Description
Research Report on Recognizing Employees: Reification, Dignity and Promoting Care in Management:- Recognizing Employees: Reification, Dignity and Promoting Care in Management
Research Report on Recognizing Employees: Reification, Dignity and Promoting Care in Management
Abstract
Purpose - The aim of this paper is to develop the idea of recognition in organizations, arguing that recognition is a fundamental building block of workplace dignity, and a key element of cultural respect in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach - As a conceptual paper, the current work approaches discussions of human resource management through the lens of recognition theory, applying ideas of recognition and reification to workplace issues. Findings - Workplace reification can be observed in diverse areas of human resource management, re?ecting a "human capital" view of employees. The paper traces this view in terms of measurement and incentives, as well as individual and group diversity within the workplace. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the literature on care in human resources by briding ideas from management and critical social theory, contributing to the former by couching workplace dignity in terms of social theoretic foundations of recognition, and contributing to the latter by showing how the workplace can form an important site for recognition. Keywords Recognition, Human capital, Care, Workplace dignity, Well-being, Organizational culture,
Introduction Care perspectives on work and management have received increasing attention in recent years (Delios, 2010; McAllister and Bigley, 2002; Dutton et al., 2006; Sewell and Barker, 2006; Frost, 2003), riding the wave of a renewed interest in the ethical implications of people management (Winstanley and Woodall, 2000). Such perspectives run contrary to a "human capital" view of employees, where organizational members are framed as sets of human resources that market actors trade to organizations in return for monetary payment, stable employment relations, and other benefits (Foss, 2008; Konzelmann et al., 2006). In contrast, care perspectives view individuals as fundamentally relational (Gilligan, 1982), and consider work as holding the potential to humanize and enrich workers, as organizational members attempt to build selfesteem through their work (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). Such perspectives see organizational success as not inimical to worker dignity, but as compatible with humane and caring relationships (Hodson and Roscigno, 2004). To be sure, well before such perspectives were discussed explicitly, human resource management had a history of taking into account aspects of employee satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) and more recently, other aspects of employee well-being (Avey et al., 2010). For example, literature in the areas of work-life issues (Eby et al., 2010)
CCM 20,2
236
has acknowledged the importance of balancing work life with non-work issues, and promoting ?exibility with regards to individuals' diverse individual and family lives. In addition, work on diversity has acknowledged that cultural, gender, racial, and other identity issues are important at work, and color individual experience in ways that affect work processes (Pless and Maak, 2004). What is often missing in such treatments, however, is the acknowledgment that work itself is a socially valuable process, one expressive and formative of individual identity and a sense of personal dignity. Acknowledging this aspect of work means going beyond satisfaction and work-life balance; it may mean a reconceptualization of work itself as a social and existentially engaged process (Sayer, 2007; Honneth, 1995b). In order to go beyond "benefits" to understand how caring organizations address important existential questions around the meaning of work (Elangovan et al., 2010), this perspective must deepen its critique of current management practice. Beyond questions of ?exibility and work-life balance, recent critical perspectives have engaged in more wideranging critiques of human resources (Townley, 1993; Islam and Zyphur, 2008), calling into question traditional management more generally. Such critiques claim that even management policies that take into account employee satisfaction often do so only to maximize productivity, thus "using" employees, which is ethically problematic (Greenwood, 2002). Similarly, work on inclusion and diversity has noted that attempts to promote diversity must begin by recognizing the relational and social aspects of human beings, and not reducing employees to material and psychological resources to be managed for financial gain (Pless and Maak, 2004). Such macro-critiques are not content with simply extending additional monetary or scheduling benefits to employees, but explore how the workrelation can be reconsidered as a means for promoting affirmation, diversity, and care towards employees. In order to provide a theoretical framework for such an exploration, the current paper will use recent discussions of recognition theory (Honneth, 2009, 2008, 1995a, b) to discuss how why human resources policies so often unwittingly detract attention from issues of human care and dignity, and how promoting recognition can reverse the undermining effects of human resource policies. Following Honneth (2008), I contrast recognition with a reification perspective on work, claiming that reification amounts to a kind of forgetting or misrecognition of employees. While recognition is described as a trans-cultural need for social acknowledgment, from which specific forms of sociality can subsequently develop, reification develops when particular material and cultural practices develop that misrepresent sociality as a purely productive process. As will be described below, cultures begin to reify their members when they overlook the social embeddedness of work, viewing work as disembodied from underlying social bonds. The research question approached in this paper is how cultural practices and beliefs, expressed in human resource systems, can promote such misrepresentations, and produce reification. In the remainder of this essay, I will first discuss worker dignity and individuality in light of reification, showing how human resource policies tend to promote reification. Then, I will discuss how reification appears under a recognition-theoretic lens, and why we should see reification as problematic from the perspective of inclusion and diversity.Next, I will reframe the employment relationship as inclusive of diversity by adopting a recognition perspective, suggesting ways in which recognition could be promoted at work. Finally, I will present the advantages and limitations of this perspective, suggesting future research into the conditions that promote recognition thinking.
Reification as an aspect of management Understanding work organization processes requires working with concepts such as action, motivation, and relationships, and thus implicitly involves ideas about human thought and behavioral processes, the ability to demonstrate empathetic concern for other human beings (Dutton et al., 2006) and to be sensitive to questions concerning human agency (Kallinikos, 2003). Some scholars have recently begun to question the underlying humanistic conceptions that managers employ, modes which are often assumed in studies of labor and economics (Kallinikos, 2003). Thematized in this work is the idea that agency is cultivated and maintained through interpersonal relationships in the workplaces, and that these relationships are essential for employee's self-concepts (Kallinikos, 2003) as well as for developing employees' sense of what they could be, or for their potential for becoming (Elangovan et al., 2010). In this sense, a caring organization would be one that framed work as a potential site for becoming, where employees can realize their potentials through their work. Alternatively, failed or pathological relationships, in which such caring or affirmation is absent at work, may have ramifications for employees' self-esteem, and sense of self-worth. Drawing from critical theory, Lukacs' (1971; see also Honneth, 2008; Berger and Pullberg, 1966) notion of reification explicitly elaborates an important link between employee self-conceptions and the ways that products and selves are created at work. In his formulation, the products of contemporary work, including the production of the worker him/herself as a social role, are made to appear "thing-like", subject to mechanical constraints and objective in?uences (Jay, 2008; Whyte, 2003). In the case of products, reification means that the social processes involved in making the product are obscured or forgotten; in the case of the employees themselves, they come to be seen as bundles of human capital rather than as conscious, freely choosing agents (Honneth, 2008). The process of reification, according to Honneth (2008), involves a way of framing work processes, but goes beyond work to affect both social relationships and worker identities. First, framing work purely in terms of goals, objectives, and products promotes a view of the environment as composed of inert objects of exchange, rather than as a field of complex relationships, promoting an essentially mechanical view of the workplace. Next, this mechanical view is transferred to social relationships at work, such that other people are seen as means to an end, bearers of desired capacities or liabilities. As the reified view of the workplace develops, employees come to see their own personalities in terms of productive potentials, assets and liabilities, and view themselves as disembodied "products" that are independent of social networks and processes, and that the elements of their individual "profile" (capacities, skills, knowledge) can be bartered and traded as commodities (Whyte, 2003). Honneth (2008) claims that reification derives from social practices, but these practices do not determine reification directly. Indeed, a deterministic view, because of its negation of human freedom, would itself promote a reified view of people. Thus, the task of a theory of reification at work would specify those conditions under which reified views tend to be adopted without re?ection, as default ways of acting at work, habitualized over time, and leading to a dehumanized workplace. Thus, while reification is not limited to particular national cultures, it is linked to specific cultures of production where work becomes disembedded from other cultural spheres. In Honneth (1995), such conditions would characterize contemporary market-oriented corporate culture, although
Recognizing employees
237
CCM 20,2
238
not necessarily all possible market cultures, leaving open the question of how a market society could produce a more caring form of human resources management. In the context of managing human resources, we can describe reifying cultural conditions at various levels. First, some practices work at the level of individuals, defining workers in terms that leave out their creative potentials. Second, other practices involve more general aspects of contemporary workplaces, practices which promote a view of work as the production of tradable goods rather than meaningful works. I will describe some relevant human resources practices at both of these levels. However, what they have in common is that they ignore the personal and social significance of work in favor of a decontextualized view, one that disconnects work from its existential, expressive bases. The forgoing of autonomy and personal meaning at work is evident in many of the key works of management, where, in order to place employment within the sphere of market relations, it is conceptualized as inert and separate from existential needs. For example, Simon (1951, p. 21) describes worker behavior as "guided by a decision reached by another, irrespective of his own judgment", a clear statement of work as separate from agency. Foss (2008) describes human capital as "a capital asset like any other", and asserts that nothing is essentially different accounting to the "human" nature of this asset. Of course, as economic actors, workers own their human capital, but may trade it as they may trade other property. The job of the human resource manager, under this conception, is to monitor the terms of this trade through surveillance and measurement, to reduce its price to the extent possible, though standardization, selection and training, to decrease competitor imitation, through diversity and organizational culture promotion, and to reduce transaction costs, by promoting ?exible work. I will treat each of these themes below. Measurement and incentives Honneth (2008), in his essay on reification, claims that modern life has been dominated by processes of watching other people, and in particular, watching with regards to monitoring, measuring, and evaluating. Honneth (2008, p. 79) claims that a culture of monitoring and surveillance, a fact of modern workplaces, can become "so much an end in itself that any consciousness of an antecedent social relationship disappears". Workers under surveillance become described through standardized categories, which become linked to economic incentives meant to reinforce or inhibit categories of behavior. It stands to reason that such measurement and incentive systems could promote reification among managers. Ball (2005), for example, describes organizational surveillance in terms of a decentering of lived experience from the body, and the tendency to view one's body as an object separate from lived experience, a phenomenon that clearly echoes the reification idea. Because behavioral measurement tends to be at the individual level, and measures operational behaviors rather than psychological motives, it stands to reason that such measurement would promote the idea that behaviors are objective, individual units. What is obscured is how individual action might be driven by social contexts, relationships, and expectations not observable in measurement systems. To the extent that social relationships enter performance measurement, for example, they may be considered sources of bias or measurement error, rather than as interpersonal, socio-cognitive processes inherent in all social systems. Carlon et al. (2006), for example, discuss the use of statistics about performance as masking the underlying social dynamics of performance, a process which leads the authors to describe performance statistics as "fetishes".
