Keywords

Introduction

In this section, we will review some recent models presented in debates in the philosophy of management to solve the problem of corporate legitimacy [1].Footnote 1 With the decline of Protestant ethics, the empty space for a values discussion has created an opening for new conceptualizations of the role of spiritual values in the corporation. In fact, the new management methods of the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s that focus on individual self-realization have also created a move toward a new spiritualization of the corporation. Searching for more freedom and self-realization in the workplace has led to a search for new meaning in work life. Many management consultants and management thinkers have been inspired by the New Age movements to establish this spiritualization as an alternative to the Catholic and Protestant approaches to the ethics of the firm. This spiritualization represents a tradition of management that is heavily inspired by Eastern religions and, as such, represents a severe criticism of the rational worldview of Protestant ethics as analyzed by Max Weber. This newer emphasis on individual self-realization and spiritualization implies a search for a new meaning of life in the corporation, where the individual can be integrated in the firm at the basis of personal self-realization. In this sense, there has been a perceptible convergence between mystical movements of spiritualization of relations in the firm, inspired by Eastern mysticism, and religions more sympathetic to the neoliberal paradigm of self-management and self-government [2].Footnote 2 At the same time, we can perceive increase focus on concepts of corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility that are based on the concept of the political firm or a recognition of the political role of corporations in society where modern democracies no longer view the market as neutral but as something that is embedded in interactions between civil society and the state [3].Footnote 3 Therefore, a shared responsibility between state, civil society, and corporations is required, and the political firm can be seen as response to this tendency. Finally, there has also been strong criticism of the metaphysics of philosophy of management, based on a general criticism of the metaphysics of the West [4].Footnote 4

Emergence of Corporate Religion and the Search for Spirituality

We can describe this phenomenon as an application of New Age spirituality in management theory. Spirituality inspired by Eastern thought and religion has been proposed as a way to achieve good and thoughtful leadership in opposition to technical management. Spirituality and leadership education is viewed as a humanistic response to a technical and rationalistic approach to management [5]. The approach is based on the holism of Gestalt therapy and New Age spirituality, which, after originating as a critical alternative social movement after 1968, has been transformed into instrumental management tools that serve to make companies more efficient. Some kinds of values-driven management are inspired by this search for a new spirituality that has become powerful as a consultancy tool. This approach to management constitutes a new spiritual approach to management where management is inspired by transcendental psychology, depth psychology, and mystical theology. The aim of such a mystical paradigm of corporate religion is to use spiritual and religious values to promote the company.

We can observe that many new forms of management consultancy and coaching use spiritual rhetoric as an instrument of management. Management discourse uses spiritual vocabulary to fill in the empty space of values now that Protestant ethics is no longer acceptable. The spiritual vision of management can be considered as a new ethics for the company that uses religious language and mythical, as well as symbolic figures, to create a meaning for the company. Sometimes, this is also combined with elements from traditional Christianity, such as when the concept of leadership in the Bible, or the consequences for management of the biblical stories, is investigated [6, 7]. Many companies use explicit religious metaphors when they describe their basic values. Values statements can, for example, be referred to as the “ten commandments of the company” [8]. In this sense, the new spiritual management can be considered as a management tool like total quality management or business process reengineering, which have as their aim to give the organization new meaning in response to problems of social legitimacy and employee motivation.

Although few organizations are totally spiritual in the orthodox religious sense, we find many management change projects that integrate new spirituality. This new focus on spirituality can arguably render corporations and their managers more conscious of values. Corporate vision and mission statements are easier to create through the language of collective spiritual values in New Age mythology. In fact, we may argue that this corporate spiritualization is not a return to Weber’s traditional mode of legitimation but is rather an integrated part of a modern project of aesthetization and spiritualization of the discourse of management, including a strong focus on personal subjectivity and development of the inner spirituality of the subject. Management is spiritualized in order to be open to the need to make room for personal development and individual self-realization in corporations, in the sense that human beings are not reduced to work machines but taken seriously as spiritually complex beings. From the New Age perspective of Eastern mythology, business ethics and corporate social responsibility should come from within the soul, and each individual should demonstrate the capacity to take responsibility for himself or herself, for their community and for their society.

Karen Lisa Salamon argues that this can easily be integrated into a neoliberal conception of the economy because the starting point is the feelings and emotions of individuals and their spiritual understandings of themselves and their responsibility. Moreover, it is a dogma of the New Age movement in management that personal success is based on the holistic integration of spiritual, private, and professional life. This is why management has become “whole-life management” [9]. Spiritual management is based on a kind of law of karma, where the journey into the self contributes to the enrichment of organizational life. Whole-life management helps to integrate the individual in the cosmos by ensuring a closer relationship between self and the outside world. Whole-life management attempts to integrate personal desire with a sense of community so that the journey into the self will, in the end, be better for the common good ([10], p. 66). In this sense, whole-life management represents an attempt to achieve harmony and balance of self.

Danish marketing writer, Jesper Kunde, provides an example of this kind of whole-life management in his book Corporate Religion (1997). Kunde’s New Age approach exemplifies an attitude of dissatisfaction with the secularization of business and with the demotivation of workers in bureaucratized environments ([9], p. 122). This work can be conceived as an effort to reckon with the dissolution of Protestant ethics in modern business. Kunde argues that clearly focused strategies based on strong values are essential for corporate survival in a society of value fragmentation. Both employees and customers have to be bonded emotionally to the corporation if the corporation is going to have a chance for survival and growth in a competitive world economy ([10], p. 66).Footnote 5

Kunde argues for a return to a religiously based corporation and a strategy of corporate religion that not only bases its values on rational and economic bottom-line considerations but also grounds strategy and management holistically in the qualitative and emotional values of the corporation. According to this conception, religion is conceived as common vision, ideals, and ideology and is necessary for creating a well-functioning modern corporation. In a number of case studies of corporations such as Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, and Body Shop, Kunde shows how these corporations can be said to operate according to a concept of corporate religion or brand religion, where the corporation is organized around strong common values and the consumer is strongly emotionally related to the its products.

