See below a cfp for a subtheme at this year's LAEMOS conference - contact details below, forwarded upon request. Best wishes, Armin
Animals and Organizations
Subtheme Conveners:
SUBTHEME 03
Julie Labatut (INRA, France), Iain
Munro (Innsbruck University, Austria), Eduardo Chia (INRA, Chile/France), John
Desmond (University of St Andrews, Scotland)
Contact:
CALL FOR PAPERS
Overview
From the BSE meat scandal of 1989
to the “Horsegate” scandal of 2013, we are confronted with the previously
hidden relations between animals and organizations, revealing a dark side to
unknown meat trading systems and organizational questions on ethics and
markets. A diversity of relations exists between animals and organizations,
involving various types of animals (pets, livestock or wild animals) at various
levels (companies, industries, zoos, reservation parks and communities),
illustrating models of capitalistic development and their crisis, to the
creation of alternatives. They exist both as an important aspect of our
organizational discourse, and as material entities. On one side, companies use
pets to deal with stress at work, or get involved in corporate responsibility
in exploiting or protecting animals. On the other side, in many respects
animals are positively excluded from organizations. This exclusion occurs both
on a material level in terms of the physical exclusion of animals such as
vermin and pets from organizations, and in the more abstract affirmation of
human identity by the denial of the irrational ‘animal other’. Theoretical
debates have been raised about whether certain species deserve greater
consideration than others, leading to an apparent schism (Kohler, 2012) between
essentialism and the “anti-essentialist” animalism, between those considering
“speciesism” (Singer 1975) as an ethically charged issue to fight against and
those resisting a “naturalization” of human beings. We ask how can organization
theory and critical management studies address this debate and move beyond this
theoretical impasse? Despite the development of an AOM division that is focused
upon the relationship between organizations and the natural environment, or the
fact that Critical Management scholars have been deeply sceptical about the
“ecological sustainability of the prevailing forms of management and
organization” (Adler et al, 2007), organization scholars have paid scant attention
to this area of study (Barley 2010; Stern and Barley, 1996;). Animal exclusion
from organizations could be fruitfully investigated using a number of
theoretical approaches such as the biopolitical immunitarianism (e.g. Esposito,
2008), or in terms of our ‘affected ignorance’ towards animals (Williams,
2008). Thanem (2011) has remarked upon the role of animals and animal
by-products in his conception of the ‘monstrous organization.’ In Science
Studies the work of Donna Harraway (2003) has been at the centre of a debate
over the extent to which humans have co-evolved with their ‘companion species’
and other animals and how this relationship has affected both our biological
and organizational development. Animal agency in organizations has been
virtually absent from the organizational sociology with the exception of
Callon’s (1986) classic study of a scallop fishery, which included the agency
of scallops in terms of their ‘willingness’ to adapt to new forms of farming.
It is surprising that studies of technological artefacts have proliferated
within the literature, whilst the agency of ‘actants’ in our natural
environment has been largely overlooked.
Analyzing contemporary forms of
organization in terms of our relationship with the ‘animal other’ opens up opportunities
to address important questions of power, accountability, ideology and ethics.
This subtheme aims to investigate and theorize the problematic of “organizing
animals”. It is an opportunity to address contemporary management practices and
organizational boundaries, and investigate more precisely what is the
relationship between organizations and the natural environment. This could be
done drawing on a diversity of theoretical frameworks which deal explicitly
with the constitution of the organizational environment, including theories
such as ANT (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005), social movement organization theory
(Böhm et al, 2008; Davis et al. 2005), post modern business ethics (Desmond
2010; Jones et al, 2005), post-humanist perspectives (Harraway, 2003), and
critical management studies more generally (Burrell, 1997; Clegg, 2006).
Organizing the ‘Animal Other’
Animals are often portrayed as
passive commodities within organizations, but this relies on a narrow view that
neglects the implications of the ways in which animals play active roles in
organizational processes, for instance recent research has revealed that cows
enjoy being milked and actively participate in farm work (Porcher and
Schmitt 2010). Scholars
have argued that animals are active participants even in
their own domestication (Budiansky
1999).
Animal-human relations are often associated with violence and domination,
relations that are ignoble and corrupting, similar to how “power” is often
considered in organizations (Clegg et al. 2006). However, it may be a mistake
to consider this relationship as a purely one directional phenomenon.
Research is also needed to
understand what happens when organizations and animals collaborate and the
extent to which they are implicated in a process of mutual transformation. As
argued by Alcadipani and Hassard (2010), forms of domination are always
performed multifariously within different sets of relations and what is
proposed in this call for papers is to analyse their multiplicity in practice.
An example of such an approach has been proposed by Desmond (2010), drawing
upon Derrida’s critique of the disavowal of the ‘animal other’ he proposes an
ethics influenced by the animal's point of view that entails an ‘animalmalaise’
in which we are not in a relationship of sympathy with the animal other, but
are ‘naked’ in relation to this other.
This call asks for theoretically
challenging papers that use empirical work to suggest new theorizations of
power and ethics. What ethical issues are raised in inquiring into the
relationship between animals and organizations? How are human-animal relations
reflected in the design of modern organizations? To what extent do
organizations in post-industrial capitalism reflect a disavowal of the ‘animal
other,’ or in contrast, develop alternative relations with animals? In what
ways do animals participate in modern organizations and forms of work? How are
animal stories drawn upon as exemplars or tropes within management and
organizational discourses? We argue that critical organization studies can
enhance and enrich such questions.