With regards to incentives per se, much has been written about effects of incentive systems on the intrinsic motivation to engage in work (Deci et al., 1999; Holgrewe, 2001). The empirical literature tends to support the thesis that incentives can reduce intrinsic desire to work particularly in those situations where employees believe that such systems encroach on their autonomy or freedom (Deci et al., 1999). Incentives, in addition, may act as substitutes for more "authentic" types of social rewards for work (Holgrewe, 2001), such as social recognition, belonging and esteem that come from competent work. Similarly, Lamont (2000) suggests that when managers refrain from measuring employee performance in purely economic terms, they can increase feelings of dignity among employees, here defined as the sense of being trusted to make autonomous decision. The workers, in this cases, feel that the organization is thereby increasing their autonomy and giving them a "vote of confidence". Finally, Sayer suggests rewarding employees, but de-coupling rewards from specific transactions at work, in order to create a general sense of employee value, rather than a specific, market-like exchange among members. Individual differences and trait-based views Managing people involves attempting to meet organizational objectives through the development of "human capital" within organizations (Foss, 2008; van Marrewijk and Timmers, 2003). Developing human capital involves building a stock of accessible knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs;, e.g. Guion, 1998) among organizational members, a process that involves both selection of preexisting worker aspects (Anderson, 2005) and training of firm-specific KSAs. Increasingly, employers are recognizing cultural, gender, and ethic diversity as further sources of diverse employee capabilities (Gonzalez and DeNisi, 2009) and are attempting to use these capabilities to improve organizational performance. There is nothing inherently reifying about discussing individual and cultural differences, or developing ideas about human capabilities and skills. In fact, promotion of competencies is often hailed as an empowering aspect of work, and promotion of diversity has been discussed as an important factor in re-inserting work in its social context, creating a culture of inclusion and dignity (Pless and Maak, 2004). However, to the extent that work in this area develops theories and concepts that help conceptualize KSA's as discrete, context independent, and deterministic, they can promote reifying attitudes. In fact, much of the literature on personality at work has taken exactly this standpoint, viewing individual differences as universal, biologically driven dimensions largely derived from genetic and pre-existing potentials (Loehlin, 1992; McCrae and John, 1992), and useful insofar as they provide sources of organizational performance (Weiss and Kurek, 2003). Thus, rather than viewing personality as a series of choices made by free, existentially engaged people in order to live as best they can, personality traits are framed as capabilities that can be traded, bargained or acted upon in order to reach objectives. The treatment of individual traits and capacities as independent, separable, and tradable also tends to underplay the social bases of individual behavior, promoting a sense of "modularity" among actors (Gellner, 1996). Gellner's "modular man" essentially a tradable portfolio of capacities, rather than a human being with a sense of unity, integrity, and narrative coherence over time (Kallinikos, 2003). As some have argued, a skill-focus goes hand in hand with social fragmentation, as individuals treat their own human capital as toolkits that they carry from workplace to workplace (Bernstein, 2006), re?ecting a kind of dislocation among individuals and a sense of social drift (Deranty, 2008; Sennett, 2006).
Recognizing employees
239
CCM 20,2
240
Diversity and the reification of groups Similar to trait-based views of human resources, treatments of cultural, gender, or ethic diversity in the workplace implicitly reify group-based traits, unwittingly decoupling group traits from the lived experiences of their members and treating diversity in an instrumental fashion (Zanoni et al., 2010). In many cases, for example, workforce diversity is touted less for its intrinsic valuing of human diversity than for its putative effects on group and organizational performance (Gonzalez and DeNisi, 2009). In addition, organizations may implement diversity programs as a way of sending an image of dynamism and ?exibility and due to institutional pressures (Prasad et al., 2011), treating diversity as symbol rather than substance. Additionally, diversity programs often focus on simple group membership status as a marker of diversity, promoting stereotyped views that are reminiscent of reification because they do not allow for individual autonomy within categories. The resulting tokenism treats demographic group membership in a stereotyped fashion, rather than as a source of individual potential. In other words, it may be true that gender, ethnic or cultural backgrounds color people's experiences, allowing them to bring interesting new perspectives into the workplace; but this does not mean that people are determined by these background characteristics. Cultures of diversity should not assume that people are bound to their cultures (Pless and Maak, 2004), but that they may draw on unique experiences to formulate their own autonomous views. Some work suggests that reification in the workplace can become re?ected in groupbased prejudice and stereotyping (Honneth, 2008), since stereotyping involves a reduction of a person to a single, standardized category and does not allow individual freedom within that overdetermining category. Human resource policies which do not promote a strong sense of community within the workplace may push individuals to seek community to a greater extent from alternative social networks, such as culture and ethnic networks (Christopherson, 2008), thereby highlighting group-based differences and promoting intergroup tensions. According to Christopherson (2008) such networks become necessary sources of economic security, promoting their instrumentalization, wherein social and group identity are referred to as sources of "social capital". Based on the above, whether individual or group-based, reified individual capacities to produce valuable goods and services are treated as tradable components rather than as forms of self-expression. Honneth is explicit in linking the measurement and psychometric conceptualizations of psychological capacities to reification, warning particularly against theories that overly emphasize the intractable or genetic component of such capacities, because it is precisely in these conceptions that free agency is mostly likely to be overlooked. Other recognition-theorists (Borman, 2009; Gutmann, 1994) suggest that recognition at work is not fulfilled through offering opportunities for skill acquisition, and an overly skill-based focused has been argued to be exploitative (Borman, 2009). As mentioned, the ways that management practices cognitively frame employees do not determine, but may in?uence, the ways employees see themselves and their colleagues. Practices promote habitual forms of interaction and taken-for-granted ways of seeing the world that divert attention from alternative views. But the question remains as to what alternative views would not promote reification? What constitutes an alternative to reification? From a recognition theoretic view, reification constitutes a misrecognition of the underlying dynamics of social relationships, and thus to critique
reified treatment of employees, we must explore the alternative view, which we may term a "recognition view". Care at work: a recognition theory perspective The care perspective in management emphasizes care as a structure of "values and organizing principles centered on fulfilling employees' needs, promoting employees' best interests, and valuing employees' contributions" (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). Rather than viewing workers as individual units, an "ethic of care" views individuals as fundamentally relational (Gilligan, 1982). Caring organizations, through their ability to generate positive self-views among organizational members, increase well-being within the organizational community (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). A focus on care emphasizes the ?ourishing of organizational members through defining their capabilities as valuable in the context of their communities (Liedtka, 1999), with a focus on valorizing, rather than exploiting, employee capabilities. The care focus aligns care perspectives with management scholarship recognizing the importance of interpersonal concern and affirmation, independent of economic benefit, in generating a positive work environment (Pless and Maak, 2004). From recognition in terms of employee participation (Brinch and Eurish, 2006) to recognition of competence (Heinich, 2009) and identification with compassion and care for suffering (Dutton et al., 2006), scholars are increasingly acknowledging that employees look beyond material interests in the workplace to frame work relations as basic building blocks of personal and social identity (Elangovan et al., 2010; Kallinikos, 2003). While developing a perspective on care at work can draw on these past studies, ultimately such perspectives tend to measure their impacts in efficiency terms (Hodson and Roscigno, 2004), precluding a true break from human capital perspectives (Foss, 2008), as well as lacking a normative or ethical argument to move beyond efficiency concerns. For example, Sewell and Barker (2006) describe how care logics compete with coercion logics in framing organizational control and surveillance, begging for a normative framework within which to describe such struggles. In another example, Kahungunu et al. (2010) describe an ethic of care as attempting to produce general value for a network of stakeholders, bound together through their ties of belonging, again juxtaposing economic and social values in a way that, while not inconsistent, requires a theoretical treatment. Recognition perspectives can complement such views by providing a normative theoretical framework, i.e. one which focuses on moral desirability and the ethical evaluation of practices. Such a framework would help understand why affirmation and care are ethically critical and what happens when they are neglected, and would be useful in this regard. Honneth's (1995a, b) recognition theory attempts to ground a normative theory of social organization on the basis of individuals' needs for interpersonal recognition or affirmation, and thus provides an ideal grounding for discussions of care in management. According to recognition theory, people's self-views as respectable and worthy of dignity derive from social recognition. Recognition theory views individual projects as deriving meaning from their participation in wider social systems of meaning and value. Recognition is "precognitive", in that it precedes particular world views (Honneth and Margalit, 2001), and consists in an affirmation of the basic personal bond between social actors, their willingness to participate in society together. Thus, while not a cultural trait per se, recognition is seen as a cross-cultural need for
Recognizing employees
241
CCM 20,2
242
personal affirmation that can find expression through different subsequent "recognition orders", which could differ according to culture. Thus, the way that a particular culture recognizes its members depends on the form of recognition given, but culture itself depends on the establishment of frameworks of recognition, on the need to derive meaning and identity from being together. The basic commitment to be together, it is argued, builds a groundwork upon which more sophisticated social formations, projects and systems can be built. Affective and affirmative in nature, according to Honneth (2008), we recognize social actors even when we disagree with them or feel strong negative emotions toward them, because it is only in their role as recognized others, as human actors bestowed with their own minds, that we are able to consider their views at all. Thus, even "pathological" forms of sociality, such as reification, contain a core of recognition, which, according to Honneth (2008), is repressed or ignored in the act of reifying. Because the sense of recognition as positive affirmative does not mean by "positive" that one agrees with the person one recognizes (Honneth, 2008, 1995a), recognition is different from sympathy, or support for a cause. It is more akin to a notion of solidarity, in that one recognizes other actors as legitimate participants in society, entitled to points of view and embedded in their unique life narrative. When individuals feels that their basic self-worth has not been acknowledged, alternatively, they feel invisible or alienated (Honneth and Margalit, 2001), rather than simply different from others. Thus, within an organization, recognition would be prior to similar concepts such as organizational cohesion, value alignment, or identification, such that these forms of sociality would presuppose recognition, and thus recognition would act as a building block for diverse social bonds. In this sense, recognition would support a care perspective on management not because it leads to increased benefits or better fits the economic interests of workers, but because, similar to recognition, a care perspective would focus on acknowledging organizational participants as valuable in themselves, and would reframe work as a way for instrumental goals to be reached in a way that promotes human ?ourishing. Thus, Honneth does not contrast recognition to instrumental or utilitarian forms of social organization; rather, he claims (Honneth, 2002), instrumental social forms themselves also depend on relations of recognition. Market relations cannot take place in the absence of a basic affirmative social bond, according to this view, although it is possible that in the course of market relations, actors come to misunderstand and distort their underlying relationships (for a critique, see Butler, 2008). This point makes recognition theory particularly interesting for management, because it does not constitute an antibusiness view, claiming that all market relations are immoral. Rather, it affirms the social legitimacy of markets as a social form, and urges actors to come to terms with the acceptance of human dignity that they have already assumed by entering into commerce with each other. In addition, which earlier versions of critical theory had dismissed instrumental action as external to the sphere of lived, holistic experience (Habermas, 1981), Honneth attempts to rescue instrumentality (i.e. productive work) from a pure functionalism, arguing that just as other forms of sociality, work is a space in which lived, phenomenally rich social experience is possible and desirable (Honneth, 1995b). This aspect makes Honneth's work ripe for contributing to a field of management looking to emphasize the human side of business.
