The chapter co-authored by Matthijs Bal and Simon B. de Jong discusses human dignity in the context of Human Resource Management. The authors present a Kantian view of dignity as a viable alternative to the managerialistic notion currently prevalent within the area of HRM. According to the managerialistic view, organizations should treat humans instrumentally, as the central focus of organizations is is the achievement of (economic) goals. In contrast, a Kantian view places the human being as a contributor to the aims of the organization, returning agency and dignity to the human. The authors propose organizational democracy for the development of human dignity, and argue for
the redefinition of Human Resource Management into Human Dignity ‘Management’.
In another take on reconceptualizing organizational practices, Ralitza Nikolaeva and Silvia Dello Russo interrogate the relationship between office design and dignity in the workplace. They argue that the physical space itself oftentimes determines the way we organize. The authors further find that despite its importance, employees are rarely consulted when officescapes are designed. This lack of workplace democracy results in a tendency towards open-plan office spaces or cubicles that yield costsavings but undermine privacy. These forms of organizing physical work often reify a power structure that is detrimental to the dignity of employees. Nikolaeva and Dello Russo then propose a number of approaches to how office spaces can be better designed to protect and enhance human dignity.
In a similar vein, Delia Mannen and Lorissa MacAllister argue that dignity needs to be part of the design process. That inclusion would require a shift from the prevailing, formalistic design towards a more humanistic design process in organizations. The role of aesthetics would need to be enhanced, and the human appreciation of beauty rather than efficiency might then allow organizations to harness better emotional and cognitive responses. The authors claim that in many ways, the space in which people work is a self-fulfilling prophecy: people that feel well at work will create better products and solutions that are more likely to please the clients and beyond.
While some of the insights presented in this book may seem at first glance intuitive, it was the very resistance such topics presented to more rigorous argumentation that pushed us editors to provide space for a purposeful discussion on dignity in the organizational context. We hope that organizations of all kinds will benefit from creating a space which fosters the flourishing of human dignity. That is, at least, the aspiration of us as editors, and we hope that as readers, you too might find it worthwhile to ponder the possibility of better organizing practices.
Enjoy the read!
References
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Duffy, R.A., and A. Gambatese. 1999. Made in God’s Image: The Catholic Vision of Human Dignity. New York: Paulist Press.
Gagliardi, P., and B. Czarniawska. 2006. Management Education and Humanities. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Harris, G. 1997. Dignity and Vulnerability: Strength and Quality of Character. Oakland: University of California Press.
Hicks, D. 2011. Dignity—Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hodson, R. 2001. Dignity at Work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hopfl, H. 1994. Learning By Heart. Management Learning 25(3): 463–474. Humanistic Management Network. 2014. Promoting Human Dignity, Promoting Human Well-Being. http://www.humanetwork.org/. Accessed 17 Oct 2014.
Jensen, M.C., & W.H. Meckling. 1994. The Nature of Man. The Journal of Applied Corporate Finance Summer 7(2): 4–19.
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Kateb, G. 2011. Human Dignity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kociatkiewicz, J., and M. Kostera. 2013. Zarządzanie Humanistyczne: Zarys Programu. Przegląd Zarządzania 4: 9–19.
Kostera, M. forthcoming. Humanistic Management. In Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies, ed. B. Czarniawska. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Lamont, M. 2002. The Dignity of Working Men, Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marx, K. 1844. Estranged Labour. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/ labour.htm. Accessed 18 Nov 2014.
McCloskey, D. 2010. Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
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Orzechowski, E. 2009. Dziś nawet żebrak musi być sprawnym menedżerem: O zarządzaniu kulturą i szkolnictwem wyższym. Kraków: Attyka.
Pirson, M.A., and C. Dierksmeier. 2014. Reconnecting Management Theory and Social Welfare: A Humanistic Perspective. Academy of Management Proceedings 2014(1): 12245.
Pirson, M., C. Dierksmeier, and K.E. Goodpaster. 2015. Human Dignity and Business. Business Ethics Quarterly 24(3): 501–503.
Pirson, M.A., and P.R. Lawrence. 2010. Humanism in Business—Towards a Paradigm Shift? Journal of Business Ethics 93(4): 553–565.
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Sen, A. 2001. Development as Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dignity in Organizing from the Perspective of
Hannah Arendt’s Worldliness
Sissi Ingman
Hannah Arendt is not one of the more frequently cited names in today’s dignity discourse, despite having made an early contribution to the debate popularized (McCrudden 2008) by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In her book, On the Origins of Totalitarianism, written around the time of the declaration and when many were experiencing rightlessness, superfluousness, and statelessness, she devotes a chapter to “the perplexities of the rights of man,” in which she formulates her view of the “right to have rights.” In her foreword, she states that “human dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth” (OT, p. ix).