This religious management strategy can be considered as a response to the lack of spirituality in modern technical and rational management strategies, from scientific management to total quality management. It is also a reaction toward the growing fragmentation and dissolution of work life in times where Protestant ethics have been weakened. Without corporate religion, it is not possible to tie together a corporation that encounters many secular and multicultural challenges to the values system of the corporation. In order to cope with the loss of meaning in modern society, Kunde presents strong and very well-formulated values and values-driven management in response to the problems of leadership in corporations. The firm should work with immaterial values in values-driven management by formulating its vision and mission in order to ensure the commitment and action of employees. The conscious religious strategy of values-driven management is about belief, community, strong managers, and commitment and engagement in work. The product of the firm should be branded as something very special so that it is not just another thing to buy but is instead endorsed by consumers as something vital for their identities and existence.

A very classic example is the US motorbike corporation Harley-Davidson, which can be characterized as a corporation with a strong brand that understands the necessity to cultivate the immaterial values of the corporation ([10], p. 66).Footnote 6 Even though it does not necessarily produce superior motorbike products, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is considered as much more than a simple motorbike. It rather signifies a lifestyle, an identity, the key to freedom, and the American dream. At a time when the corporation was about to go bankrupt, Harley-Davidson invented a new strategy where the firm focused on brand value, or what we may call the religious and emotional image of the corporation. The firm worked actively to link customers and employees emotionally to the firm as a part of the Harley-Davidson community – or perhaps disciples of its congregation.

Kunde draws our attention to the branding and strategy of the cosmetics company Body Shop. Body Shop is a company that has been able to combine a political message with religious content in the image of its products. The Body Shop brand not only represents a company selling cosmetics; it is a knowledge-based enterprise that uses its products to spur environmental consciousness and market a lifestyle among its customers ([10], p. 66). With the concept of “caring cosmetics,” Body Shop has given cosmetic products a specific brand value for customers, and the firm uses its products as a signal of political values and ideals with a strong emotional content. In this sense, Body Shop turns its green profile into a religion.

We can mention many other examples of companies that have worked to articulate immaterial values in order to increase the emotional significance of their firms and their products for customers and, consequently, have also intensified employee motivation. According to the strategy of corporate religion, it is the task of the firm to link the customers to the corporation religiously by emphasizing that the products of the firm are expressions of attitudes and values. In this context, corporations are organizing events that are also other initiatives to ensure the loyalty and emotional binding of individuals to the firm (e.g., by making slogans that promote an image of the firm that contributes to a lifestyle).

This ideological and strategic concept of corporate religion is based on a number of simple values and mission messages that imbue the organization at all levels. Kunde compares this message with the Bible in order to show how the mission statement of the organization can be understood in analogy with a religious message and mission ([9], p. 122). In the fight to emotionally engage employees and customers in the firm, it is important to work with simple and strong formulations of clear values in order to give the vision and mission of the firm strategic power and weight. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that corporate religion, based on a powerful style of leadership with charisma, is an important condition for realizing the values of the firm. As a strong leader, the manager or CEO must present himself or herself as incarnation and symbol of the values and personality of the totality of the corporation.

The work of William C. Miller and Peter Pruzan in their article “Spiritual-based Leadership: Initial Observations from a Research Program” is another example of the influence of New Age on management science [11].Footnote 7 Spirituality is considered as a way to ensure greater sensibility in management and a stronger responsibility toward employees and other stakeholders of the corporation [5]. By looking into spiritual texts of different religions, managers can be inspired in their personal consciousness and improve their daily decisions. Spiritual leadership is conceived as an alternative to purely technical and rational economic ways of decision-making. Spiritual-based leadership involves both the development of leaders but also employees who are interested in adding a spiritual dimension to their lives. Spiritual-based leadership intends to overcome the conflict between religious people who view business skeptically (where wealth is “filthy lucre”) and business people who argue that it is a solely rational enterprise. As a reaction to Protestant ethics, spiritual leadership has been inspired by Eastern religions, but other religious traditions increasingly play a role in this paradigm of management [12].Footnote 8

This kind of new mysticism corresponds very well to the need for new spiritualization of life, which characterizes many business managers. In the search for meaning in management, business people want to go beyond the extreme rational organization of work life and the workplace. As a reaction to increased instrumentalization of work, they are looking for symbols and holy places in their daily work. They have abandoned Puritan morality and the Protestant work ethic and are searching for irrational and unnatural spaces in their lives. They invite different types of consultants to help them fill their daily lives with religious and spiritual content. Spiritualization of the workplace is considered a relief in confrontation with the extreme rationality of the Protestant values in the work environment. This new mysticism is by many people understood to function as a dynamic means to reestablish the lost meaning in a boring and uniform life in organizational bureaucracy.

