Journal of Business Ethics (2010) 96:425–434
DOI 10.1007/s10551-010-0475-4
Beyond Good and Evil: The Adiaphoric
Company
ABSTRACT. In this article, six demoralising processes in
the context of the company are identified. These pro-
cesses promote a realm of ‘being-with’, in which out-
comes of human interaction are evaluated on rational
grounds, and on whether or not a particular action
accorded with stipulated ethical rules. Thereby the realm
of ‘being-for’, in which individuals are supported to take
increased responsibility, is marginalized. The conclusion
made is that not only do the demoralizing processes sys-
tematically produce moral distance between humans,
which weakens individual spontaneous outbursts of
sympathy to take increased moral responsibility, they also
promise to release individuals from their moral ambiva-
lence by declaring organised action morally indifferent.
Organisational action is, in other words, declared as adi-
aphoric – beyond good and evil.
KEY WORDS: adiaphorisation, business ethics,
demoralising processes, morality
Introduction
Contemporary environmental and social planetary
problems (global warming, species extinction, deg-
radation and depletion of natural resources, corrup-
tion, famine, poverty and inequality etcetera) have
casted their shadow over business. The discussion on
business ethics with regard to companies’ role and
capability to take responsibility has in the era of
globalisation gained momentum. The background to
this momentum is basically that since companies ‘act
within a set of structures that materially connect
them to one another and to factory workers’, their
families, governments, natural resources and eco-
logical systems etcetera all over the world, ‘they have
responsibilities to concern themselves with the
wellbeing’ of those effected (Young, 2004, p. 382;
see also Held and McGrew, 2007; Heymann, 2006).
Ó Springer 2010
Tommy Jensen
In relation to this, companies are, on the one
hand, targeted as key-agents and one of the main
drivers of change towards sustainable development
(broadly defined as including green as well as social
issues). Companies are in this ‘pro-business’ camp
primarily considered as valuable assets for the quest
of combating and finding solutions to environmental
and social problems due to their entrepreneurial
capacity and responsible stakeholder management
(Freeman, 2005; Prahalad, 2004). When companies
are targeted as a problem in relation to sustainable
development, this is mainly framed as a governance
problem (current deficits in global governance and
corporate governance). On the other hand, com-
panies are depicted as one of the key-agents resisting
change. Companies are in this ‘business-sucks’ camp
primarily considered as profit maximizers refusing
to abandon prevailing business objectives and ways
of creating economic value (Stieb, 2009; Walsh,
2005).
Although the description above is way too sim-
plified to do justice to the many complex discussions
on companies’ role and capability as drivers for or
against change found in the business ethics literature,
it is sufficient enough for making the point that both
camps share common ground; collectives of artificial
bodies (companies as assemblies of humans, gover-
nance structures, rules, guidelines and policies) and
human collectives are considered capable of having
moral responsibility. Collectives of artificial bodies as
well as human collectives are indeed vehicles,
and importantly powerful sources, to avoid harm
from being done (negative responsibility) as well as
preventing or solving ethical dilemmas (positive
responsibility), but it is an ontological mistake to
stretch moral responsibility beyond the individual
(Bevan and Corvellec, 2007; McMahon, 1995).
Consequently, the position taken in this article is
426 Tommy Jensen
that moral responsibility belongs exclusively to
individual human beings.
However, taking this position does not imply that
moral responsibility ‘is something within each of us
– our essential humanity – which resonates to the
presence of this same thing in other human beings’
(Rorty, 1989, p. 189). It does not either imply that
there is a universal moral self, for example, that we
are naturally good or bad; ‘humans are morally
ambivalent’ (Bauman, 1993, p. 10). In other words,
even though moral responsibility is considered to
belong exclusively to individual human beings, it is
crucial to stay sensitive to contexts. The moral
position taken here insists on contingencies, thus the
notion that societies, and the individuals embedded
in there, have no predestined path (either towards
human/inhuman, good/evil, altruistic/opportunis-
tic). What is counted as moral and immoral, and
the way in which individuals perceive morality/
immorality, are socially historic and institutionally
dependent (Hume, 1739/1978; Rorty, 1989;
Willmott, 1998).