According to Honneth (1995a, b), recognition can take different forms or "recognition orders" (Honneth and Fraser, 2003), each corresponding to a distinct structure of affirmation, but all three acknowledging the fundamental worth of individuals. The first and most basic form (perhaps also the most aligned with traditional notions of "care") is the recognition of individuals as having needs worthy of fulfillment. The recognition of human needs and potential for suffering has been cited in the organizational sciences as a basis for compassion organizing (Dutton et al., 2006). Subsequent to the acknowledgement and affirmation of need fulfillment (which Honneth (1995a, b) refers to as "love"), recognition takes the form of justice concerns and the formation of a social contract guaranteeing equality of voice among members. Empirical research has confirmed the centrality of such voice and justice concerns for creating a sense of individual autonomy (van Prooijen, 2009). Finally, recognition involves, beyond the need for formal equality, an acknowledgement of the uniqueness and value of the individual as such, involving his/her particular competencies and recognizing each person as special and important (Honneth, 1995a, b). Thus, the use of organizational prizes and commendations as a form of recognition is key to this type of recognition (Heinich, 2009). Although past research has largely confirmed the importance of each of these forms of recognition (albeit without using the language of recognition theory), management often also promotes practices and habits of mind that seem to undermine the very principles that recognition theory claims undermine social relations. According to Honneth (1995a), this is explainable by a kind of inauthenticity with regards to our social bonds. Although social systems rely on fundamental bonds, actors may misrecognize, ignore, or actively repress these bonds. In particular, where instrumental action requires devoted attention, competition with others, combatitive negotiation, or other processes that imply opposition, actors may divert their attention away from basic connectedness, and act as if no social ties existed between members of an organization. The neglect of an underlying social connectedness due to lack of attention or misrecognition makes organizational goals seem as if they ?oat freely of human concerns, leading to reification of employees as means toward the end of reaching such goals (Honneth, 2008). Because, following Honneth (2008), misrecognition and the reification that accompany it are not simply incorrect views of humans, they cannot be remedied by argument alone, nor by management research as traditionally conceived. However, reification is also not "a transgression against moral principles" (Honneth, 2008, p. 53), meaning that one has not committed a wrong action or espoused a wrong principle (for a critique of this moral argument, see Lear, 2008). Because recognition is implicit in our social relationships, it is best to think of reification as an inauthentic standpoint, rather than as either incorrect or immoral per se. In many cases, reification is described as a social pathology, thus something to be remedied, although not in the sense of punishing an immoral act or disproving an empirically false statement. Thus, recognition theory attempts to steer a middle ground between descriptive and normative views of well-being at work, and combine the two in a view of society that is at once fact-based and ethical. In the case of contractual relationships, recognition appears as primary in the fact that contractual relationships presuppose the autonomy (i.e. the ability to non-coercively enter into free contract) of both parties (Honneth, 2008, 1997). With such a presumption, submitting one's actions to a manager's discretion within an organizational hierarchy would be tantamount to slavery or servitude. Once recognition
Recognizing employees
243
CCM 20,2
244
is presupposed as an internal part of the management agreement, it becomes possible to see how freedom is consistent with organizational hierarchy, and must be a trump card or limit to that hierarchy's power. Thus, subsequently treating employees as nothing more than "capital" goes against presuppositions that underlie their employment. As Honneth states, reification conceals authentic social connection from our perception, but this is best described as a type of "forgetfulness" (Honneth, 2008). The answer to reification, therefore, would consist in promoting practices of remembering, to remind organizational members of who they have been all along. Promoting recognition in the workplace The implicit nature of recognition implies that, despite the reifying practices described above, reification is not a caused by particular practices, nor can it be "cured" technically; rather, recognition and reification are promoted, not caused, by work environments, according to a recognition-theoretic view. This also aligns recognition theory with care perspectives, in that "care cannot be easily equated with any particular configuration of managerial and human resource practices" (McAllister and Bigley, 2002, p. 895). Such practices could differ according to task, organizational, and cultural configurations for recognition, in the same way as they vary in care practices (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). In some ways, this makes managers' job easier, because it is conceivable to promote a more humane view of work within current frameworks; on the other hand, the subtle forms of consciousness raising that recognition views imply may be in practice difficult to detect, in part because to measure them could itself promote reification (Butler, 2008). Some examples of how similar managerial practices could differ between mainstream and recognition standpoints is depicted in Table I. To illustrate, human resource policies in the area of work-life balance have often taken an economistic outlook, focusing on negotiation ?exibility as a "good" that can be contested between employers and employees (Rigby and O'Brien-Smith, 2010). From a recognition theory perspective, however, promoting work-life balance has important implications for sending messages about what aspects of certain ways of life are valued, for example, religious holidays, maternity/paternity periods, or providing childcare (Honneth and Fraser, 2003). Allowing ?exible work arrangements not only is economically beneficial to employees, but also sends the message that the needs involved in their particular ways of life are valued by the organization, thus strengthening their sense that work is part and parcel of a unified and integrated life-world. Using this example, we can see how the notion of ?exibility, in itself, does not guarantee recognition, but can do so only when embedded in an environment of
Area of management Work-life balance Diversity Table I. Examples of managerial promotion of recognition perspectives
Form of recognition Individual need Universal value Individual merit
Mainstream standpoint Negotiating benefits
Recognition standpoint
Incentives
Valuing ways of life, acknowledging individual needs Legal compliance/performance Solidarity/climate for self-expression management of differences within a community of equals Pay for performance Recognition of excellence, individual self-esteem
employee respect. Indeed, "?exibility" is often used in a highly exploitative manner, in detriment to work-life balance, as a form of managerial control (Adler et al., 2007). However, when ?exibility is framed as a manner to improve employees' abilities to work according to their own self-needs while helping the organization, such policies become affirmative. Thus, it is not the policy itself, but its relation to a wider system of employee respect, that makes the practice affirmative of employee identity. In the area of diversity, Pless and Maak (2004) provide some direction in thinking about diversity topics while breaking free from views of diversity as "capital". Rather than thinking of diversity in compliance or performance terms (Reskin et al., 1999), they discuss how diversity can promote re?ection about the richness of a common humanity with organization, "reminding" individuals about the recognitive bases of their relations. Promoting diversity does this, for example, by allowing a free expression of cultural and individual differences, leading to a more democratic form of organizing, a form which they refer to as "human relations" rather than "human resources", a subtle difference that is key in the context of our discussion. They mention that such expression may be a source of profitability, by improving creativity, but it is important to note that this creativity depends on the noninstrumental promotion of human relations, even as these relations produce instrumentally positive outcomes. Pless and Maak's (2004) treatment comes closest, within the business ethics literature, to highlighting the importance of recognition in a multicultural workplace. Rather than promoting either cultural unity or difference per se, the recognition view suggests that promoting free expression both allows cultural difference to emerge and affirms the universal value of respect for individual personality, allowing culture to be affirmed without "tokenism" or focusing on stereotyped differences, which themselves would be a form of reification. Once again, the promotion of diversity as a practice can be used in a reifying way, in which employees are typified as tokens or seen superficially in terms of group membership, or in an identity-affirming way, whereby diversity is seen as a proxy for rich life experiences. The meaning of a diversity policy, similarly to ?exibility, will depend on how the policy is embedded in the wider organizational culture of affirmation, and thus it is not the policy itself which creates recognition, but its interpretation against the background of such a culture. Third, recognition theory has dealt with issues revolving around organization incentives and the need to provide incentives without promoting reification. For example, Heinich (2009) specifies conditions under which prizes in professional work can promote a sense of recognition, while Sayer (2007) discusses how rewards can function to reinforce employee dignity when they are temporally decoupled from action, so as not to give the sense that they are being used to control or "buy" good behavior. These findings fall in line with empirical work on intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999), which finds that intrinsic motivation can be (but is not necessarily) undermined by extrinsic rewards. According to Deci et al.'s meta-analytic results, extrinsic rewards work best when they do not compromise employee's sense of autonomy, results which fall into line with recognition theory. Linking this line of thought with recognition theory, Holgrewe (2001) stresses the importance of admiration and approval, rather than incentives per se, for producing recognition. While the difference between demonstrating material appreciation through reward and material recompense as an external incentive