Paradoxically, an existentialist approach to management can be considered as continuing the search for a deeper meaning in business life while at the same time functioning as a very critical attack against the presuppositions of spiritual-based leadership. An origin of existentialism may be found by the French philosopher Henri Bergson who turned to the inner experience of the mind as a reaction to the empiricism and technological instrumentalism of science and industrial society of his time. Bergson combined this with a personalist philosophy that focused on the personal development of the subject and influenced later French existentialists as Mounier and Sartre [13].Footnote 9

As a movement of search for respect for the inner life of the person, existentialism in management is different from corporate religion because it refuses to reestablish a new spirituality as mysticism, but rather the aim is to make the individual existentialist search for meaning the basis for the social legitimacy of the firm. The existentialist approach to business ethics has been proposed recently by a number of authors who are trying to apply existentialist thinking to the relations of management and work life [14–19].Footnote 10 From a critical perspective on capitalism, we can ask whether such a thing as an existentialist philosophy of management can exist. Critical authors would state that existentialism and management cannot be combined and that this approach is an indication of an ideological use of existentialism to justify management. They would say that there is no room for singular existence and the search for meaning in the large economic organizations and social systems of our time. It looks very difficult to reestablish the individual meaning of life within modern organizations, and it seems impossible to unite the private search for existential and religious meaning with the requirements of having a specific work function in large organizations. We can, however, identify this existentialist approach as a response to Protestant ethics as the basis for establishing meaning in organizations that recognizes the conditions of economic life in modernity. The existentialist approach refuses spiritualization of the workplace while being critical to the extreme rationalism of the Protestant approach. The existentialist approach asks the question of the meaning of work and of life in broader terms than the focus on efficiency and productivity that characterizes the Protestant ethics.

The work of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard can help illuminate how existentialist thought can form the basis for corporate legitimacy [19]. Kirstine Andersen argues that Kierkegaard contributes a poetic language to our understanding of management and governance ([18], p. 7). Kierkegaard’s categories of aesthetics, ethics, and the religious can be used to understand the way managers relate to their work and see their life in relation to their work. Also Kierkegaard’s existentialism can help to analyze relations between personal existential life and the professional role as a manager. In existentialist philosophy, there is a search for dialogue and communication that implies confidence in and engagement with other human beings. Existentialism takes seriously the original signification of being a director as the person in the organization who points toward a direction that has concrete and existential ramifications for lived experience. Managers are confronted with something larger than themselves when they have to make important decisions. Since it is impossible to abstract from personal existence in professional life, professional legitimacy is dependent on the harmony between the personal and private convictions of individuals [18]. Moreover, existential management is about recognizing the importance of human dignity and respect for employees and other stakeholders as human beings with infinite value.

Managers have to come to terms with the fact that their role is an inescapable condition not only of their own lives, but for the people whom depend on them as well. This might be called the existentialist challenge of management. Given this condition of his or her existence, the manager cannot avoid being forced to become someone imbued with character, values, and conceptions of life. Indeed, it is an existentialist requirement not to forget to respect other human beings as “goals in themselves” with dignity and humanity. This fundamental responsibility expresses the fact that the ethical challenge is greater than the individual. The ethics of existentialist management require the manager to take personal responsibility for moral choices. As such, the strategy of legitimacy in existentialism implies a return to the personal conscience and engagement of the individual behind the mask of professional life as the basis for real professional commitment and responsibility. Indeed, existentialism must be in search for an ethics of basic ethical principles like respect for autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability of the human person [20].

Toward the Political Corporation

The centrality of personal responsibility in existentialism resembles a modern version of Protestant ethics. But at the same time, the kind of existentialism that is proposed is in danger of losing its roots in the critical attitude toward corporate life and becoming a new philosophy of meaning in the corporation, which is based on New Age thinking. Can we really build professional life on personal values? What is personal self-realization in business life? Is it not better to work with strictly separated spheres of values, ethics, law, economics, and religion? [21] In this sense, an existentialist turn in business ethics is dangerous because it moves from formal rules of professional life toward individual emotions and conceptions that are outside the objectivity of professionalism. The counterargument is that you cannot separate personal responsibility from public functions and that government and management are a kind of decision-making that implies great personal responsibility, accountability, and integrity.

These different attempts to deal with secularization and with the crisis of Protestant work ethics cannot be considered independently of the global challenges on the labor market and the changing role of corporations in society. Although work is still conceived by many people as foundational to their identities and for finding meaning in life, we should not overlook of the displacement of workers by technology, which allows fewer workers to produce more. Society is changed continuously by inventions like biotechnology or information technologies that have fundamentally altered the character and significance of work. Unlike industrial society, there are few routine jobs left. It is the knowledge producer and the knowledge worker, human beings who create their work out of their own professional capacities, who will become the elites of the future global society ([22], p. 123).

The economic organization of this future society will be characterized by the emergence of large economic organizations, multinational companies, and network companies with many knowledge-producing employees who are organized in temporary project groups or who work together over short periods of time with many different colleagues ([22], p. 146). Institutional changes occur alongside changes in the character of capitalism [23]. For example, institutional investors or governments and other stakeholders have emerged to put greater pressure on companies to have policies of ethics and corporate social responsibility in order to improve their social legitimacy. Moreover, our earning potential does not rise with increased production, as in industrial days, but rather through applying knowledge and developing sophisticated technological innovations.

The concept of the political firm is a much better alternative to New Age spirituality and corporate religion. In a globalized knowledge economy, the emergence of the political firm can be described as a way to absorb some of the previously mentioned perspectives on strategies of management. Thus, the political firm is one that works deliberately and explicitly with ethics and values-driven management in order to respond to the search for legitimacy in a postindustrial and postmodern knowledge economy. This search for the political firm can be considered as a response to the new spirit of capitalism in network society [24]. As a kind of political organization, the firm represents an attempt to overcome the lack of morality with the decline of Protestant ethics. In this sense, the political firm, or the expressive organization based on values branding, represents a conscious attempt to respond proactively to societal requirements for corporate legitimacy. The political firm is, therefore, a response to the changed social conditions of corporate activities in global society [20].

