Search results

Western societies are not “a-moralized.” We could observe “ethical etiquette” everywhere, in every social institution and concerning every human activity or field of research (codes of ethics, ethics committees, Government ethics laws and so forth). The moralization processes of Western societies appear to be actualized in a dialectical way, and that process involves three patterns of actions undertaken by most of the social groups and institutions: (1) to get rid of an external (heteronomous) morality; (2) to adopt an inner (autonomous) morality; and (3) to safeguard two equivocal attitudes: (a) excluding any moral issue from one's decision-making and paradigmatic beliefs individuals adhere to (in order to explain the systemic reality of their self, world and Nature); and (b) letting to the given social groups and institutions (professions, for instance) the responsibility to provide the moral foundations of social life. In neo-liberalistic societies, where individualism has reached its peak, moral responsibility is more and more considered as a constraint to the “desire to do what we wish to do.” Indeed, such a desire serves to define the meaning of freedom in neo-liberalistic societies, although the meaning expresses a distorted form of freedom: to do whatever we like, except if it tends to reduce others’ freedom. Such a meaning does not imply to serve society or to love each other.

The aim of this paper was to describe the aesthetics of self-realization as a way to overcome depersonalization, routinization, and linear temporality in the organizational setting. Artists’ self-portraits (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Dali) are used as metaphors of organizational life. In doing so, they could enable organizational members to reinvent modes of thinking, speaking, and behaving in the workplace. Philosophical novels (Kafka, Proust, and Murakami) could also unveil hidden aspects of human existence that are quite relevant for the organizational life. Artists’ self-portraits and philosophical novels could then help organizational members to avoid estranged depersonalization, while designing their own project of self-realization. Reinventing the real world of organizational life implies to emphasize both moral imagination (against routinization) and openness to all kinds of temporality (against linear temporality). Describing the aesthetics of self-realization could make organizational members more aware of their capacity to endorse radical humanism without destroying the organization itself.

The side effects of disguised bribes are hidden by their apparent good consequences (as pseudo-gifts). The aim of the chapter is to unveil to what extent pseudo-gifts (as disguised bribes) could distort the cultural, social, and communicational functions of gift-giving practices. We will firstly describe how disguised bribes could be analyzed from a Sartrean perspective, given that Sartre’s notion of bad faith could help to better understand the three basic kinds of substantive loss which follow from disguised bribes: (a) the loss of commonalities (the cultural function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Malinowski’s notion of culture): we will analyze the phenomenon of guanxi; (b) the loss of social bonds (the social function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Durkheim’s notion of culture); (c) the loss of communicability, and the arising of an empty truth (the communicational function of gift-giving as distorted by disguised bribes: Jaspers’ notion of truth claims). Gift-giving practices are culturally rooted. This is the first level of analysis (surface). Seizing the social and moral function of gift-giving practices unveils the second level of analysis (beneath-the-surface). Describing the communicational function of gift-giving practices opens the door to the third level of analysis (exchanges of truth claims). Bribery is the distortion of those basic functions of gift-giving practices. We are then facing an empty truth (the communicational function of culture is distorted).

Any concept of disguised bribes must be empirically tested. The way the cultural, social and communication functions of gift-giving practices are distorted could vary from one culture to another. Future research could check how such distortions arise in given societal cultures. It could then distinguish the side effects of disguised bribes, either from a cultural viewpoint, or from social perspective, or even from a communicational pattern of reference. Unveiling the multiple ways of distorting gift-giving practices could help decision-makers to better understand the frontiers between bribery and gift-giving. Emphasizing the various functions of gift-giving practices, from a philosophical and sociological perspective, could allow business decision-makers to raise their ethical awareness.