Recognizing employees
245
CCM 20,2
246
may seem small, this theory suggests that it may make an important impact on workers' interpretations of their work role. In summary, human resources practices tend to promote recognition and "remembering" of social bonds when they emphasize autonomy, interpersonal value and belongingness over and above economic transaction. The socially integrative function of work (Honneth, 2009) may not be at odds with its economic function, and may improve it by promoting intrinsic motivation and creativity. Discussion and conclusion In this theoretical essay, I have used recognition theory to describe how management can promote a more humane view of employees, and avoid the problematic yet prevalent perspective described as reification. Recognition theory gives us criteria by which we can diagnose and combat reification at work. Like all perspectives, the recognition perspective has advantages and disadvantages, of which some final words should be said. One clear advantage of a recognition perspective on work is that it extends the importance of employee well-being beyond economic concerns, and into key issues of respect and dignity at work (Holgrewe, 2001). Thus, creating a humane workplace cannot be solely discussed in terms of providing adequate benefits and material working conditions, although such conditions are, of course, important. It means recognizing that, as all human institutions, contemporary organizations provide sites in which individuals build their identities, and create their life stories in a social context (Levinson et al., 1978). Undermining social recognition at work can result in undermining the "behavioral and existential unity" (Kallinikos, 2003, p. 600) of employees, an existential feature of work that deserves further attention. On the other hand, in an era of increasing job insecurity, decreasing worker protections, and increasing economic inequality (Kalleberg, 2009), it might seem utopian to devote so much attention to social issues of respect at the cost of concrete, material gains for workers. As Nancy Fraser (Fraser and Honneth, 2003) points out in her critique of recognition theory, issues of respect and self-esteem have implications for demands for economic and material equality, and recognition views par far to little attention to these less "philosophical" types of equality. Fraser's critique essentially accuses Honneth of conservatism because, as is made clear above, very little must change materially in the workplace for recognition to be promoted; in fact, it is already presupposed in the workplace and must simply be acknowledged (Honneth, 2008). Thus, the very advantage of recognition theory also generates an important critique, because recognition may not demand changes in the workplace that some deem necessary to worker well-being. With regards to diversity, recognition views have a natural affinity to attempts to humanize the diversity literature (Pless and Maak, 2004). Because recognition does not depend on a particular set of cultural beliefs, or even organizational goals, but rather is the pre-cognitive groundwork for social relationships, recognition creates a wide space for plural forms of life. Diverse worldviews are able to thrive in a recognition-rich environment because social respect is not tied to particularistic world-views, and allows for plural and even contradictory standpoints without compromising on the basic respectability of organizational members (e.g. 2008). This does not mean that, within organizational contexts, members do not attempt to create specific cultures with particularistic values and practices (Honneth, 1997), but rather that the organization remains open to alternative values and practices.
This very focus on diversity, however, has led to criticisms of recognition as being a weak or thin ethical standpoint, because it gives little council on how managers or organizational actors should behave in specific circumstances. Because recognition does not assume support for particular identities, positions, or behaviors, it cannot direct behaviors beyond affirming the basic dignity of persons (Geuss, 2008). I would argue however, that this simple step of affirmation is already a needed addition to contemporary organizational life, given that affirmation and social integration are not assured in contemporary organizations, but are increasingly precarious (Goodwin, 2005). Although recognition might not solve all organization problems, it is a good first step. In sum, recognition theory offers an important step in understanding the "human side" of management, correcting traditional views of human capital by arguing that organizations are, first and foremost, social systems inhabited by existentially engaged human beings. Empirical research should focus on why it has been so easy to "forget" that the workplace is a seat of social meaning, and how we can best remain conscious of our social bonds at work. Although such knowledge is not likely to take the form of "techniques" of recognition, it may promote habits of thought, small ways of reminding ourselves what we do everyday at work, and why it is important.
References Adler, P.S., Forbes, L.C. and Willmott, H. (2007), "Critical management studies", The Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 119-179. Anderson, N. (2005), "Relationships between practice and research in personnel selection: does the left hand know what the right is doing?", in Evers, A., Anderson, N. and Vosquijl, O. (Eds), The Blackwell Handbook of Personnel Selection, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 1-24. Avey, J.B., Luthans, F., Smith, R.M. and Palmer, N.F. (2010), "Impact of positive psychological capital on employee well-being over time", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 17-28. Ball, K. (2005), "Organization, surveillance and the body: towards a politics of resistance", Organization, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 89-108. Berger, P. and Pullberg, S. (1966), "Reification and the sociological critique of consciousness", New Left Review, Vol. 35, pp. 56-71. Bernstein, J. (2006), All Together Now: Common Sense for a New Economy, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA. Borman, D.A. (2009), "Labour, exchange and recognition: Marx contra Honneth", Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 35 No. 8, pp. 935-959. Butler, J. (2008), "Taking another's view: ambivalent implications", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 97-119. Carlon, D.M., Downs, A.A. and Wert-Gray, S. (2006), "Statistics as fetishes: the case of financial performance measures and executive compensation", Organizational Research Methods, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 475-790. Christopherson, S. (2008), "Beyond the self-expressive creative worker: an industry perspective on entertainment media", Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 25 Nos 7/8, pp. 73-95. Deci, E.L., Koestner, R. and Ryan, R.M. (1999), "The undermining effect is a reality after all extrinsic rewards, task interest, and self-determination: reply to Eisenberger, Pierce, and Cameron (1999) and Lepper, Henderlong, and Gingras (1999)", Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 125 No. 6, pp. 692-700.
Recognizing employees
247
CCM 20,2
248
Delios, A. (2010), "How can organizations be competitive but dare to care?", The Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 25-37. Deranty, J.P. (2008), "Work and the precarisation of existence", European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, pp. 443-463. Dutton, J.E., Worline, M.C. and Frost, P.J. (2006), "Explaining compassion organizing", Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 51, pp. 59-96. Eby, L.T., Maher, C.P. and Buts, M.M. (2010), "The intersection of work and family life: the role of affect", Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 61, pp. 599-622. Elangovan, A.R., Pinder, C.C. and McLean, M. (2010), "Callings and organizational behavior", Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 76 No. 3, pp. 428-440. Foss, N.J. (2008), "Human capital and transaction cost economics", SMG Working Paper No. 2, Copenhagen Business School Working Paper Series. Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003), Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. Frost, P.J. (2003), Toxic Emotions at Work: How Compassionate Managers Handle Pain and Con?ict, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Gellner, E. (1996), Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals, Penguin, London. Geuss, R. (2008), "Philosophical anthropology and social criticism", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 120-130. Gilligan, C. (1982), In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Gonzalez, J.A. and DeNisi, A.S. (2009), "Cross-level effects of demography and diversity climate on organizational attachment and firm effectiveness", Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 30, pp. 21-40. Goodwin, N. (2005), "The social impact of multinational corporations: an outline of the issues, with a focus on workers", in Mazlish, B. and Chandler, A. (Eds), Mapping the Multinational Corporations: The New Global Leviathans in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Greenwood, M.R. (2002), "Ethics and HRM: a review and conceptual analysis", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 36, pp. 261-278. Guion, R.M. (1998), Assessment, Measurement, and Prediction for Personnel Decisions, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Gutmann, A. (1994), "Preface", in Gutmann, A. (Ed.), Multiculturalism: Exploring the Politics of Recognition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. ix-xii. Habermas, J. (1981), The Theory of Communicative Action, Beacon Press, London. Heinich, N. (2009), "The sociology of vocational prizes: recognition as esteem", Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 85-107. Hodson, R. and Roscigno, V. (2004), "Organizational success and worker dignity: complementary or contradictory?", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 110, pp. 672-708. Holgrewe, U. (2001), "Recognition, intersubjectivity and service work: labour con?icts i n call centres", The German Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 37-54. Honneth, A. (1995a), The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Con?icts, Polity Press, Cambridge. Honneth, A. (1995b), "Work and instrumental action: on the normative basis of critical theory", in Wright, C.W. (Ed.), The Fragmented World of the Social, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, pp. 1549.