When companies are working naively and unreflectively with values and political ideals as part of a mission, strategy, and values statement, they may have a tendency to use values and ethics in a purely emotional sense rather than in a reflective and reasonable sense. The political firm, on the other hand, is often at the moral frontline of social development. With its attention to social issues, this company captures important trends in society and contributes to the change and social betterment of society. What is fascinating is that this does not have to be in opposition to Protestant ethics but can be conceived from the viewpoint of Max Weber’s thought. Weber defined legitimacy beyond Protestant ethics to include economic and cultural considerations of the role a corporation plays in social development. Accordingly, the political corporation is a very good indication of the basic trends of social development [25]. For example, when companies emphasize “soft values,” “love for your fellow employee,” and personal relations as important in the workplace, this reflects the predominant morality of society. It further affects company managers who realize that articulating a morality of soft values is necessary to survive on the global market. It may, however, be a problem of when alternative forms of legitimacy, where firms present themselves as political firms and an alternative to Protestant ethics, that they presuppose old conceptions of organic corporate unity that precede rational economic organization. It is important to be aware of values, ethics, poetics, aesthetics, and irrational dimensions of life in business corporations, but these aspects of economic life should not lead to a return to a naive mythological and ideological conception of the world, ignoring all the complexity in a modern society.

Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen characterizes political firms as an indication of private policy networks [26, 27]. Here, corporations act as political organizations that in addition to their economic activities seek to influence public policy in order to promote their interests in society. As private political actors, corporations use different strategies to obtain legitimacy in society. Therefore, the political firm can be conceived as a means of reconciling “the particular with the universal” ([26], p. 235). Andersen names the political and socially responsible firm as the dream of civil society, where all conflicts between state, market, and society are mediated and solved. In this sense, Andersen can be said to emphasize an organic dimension of the idea of the political firm because he argues that it is a romantic dream dating back to a holistic vision of society from the nineteenth century. Instead, we should be aware of the functional reality of postmodern network society. According to this point of view – inspired by Niklas Luhmann – postindustrial society implies functional differentiation of closed autopoietic subsystems of society. This approach to philosophy of management can be called a system-theoretical analysis of the search for legitimacy in modern corporations ([27], Introduction, [28]).Footnote 11 In a functionally differentiated society, the firm is reflexive and strategic and aware of the importance of legitimacy in relation to its environment. This firm is characterized by polymorphic organization with many spheres and codes with particular forms and requirements of legitimacy. Andersen mentions spiritualization, pedagogization, aesthetization, intimization (personalization), mediatization, and moralization as expressions of this multitude of codes and forms of legitimacy in modern corporations ([26], pp. 247–248). Corporations are situated in different networks with different strategies of legitimacy. The role of the state is not primarily to ensure law and order and protect rights and welfare but rather to facilitate the possibility of these private firms to have reflective self-regulation with regard to ethical and social issues in these private policy networks.

Andersen’s description of the intimization and moralization of the firm as an actor in private policy network following the dream of harmony between state, market, and society explains how it is possible to conceive the political firm as a kind of reaction to the lack of values after the decline of Protestant ethics. This is unusual because it is normally presupposed that the political firm is not primarily religious, but a necessary response to the complexity of modern social problems, which require that the firm take social responsibility and includes different stakeholders in the formulation of a corporation’s strategy, mission, and values. When dealing with the dream of harmony between state, market, and society, these efforts nearly seem to imply a new value dimension, as when social responsibility, values, and business ethics are promoted as branding and image with a strong emotional content ([26], p. 254).

With regard to political firms, it is therefore important not to conceive values and business ethics as ideological concepts that lead to a mythological and simple understanding of the world, where ethics and values are reduced to propaganda to ensure the image and branding of the firm. The vision of the political firm should not be based on corporate religion, but rather we should try to work for the republican concept of the good citizen corporation, which implies a reflective, rational, and democratic conception of management and corporate governance. In fact, we can point to the importance of the global approach to corporate citizenship where corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in a global perspective are emphasized as the most important way to approach the problem of corporate legitimacy in society. Güler Aras and David Crowther from the international corporate social responsibility network propose this point of view, and they see the movement toward global and cosmopolitan business ethics as central to establish a new role of corporations in modern society [29]. This globalization of the corporate citizenship agenda as the most important challenge for modern corporations is also emphasized by the global focus on the UN Global Compact Principles that many corporations subscribe in order to show that they are good citizens [30]. Legitimacy is established by the search for universal ethical norms for corporate citizenship in international society [20, 31].Footnote 12

As a model of legitimacy for the political firm, the idea of the reflective rational model of the corporation may be said to transcend the opposition between Protestant ethics on the one hand and alternative religious and political models of the firm on the other. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt proposed a sharp criticism of Protestant work ethics. Arendt opposed the ideal of work in Renaissance humanism against the thought of Luther and Calvin. She emphasized that what is important is the creativity of human creativity in opposition to work, utility, and consumption [32]. Creative transformation of human nature lifts humanity beyond biological necessity. In her concept of work, Arendt criticized industrial production and reducing human beings to “animal laborans” or rational engineers like “homo faber” who no longer create cultural works but rely only on work and consumption. True human creations ought to express enduring human conditions of life, going beyond necessity and into the realm of art and freedom, creating the conditions for culture and civilization. In this sense, working creativity expresses what is most noble in human beings and becomes the essence of the active life of humanity [32].