Possible topics and questions:
Expected contributions include
theoretical and empirical studies of a broad set of topics, to give a more
complete account of the significance of “non human” animals for the critical
analysis of organizational practices:
·
Business ethics and animal
exploitation: for example, the use of animals in the cosmetics and medical
industries, the organization of animals in zoos, circuses, and wildlife parks.
Animal welfare is an important topic in academic literature, but it has not
been taken up by organizational scholars or business ethicists to produce
conceptual or theoretical advances with this topic.
·
Eating animals: the
organization of animals in restaurants, scandals in the food industry (e.g.
BSE, Foot and Mouth, Salmonella, the use of horse meat or other inappropriate
food stuffs), and agriculture / food alternatives.
·
Animals at work: how animals
involved in work practices allow for understanding new forms of professional
identities? (see Bunderson and Thompson, 2009). How “companions” reflect new
forms of management as they are introduced in firms?
·
Animals and social movement
organizations (e.g. RSPCA, WWF, Greenpeace). Many animal rights SMOs are closely
connected with other forms of activism and social movement organizations. A
founding member of the RSPCA in Britain was William Wilberforce, also a key
activist in the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This
issue calls for further investigation of the links between the animal rights
movement and other emancipatory SMOs.
·
Animals in organizational
discourse: The role of
animal metaphors and analogies in management discourse, including in colloquial
speech, in motivational texts (‘Who Moved My Cheese?’), in social critique and
the development of alternative forms of organizational (‘The Fable of the
Bees,’ ‘Animal Farm’) and management parodies such as the role of dogs, cats
and rats in the Dilbert comics.
·
Anthropomorphism and
Organization: Critically examining the pervasive tendency to classify others based
on a hierarchy that places the human at its centre. Examining work places where
workers are not regarded as being fully human. Questioning Cartesian
assumptions by which some animals are elevated to the status of human and some
humans demoted to the status of animals. Is it better to be treated as a pet or
as meat is explored in relation to treatment of women, the poor, the disabled
and aged (Case, 2005)?
·
Human Animals: Given humans
are animals, can ethology contribute towards a better understanding of human
organization? Is human organization a realm of domestication? Should one take
the treatment of the animal as a model for that of humans; the slaughterhouse
as a model for the death camps and the Gulag (Burrell, 1997). What are the
implications of rapid technological development for the weak animal self
(Stiegler, 1998)?
References
Adler, P. S., Forbes, L.,
Willmott, H. (2008). Critical Management Studies. In Brief,
A., Walsh, J. (Eds.), Academy of Mangement Annals Alcadipani,
R. and J. Hassard (2010). Actor-Network Theory, organizations and
critique: towards a politics of
organizing, Organization
17(4): 419-435.
Barley, S. R. (2010). "Building an Institutional Field to Corral a
Government: A Case
to Set an Agenda for Organization
Studies." Organization studies 31(6): 777-805.
Böhm, S. Spicer, A. & P.
Fleming (2008) Infra-Political dimensions of resistance to international
business: A Neo-Gramscian approach, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 24:
169-182 Budiansky, S. (1999). The covenant of the wild: why animals chose domestication. Yale, Yale
University Press.
Bunderson, J. S. and J. A.
Thompson (2009). "The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the
Double-edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work." Administrative science
quarterly 54(1): 32-57.
Burrell, G. (1997) Pandemonium:
Towards a retro-organization theory, Sage. Callon, M. (1986) Some elements of a
sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St
Brieuc Bay, First published in J. Law, Power, action and belief: a new sociology
of knowledge? London, Routledge, 1986, pp.196-223. Case, M. A. (2005) Pets or Meat.
Chicago-Kent Law Review, vol. 80: 1129-1150. Clegg, S., D. Courpasson and N.
Phillips (2006). Power
and Organizations, SAGE.
Davis, G., D. McAdam, W. Scott
& M.Zald (2005) Social Movement Organization Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
Desmond, J. (2010). A summons to
the consuming animal. Business Ethics : a European Review 19(3).
Esposito, R. (2008) Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, University
of Minnesota Press, London
Harraway, D. (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto:
Dos, People, and Significant Otherness, Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago
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(2005) For Business
Ethics: A Critical Approach, Routledge, Kondon
Kohler F., (2012)
"Sociabilités Animales. Introduction" , Etudes rurales, 1: 189,
11-31.
Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the
Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP
Porcher, J. and T. Schmitt (2010).
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235-261.
Singer, P.
(1975/2002) Animal
Liberation, New York:
Ecco
Stern, R.
& Barley, S. 1996. Organizations and social systems: organization theory's
neglected mandate. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41: 146-163.
Stiegler, B.
(1998) Technics and Time 1: The fault of Epimetheus, Richard Beardworth and
George Collins (trans.) Stanford University Press.
Thanem, T.
(2011) The
Monstrous Organization, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham
Williams, N.
M., 2008, « Affected ignorance and animal suffering : why our failure to debate
factory farming puts us at moral risk ». Journal of Agricultural and
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