Honneth, A. (1997), "Recognition and moral obligation", Social Research, Vol. 64 No. 1, pp. 30-32. Honneth, A. (2008), "Reification and recognition: a new look at an old idea", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 17-96. Honneth, A. (2009), "Work and recognition: a redefinition", paper presentation at Work and Recognition: An International Conference, Macquerie University. Honneth, A. and Fraser, N. (Eds) (2003), Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-philosophical Profile, Verso, New York, NY. Honneth, A. and Margalit, A. (2001), "Recognition", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 75, pp. 111-139. Islam, G. and Zyphur, M.J. (2008), "Concepts and directions in critical industrial/organizational psychology", in Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I. and Austin, S. (Eds), Critical Psychology, Sage, London, pp. 110-135. Jay, M. (2008), "Introduction", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3-16. Judge, T.A., Heller, D. and Mount, M.K. (2002), "Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: a meta-analysis", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87 No. 3, pp. 530-541. Kahungunu, N., Erakovic, L., Puhi, N. and Pio, E. (2010), "Relational well-being and wealth: Maori business and an ethic of care", Academy of Management Proceedings. Kalleberg, A.L. (2009), "Precarious work, insecure workers: employment relations in transition", American Sociological Review, Vol. 74, pp. 1-22. Kallinikos, J. (2003), "Work, human agency and organizational forms: an anatomy of fragmentation", Organization Studies, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 595-618. Konzelmann, S., Conway, N., Trenberth, L. and Wilkinson, F. (2006), "Corporate governance and human resource management", British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 44 No. 3, pp. 541-567. Lamont, M. (2000), The Dignity of Working Men, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Lear, J. (2008), "The slippery middle", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 131-146. Levinson, D.J., Darrow, C.N., Klein, E.B., Levinson, M.H. and McKee, B. (1978), Seasons of a Man's Life, Knopf, New York, NY. Liedtka, J. (1999), "Linking competitive advantage with communities of practice", Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 8, pp. 5-16. Loehlin, J.C. (1992), Genes and Environment in Personality Development, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Lukacs, G. (1971), History and Class Consciousness, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (translated by Livingstone, R.). McAllister, D.J. and Bigley, G.A. (2002), "Work context and the definition of self: how organizational care in?uences organization-based self-esteem", Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 45 No. 5, pp. 894-904. McCrae, R.R. and John, O.P. (1992), "An introduction to the five-factor model and its applications", Journal of Personality, Vol. 60, pp. 175-215. Pless, N.M. and Maak, T. (2004), "Building an inclusive diversity culture: principles, processes and practice", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 54, pp. 129-147. Prasad, A., Prasad, P. and Mir, R. (2011), "One mirror in another': managing diversity and the discourse of fashion", Human Relations, January 31, pp. 1-22. Reskin, B.F., McBrier, D.B. and Kmec, J.A. (1999), "The determinants and consequences of workplace sex and race composition", Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 25, pp. 335-361.
Recognizing employees
249
CCM 20,2
Rigby, M. and O'Brien-Smith, F. (2010), "Trade union interventions in work-life balance", Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 203-220. Sayer, A. (2007), "Dignity at work: broadening the agenda", Organization, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 565-581. Sennett, R. (2006), The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Sewell, G. and Barker, J.R. (2006), "Coercion versus care: using irony to make sense of organizational surveillance", Academy of Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 934-961. Simon, H.A. (1951), "A formal theory of the employment relationship", in Simon, H. (Ed.), Models of Bounded Rationality, MIT Press, Cambridge. Townley, B. (1993), "Foucault, power/knowledge, and its relevance for human resource management", The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18, pp. 518-545. van Marrewijk, M. and Timmers, J. (2003), "Human capital management: new possibilities in people management", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 44, pp. 171-184. van Prooijen, J.W. (2009), "Procedural justice as autonomy regulation", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 96 No. 6, pp. 1166-1180. Weiss, H.M. and Kurek, K.E. (2003), "Dispositional in?uences on affective experiences at work", in Barrick, M.R. and Ryan, A.M. (Eds), Reconsidering the Role of Personality in Organizations, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 121-149. Whyte, M. (2003), Marxism and Media Studies Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends, Pluto Press, London. Winstanley, D. and Woodall, J. (2000), "The ethical dimensions of human resource management", Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 5-20. Zanoni, P., Janssens, M., Beauchop, Y. and Nkomo, S. (2010), "Unpacking diversity, grasping inequality: rethinking difference through critical perspectives", Organization, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 9-29. Further reading Cascio, W.F. (2000), Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life and Profits, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Cavell, S. (1976), Knowing and Acknowledging,' in Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 238-266. Honneth, A. (2003), "Redistribution as recognition: a response to Nancy Fraser", Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-philosophical Profile, Verso, New York, NY, pp. 110-197 (translated by Golb, J. and Ingram, J.). About the author Gazi Islam is Associate Professor of Business Administration at Grenoble Ecole de Management and Insper. He completed his PhD in Organizational Behavior at Tulane University, where his research focused on organizational identity, voice, and power relations. His current research interests include the organizational antecedents and consequences of identity, and the relations between identity, group dynamics and the production of group and organizational cultures. In addition, he attempts to link identity and organizational culture to wider issues of national culture, ideology, and civil society. Gazi Islam can be contacted at: [email protected]
250
doc_865335047.docx
Research Report on Recognizing Employees: Reification, Dignity and Promoting Care in Management:- Recognizing Employees: Reification, Dignity and Promoting Care in Management
Research Report on Recognizing Employees: Reification, Dignity and Promoting Care in Management
Abstract
Purpose - The aim of this paper is to develop the idea of recognition in organizations, arguing that recognition is a fundamental building block of workplace dignity, and a key element of cultural respect in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach - As a conceptual paper, the current work approaches discussions of human resource management through the lens of recognition theory, applying ideas of recognition and reification to workplace issues. Findings - Workplace reification can be observed in diverse areas of human resource management, re?ecting a "human capital" view of employees. The paper traces this view in terms of measurement and incentives, as well as individual and group diversity within the workplace. Originality/value - The paper contributes to the literature on care in human resources by briding ideas from management and critical social theory, contributing to the former by couching workplace dignity in terms of social theoretic foundations of recognition, and contributing to the latter by showing how the workplace can form an important site for recognition. Keywords Recognition, Human capital, Care, Workplace dignity, Well-being, Organizational culture,
Introduction Care perspectives on work and management have received increasing attention in recent years (Delios, 2010; McAllister and Bigley, 2002; Dutton et al., 2006; Sewell and Barker, 2006; Frost, 2003), riding the wave of a renewed interest in the ethical implications of people management (Winstanley and Woodall, 2000). Such perspectives run contrary to a "human capital" view of employees, where organizational members are framed as sets of human resources that market actors trade to organizations in return for monetary payment, stable employment relations, and other benefits (Foss, 2008; Konzelmann et al., 2006). In contrast, care perspectives view individuals as fundamentally relational (Gilligan, 1982), and consider work as holding the potential to humanize and enrich workers, as organizational members attempt to build selfesteem through their work (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). Such perspectives see organizational success as not inimical to worker dignity, but as compatible with humane and caring relationships (Hodson and Roscigno, 2004). To be sure, well before such perspectives were discussed explicitly, human resource management had a history of taking into account aspects of employee satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) and more recently, other aspects of employee well-being (Avey et al., 2010). For example, literature in the areas of work-life issues (Eby et al., 2010)
CCM 20,2
236
has acknowledged the importance of balancing work life with non-work issues, and promoting ?exibility with regards to individuals' diverse individual and family lives. In addition, work on diversity has acknowledged that cultural, gender, racial, and other identity issues are important at work, and color individual experience in ways that affect work processes (Pless and Maak, 2004). What is often missing in such treatments, however, is the acknowledgment that work itself is a socially valuable process, one expressive and formative of individual identity and a sense of personal dignity. Acknowledging this aspect of work means going beyond satisfaction and work-life balance; it may mean a reconceptualization of work itself as a social and existentially engaged process (Sayer, 2007; Honneth, 1995b). In order to go beyond "benefits" to understand how caring organizations address important existential questions around the meaning of work (Elangovan et al., 2010), this perspective must deepen its critique of current management practice. Beyond questions of ?exibility and work-life balance, recent critical perspectives have engaged in more wideranging critiques of human resources (Townley, 1993; Islam and Zyphur, 2008), calling into question traditional management more generally. Such critiques claim that even management policies that take into account employee satisfaction often do so only to maximize productivity, thus "using" employees, which is ethically problematic (Greenwood, 2002). Similarly, work on inclusion and diversity has noted that attempts to promote diversity must begin by recognizing the relational and social aspects of human beings, and not reducing employees to material and psychological resources to be managed for financial gain (Pless and Maak, 2004). Such macro-critiques are not content with simply extending additional monetary or scheduling benefits to employees, but explore how the workrelation can be reconsidered as a means for promoting affirmation, diversity, and care towards employees. In order to provide a theoretical framework for such an exploration, the current paper will use recent discussions of recognition theory (Honneth, 2009, 2008, 1995a, b) to discuss how why human resources policies so often unwittingly detract attention from issues of human care and dignity, and how promoting recognition can reverse the undermining effects of human resource policies. Following Honneth (2008), I contrast recognition with a reification perspective on work, claiming that reification amounts to a kind of forgetting or misrecognition of employees. While recognition is described as a trans-cultural need for social acknowledgment, from which specific forms of sociality can subsequently develop, reification develops when particular material and cultural practices develop that misrepresent sociality as a purely productive process. As will be described below, cultures begin to reify their members when they overlook the social embeddedness of work, viewing work as disembodied from underlying social bonds. The research question approached in this paper is how cultural practices and beliefs, expressed in human resource systems, can promote such misrepresentations, and produce reification. In the remainder of this essay, I will first discuss worker dignity and individuality in light of reification, showing how human resource policies tend to promote reification. Then, I will discuss how reification appears under a recognition-theoretic lens, and why we should see reification as problematic from the perspective of inclusion and diversity.Next, I will reframe the employment relationship as inclusive of diversity by adopting a recognition perspective, suggesting ways in which recognition could be promoted at work. Finally, I will present the advantages and limitations of this perspective, suggesting future research into the conditions that promote recognition thinking.