From the starting point that the social context of
companies always allows for certain amounts of indi-
vidual moral responsibility (ten Bos, 1997), this article
has as purpose, first, to outline a moral philosophical
framework that illustrates the fragility of individual
moral character and, second, to identify demoralizing
processes in companies to illustrate how these wield
forceful pressure on individuals to refrain from taking
increased moral responsibility. Illuminating the fragil-
ity of individual moral character and the identification
of demoralizing processes is important so as to pave
way for critical conceptual discussions within business
ethics and stimulate researchers within the field to
conduct critical field studies.
In the next section, a framework for individual
moral responsibility is outlined. In the subsequent
section, the demoralizing processes and implications
on individual moral responsibility are identified. In
the last section, consequences of these demoralizing
processes on individual moral responsibility are
discussed.
Outlining moral responsibility
How to take responsible action can be negotiated
and decided upon collectively, but moral responsi-
bility as such is exclusively individual. In stark
contrast to other human domains (political, social,
economical and legal), individuals cannot refrain
from the moral domain as it is synonymous with
having to give up interaction, talk and action within
the human community (Benhabib, 1992). Moral
responsibility is in this sense thus something essential
to human beings.
Taking moral responsibility, then, is challenging
because responsible action may require individuals to
act against established social norms, laws and rules in
which the individual is embedded (Bauman, 1989,
1993, 1995; Levinas, 1969; Løgstrup, 1997). Indi-
vidual moral responsibility, as it is outlined here, is
essentially about exercising ‘one’s freedom of
authorship and/or actorship as a choice between
good and evil’ (Bauman, 1995, p. 1; cf. Rorty,
1989). The current situation, or the degree of free-
dom, under which the choice between good and
evil has to take place, might provide an explanation
to why an individual does not take moral responsi-
bility, but it does not release the individual from
moral guilt (Bauman, 1989).
Essentially, moral responsibility implies ‘not to
consider the Other any more as a specimen of a
species or a category, but as unique’, with its own
unique history, capabilities, needs and limitations
(Bauman, 1995, p. 60; see also Benhabib, 1992). In
other words, moral responsibility is distinctively
about ‘safeguarding and defending the uniqueness of
the Other’ (Bauman, 1995, pp. 51–52). To take
increased moral responsibility requires that individ-
uals transcend the realm of ‘being-with’ (Bauman,
1993, 1995). The realm of being-with is a social
context where ‘individuals [live] alongside but
independently of one another’ and where individuals
primarily are indifferent to each others fate (Tönnies,
1887/2001, pp. 18–19). Although such a social
context might be just, individuals are ‘essentially
detached’ and ‘remain separate in spite of everything
that unites them’, whilst in the realm of ‘being-for’
individuals ‘stay together in spite of everything that
separates them’ (Tönnies, 1887/2001, p. 52).
In stark contrast to the realm of being-with,
entering the realm of being-for implies entering a
context in which no corresponding deterministic or
probabilistic cause and effect exists (Bauman, 1993,
1995). Essentially, moral responsibility is permeated
by ambivalence since:
 Beyond Good and Evil: The Adiaphoric Company
[T]he course of action is not-yet-determined. The
dividing line between good and evil is not-yet-drawn.