Although Arendt is not cited often, she still inspires the debate today. In fact, a growing number of recent dissertations and works have focused on her thoughts on human dignity and rights, and the relevance of these for the challenges of today’s world.1 Further, they have inspired
1 See, for example, Birmingham (2006), Menke (2007), Parekh (2008), Ingram (2008), Borren (2010), Schaap (2011), Kesby (2012), and Lacroix (2015).
theorists who are influential in today’s discourses on human dignity; for example, Waldron (2006) identifies with her ideas on how politics need housing and Kateb (2007) describes his concept of human dignity in terms of the existential values in her writing. In addition, Ferrara (2008) has been inspired by her ideas on judgment as a way to proceed with exemplary validity in discourses of human dignity.
The early reception of Arendt’s thought often focused on her 1958 book, The Human Condition, after some influential interpretations of her work in its entirety [Young-Bruehl 1982; Barnouw 1990; Canovan 1992]. Contemporary critics frequently interpreted her work as containing normative political theory modeled on the Greek polis; yet, scholars today tend to view her personal experiences as a Jew in times of totalitarianism as central to her thought. She emigrated from Germany to Paris in 1933, was deprived of German citizenship in 1937, interned as a “hostile alien” in France in 1940, fled to New York in 1941, and was stateless until 1951 when she became an American citizen. The tendency to read her work as a revival of the polis has changed in favor of reading it as reversed totalitarianism. In line with this reading, Birmingham (2006) argues that Arendt’s concept of natality—the capacity of being “beginnings”—as the foundation for human dignity is her most important contribution to political theory, and Borren (2010) sees in Arendt’s distinctions a framework for distinguishing politically good forms of in/ visibility as conducive to human dignity from politically bad ones.
The closest to conceptualizing dignity as rank or status, Arendt is not easily placed within any of the strands that Rosen (2012) identifies in the overall discourse of dignity (status, intrinsic value, behavior, treatment). Rosen argues that, after Kant, discourses on dignity are a question of human dignity. However, in opposition to Kant’s concept of dignity, which is grounded on morality and autonomy, Arendt approaches the question of dignity in terms of plurality. She further criticized the approach to dignity as something exclusively for humans; this is one of the reasons why I will not begin with Arendt’s concepts of action and politics as her primary contribution to the discourse on dignity. Arendt has an affinity with the Aristotelian capability approach promoted by Nussbaum, but she emphasizes appearances, conflicts, limits, and boundaries more.
I begin with her thoughts on worldliness—a theme which runs throughout all her works, from her reflections on early Christian worldlessness in her dissertation to her last book on the role of non-appearing mental activities in a world of appearances.
Arendt has not gained much attention in the field of management and organization, but when she is referred to, her concept of action is at the center, and the texts explicitly or implicitly concern questions of human dignity. The challenges of introducing humanistic approaches to management and organization are well known. It is a standing critique in Foucauldian and Marxian management studies, and is also pointed out in the literature on dignity and management (Hodson 2004; Pirson and Dierksmeier 2014). By shifting the focus from direct relations between humans to ways of relating to the world, I hope that the distinctness of an Arendtian approach appears more clearly than a direct focus on human action would; not as less humanistic, but as less easily transformed into a managerial tool for emancipating human resources.
In the first part of the chapter, I present Arendtian worldliness in terms of appearances and plurality and the worldly virtue of durability.
The second section presents an Arendtian framework for meanings of dignity in human activities due to their correspondence to existential human conditions and the idea of organizing as conditioning dignity is thus introduced.
In a third section, seven voices which independently introduce Arendt’s thoughts into the field of management and organization are presented as an ongoing conversation into which I insert my view on Arendtian worldliness and distinctions for dignity in management and organization.
Arendtian Worldliness as Plurality and Durability
Arendt opens her book The Life of the Mind on thinking, willing, and judging as non-appearing mental processes by reflecting on the world’s phenomenal nature—the “almost infinite diversity of its appearances … matched by an equally astounding diverseness of sense organs among the
animal species” (LM, p. 20). She uses the Greek expression, δοκεῖ μοι, ‘it seems to me’ to describe:
[T]he mode, perhaps the only possible one, in which an appearing world is acknowledged and perceived. … Seeming corresponds to the fact that every appearance, its identity notwithstanding, is perceived by a plurality of spectators. (LM, p. 21)
δοκεῖ μοι is a Greek common-sense expression used to denote perception, reasoning, deliberate choice as well as judgment, and I quote the book’s first paragraph in its entirety because I read it as her essentialized δοκεῖ μοι:
The world men are born into contains many things, natural and artificial, living and dead, transient and sempiternal, all of which have in common that they appear and hence are meant to be seen, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled, to be perceived by sentient creatures endowed with the appropriate sense organs. Nothing could appear, the word ‘appearance’ would make no sense, if recipients of appearances did not exist—living creatures able to acknowledge, recognize, and react to—in flight or desire, approval or disapproval, blame or praise—what is not merely there but appears to them and is meant for their perception. In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into a nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide. Dead matter, natural and artificial, changing and unchanging, depends in its being, that is, in its appearingness, on the presence of living creatures. Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator. In other words, nothing that is, insofar as it appears, exists in the singular; everything that is is meant to be perceived by somebody. Not Man but men inhabit this planet. Plurality is the law of the earth. (LM, p. 19)
Her choice of words is suggestive. She speaks of a law of the earth, which may be read as description or as a law to listen to or follow by giving due attention to what is there and meant to be perceived and acknowledged. In the world of appearances, objects need a plurality of perspectives to guarantee their reality, for “Nothing that appears manifests itself to a single viewer capable of perceiving it under all its inherent aspects” (LM, p. 38).