Reification as an aspect of management Understanding work organization processes requires working with concepts such as action, motivation, and relationships, and thus implicitly involves ideas about human thought and behavioral processes, the ability to demonstrate empathetic concern for other human beings (Dutton et al., 2006) and to be sensitive to questions concerning human agency (Kallinikos, 2003). Some scholars have recently begun to question the underlying humanistic conceptions that managers employ, modes which are often assumed in studies of labor and economics (Kallinikos, 2003). Thematized in this work is the idea that agency is cultivated and maintained through interpersonal relationships in the workplaces, and that these relationships are essential for employee's self-concepts (Kallinikos, 2003) as well as for developing employees' sense of what they could be, or for their potential for becoming (Elangovan et al., 2010). In this sense, a caring organization would be one that framed work as a potential site for becoming, where employees can realize their potentials through their work. Alternatively, failed or pathological relationships, in which such caring or affirmation is absent at work, may have ramifications for employees' self-esteem, and sense of self-worth. Drawing from critical theory, Lukacs' (1971; see also Honneth, 2008; Berger and Pullberg, 1966) notion of reification explicitly elaborates an important link between employee self-conceptions and the ways that products and selves are created at work. In his formulation, the products of contemporary work, including the production of the worker him/herself as a social role, are made to appear "thing-like", subject to mechanical constraints and objective in?uences (Jay, 2008; Whyte, 2003). In the case of products, reification means that the social processes involved in making the product are obscured or forgotten; in the case of the employees themselves, they come to be seen as bundles of human capital rather than as conscious, freely choosing agents (Honneth, 2008). The process of reification, according to Honneth (2008), involves a way of framing work processes, but goes beyond work to affect both social relationships and worker identities. First, framing work purely in terms of goals, objectives, and products promotes a view of the environment as composed of inert objects of exchange, rather than as a field of complex relationships, promoting an essentially mechanical view of the workplace. Next, this mechanical view is transferred to social relationships at work, such that other people are seen as means to an end, bearers of desired capacities or liabilities. As the reified view of the workplace develops, employees come to see their own personalities in terms of productive potentials, assets and liabilities, and view themselves as disembodied "products" that are independent of social networks and processes, and that the elements of their individual "profile" (capacities, skills, knowledge) can be bartered and traded as commodities (Whyte, 2003). Honneth (2008) claims that reification derives from social practices, but these practices do not determine reification directly. Indeed, a deterministic view, because of its negation of human freedom, would itself promote a reified view of people. Thus, the task of a theory of reification at work would specify those conditions under which reified views tend to be adopted without re?ection, as default ways of acting at work, habitualized over time, and leading to a dehumanized workplace. Thus, while reification is not limited to particular national cultures, it is linked to specific cultures of production where work becomes disembedded from other cultural spheres. In Honneth (1995), such conditions would characterize contemporary market-oriented corporate culture, although
Recognizing employees
237
CCM 20,2
238
not necessarily all possible market cultures, leaving open the question of how a market society could produce a more caring form of human resources management. In the context of managing human resources, we can describe reifying cultural conditions at various levels. First, some practices work at the level of individuals, defining workers in terms that leave out their creative potentials. Second, other practices involve more general aspects of contemporary workplaces, practices which promote a view of work as the production of tradable goods rather than meaningful works. I will describe some relevant human resources practices at both of these levels. However, what they have in common is that they ignore the personal and social significance of work in favor of a decontextualized view, one that disconnects work from its existential, expressive bases. The forgoing of autonomy and personal meaning at work is evident in many of the key works of management, where, in order to place employment within the sphere of market relations, it is conceptualized as inert and separate from existential needs. For example, Simon (1951, p. 21) describes worker behavior as "guided by a decision reached by another, irrespective of his own judgment", a clear statement of work as separate from agency. Foss (2008) describes human capital as "a capital asset like any other", and asserts that nothing is essentially different accounting to the "human" nature of this asset. Of course, as economic actors, workers own their human capital, but may trade it as they may trade other property. The job of the human resource manager, under this conception, is to monitor the terms of this trade through surveillance and measurement, to reduce its price to the extent possible, though standardization, selection and training, to decrease competitor imitation, through diversity and organizational culture promotion, and to reduce transaction costs, by promoting ?exible work. I will treat each of these themes below. Measurement and incentives Honneth (2008), in his essay on reification, claims that modern life has been dominated by processes of watching other people, and in particular, watching with regards to monitoring, measuring, and evaluating. Honneth (2008, p. 79) claims that a culture of monitoring and surveillance, a fact of modern workplaces, can become "so much an end in itself that any consciousness of an antecedent social relationship disappears". Workers under surveillance become described through standardized categories, which become linked to economic incentives meant to reinforce or inhibit categories of behavior. It stands to reason that such measurement and incentive systems could promote reification among managers. Ball (2005), for example, describes organizational surveillance in terms of a decentering of lived experience from the body, and the tendency to view one's body as an object separate from lived experience, a phenomenon that clearly echoes the reification idea. Because behavioral measurement tends to be at the individual level, and measures operational behaviors rather than psychological motives, it stands to reason that such measurement would promote the idea that behaviors are objective, individual units. What is obscured is how individual action might be driven by social contexts, relationships, and expectations not observable in measurement systems. To the extent that social relationships enter performance measurement, for example, they may be considered sources of bias or measurement error, rather than as interpersonal, socio-cognitive processes inherent in all social systems. Carlon et al. (2006), for example, discuss the use of statistics about performance as masking the underlying social dynamics of performance, a process which leads the authors to describe performance statistics as "fetishes".
With regards to incentives per se, much has been written about effects of incentive systems on the intrinsic motivation to engage in work (Deci et al., 1999; Holgrewe, 2001). The empirical literature tends to support the thesis that incentives can reduce intrinsic desire to work particularly in those situations where employees believe that such systems encroach on their autonomy or freedom (Deci et al., 1999). Incentives, in addition, may act as substitutes for more "authentic" types of social rewards for work (Holgrewe, 2001), such as social recognition, belonging and esteem that come from competent work. Similarly, Lamont (2000) suggests that when managers refrain from measuring employee performance in purely economic terms, they can increase feelings of dignity among employees, here defined as the sense of being trusted to make autonomous decision. The workers, in this cases, feel that the organization is thereby increasing their autonomy and giving them a "vote of confidence". Finally, Sayer suggests rewarding employees, but de-coupling rewards from specific transactions at work, in order to create a general sense of employee value, rather than a specific, market-like exchange among members. Individual differences and trait-based views Managing people involves attempting to meet organizational objectives through the development of "human capital" within organizations (Foss, 2008; van Marrewijk and Timmers, 2003). Developing human capital involves building a stock of accessible knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs;, e.g. Guion, 1998) among organizational members, a process that involves both selection of preexisting worker aspects (Anderson, 2005) and training of firm-specific KSAs. Increasingly, employers are recognizing cultural, gender, and ethic diversity as further sources of diverse employee capabilities (Gonzalez and DeNisi, 2009) and are attempting to use these capabilities to improve organizational performance. There is nothing inherently reifying about discussing individual and cultural differences, or developing ideas about human capabilities and skills. In fact, promotion of competencies is often hailed as an empowering aspect of work, and promotion of diversity has been discussed as an important factor in re-inserting work in its social context, creating a culture of inclusion and dignity (Pless and Maak, 2004). However, to the extent that work in this area develops theories and concepts that help conceptualize KSA's as discrete, context independent, and deterministic, they can promote reifying attitudes. In fact, much of the literature on personality at work has taken exactly this standpoint, viewing individual differences as universal, biologically driven dimensions largely derived from genetic and pre-existing potentials (Loehlin, 1992; McCrae and John, 1992), and useful insofar as they provide sources of organizational performance (Weiss and Kurek, 2003). Thus, rather than viewing personality as a series of choices made by free, existentially engaged people in order to live as best they can, personality traits are framed as capabilities that can be traded, bargained or acted upon in order to reach objectives. The treatment of individual traits and capacities as independent, separable, and tradable also tends to underplay the social bases of individual behavior, promoting a sense of "modularity" among actors (Gellner, 1996). Gellner's "modular man" essentially a tradable portfolio of capacities, rather than a human being with a sense of unity, integrity, and narrative coherence over time (Kallinikos, 2003). As some have argued, a skill-focus goes hand in hand with social fragmentation, as individuals treat their own human capital as toolkits that they carry from workplace to workplace (Bernstein, 2006), re?ecting a kind of dislocation among individuals and a sense of social drift (Deranty, 2008; Sennett, 2006).
