Site-seeing Humanness in Organizations

Tuure Haarjärvi and Sari Laari-Salmela

Business Ethics Quarterly, 2024, vol. 34, issue 1, 60-96

Abstract: In this study, we theorize humanness in organizations as a property of practice. We apply practice theory to examine how humanness becomes enacted in a business organization as people prioritize organizational and individual ends in their work activities. Our empirical case study examines the everyday interactions of development team members in an R&D organization of a large Nordic cooperative. Challenging the dominant individualist and structuralist approaches in humanness and human dignity studies, we identify and locate four different aspects of humanness in organizational practices. As a result, we show how the emergence of humanness is an ongoing process that transpires through two mechanisms: site shifting and reconciliation; that is, people shift between different sites of the social, consisting of different sets of practices with underlying disparate assumptions of humanness, which requires reconciliation. These findings provide a basis for an alternative theorizing of humanness in organizations.

Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:34:y:2024:i:1:p:60-96_3

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