It is only the subsequent actions of the actors that will
make the distinction, set apart good from evil, deter-
mine the goodness and the evil of what will have been
done. There is no scenario written in advance, and the
actors write the plot as they proceed, each being his or
her own director; and construe the language of writing
in the course of writing it. (Bauman, 1995, p. 64)
The leap from the realm of being-with to being-
for is not, and can never be, preceded by consider-
ation; it is an emotional spontaneous impulse that
lacks rational purposes and considerations of future
risks (Bauman, 1993, 1995; Hume, 1739/1978;
Jonas, 1984). In the moral philosopher Hans Jonas’s
words ‘the revulsion of feeling [- - -] acts ahead of
knowledge’ (1984, p. 27; or in Levinas terminology,
1969, morality comes before being, before ontol-
ogy). An individual entering the realm of being-for
is ‘enclosed in the frame of sympathy, of the will-
ingness to serve, to do good, to self-sacrifice for the
sake of the Other’ (Bauman, 1995, p. 60). To
rephrase an already made point, this implies a
readiness, which often has to manifest itself as
disobedience to social norms, laws and rules
(Bauman, 1989, pp. 243–244).
Establishing that emotional spontaneous impulses
are the starting point for moral responsibility does
not rule out reason from the moral equation, nor
does it render reason inferior to emotions.1 When
the leap from being-with to being-for is done,
emotions need guidance by reason; moral dilemmas
that individuals confront are eased up, but not
resolved, through spontaneous, yet erratic, emo-
tional actions. For Bauman (2002, pp. 215–216), this
erratic state of being needs to be supported by ethical
reflection if individuals are to address the root
problems of our time; that our actions ‘here’ and
‘now’ have remote effects ‘there’ and ‘then’ (e.g.
purchasing a product has remote effects on working
conditions and workers salary thousands of kilome-
tres away and, in turn, the future possibilities for
children to attend school since they have to help
parents with their work, looking after siblings and
doing household keeping).
However, reason is not defined in its normal
meaning, which is close to the term rationality; that
is to say that action occurs under the condition that
expectancy of returns follows from human interac-
427
tion, and on whether or not a particular action
accords with stipulated rules (Bauman, 1993, 1995;
Jonas, 1984). Rather it is a type of reflective rea-
soning that directs us towards increased sensibility –
a meaning of the word that according to Rawls
(1971) comes close to the mundane meaning of
‘common sense’, which he argued needed to be
upgraded within moral philosophy – so as to thereby
include more humans (distant in space and time) to
our realm of moral responsibility. Despite their dif-
ferent philosophical positions, this plea can be found
in the writings of Bauman (1993, 2008), Benhabib
(1992), Jonas (1984), Rorty (1989), Sen (2006) and
Singer (2002).
Having outlined the foundation of individual
moral responsibility, the demoralising processes are
turned to next.
Demoralising processes in companies
Discontinuous reinvention of companies
This first demoralising process arises from the
widespread organisational movement (see, for
instance, Peters, 2003) that has as its aim to tear
down routines and to reinvent companies ‘decisively
and irrevocably, so that the present becomes dis-
continuous from the past’ (Sennett, 1999, p. 48).
Constant discontinuous reinvention makes organi-
sational life episodic (Bauman, 1998) by putting
upfront the demand on organisational members to
produce now, instantly. Organisational members
become embedded in the notion that every day is a
new beginning (Bauman, 2002).
As a consequence of this, organisational members,
as an individual or as part of a work group, have to
prove his/her (most often: cost-benefit) value to the
company (Kotter, 1996; Sennett, 2006); otherwise
they risk dismissal or transfer to new ‘opportunities’
within the company (Kallinikos, 2001; Sennett,
1999). Furthermore, different members and groups
of the company are arranged so that they are in
autonomous and competitive position towards each
other (Hamel, 2007; Peters, 2003). In this type of
context, organisational members need to recognise
that alliances are only profitable as long as they prove
useful in promoting their career, and that they have
to exclude colleagues before they are themselves
428 Tommy Jensen

excluded. Consequently, the skill to disintegrate structure of [companies]. All these elements of
with parts of the social network that are not useful responsiveness make for an acceptance of decisive,
becomes essential for individual success (Bauman, disruptive change. (also see Alvesson, 1990)
2002, p. 65; Castells, 2000; Jensen and Sandström,
A key aspect enabling the organisation to imple-
2009).
