Brenden E. Kendall

Making Organization matter: looking back and looking ahead

This article calls upon scholars of organizational studies to take more active roles in confronting and addressing the social, political, economic and environmental problems of today. The article begins with the observation that the birth of organizational studies was deeply concerned with changes, problems and opportunities in an increasingly ‘organized’ world and argues that our studies should not abstract organizing from the world but use our conceptual and practical tools to engage the world fully. We offer six contemporary challenges for (critical) organizational studies in a global society: abstraction and virtuality, diversity and homogeneity, distinctiveness and linkage, boundaries and limits, transformations of labour/work and trust and cynicism. The article urges readers to consider in more specific terms how their work can not only illuminate these issues but also offer something practical, at whatever location or level of analysis, to make a positive difference in pedagogy, scholarship and wider community involvement.

Re)Framing Ethics at Work

This chapter explores how we have limited our own understanding and application of ethics at work through our everyday talk about it. The chapter begins by arguing that how we frame ethics is as important, and sometimes more important, than the specific ethical decisions we make. The chapter explains how a perspective on ethics that is grounded in communication and rhetoric can illuminate how we unnecessarily restrain the influence of ethics at work. The chapter makes the case for examining popular culture and everyday talk for clues to how ethics is treated in our professional lives. Turning the saying “talk is cheap” on its head, the chapter urges a serious consideration of what it means to say, for example, that ones work is “just a job” or that we should “let the market decide.” Thus, the reader is urged to find ethical implications in diverse messages and cases, ranging from codes and handbooks, to television shows and Internet advertising, to everyday conversation, including sayings that become part of who we are.