Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-20T06:09:00.633Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Corporate Governance and the Ethics of Narcissus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

John Roberts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This paper offers an extended critique of the proliferation of talk and writing of business ethics in recent years. Following Levinas, it is argued that the ground of ethics lies in our corporeal sensibility to proximate others. Such moral sensibility, however, is readily blunted by a narcissistic preoccupation with self and securing the perception of self in the eyes of powerful others. Drawing upon a Lacanian account of the formation of the subject, and a Foucaultian account of the workings of disciplinary power, it is then argued that the governance of the corporation is effected precisely through encouraging such a narcissistic preoccupation with the self. For the most part our narcissistic concerns are bound to ethically indifferent financial interests. But in recent years they have also been harnessed to the demand for environmental, social and ethical responsibility by the corporation. It is argued, however, that the desire to be seen to be ethical—the ethics of narcissus—is the obverse of “being responsible for.”

Type
Corporate Governance
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 2001 , pp. 109 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berle, A. and Means, G. 1932. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bowie, M. 1991. Lacan. London: Fontana Press.Google Scholar
Butler, J. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cadbury, A. 1992. Report of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance. London: Gee.Google Scholar
Charkham, J. and Simpson, A. 1999. Fair Shares; the Future of Shareholder Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, F. and Stout, S. 1992. “Organization Theory and the Market for Corporate Control.” Administrative Science Quarterly 37: 37–59.Google Scholar
Davis, F. and Thompson, T. 1994. “A Social Movement Perspective on Corporate Control.” Administrative Science Quarterly 39: 141–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deetz, S. 1992. Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization. Albany: University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Elkington, J. 1997. Cannibals with Forks; the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. Oxford: Capstone.Google Scholar
Fama, E. 1980. “Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm.” Journal of Political Economy 88: 288–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 1988. “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” In Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach, ed. Donaldson, T. and Werhane, P., pp. 162–167. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Grey, C. 1994. “Career as a Project of the Self and Labor Process Discipline.” Sociology 28: 479–507.Google Scholar
Gergen, K. and Whitney, D. 1996. “Technologies of Representation in the Global Corporation: Power and Polyphony.” In Postmodern Management and Organization Theory, ed. Boje, D. et al., pp. 331–357. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jensen, M. and Meckling, W. 1976. “Theory of the Firm; Managerial Behaviour, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.” The Journal of Financial Economics 3: 305–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kets de Vries, M. 1991. “Whatever Happened to the Philosopher King? The Leader’s Addiction to Power.” Journal of Management Studies 28: 339–351.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. 1977. Ecrits; a Selection. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. 1986. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Lacan, J. 1992. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis; the Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VII. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Law, J. 1992. “Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network; Ordering, Strategy, and Heterogeneity.” Systems Practice 5: 379–393.Google Scholar
Lévinas, E. 1991. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Miller, P. and O’Leary, T. 1987. “Accounting and the Construction of the Governable Person.” Accounting, Organizations and Society 12: 235–266.Google Scholar
Miller, P. and O’Leary, T. 1993. “Accounting Expertise and the Politics of the Product; Economic Citizenship and Modes of Corporate Governance.” Accounting Organizations and Society 18: 187–206.Google Scholar
Monks, R. and Minnow, N. 1996. Watching the Watchers; Corporate Governance for the 21st Century. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
O’Neil, J. 1995. The Paradox of Success. London: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Parker, M. 1997. “Organizations and Citizenship.” Organization 4: 75–92.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. 1991. “The Possibilities of Accountability.” Accounting, Organizations and Society 16: 355–68.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. 1996. “From Discipline to Dialogue: Individualising and Socialising Forms of Accountability.” In Accountability: Power, Ethos and the Technologies of Managing, ed. Munro, R. and Mouritsen, J., pp. 40–61. London: International Thompson Business Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. and Scapens, R. 1990. “Accounting as Discipline.” In Critical Accounts: Reorienting Accounting Research, ed. Cooper, D. and Hopper, T., pp. 107–125. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. and Stiles, P. 1999. “The Relationship between Chairmen and Chief Executives; Competitive or Complementary Roles?” Long Range Planning 32: 36–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, H. 1987. “Anti-social Actions of Committed Organizational Participants: An Existential Psychoanalytic Perspective.” Organization Studies 8: 327–340.Google Scholar
Willmott, H. 1998. “Towards a New Ethics? The Contributions for Poststructuralism and Posthumanism.” In Ethics and Organizations, ed. Parker, M., pp. 76–121. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Zadek, S.; Pruzan, P.; and Evans, R. 1997. Building Corporate Accountability: Emerging Practices in Social and Ethical Accounting, Auditing and Reporting. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Zaleznik, A. and Vries, Kets de. 1985. Power and the Corporate Mind. Chicago: Bonus Books.Google Scholar