In addition to focusing on the creative dimension of work, the problem is how to replace Protestant ethics. We cannot deny that work ethics are very important in modern society. It is also an important aspect of Protestant ethics that egoism goes beyond the self and is concerned with the common good. The acquirement of wealth is directed toward social community. Likewise, the idea of the firm as a covenant and a community of destiny based on a common vulnerability in relation to external and internal relations between employees and management seems to capture an essential element of the culture of modern corporations, which is often overlooked in the conflict model of worker management relations. Moreover, it is a characteristic feature of Protestant ethics that it works with a strong distinction between knowledge and belief, reason and mysticism, but this also limits the religious field to an autonomous sphere of belief, which we cannot genuinely know. This is the main reason why Protestant work ethics have been so easy to secularize. This has led to the emancipation of utility – based on profit-maximizing goal rationality in work life – with nihilism as the ultimate consequence. Still, it is not clear that the proposals for other kinds of legitimacy and remythologization of work life are correct responses to the crisis of Protestant work ethics.

It is true that there is a need to dissolve rigid rule-based and instrumental bureaucratic reason to the extent that it rules in work life and in other organizational contexts. But this must be possible to realize in another way than returning to an organic religion or to a mystical irrationalism. We need to recognize the value-based aspect of our economic action, but this does not have to imply that we need to give up our critical rationality, capacity of judgment, and reflective attitudes to values and ethics in corporations. A concept of the political firm is needed that, while founded on ethics and values, has nothing to do with the idea of corporate religion.

This is possible by considering business ethics from the perspective of the republican tradition of political theory ([33], p. 289ff).Footnote 13 This approach represents a community-based foundation of legitimacy, respecting the expectations of society and representing a clear alternative to Protestant and traditional models of legitimacy and mythological approaches on the one hand and charismatic models of legitimacy on the other. In republican business ethics, ethical motivation is not deduced by personal self-interest in salvation, but in the duty toward community and the common good, based on respect for individual autonomy and freedom. This model of legitimacy emphasizes rights as an important part of ethics, but these are not exclusively founded on a strategic brand value but rather on concern for the interests of society and respect for the position of singular human beings as legal subjects in a state based on the rule of law, including the legal principles of legality and legitimacy.

According to this concept of corporate legitimacy, the activities of the firm on the market are limited by such a relation to the political community where the firm seeks to be a virtuous participant in society. From this perspective, the task is to ensure that the firm is a good corporate citizen, which takes social responsibility at the individual and institutional levels. As a good citizen corporation, the firm acts consciously to respond to the social demands of political and social justice. This includes values that actively contribute to the betterment of the social and political conditions in society. Legitimate economic activity is conceived as a contribution to a just society ([20], Conclusion). We can mention the strategic focus on economic sustainability, finance ethics, corporate governance, ethical investment, social responsibility for customers and employees, and respect for employee rights, to creative development and self-realization in the corporation as examples of these values. What is important in this genuine political corporation aiming at corporate citizenship – in opposition to the concept of corporate religion – is that these values are founded reflectively and rationally from the perspective of the self-understanding of the corporation as an active corporate citizen, who takes part in the ethical and political process of discussion in society, based on a critical public opinion in democratic modernity.

Such a model of legitimacy does not exclude religious elements but is open to the significance of religion in light of republicanism. Recognition of the right of individual to privacy and freedom of religion is an essential element in the republican conception, and it includes respect for the individual’s right to present his or her own conception of the good life. The firm does not have a right to limit the religious freedom of its employees unless it represents a direct threat to the political community. In this sense, there is room for religious spaces in the firm, but these should not replace a critical reasonable dialogue, based on fundamental ethical rationality ([20], Introduction). At the same time, the employee’s rights and duty to independent and critical ethical self-reflection about the actions and norms of the organization, based on critical loyalty, personal consciousness, and responsibility, can have religious elements of justification. Social responsibility of the good citizen corporation is firstly based on its dependence on a democratic political public, where all participants make an effort to respect community and common principles of rights. The ethical principles of respect for the autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability of stakeholders are an important feature of the values and professional ethics of corporations ([20], Discussion). The democratic approach is therefore becoming an integrated part of the contemporary foundation of the corporation ([33], p. 304). This republican idea of political democracy as a social ideal, with democratic communicative reason, implies the effort to work for democratic public virtues of citizenship and concern for the common good in business life as a regulative ideal for business economics ([33], pp. 27–28).

However, according to skeptics, this quest for values and values-driven management is nothing but a new form of religion. Someone may try to describe business ethics as a kind of psychosocial religious ideal type, using Weber’s terms, to indicate a form of religious legitimacy consisting of individuals realizing themselves as good people in the workplace. This is a new modern form of iron cage. Critical voices maintain that we consider modernity as the period of ultimate secularization, and business ethics and values-driven management should rather be analyzed as new ways of justifying the old ideal of the calling of individuals to their work. This is the case when firms emphasize ethics, values, and culture and when they are trying to be socially responsible and self-reflexive in order to reach a harmonious relation with their fellow employees and the stakeholders of the firm.

As previously mentioned, there is the danger that ethics and values-driven management can change the firm into a kind of church where real oppositions and contradictions are falsely concealed. Critical sociology and philosophy are not very open to this conception of good management. Foucault, Gauchet, and Bourdieu would argue that corporate citizenship and business ethics based on a “covenantal relation” rather than the relation of a contract between workers and employees, emphasizing virtues instead of rights and focused on the spiritual realization of individuals at the workplace, represent a new kind of disciplinary mechanism [34–39].Footnote 14 All this talk of business ethics is argued to be nothing but a new method to increase employee productivity in a modern age. Similar to other methods of management, like scientific management, human relations management, total quality management, or the personality-oriented and existentialist visions management, management based on values rather than rules does not represent any kind of rupture with an economics based on maximizing utility efficiency ([40], p. 168).