ment flexible specialisation of production is infor-
In this organisational context, individuals face ‘the
mation technology (Castells, 2000), which makes it
task of weaving the mode of their togetherness from
possible to identify and make sense of stakeholder
scratch and with no promise of durability’ and it is to
demands on a global scale with little lagging in time
them ‘demonstrated again and again how whimsical
(probably most developed within consumer behav-
and unpredictable’ the organisational world is
iour, Peters, 2003). Information technology also
(Bauman, 2002, p. 62), which acts according to
enables dramatic reduction in time for production
‘rules of the game’ that workers fail to identify,
planning and production (reprogramming and con-
monitor and manipulate (regarding how and when
figuration of machines on a daily basis) (Sennett,
economic efficiency, labour productivity, company
1999, p. 52). Moreover, flexible specialisation of
profitability, etc., are defined and used). Decisions
production requires fast decision making and prob-
about who is next to fall victim to the process of
lem solving, which have caused a dramatic shift from
discontinuous reinvention of companies fall outside
the formal organisation to the temporary network
the reach of individuals to comprehend (Sennett,
(the project) (Castells, 2000; Ekstedt, et al., 1999;
1999, 2006). Numerous are the cases in which parts of
Pettigrew et al., 2003).
companies, or whole companies, have been shut
Flexible specialisation of production paves way for
down and where the workers, by themselves or
a ‘damaging measure of talent’ since the new version
voiced through union representatives, are chocked
of talent breaks with craftsmanship, broad skills and
and fail to understand on what grounds they and their
durability, and looks for individuals who have the
work groups have been considered to underperform.
capability to constantly learn new skills (Sennett,
According to recent research in social identity
2006, p. 115). More and more workers find them-
theory, this type of organising leads to individual
selves in the situation of signing until further
stress, decreased motivation, suspicion of fellow co-
notice employment contracts (temporary contracts)
workers (are you my colleague or ‘collegial com-
(Kallinikos, 2001; Sennett, 1999, 2006). It also
petitor’) and self-interest (Hogg and Terry, 2001).
becomes the responsibility of the worker to contin-
uously upgrade his/her skills and capabilities to avoid
becoming a victim to the process of downsizing and
Flexible specialisation of production
productivity changes aiming at doing more with less
(Bauman, 2002; Kallinikos, 2001; Sennett, 1999,
The second demoralizing process also helps to explain
2006).
the continuous search ‘for a change of a decisive,
This organisational context has profound effects
irreversible sort, disorganised or unproductive as it
on work ethics. When instability is considered
may be’ (Sennett, 1999, p. 51). Primarily, flexible
normal, work ethics has shifted from long-term
specialisation of production responds to changing
collective commitment to short-term individual
demands from external stakeholders (such as inves-
gains (Bauman, 1998; Hogg and Terry, 2001); as a
tors, consumers, business-to-business partners, lobby-
consequence ‘bonds of trust and commitment’ are
groups, non-governmental organisations etcetera).
loosened, and ‘will’ is divorced from ‘behaviour’
To speak through Pierre Bourdieu, external stake-
(Sennett, 1999, p. 31).
holders become a deputy to strategic management.
