Levinas Translated to Organizations

Abstract

The effort of this chapter is to translate into the context of organizations Levinas’s train of thought as it is discussed in Chapter 4. These Levinassian ideas include the elements of the deficiency of rationality, radical resistance, rationality shame and possibilities for change. The question is how these ideas can be meaningfully understood in the context of organizing and managing. In Section 1 with that focus the organization studies literature is investigated. Its conclusion is that some elements of Levinas’s line of thought are reflected in that literature indeed, some other elements are partially so and some others not at all. By joining together what could be found in the literature and by supplementing it with the author’s own proposals for translation, a scheme of propositions is constructed which, as a sketch, describes what Levinas’s story in organizational practice could look like. Simultaneously it is concluded that that scheme in its entirety is not to be found within the organizational literature. Section 2 then undertakes the translation effort in an entirely different way. Namely by, starting from quotations from Levinas and the scheme of propositions, through interviews with organizers, collecting stories that could confirm the scheme. This yielded a dozen of cases, each one of which in its own way shows what Levinas’s story, translated to organizations, might look like, and this in its entirety. This means, in the author’s view, that Levinas’s ideas can be related to the practice of management and organization. And that the the scheme of propositions can serve to translate those ideas to that practice.