Arendt avoids speaking of duties, but she does speak of claims on attention. The world is old, there are many things in it, and a lot goes on in it: no one can give attention to everything. Τhe dative in δοκεῖ μοι points to the personal element in address and attention.
The Urge to Appear
Arendt speaks of a correspondence between living sentience and an urge to appear:
[W]hatever can see wants to be seen, whatever can hear calls out to be heard, whatever can touch presents itself to be touched. It is indeed as though everything that is alive—in addition to the fact that its surface is made for appearance, fit to be seen and meant to appear to others—has an urge to appear, to fit itself into the world of appearances by displaying and showing, not its ‘inner self’ but itself as an individual. (LM, p. 29)
Inspired by the zoologist and biologist Adolf Portmann’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic appearances, Arendt reflects on this spontaneous urge toward self-display by which living things fit themselves into a world of appearances. Arendt points to the equivocal meanings of “self-display”: either by actively making one’s presence felt, seen, and heard, or by displaying something “inside” that otherwise would not appear. She uses it in the former sense and allows Aristotle’s distinctions between body, soul, and mind to reveal the equivocality involved if the distinction between souls and minds is blurred. See Table 2.1.
Authentic appearances come to light of their own accord and refer to the external features of living things, such as body shape and the sound of one’s voice. Examples of inauthentic appearances are when the roots of a plant or one’s inner organs are forced to the light of day through interference and violation of the “authentic” appearance. Differentiation of the former allows us to distinguish one individual from another, but we can hardly tell individuals apart by inspecting their intestines. The functional apparatus of the life process does not need the light of the world and a plurality of spectators to function properly—sources of life may even
Table 2.1 Distinctions between bodies, souls, and minds
Bodies
Worldly appearance of own accord
Authentic appearances
Individualized
“Inner life” Life process
Inside made to appear in the world
Inauthentic appearances forced to the light
Souls
“Body language” as sign
Life process
Lack worldly property
Appear only as selfpresentation, “mere appearance”
Minds
“Absentmindedness” as sign
Conscious use of imagination
Speech
Individualized
need protection from it, and from a life perspective, the value of the surface lies in this protection.
The life processes of body and soul make us feel alive: feelings, passions, emotions, and sensations give life its intensity and quality. From a world perspective, these appear in physical signs as glances, sounds, or gestures, but every show of one’s passion or emotion is a form of self-presentation. It involves mental reflection and may be authentic for the actor’s urge to fit into the world, but as an appearance of the soul, it becomes ‘mere appearance’ in the full expression of this word. Issues of inauthenticity emerge as a matter of fact when motives are exposed as appearances in the world, Arendt argues, because motives behind deeds and words “are destroyed in their essence through appearance” (OR, p. 96):
[N]ot only is the human heart a place of darkness which, with certainty, no human eye can penetrate; the qualities of the heart need darkness and protection against the light of the public to grow and to remain what they are meant to be, innermost motives which are not for public display. (OR, p. 96)
Body bound, emotions share with inner organs the fact that we tend to speak of pathology as disorder or abnormality when individualized, but the threat of exposure is different: inner organs are not destroyed in their essence when forced to light.
Our tendency to speak of “a life inside us” to denote both soul and mind blurs their differences. The soul is an inner life process, and when the mind reflects on it and speaks of aching hearts and other physical sensations, it is not using metaphors. Emotions and passions are somatic experiences—they do not appear to us, but happen in us. We feel them, but they “lack the chief worldly property of ‘standing still and remaining’” long enough to be objects of perception (LM, p. 40).
In contrast, thinking always deals with appearances, but temporarily withdraws not only from the here and now of the world, but also from the body. Ageless and sexless, the thinking ego moves freely between past and present, and can make anything it can perceive—including sex or age—its object, allowing the magic of imagination the feat of essentializing and variation, reflecting on its essence, its meaning, the way it pleases or becomes unpleasant in different company, places, lights and from different standpoints and perspectives, as well as what could be appropriate ways to engage and deal with it.
Thinking does not appear of its own accord, other than as absentmindedness, but it deals with appearances: it “sees,” and thus shares in the urge to appear, which the gift of metaphoric language allows it, “bridging the gulf between the realm of the invisible and the world of appearance” (LM, p. 108).
As confirmation that every appearance appears to a plurality, Arendt points to the fact that the mind actualizes plurality even when it withdraws and bends back towards the self. The thinking ego splits into the “two-in-one” as inner, but critical friends, the willing ego splits into a conflict between will as command and will as refusal, and in judging, the mind goes “visiting” to other possible standpoints.
The Dignity of a Durable Human World
Arendt uses the word ‘objectivity’ to denote the worldly quality of objects that does not diminish, but stands against and withstands the “subjectivity” of the living—the plurality of δοκεῖ μοι and the life processes of consumption and use. From the viewpoint of life, things have a stabiliz-
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