We can indeed analyze many of the new kinds of management methods in this way. Management approaches that search for perfection and worker autonomy are based on an “ethics of sensibility” in order to cope with change and complexity in the workplace ([40], p. 256ff). Applying Richard Sennett’s concept of flexibility and the new work ethos in the workplace, it is possible to argue that we are in a situation where modern methods of management do not represent a liberation of individuals but represent nothing more than an assimilation of individuals to the new cultural conditions of the West after the legitimacy crisis of modernist values. Focus on personality development and values-driven management are, from this perspective, nothing more than the basis for a new Protestant concept of the calling, where the individual internalizes duties to the corporation through values rather than through orders. This internalization of values as a part of the personality is even more efficient than economic arguments for ensuring individual adaptability to the ideals of the corporation [41]. If we look at the present strategies for other kinds of management, we can even perceive different kinds of spiritual and religious arguments for personal improvement and value development ([40], p. 7).

The different new strategies of searching for legitimacy do not have to be conceived in opposition to the Protestant ethos of modern capitalism. The popularity of all these new kinds of strategies for empowerment, values improvement, and corporate identity and mission formulation may rather be viewed as methods to harmonize and normalize individuals in corporations. Accordingly, new methods of human resource management have understood the necessity to focus on individual morals and values in order to be sure that individuals act in congruence with the ideals of their organizations. The concept of the good citizen corporation that consequently emphasizes personal and organizational integrity is nothing other than a new way of promoting the discipline and power of organizations. The emphasis of the ethical worker, the need for excellence, and the virtues of the stakeholder corporation are, according to this harsh criticism, simply a new kind of ideological justification of basic economic structures and underlying power relations in the firm and community.

This challenge to the philosophy of management regarding corporate citizenship as a new kind of power instrument, a modern iron cage, is very serious; however, it is necessary to differentiate between different theories of values-driven management, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and business ethics. Some approaches to the field may seem fair game for such criticism, for example, theories based on holistic views on human nature, including very idealistic conceptions of the possible conventional harmony between employees and employers in the firm. Indeed, when such theories are used as quasi-religious legitimacy for corporate power relations, we may say that an ethics of sensibility has replaced the Protestant ethos. This may be the case, but not all efforts to conceive business ethics and values-driven management are similarly vulnerable. Indeed, when we are working with republican business ethics, based on the democratic autonomy of stakeholders, we are very far from a new corporate religion. According to this view, CSR and business ethics are not methods for neutralizing conflict. Rather, they should promote awareness of possible moral dilemmas in the firm [20]. Moreover, personal realization or the quest for employee freedom and autonomy cannot be reduced to a justification for a given economic order but rather defend a pluralistic and polycentric conception of rationality.

Indeed, there is a peculiar common presupposition between modernist and postmodernist critical sociology and Weber’s economic sociology. This is a very limited conception of rationality that is shared by the modernist project of economics of the Cambridge and Chicago schools that have been so influential in modern economics. All these theoretical approaches regard economic rationality based on utility maximizing self-interested individuals as dominant in the market system. They see no alternative rationality that can liberate capitalism from the iron cage. The system of market economics is considered as governed by one-dimensional instrumental rationality, and it seems impossible to overcome these limitations of economic markets [42].Footnote 15

However, such a presupposition is not shared by the theory of integrative business ethics. This is an approach that integrates ethics and the market. It is recognized that there are institutional conditions for economic markets and that economic action is determined by these conditions. This rationality does not have to be conceived in terms of subjective calling.

It is, therefore, important to be critical of the effort of economic schools like Chicago and Cambridge in addition to different approaches to the philosophy of management that generalizes economic rationality. Moreover, we have to emphasize the openness of organizations to their surroundings as proposed by many recent theories of management. Rules of profit maximization and self-interested behavior on markets need broader social legitimacy. We might say that the justification of profit maximization in modernity is morally conditioned and limited by community-based views on justice and the common good ([33], p. 416).

Consequently, we can propose an alternative view of the legitimacy of business ethics and corporate citizenship that is neither purely instrumental nor purely strategic. The legitimacy of values-driven management cannot be limited to the idea that “good business is good ethics.” Business ethics imply something more than marketing or use of human resources in order to improve employee productivity and flexibility. An indication of this is our instinctively critical reaction to the use of values-driven management for the sole purpose of improving the bottom line, but there is no easily harmonious relation between ethics and purely instrumental economic reason ([33], p. 417).

In addition, we can reject a surplus-based conception of business ethics according to which the legitimacy of corporate activities is dependent on the capacity to give away substantial parts of corporate profits and turnovers for good purposes. You cannot justify your instrumental actions ethically by giving the money away. The idea that social responsibility is something luxurious that comes when the firm is rich and famous is not sufficient to justify the activities of the firm from the perspective of community.

