When craving goodness becomes bad: a critical conception of ethics and aesthetics in organizations

Abstract

Using critical aesthetics, this paper shows the essential ideological and control linkages between ethics and aesthetics in organizations. Using Kateb's concept of aesthetic cravings, the paper explores the role of emotional and psychological attachments in organizational reality construction and their implications for organizational change and organizational control.

Keywords:

• critical theory
• aesthetics
• ethics
• control
• ideology

Notes

1. The paper is part of a larger project on organizational aesthetics, loosely called ‘the beautiful organization’. This project seeks to critically examine how we construct notions of beauty, truth and ethics in contemporary organizations, the implications of the modern organizational aesthetic for the quality of human (work) life, and the possibility of (re‐)constructing an alternative aesthetic.

2. For extensive descriptions and data links, see The Fall of Enron (http://www.chron.com/news/specials/enron/) and Enron and Ethics (http://www.businessethics.ca/enron/).