Recognizing employees
239
CCM 20,2
240
Diversity and the reification of groups Similar to trait-based views of human resources, treatments of cultural, gender, or ethic diversity in the workplace implicitly reify group-based traits, unwittingly decoupling group traits from the lived experiences of their members and treating diversity in an instrumental fashion (Zanoni et al., 2010). In many cases, for example, workforce diversity is touted less for its intrinsic valuing of human diversity than for its putative effects on group and organizational performance (Gonzalez and DeNisi, 2009). In addition, organizations may implement diversity programs as a way of sending an image of dynamism and ?exibility and due to institutional pressures (Prasad et al., 2011), treating diversity as symbol rather than substance. Additionally, diversity programs often focus on simple group membership status as a marker of diversity, promoting stereotyped views that are reminiscent of reification because they do not allow for individual autonomy within categories. The resulting tokenism treats demographic group membership in a stereotyped fashion, rather than as a source of individual potential. In other words, it may be true that gender, ethnic or cultural backgrounds color people's experiences, allowing them to bring interesting new perspectives into the workplace; but this does not mean that people are determined by these background characteristics. Cultures of diversity should not assume that people are bound to their cultures (Pless and Maak, 2004), but that they may draw on unique experiences to formulate their own autonomous views. Some work suggests that reification in the workplace can become re?ected in groupbased prejudice and stereotyping (Honneth, 2008), since stereotyping involves a reduction of a person to a single, standardized category and does not allow individual freedom within that overdetermining category. Human resource policies which do not promote a strong sense of community within the workplace may push individuals to seek community to a greater extent from alternative social networks, such as culture and ethnic networks (Christopherson, 2008), thereby highlighting group-based differences and promoting intergroup tensions. According to Christopherson (2008) such networks become necessary sources of economic security, promoting their instrumentalization, wherein social and group identity are referred to as sources of "social capital". Based on the above, whether individual or group-based, reified individual capacities to produce valuable goods and services are treated as tradable components rather than as forms of self-expression. Honneth is explicit in linking the measurement and psychometric conceptualizations of psychological capacities to reification, warning particularly against theories that overly emphasize the intractable or genetic component of such capacities, because it is precisely in these conceptions that free agency is mostly likely to be overlooked. Other recognition-theorists (Borman, 2009; Gutmann, 1994) suggest that recognition at work is not fulfilled through offering opportunities for skill acquisition, and an overly skill-based focused has been argued to be exploitative (Borman, 2009). As mentioned, the ways that management practices cognitively frame employees do not determine, but may in?uence, the ways employees see themselves and their colleagues. Practices promote habitual forms of interaction and taken-for-granted ways of seeing the world that divert attention from alternative views. But the question remains as to what alternative views would not promote reification? What constitutes an alternative to reification? From a recognition theoretic view, reification constitutes a misrecognition of the underlying dynamics of social relationships, and thus to critique
reified treatment of employees, we must explore the alternative view, which we may term a "recognition view". Care at work: a recognition theory perspective The care perspective in management emphasizes care as a structure of "values and organizing principles centered on fulfilling employees' needs, promoting employees' best interests, and valuing employees' contributions" (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). Rather than viewing workers as individual units, an "ethic of care" views individuals as fundamentally relational (Gilligan, 1982). Caring organizations, through their ability to generate positive self-views among organizational members, increase well-being within the organizational community (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). A focus on care emphasizes the ?ourishing of organizational members through defining their capabilities as valuable in the context of their communities (Liedtka, 1999), with a focus on valorizing, rather than exploiting, employee capabilities. The care focus aligns care perspectives with management scholarship recognizing the importance of interpersonal concern and affirmation, independent of economic benefit, in generating a positive work environment (Pless and Maak, 2004). From recognition in terms of employee participation (Brinch and Eurish, 2006) to recognition of competence (Heinich, 2009) and identification with compassion and care for suffering (Dutton et al., 2006), scholars are increasingly acknowledging that employees look beyond material interests in the workplace to frame work relations as basic building blocks of personal and social identity (Elangovan et al., 2010; Kallinikos, 2003). While developing a perspective on care at work can draw on these past studies, ultimately such perspectives tend to measure their impacts in efficiency terms (Hodson and Roscigno, 2004), precluding a true break from human capital perspectives (Foss, 2008), as well as lacking a normative or ethical argument to move beyond efficiency concerns. For example, Sewell and Barker (2006) describe how care logics compete with coercion logics in framing organizational control and surveillance, begging for a normative framework within which to describe such struggles. In another example, Kahungunu et al. (2010) describe an ethic of care as attempting to produce general value for a network of stakeholders, bound together through their ties of belonging, again juxtaposing economic and social values in a way that, while not inconsistent, requires a theoretical treatment. Recognition perspectives can complement such views by providing a normative theoretical framework, i.e. one which focuses on moral desirability and the ethical evaluation of practices. Such a framework would help understand why affirmation and care are ethically critical and what happens when they are neglected, and would be useful in this regard. Honneth's (1995a, b) recognition theory attempts to ground a normative theory of social organization on the basis of individuals' needs for interpersonal recognition or affirmation, and thus provides an ideal grounding for discussions of care in management. According to recognition theory, people's self-views as respectable and worthy of dignity derive from social recognition. Recognition theory views individual projects as deriving meaning from their participation in wider social systems of meaning and value. Recognition is "precognitive", in that it precedes particular world views (Honneth and Margalit, 2001), and consists in an affirmation of the basic personal bond between social actors, their willingness to participate in society together. Thus, while not a cultural trait per se, recognition is seen as a cross-cultural need for
Recognizing employees
241
CCM 20,2
242
personal affirmation that can find expression through different subsequent "recognition orders", which could differ according to culture. Thus, the way that a particular culture recognizes its members depends on the form of recognition given, but culture itself depends on the establishment of frameworks of recognition, on the need to derive meaning and identity from being together. The basic commitment to be together, it is argued, builds a groundwork upon which more sophisticated social formations, projects and systems can be built. Affective and affirmative in nature, according to Honneth (2008), we recognize social actors even when we disagree with them or feel strong negative emotions toward them, because it is only in their role as recognized others, as human actors bestowed with their own minds, that we are able to consider their views at all. Thus, even "pathological" forms of sociality, such as reification, contain a core of recognition, which, according to Honneth (2008), is repressed or ignored in the act of reifying. Because the sense of recognition as positive affirmative does not mean by "positive" that one agrees with the person one recognizes (Honneth, 2008, 1995a), recognition is different from sympathy, or support for a cause. It is more akin to a notion of solidarity, in that one recognizes other actors as legitimate participants in society, entitled to points of view and embedded in their unique life narrative. When individuals feels that their basic self-worth has not been acknowledged, alternatively, they feel invisible or alienated (Honneth and Margalit, 2001), rather than simply different from others. Thus, within an organization, recognition would be prior to similar concepts such as organizational cohesion, value alignment, or identification, such that these forms of sociality would presuppose recognition, and thus recognition would act as a building block for diverse social bonds. In this sense, recognition would support a care perspective on management not because it leads to increased benefits or better fits the economic interests of workers, but because, similar to recognition, a care perspective would focus on acknowledging organizational participants as valuable in themselves, and would reframe work as a way for instrumental goals to be reached in a way that promotes human ?ourishing. Thus, Honneth does not contrast recognition to instrumental or utilitarian forms of social organization; rather, he claims (Honneth, 2002), instrumental social forms themselves also depend on relations of recognition. Market relations cannot take place in the absence of a basic affirmative social bond, according to this view, although it is possible that in the course of market relations, actors come to misunderstand and distort their underlying relationships (for a critique, see Butler, 2008). This point makes recognition theory particularly interesting for management, because it does not constitute an antibusiness view, claiming that all market relations are immoral. Rather, it affirms the social legitimacy of markets as a social form, and urges actors to come to terms with the acceptance of human dignity that they have already assumed by entering into commerce with each other. In addition, which earlier versions of critical theory had dismissed instrumental action as external to the sphere of lived, holistic experience (Habermas, 1981), Honneth attempts to rescue instrumentality (i.e. productive work) from a pure functionalism, arguing that just as other forms of sociality, work is a space in which lived, phenomenally rich social experience is possible and desirable (Honneth, 1995b). This aspect makes Honneth's work ripe for contributing to a field of management looking to emphasize the human side of business.
According to Honneth (1995a, b), recognition can take different forms or "recognition orders" (Honneth and Fraser, 2003), each corresponding to a distinct structure of affirmation, but all three acknowledging the fundamental worth of individuals. The first and most basic form (perhaps also the most aligned with traditional notions of "care") is the recognition of individuals as having needs worthy of fulfillment. The recognition of human needs and potential for suffering has been cited in the organizational sciences as a basis for compassion organizing (Dutton et al., 2006). Subsequent to the acknowledgement and affirmation of need fulfillment (which Honneth (1995a, b) refers to as "love"), recognition takes the form of justice concerns and the formation of a social contract guaranteeing equality of voice among members. Empirical research has confirmed the centrality of such voice and justice concerns for creating a sense of individual autonomy (van Prooijen, 2009). Finally, recognition involves, beyond the need for formal equality, an acknowledgement of the uniqueness and value of the individual as such, involving his/her particular competencies and recognizing each person as special and important (Honneth, 1995a, b). Thus, the use of organizational prizes and commendations as a form of recognition is key to this type of recognition (Heinich, 2009). Although past research has largely confirmed the importance of each of these forms of recognition (albeit without using the language of recognition theory), management often also promotes practices and habits of mind that seem to undermine the very principles that recognition theory claims undermine social relations. According to Honneth (1995a), this is explainable by a kind of inauthenticity with regards to our social bonds. Although social systems rely on fundamental bonds, actors may misrecognize, ignore, or actively repress these bonds. In particular, where instrumental action requires devoted attention, competition with others, combatitive negotiation, or other processes that imply opposition, actors may divert their attention away from basic connectedness, and act as if no social ties existed between members of an organization. The neglect of an underlying social connectedness due to lack of attention or misrecognition makes organizational goals seem as if they ?oat freely of human concerns, leading to reification of employees as means toward the end of reaching such goals (Honneth, 2008). Because, following Honneth (2008), misrecognition and the reification that accompany it are not simply incorrect views of humans, they cannot be remedied by argument alone, nor by management research as traditionally conceived. However, reification is also not "a transgression against moral principles" (Honneth, 2008, p. 53), meaning that one has not committed a wrong action or espoused a wrong principle (for a critique of this moral argument, see Lear, 2008). Because recognition is implicit in our social relationships, it is best to think of reification as an inauthentic standpoint, rather than as either incorrect or immoral per se. In many cases, reification is described as a social pathology, thus something to be remedied, although not in the sense of punishing an immoral act or disproving an empirically false statement. Thus, recognition theory attempts to steer a middle ground between descriptive and normative views of well-being at work, and combine the two in a view of society that is at once fact-based and ethical. In the case of contractual relationships, recognition appears as primary in the fact that contractual relationships presuppose the autonomy (i.e. the ability to non-coercively enter into free contract) of both parties (Honneth, 2008, 1997). With such a presumption, submitting one's actions to a manager's discretion within an organizational hierarchy would be tantamount to slavery or servitude. Once recognition