Indeed, we cannot propose an external theory of corporate legitimacy by saying that it is enough for firms to be morally legitimate when they practice ethics as practical corrections to specific situations of conflict. Rather, due to the challenge of postconventional morality in modernity, we need a general democratic and republican theory of the legitimacy of corporations ([33], pp. 299–300, [43]).Footnote 16

Criticism of the Metaphysics of Management

A recent critical approach to the theory of philosophy of management is based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. This approach attempts to go deeper than the preceding concepts by posing fundamental ontological questions about philosophy of management. The problem is that most theories of philosophy and management risk being instrumental, because it is really not possible to combine management and philosophy. It is a problem for the political philosophy of the corporation that there is no democracy in a corporation and therefore a political philosophy of management based on legitimacy risks being purely functional. The critical Heideggerian position argues that attempts to deal with the problems of the search for legitimacy as corporate religion, corporate existentialism, values-driven management, values-based leadership, CSR, and corporate citizenship are based on a kind of metaphysics of the present in Western philosophy that needs to be critically examined and eventually deconstructed. This approach argues that it is impossible for the approach to business ethics and ethics of organization, conceived in the republican approach to business ethics, to not imply an instrumental and technological approach.

It is therefore a task for a Heideggerian to move beyond purely instrumental management. With regard to the meaning of management, legitimacy has to not only be functional but also to be ethical and political. Those who want to criticize the different concepts of philosophy for managers represented this approach. The Danish philosopher and theoretician of leadership, Pia Lauritzen, has argued that mainstream philosophy of management usually consists of four dominant instrumental concepts that address leadership on the ontic and technical level rather than on a more fundamental ontological level of fundamental questions. These positions are (1) the aristocratic concept of leadership based on ancient ethical virtues; (2) related to values-driven management, CSR, and corporate citizenship as efforts to deal with the legitimacy of the corporation; (3) a philosophy of leadership that remains based on a charismatic concept of leadership; and (4) a critical philosophy of management based on post-structuralist and constructivist approaches.

The position of fundamental ontology inspired by Heidegger asks the question whether it is really true that managers are like feudal lords that need virtue, prudence, ethics, and wisdom. This approach seems to include a kind of metaphysical subjectivation of the manager or the leader. Moreover, this approach to philosophy of management seems to ignore the ontology and epistemology of organizations. Indeed, it relates to the virtues and morality of the organization, but philosophy of management could also be extended to include cultural practice and organizational aesthetics. When we deal with philosophy of management as virtue ethics, the ethics of management is about the fiduciary duty of the manager toward the good of the firm. In this context, care prudence and practical wisdom are important in order to understand the function of the firm. When we deal with the aesthetics of an organization, the philosophy of management is about management and cultural philosophy. Here, philosophy of management deals with the institutionalization of values and the human lifeworld in organizations.

Other recent issues in the philosophy of management that may be submitted to criticism by the ontological approach are the concern for CSR and business ethics and also theories that focus on the ethical legitimacy of corporations. According to the ontological approach, we have to focus on the ontology of organizations rather than on ethics and morality.

This approach is also critical toward a philosophy of leadership that focuses on individual leaders and their relations to the cultural environment. This kind of approach becomes a subjectivist philosophy because it focuses on the thoughts and reflections of the individual subjectivities of managers. In this sense, the Heideggerian criticism of the movement of philosophy of management is that it belongs to a kind of metaphysics of the present. Discussions of various kinds of leadership dominate the debate about the philosophical foundations of management [44].Footnote 17 In contrast to this focus on the dimensions of metaphysical subjectivity, the Heideggerian philosophy of management tries to move beyond and behind these issues by asking fundamental questions such as: “What is management and leadership?” “What is management and leadership for me?” “What is the culture and meaning of organizations?” This kind of engagement overcomes functionalistic manipulation of employees.

We can also apply this approach of metaphysical questioning to the relation between leadership, management, and employees. According to criticisms of the traditional concept of leadership, leaders tend to create an artificial distinction between the cosmos of the leader versus the chaos of employees ([44], Introduction). Here, the leader or manager sees himself or herself representing reason and rationality in opposition to the irrationality and the nature of the demands of the employees. Different constructions of leadership as based on oppositions between totality and partiality, vertical versus horizontal theories, soft versus hard values, and also propositions of values-driven management as the answer to problems of management can be considered as a part of this kind of metaphysics.

This fundamental questioning may also be considered necessary with regard to our concepts of leadership. Metaphysical readings of contemporary leadership tend to argue that the concept involves hidden metaphysical dimensions. We face, for example, the belief that there is a close connection between leadership and truth (absolute), leadership and self-realization (circular), leadership and decisions (immediacy), and leadership and complexity (linear). With these presuppositions, it is possible to argue that the philosophy of leadership is not without metaphysical presuppositions but is rather a kind of philosophy that has become a technological and instrumental manipulation of the foundations of management ([4], Introduction).

In order to overcome these presuppositions, it is important that philosophy of management does not end by instrumentalizing philosophy. Instead, according to a Heideggerian approach, new concepts of philosophy of management should be based on the experience of a philosophy of thinking. With this credo, the Heideggerian approach to the philosophy of management provides us with a criticism of the old positions of management theory. The so-called radical leadership philosophy, represented by, among others, Ole Fogh Kirkeby, is indeed marked by this metaphysics of leadership where the subjectivism of a charismatic leader is rendered a fundamental normative truth. This is also the case for approaches for spiritual leadership, as they are dependent on a kind subjectivism of the spirit of the leader as important for management [45]. This is the case even with critical movements of philosophy of management, including post-structuralism and social constructivism, which were supposed to criticize the manipulative dimensions of the value-based, spiritualist, and other approaches to leadership. Theories about power relationships and decision-making and theories about culture, change management, and also values-driven management are characterized by the metaphysical presuppositions that are criticized by the approach of Heideggerian philosophy of management ([4], Conclusion).