When companies seek to respond to outside-in
movements, Sennett (1999, p. 52) states that:
Concentration without centralisation of power
The most strongly flavored ingredient in this new
productive process is the willingness to let the shifting The third demoralizing process is a ‘way of con-
demands of the outside world determine the inside veying the operation of command in a structure
 Beyond Good and Evil: The Adiaphoric Company
which no longer has the clarity of a pyramid – the
[company] structure has become more convoluted,
not simpler’. The word ‘debureaucratization’ is
therefore misleading, top-down domination ‘is both
strong and shapeless’ (Sennett, 1999, pp. 56–57). In
companies that succeed in practicing concentration
without centralisation:
[p]ower becomes concentrated at the center; the
institution’s central processing unit sets the tasks, jud-
ges results, expands and shrinks the firm. New analytic
technologies have enabled firms to engage in what
Michel Foucault has called ‘panoptic surveillance’;
these technologies put real-time maps of resources and
performance on screen. (Sennett, 2006, p. 51)
Power has, at least partly, broken free from the
pyramid structures. Companies must therefore also
be conceived of as flat structures in which organi-
sational nodes are geared towards becoming auton-
omous and loosely coupled with the centre of
domination (for example, Gary Hamel’s radical de-
centralisation, 2007, or Charles Handy’s federalist
decentralisation, 1993). In practice, this means that
nodes manage themselves but are lead from the
centre. When concentration without centralisation
of power is performed, the centre leads by dispersing
mistakes, failures and certain responsibilities to the
periphery (Sennett, 1999, 2006).
Of course, power still runs through traditional
hierarchies, but the exercise of power comes in
many disguises and is ‘put to circulation by many
different regimes’ (Kallinikos, 1996, p. 66; cf. Clegg
et al., 2006). This dynamic capacity stems from the
fact that bureaucratic coordinating mechanisms in
companies no longer are dependent on disciplining
through physical presence; they also discipline digi-
tally (Kallinikos, 1996, 2001). Digital surveillance
and monitoring thus make it possible for bureau-
cracy to reach out beyond traditional borders, even
through loosely coupled networks (Jensen, 2008),
suggesting that bureaucracy is also ‘at work’ in
so-called post-bureaucratic companies. Bureaucracy
has proved to have a remarkable capability to adjust
to disorder and turbulence (Courpasson and Reed,
2004; Du Gay, 2000; Jensen, 2008; Jensen and
Nylén, 2006; Kallinikos, 2004).
The main effect of concentration without cen-
tralisation of power is that companies becomes
characterised by floating responsibility and the rule
429
of nobody (Arendt, 1969; Bauman, 1989, 1995,
p. 99), making it hard to identify who is accountable
(an outstanding account of how it is to work in such
a fluid social context is Franz Kafka’s novels ‘The
Trial’ and ‘The Castle’). It is, thus, difficult to
prosecute any individuals, or individual elites, at the
centre of companies, whilst individuals and work
groups located in the periphery are exposed to
constant threats of facing penalties (according to
Arendt, 1969, this is the worst form of tyranny).
Individuals working in this context cautiously avoid
action that exposes them to the risk of being marked
out and isolated, thereby being distinguished from
others, as wrong-doers. ‘Responsible action’ thus
equals behaving and acting in accordance to informal
as well as formal company rules and demands.
Differentiation through mediation of action
The fourth demoralizing process stands out as one of
the most salient and seminal features of organisations
(Arendt, 1963/1994; Bauman, 1989; Milgram,
1974/2005). The major effect is ‘social production
of distance’ (Bauman, 1989, p. 199) and functional
division of labour and specialisation are essential for
this type of distancing to occur. Performing tasks
within a company that is organised through func-
tional division and specialisation, which all compa-
nies to different degrees are, implies that individual
action ‘here’, in this part of the organisation, and
effects ‘there’, in that part of the organisation, are
distanced. More precisely, ‘intentions and practical
accomplishments’ are distanced because ‘the space
between the two’ is mediated through a number
of actors, minute acts and events (Bauman, 1989,
pp. 24–25).
The social distance is also constructed because of
‘the lack of similarity between the task at hand and
the task of the [company] as a whole [- - -], which
distances the contributor from the job performed by
the [company] of which he is a part’ (Bauman, 1989,
pp. 99–100). The social production of distance is,
however, not only an internal organisational affair.
