Management Ethics without the Past: Rationalism and Individualism in Critical Organization Theory

Since the Enlightenment our attachment to the past has been greatly weakened, in some areas of social life it has almost ceased to exist. This characteristic of the modern mind is seen as an overreaction. The modern mind has lost the capacity to appreciate the positive contribution the maintenance of the past in the present achieves in social life, especially in the sphere of moral conduct. In the field of organization theory, nowhere is the past as explicitly distrusted as in critical organization theory. The maintenance of the past in the present is seen as a potential carrier of oppressive and unjust social relationships. Perpetual critique is advocated as a means to uncover these oppressive and unjust relations and prevent any new undemocratic relations from becoming established. I present an historical and cultural analysis of the modern attitude toward the past and develop a concept of moral tradition to analyze critical organization theory’s ethical assumptions and implications. In so doing, an effort is made to rectify the exaggerated confidence critical organization theory places in rationalism and individualism and to recognize the ineluctable role traditions play not only in organizational life, but also in the way we theorize about organizations.