Memory as a Moral Decision: The Role of Ethics in Organizational Culture

The notion of organizational culture has become a matter of central importance with the great increase in the size of organizations in the twentieth century. Organizational culture is the great invisible force that decides the difference between success and failure and serves as the key to organizational change, productivity, innovation, and communication. Memory as a Moral Decision, now available in paperback, investigates the kind of world conceptualized by those who have described organizations and the kind of moral world they have in fact constructed, through its ideals and images, for the men and women who work in organizations. Feldman builds his analysis around a historically grounded concept of moral tradition. He demonstrates a central insight: when those who have written on organizational culture have addressed issues of ethics, they have ignored the past as a foundation to stabilize and maintain moral commitments. Instead, they have fluctuated between attempts to base ethics on executive rationality and attempts to escape the suffocating logic of rationalism. The book's interdisciplinary approach uses the insights of sociology, psychology, and culture studies to create an invaluable framework for the study of ethics in organizations.

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction 1. The Chain of Memory: On the Relations Between Moral Culture, the Individual, and the Past 3 Part 2: Establishing Traditions 2. The Disinheritance of Management Ethics: Rational Individualism in Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive 37 3. The Ethics of Shifting Ties: Moral Relativism in Melville Dalton’s Men Who Manage 57 Part 3: Ethical Rationalism 4. Management Ethics Without the Past: Rationalism and Individualism in Critical Organizational Theory 83 5. Micro Matters: The Aesthetics of Power in NASA’s Flight Readiness Review 109 Part 4: Ethical Relativism 6. The Revolt Against Cultural Authority: Power/Knowledge as an Assumption in Organization Theory 7. Playing with the Pieces: Deconstruction and the Loss of Moral Culture 155 8. The Leveling of Organizational Culture: Egalitarianism in Critical Postmodern Organization Theoiy 181 9. Conclusion: Sanctuaries Against the Modem World 203

Review :
"In this defiant, provocative, and impressive collection of essays...Feldman has offered Western cultural elites a stern reminder of the importance of moral leadership." - Robin Stanley Snell, International Journal of Organizational Analysis; "Feldman's work here is complex and sophisticated.... It will have to be read by every graduate student in organization theory who wants to think of his education as being complete, or for that matter even adequate." - Howard S. Schwartz, Business Ethics Quarterly; "Memory as a Moral Decision is a fine book: clearly written, richly insightful and provocative. It is a fine example to all academics of a writer who has the courage to stake out a position and engage others from it." - Aidan MacQuade, Organization Studies"