Outcomes of individual actions stretch well beyond
the boundaries of the company, and, arguably,
the current globalisation process, which could be
framed as a process compressing time and space
(global markets and global trade, instant and dense
430 Tommy Jensen
communication and coordination, Urry, 2003),
accelerates the social production of distance. Com-
panies take part in global processes in which they are
materially connected to distant others; from the
company that places an order of, say clothes, to the
thousands and thousands of remote workers that
produce these clothes in their homes. As for indi-
viduals, companies also act within a set of structures
that have no isolatable perpetrator; structural injus-
tice is mediated through a multitude of mediated
actors, minute acts and events that take place along
global value-chains (Young, 2004).
Individuals working in this ‘dual’ context, char-
acterised by differentiation through mediation of
action, are guided by coordinating principles that
have as their purpose to physically and psychologi-
cally distance individual action ‘here’ from intra- and
inter-organisational consequences ‘there’. Conse-
quently, lack of direct psychological and physical
experience has as consequence that individuals loose
sight of the outcomes of his/her actions, causing
moral distancing. Confronted with claims for in-
creased moral responsibility, individuals’ fend-off
such claims as ‘absurd’ and argue that ‘[w]e are not
the cause of the injustice [- - -], and we do not
control those who are’ (Young, 2004, p. 367; cf.
Bonnedahl et al., 2007).
Substitution of technical for moral responsibility
The fifth demoralising process also ‘conceals the
moral significance of action’ (Bauman, 1989,
p. 199). Technological responsibility is, however,
not a concept dealing with ‘technological’ problems,
such as seeking solutions to engineering or energy
problems; rather it is a term that is applicable to all
kinds of human action. We thus can have a more or
less technological orientation towards decisions
made in all areas of life, raising children, dealing with
personal problems etcetera.
Milgram’s (1974/2005) experiments, in which
students participated in an experiment under the
fabricated condition that they were to deliver pun-
ishment (electroshocks) to another person in order
to see how the learning capacity was affected,
revealed that individuals’ moral responsibility is
fragile. Despite the obvious agony that the victim
expressed (a hired actor), obedience to a present
legitimate authority (the researcher), the subjects
initial promise to take on the very experimental task,
and the task itself, gradually became more important.
Although academic references to Milgram’s
experiments most often focus on the influence of
authority, another crucial observation Milgram
makes, however, is that a majority of those partici-
pating in the experiments found themselves
becoming ‘so absorbed in the narrow technical
aspects of the task that he loses sight of its broader
consequences’ (1974/2005, p. 9). This process seems
also to be self-enforcing; as Weber wrote (1964,
p. 117), ‘the more unconditionally the actor devotes
himself to this value for its own sake, [- - -] the less is
he influenced by considerations of the consequences
of his action’ (see also Bauman, 1989; Jonas, 1984;
Milgram, 1974/2005).
An individual that gradually becomes absorbed by
technological aspects of the task at hand, how this
task could best be technically solved and carried out,
pay lesser and lesser attention to dimensions and
consequences other than those belonging to the
technological realm of action. In a company in
which substitution of technical for moral responsi-
bility is established ‘[t]he options open to the actor in
his relation to the other’ shrinks and are reduced to
being evaluated from whether or not the option is
‘effective and ineffective, efficient and inefficient –
indeed, rational and irrational’ (Bauman, 1989,
p. 180).
Reduction to traits
The increase of techniques that seek to make ‘human
behaviour’ and everyday life ‘visible, inspectable and
manageable’ in organisations are an essential part of
‘the grand and ever-expanding project of the Wes-
tern world’ (Kallinikos, 1996, p. 65). Consequently,
contemporary companies, and their organisational
members, are ‘highly dependent on the kind of
information that is codifiable and effectively trans-
mittable across time and space’ (Kallinikos, 1996,
p. 114; see also Callon, 1998; Callon and Muniesa,
2005; Jensen, 2004, 2006).