With this fundamental criticism of the metaphysics of theories of management, we are faced with the fundamental question whether philosophy really can inspire management. What kind of inspiration can philosophers like Kant and Kierkegaard give us for leadership? On the basis of the criticism of the metaphysics of leadership, we can say that we have to search for the deeper truth in the philosophical theories. We might say that there is a basis for understanding the legitimacy of corporations present in the philosophical theories of leadership. Here, we can refer to the organizational theorist Karl Weick attempt to develop a hermeneutical philosophy of organizations by asking about the meaning of organizational activities. From this perspective, the philosophy of management considers the question of organizational legitimacy as a question of the meaning of organizational behavior [46]. The question of meaning involves asking: “How did I know?” “Why didn’t I ask?” “Why didn’t I say what I knew?” These questions refer to the fundamental meaning of individual behavior in organizations. Moreover, the philosophy of management as fundamental questioning is characterized by one overarching question: “What is management and leadership?” From this perspective – according to the philosophy of Heidegger – the philosophy of management asks the question of meaning of practices of management. We can draw an analogy to Plato, who asks the question about what is the good, the beautiful, and the just. The philosophy of management asks the question “What is?” which can be conceived as the foundation of the concept of legitimate leadership, or “What is management?” “What is motivation?” “What is justice?” “What is responsibility?” “What are my foundational values?” “What is meaning?” or “What is good leadership?” We can call this a Socratic approach to leadership where the philosophy of management asks the radical questions.

Important topics for such a philosophy of management include the relations between managers and employees, drawing upon the insights of the great philosophical tradition from Aristotle to Kant and Hegel. Moreover, in this context, we can also elaborate on the problems of institutions and how economic issues relate to social values as discussed by Weber. With the Socratic and Heideggerian approach, ethical, social, institutional, and economic issues are integrated into the fundamental debate about the meaning of management as proposed by Heidegger. When we deal with this approach to philosophy of management, we move beyond the Platonic conception of the philosopher as king. Philosophers should no longer make unrealistic assumptions about the power and virtues of the managers [47]. The philosophy of management must go beyond managerial self-understanding where the manager views himself or herself as a kind of cosmos confronted with chaos. There is no abstract total power, but it is the ability to understand situated meaning and culture that helps good management. Indeed, we must remember that the power relations between leaders, managers, and employees cannot be changed. Instead, we must hope that the leader can be open to the plurality of the organization. It is destructive that today’s philosophy of management makes us forget that management is a question of employee relations.

So this approach to philosophy of management argues that Western philosophy is focused on what is universal and general as opposed to what is concrete and particular. With the new philosophy of management, the idea of what is flexible and values-based has been proposed as a new kind of truth; however, this is marked by a kind of paradox because it will make the singular general and universal. What is conceived as flexible and values-based leadership is experienced as a new kind of truth, but it is important that individuals are involved in the process of defining these new values. They will also have to be a part of the process of defining how to structure this process. With this philosophy of management, managerial practice is analyzed in concrete situations. It focuses on the experience of meaning in practice, which cannot really be captured by post-structuralism or social constructivism, but is still analyzed from the perspective of continental philosophy as an approach to philosophy of management which has recently be developed in details [48].

In this context, we can say that leadership from the Heideggerian approach involves storytelling, but in a deeper hermeneutical sense than is the case with discursive and post-structuralist approaches. In this context, one approach could be to introduce a kind of historical thinking or storytelling that captures the externalization and internalization of the experience of meaning. The basis of this approach could be the hermeneutical philosophy of the Italian thinker Gianni Vattimo. Hermeneutics, in this context, is a kind of analysis of the presuppositions of managers in their daily search for meaning. Here, the presuppositions of good management should be placed in the open. Good management implies loyalty, authenticity, and reason, but this is not only good management. It is the presupposition of good management. The presupposition of this kind of thinking is that managers can realize themselves and the potentiality of their organizations by looking at themselves and their values as human beings. Still, according to the hermeneutic critique, this is not good management, but rather an example of the metaphysics of “homo economicus,” as suggested by the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo ([44], pp. 32–35). Instead, it is our task to wonder about how we could create new modes of thinking and go behind existing dogmas of philosophy of management. Thinking in philosophy of management and of corporations means asking deep reflective questions about the foundations of management and leadership ([44], p. 165). It involves reflection about the foundations of judgment and business ethics, and in this sense, we can say that there is a close relation between fundamental reflections in philosophy of management and reflections according to critical reflective judgment in business ethics.

Conclusion

This critique of the metaphysics of subjectivity and homo economicus within the philosophy of management argues that we need to overcome the implicit metaphysics of many theories and approaches to the philosophy of management. Instead, philosophy of management should be conceived as radical questioning that addresses the social engagement and sense-making within management ([4], discussion on Heidegger). Philosophy of management needs to ask fundamental questions, addressing and focusing on tensions and dilemmas of management, for example, by following the Heideggerian approach of questioning the being and meaning of management ([4], [10], p. 86).

What are the consequences for the problem of legitimacy when we are confronted with this Socratic and Heideggerian critique of the dominant conceptions of legitimacy that have been recently proposed? The answer from the point of view of the philosophy of management that asks fundamental questions about the meaning of management is that the strive for legitimacy remains an open question where it is always possible to go deeper behind any vision of legitimacy and ask more fundamental and critical questions about the accomplishment of corporate legitimacy in society [49].

Cross-References

Aristotle and the Corporation

Basic Concepts of Philosophy of Management and of Corporations

Philosophical Theories of Management and Corporations

The History of the Philosophy of Management and Corporations