Forgiving the Unforgivable: The Possibility of the ‘Unconditional’ Forgiveness in the Workplace
Guglielmo Faldetta ()
Additional contact information
Guglielmo Faldetta: Cittadella Universitaria
Journal of Business Ethics, 2022, vol. 180, issue 1, No 7, 103 pages
Abstract:
Abstract Forgiveness has been a central issue for humankind since ancient times; it emerged in theology, but in recent decades it has received significant attention from different disciplines, such as philosophy and psychology. More recently, forgiveness has received attention also from organizational and managerial studies, particularly, in studying how individuals respond to interpersonal offenses, or perceived harm and wrongdoing in the workplace. Forgiveness is a complex concept, as it can be understood as a family of related constructs and can be analyzed at different levels. Even if social sciences have widely recognized that the nature of forgiveness can be both conditional and unconditional, the notions of conditionality and unconditionality have not yet received sufficient study, especially in organizational and managerial fields. In these fields, forgiveness has been predominantly studied under a psychological approach, looking for the conditions under which it may occur in the workplace. Unconditional forgiveness has received less attention: with a few exceptions, managerial and organizational literature has limited the conceptualization of forgiveness, weakening its scope and probably not catching a relevant part of forgiving experiences in the workplace. This article proposes to follow a more comprehensive approach to forgiveness in the workplace, according to the social sciences field, which can take into account both conditionality and unconditionality. It focuses on unconditional forgiveness according to Continental philosophy, in particular, to the thought of Jacque Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. Through their contributions, the unconditionality of forgiveness is deepened, and the implications of considering both conditional and unconditional forgiveness are discussed.
Keywords: Forgiveness; Workplace; Continental philosophy; Derrida; Ricoeur (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-021-04885-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:180:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-021-04885-2
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-021-04885-2
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman
More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().