The sixth demoralising process implies that per-
sons at which this kind of technical operation is
aimed can be and are dissembled into a set of specific
traits (Bauman, 1989, p. 102; ten Bos, 1997,
 Beyond Good and Evil: The Adiaphoric Company
p. 1004). We can say that out of these techniques
‘is born an accountable and predictable version of
man which is essential to the instrumental experi-
ence’ (Kallinikos, 1996, p. 65; cf. Jensen et al.,
2009).
Reduced to a set of traits, most notably through
quantitative measurements such as cost–benefit
analysis, individuals are represented in terms that
‘‘are abstracted from ‘total persons’’’ (ten Bos, 1997,
p. 1005). Reduced to kilograms, centimetres, litres,
purchasing power, annual income, work hours,
salary, productivity, needs and wants, etc., individuals
loose their distinctiveness and become an ‘entity,
devoid of quality’ (Bauman, 1989, p. 103; Bonnedahl,
et al., 2007; Callon, 1998; ten Bos, 1997). Conse-
quently, techniques for dissembling persons into
specific traits wash away the possibility of those
divided up to have a just cause, to have interests and
claims to subjectivity (Bauman, 1989, p. 104; ten Bos,
1997). Human individuals become objectified.
Furthermore, the ‘standardized and abstract con-
stitution’ (Kallinikos, 1996, p. 114) of techniques
that dissemble persons into a set of specific traits,
creates a moral distance between decision makers
and objectified persons. The language of quantifi-
cation in particular, but in general any technique that
dissembles persons into traits, ‘is unfit for normative-
moral statements’ and therefore acts as a safeguard for
decision makers (those who construct and/or use
such techniques) from normative-moral dimensions
concerning individual persons (Bauman, 1989,
pp. 103, 116; Milgram, 1974/2005).
Conclusion: the adiaphoric company
The account of individual moral responsibility and
the identification and description of demoralizing
processes make it conceptually possible to compre-
hend how individual moral responsibility is nega-
tively affected by organisational contexts. However,
to what extent different companies coordinate
organisational action through these demoralizing
processes and to what extent individuals thereby
refrain from taking increased moral responsibility
is an empirical question – it is still up for scrutiny.
It has also to be empirically investigated how
demoralizing processes influence and condition each
other; how one might reinforce, or even cancel out,
431
another, or that the existence of one demoralizing
process might require that another one is put into
place.
What is without doubt is that companies system-
atically organise along the dimensions as described
within each demoralizing process. Consequently,
demoralizing processes are so to speak normal features
of contemporary companies and contemporary
organising (Bauman, 1989; Jensen et al., 2009; Sen-
nett, 1999, 2006). Of course, common and contem-
porary practice of organising is normally not
associated with negative outcomes on an individual
level. On the contrary, practice of organising is nor-
mally associated with individual progression and
betterment; individuals are empowered, their inner
creativity liberated, their motivation elevated, and,
even, that they become more responsible.
And, of course, there might be positive effects on
power, creativity and motivation, but I strongly re-
sist the idea that individuals are becoming more
responsible. The moral perspective developed here
suggests that current ways and attempts of organising
come at a price; the corrosion of individual moral
character (Sennett, 1999). When an individual’s
character corrodes, the capability of spontaneous
outbursts of sympathy weakens (Bauman, 1989,
1993, 1995; Hume, 1739/1978; Sennett, 1999,
2006). In fact, in order to become successful, com-
panies need to, at least partly, construct organisa-
tional contexts that increase moral distance and
weakens individuals capability of spontaneous out-
bursts of sympathy (cf. Bevan and Corvellec, 2007;
Jackall, 1988; ten Bos, 1997). This context makes it
hard for individuals to take an increased moral
responsibility, or framed according to the earlier
developed moral perspective; to transcend the realm
of being-with to the realm of being-for.
This article has been an attempt to critically assess
how organisational contexts hinder individuals from
taking increased moral responsibility in companies.
Based on this assessment, the main conclusion is that
we can expect only few individuals to succeed in
making the leap from being-with to being-for. Hope
for extended individual responsibility seems futile as
long as current organisational practice remains
uncontested.
However, more is at stake. Taken together, as a
unity, the demoralizing processes also threatens to
make another distinct negative imprint on individuals;
432 Tommy Jensen
they together carry with them a promise of releas-
ing individuals from their moral ambivalence, even
guilt, by declaring organised action morally indiffer-
ent. That is to say that organised action can no longer
be morally ambivalent since questions about human/
inhuman, altruistic/opportunistic, empathy/indiffer-
ence, caring/exploitation are made into non-ques-
tions. Organisational action is declared as exempt
from moral judgement and moral significance and
is, in other words, declared as morally adiaphoric2;
‘neither good nor evil’ (Bauman, 1993, p. 125).
Consequently, not only do companies that sys-
tematically produce moral distance between humans,
weakening individual spontaneous outbursts of
sympathy, run the risk of hindering individuals from
taking increased moral responsibility; they are also
risking annulling the question of moral responsibility
as such! Refraining from taking individual moral
responsibility in such an adiaphoric context would
be considered as ‘a rational step to take, a legitimate
conclusion from a sober, ‘rational’ evaluation of the
possible and the feasible’ (Bauman, 2002, p. 216;
Jensen, 2007).
Companies’ role and capability in the battlement
of contemporary environmental and social planetary
problems are essential. If there is an upsurge of
genuine adiaphoric companies, annulling the ques-
tion of moral responsibility for organised action,
then managers and employees in such companies
will most probably fail taking the kind of responsi-
bility that the social and environmental challenges
demand from them. At worst, then, adiaphoric
companies take a leading role as a protector of the
contemporary unsustainable society.
Notes
1
Within the context of business ethics, this moral
position has been criticised for not breaking the dualis-
tic, antagonistic, relationship between reason and emo-
tion. ten Bos and Willmott (2001) use Bauman as a case
for making their point and argue that what Bauman
actually ends up in is an inversion of the hierarchical
relationship between reason and emotions; making
emotions superior to reason. To me this type of critique
is misplaced. I will therefore discuss ten Bos and
Willmott’s (2001) critique of Bauman since it has rele-
vance to the moral position taken in this text. A starting
point for Bauman, and for the moral position developed
here, is that it is not possible to order and manage
morality. From this, Bauman argues that our times call
for morality without ethics at the same time as we live
in a time of ‘ethically unfounded morality’ (1995,
p. 18). However, ten Bos and Willmott (2001) misread
Bauman (notably they quote mainly Bauman’s 1993
book on postmodern ethics) as claiming that ethics and
morality are disengaged and that the former is irrelevant
vis-à-vis the latter (moral scholasticism). Thus, the con-
clusion that Bauman ends up making emotions superior
to rationality. In the subsequent book, Life as Fragments
(Essays in Postmodern Morality), Bauman argues that
ethics and morality, which in Bauman terminology cor-
respond to reason and emotions as well as ethical
authority from above (rules and laws) and autonomous
moral subjects with their unfinished life projects, ‘grow
of the same soil: moral selves do not ‘discover’ their
ethical foundations, but [- - -] build them up whilst
they build up themselves’ (Bauman, 1995, p. 20). Bau-
man’s moral position thus renders ethics insufficient to
current praxis, but without taking away its capacity to
influence everyday life. Bauman’s postmodern ethics, or
liquid ethics to use a more up to date term, as I see it,
rebalances the relation between reason and emotions.
2
‘The term adiaphoron belongs to the language of
ecclesia; it meant originally a belief or a custom de-
clared by the Church indifferent – neither merit nor sin
– and hence requiring no stand, no official endorsement
or prohibition’. (Bauman, 1993, p. 125)
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E-mail: tommy.jensen@usbe.umu.se