Recognizing employees
243
CCM 20,2
244
is presupposed as an internal part of the management agreement, it becomes possible to see how freedom is consistent with organizational hierarchy, and must be a trump card or limit to that hierarchy's power. Thus, subsequently treating employees as nothing more than "capital" goes against presuppositions that underlie their employment. As Honneth states, reification conceals authentic social connection from our perception, but this is best described as a type of "forgetfulness" (Honneth, 2008). The answer to reification, therefore, would consist in promoting practices of remembering, to remind organizational members of who they have been all along. Promoting recognition in the workplace The implicit nature of recognition implies that, despite the reifying practices described above, reification is not a caused by particular practices, nor can it be "cured" technically; rather, recognition and reification are promoted, not caused, by work environments, according to a recognition-theoretic view. This also aligns recognition theory with care perspectives, in that "care cannot be easily equated with any particular configuration of managerial and human resource practices" (McAllister and Bigley, 2002, p. 895). Such practices could differ according to task, organizational, and cultural configurations for recognition, in the same way as they vary in care practices (McAllister and Bigley, 2002). In some ways, this makes managers' job easier, because it is conceivable to promote a more humane view of work within current frameworks; on the other hand, the subtle forms of consciousness raising that recognition views imply may be in practice difficult to detect, in part because to measure them could itself promote reification (Butler, 2008). Some examples of how similar managerial practices could differ between mainstream and recognition standpoints is depicted in Table I. To illustrate, human resource policies in the area of work-life balance have often taken an economistic outlook, focusing on negotiation ?exibility as a "good" that can be contested between employers and employees (Rigby and O'Brien-Smith, 2010). From a recognition theory perspective, however, promoting work-life balance has important implications for sending messages about what aspects of certain ways of life are valued, for example, religious holidays, maternity/paternity periods, or providing childcare (Honneth and Fraser, 2003). Allowing ?exible work arrangements not only is economically beneficial to employees, but also sends the message that the needs involved in their particular ways of life are valued by the organization, thus strengthening their sense that work is part and parcel of a unified and integrated life-world. Using this example, we can see how the notion of ?exibility, in itself, does not guarantee recognition, but can do so only when embedded in an environment of
Area of management Work-life balance Diversity Table I. Examples of managerial promotion of recognition perspectives
Form of recognition Individual need Universal value Individual merit
Mainstream standpoint Negotiating benefits
Recognition standpoint
Incentives
Valuing ways of life, acknowledging individual needs Legal compliance/performance Solidarity/climate for self-expression management of differences within a community of equals Pay for performance Recognition of excellence, individual self-esteem
employee respect. Indeed, "?exibility" is often used in a highly exploitative manner, in detriment to work-life balance, as a form of managerial control (Adler et al., 2007). However, when ?exibility is framed as a manner to improve employees' abilities to work according to their own self-needs while helping the organization, such policies become affirmative. Thus, it is not the policy itself, but its relation to a wider system of employee respect, that makes the practice affirmative of employee identity. In the area of diversity, Pless and Maak (2004) provide some direction in thinking about diversity topics while breaking free from views of diversity as "capital". Rather than thinking of diversity in compliance or performance terms (Reskin et al., 1999), they discuss how diversity can promote re?ection about the richness of a common humanity with organization, "reminding" individuals about the recognitive bases of their relations. Promoting diversity does this, for example, by allowing a free expression of cultural and individual differences, leading to a more democratic form of organizing, a form which they refer to as "human relations" rather than "human resources", a subtle difference that is key in the context of our discussion. They mention that such expression may be a source of profitability, by improving creativity, but it is important to note that this creativity depends on the noninstrumental promotion of human relations, even as these relations produce instrumentally positive outcomes. Pless and Maak's (2004) treatment comes closest, within the business ethics literature, to highlighting the importance of recognition in a multicultural workplace. Rather than promoting either cultural unity or difference per se, the recognition view suggests that promoting free expression both allows cultural difference to emerge and affirms the universal value of respect for individual personality, allowing culture to be affirmed without "tokenism" or focusing on stereotyped differences, which themselves would be a form of reification. Once again, the promotion of diversity as a practice can be used in a reifying way, in which employees are typified as tokens or seen superficially in terms of group membership, or in an identity-affirming way, whereby diversity is seen as a proxy for rich life experiences. The meaning of a diversity policy, similarly to ?exibility, will depend on how the policy is embedded in the wider organizational culture of affirmation, and thus it is not the policy itself which creates recognition, but its interpretation against the background of such a culture. Third, recognition theory has dealt with issues revolving around organization incentives and the need to provide incentives without promoting reification. For example, Heinich (2009) specifies conditions under which prizes in professional work can promote a sense of recognition, while Sayer (2007) discusses how rewards can function to reinforce employee dignity when they are temporally decoupled from action, so as not to give the sense that they are being used to control or "buy" good behavior. These findings fall in line with empirical work on intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999), which finds that intrinsic motivation can be (but is not necessarily) undermined by extrinsic rewards. According to Deci et al.'s meta-analytic results, extrinsic rewards work best when they do not compromise employee's sense of autonomy, results which fall into line with recognition theory. Linking this line of thought with recognition theory, Holgrewe (2001) stresses the importance of admiration and approval, rather than incentives per se, for producing recognition. While the difference between demonstrating material appreciation through reward and material recompense as an external incentive
Recognizing employees
245
CCM 20,2
246
may seem small, this theory suggests that it may make an important impact on workers' interpretations of their work role. In summary, human resources practices tend to promote recognition and "remembering" of social bonds when they emphasize autonomy, interpersonal value and belongingness over and above economic transaction. The socially integrative function of work (Honneth, 2009) may not be at odds with its economic function, and may improve it by promoting intrinsic motivation and creativity. Discussion and conclusion In this theoretical essay, I have used recognition theory to describe how management can promote a more humane view of employees, and avoid the problematic yet prevalent perspective described as reification. Recognition theory gives us criteria by which we can diagnose and combat reification at work. Like all perspectives, the recognition perspective has advantages and disadvantages, of which some final words should be said. One clear advantage of a recognition perspective on work is that it extends the importance of employee well-being beyond economic concerns, and into key issues of respect and dignity at work (Holgrewe, 2001). Thus, creating a humane workplace cannot be solely discussed in terms of providing adequate benefits and material working conditions, although such conditions are, of course, important. It means recognizing that, as all human institutions, contemporary organizations provide sites in which individuals build their identities, and create their life stories in a social context (Levinson et al., 1978). Undermining social recognition at work can result in undermining the "behavioral and existential unity" (Kallinikos, 2003, p. 600) of employees, an existential feature of work that deserves further attention. On the other hand, in an era of increasing job insecurity, decreasing worker protections, and increasing economic inequality (Kalleberg, 2009), it might seem utopian to devote so much attention to social issues of respect at the cost of concrete, material gains for workers. As Nancy Fraser (Fraser and Honneth, 2003) points out in her critique of recognition theory, issues of respect and self-esteem have implications for demands for economic and material equality, and recognition views par far to little attention to these less "philosophical" types of equality. Fraser's critique essentially accuses Honneth of conservatism because, as is made clear above, very little must change materially in the workplace for recognition to be promoted; in fact, it is already presupposed in the workplace and must simply be acknowledged (Honneth, 2008). Thus, the very advantage of recognition theory also generates an important critique, because recognition may not demand changes in the workplace that some deem necessary to worker well-being. With regards to diversity, recognition views have a natural affinity to attempts to humanize the diversity literature (Pless and Maak, 2004). Because recognition does not depend on a particular set of cultural beliefs, or even organizational goals, but rather is the pre-cognitive groundwork for social relationships, recognition creates a wide space for plural forms of life. Diverse worldviews are able to thrive in a recognition-rich environment because social respect is not tied to particularistic world-views, and allows for plural and even contradictory standpoints without compromising on the basic respectability of organizational members (e.g. 2008). This does not mean that, within organizational contexts, members do not attempt to create specific cultures with particularistic values and practices (Honneth, 1997), but rather that the organization remains open to alternative values and practices.
This very focus on diversity, however, has led to criticisms of recognition as being a weak or thin ethical standpoint, because it gives little council on how managers or organizational actors should behave in specific circumstances. Because recognition does not assume support for particular identities, positions, or behaviors, it cannot direct behaviors beyond affirming the basic dignity of persons (Geuss, 2008). I would argue however, that this simple step of affirmation is already a needed addition to contemporary organizational life, given that affirmation and social integration are not assured in contemporary organizations, but are increasingly precarious (Goodwin, 2005). Although recognition might not solve all organization problems, it is a good first step. In sum, recognition theory offers an important step in understanding the "human side" of management, correcting traditional views of human capital by arguing that organizations are, first and foremost, social systems inhabited by existentially engaged human beings. Empirical research should focus on why it has been so easy to "forget" that the workplace is a seat of social meaning, and how we can best remain conscious of our social bonds at work. Although such knowledge is not likely to take the form of "techniques" of recognition, it may promote habits of thought, small ways of reminding ourselves what we do everyday at work, and why it is important.
References Adler, P.S., Forbes, L.C. and Willmott, H. (2007), "Critical management studies", The Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 119-179. Anderson, N. (2005), "Relationships between practice and research in personnel selection: does the left hand know what the right is doing?", in Evers, A., Anderson, N. and Vosquijl, O. (Eds), The Blackwell Handbook of Personnel Selection, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 1-24. Avey, J.B., Luthans, F., Smith, R.M. and Palmer, N.F. (2010), "Impact of positive psychological capital on employee well-being over time", Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 17-28. Ball, K. (2005), "Organization, surveillance and the body: towards a politics of resistance", Organization, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 89-108. Berger, P. and Pullberg, S. (1966), "Reification and the sociological critique of consciousness", New Left Review, Vol. 35, pp. 56-71. Bernstein, J. (2006), All Together Now: Common Sense for a New Economy, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA. Borman, D.A. (2009), "Labour, exchange and recognition: Marx contra Honneth", Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 35 No. 8, pp. 935-959. Butler, J. (2008), "Taking another's view: ambivalent implications", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 97-119. Carlon, D.M., Downs, A.A. and Wert-Gray, S. (2006), "Statistics as fetishes: the case of financial performance measures and executive compensation", Organizational Research Methods, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 475-790. Christopherson, S. (2008), "Beyond the self-expressive creative worker: an industry perspective on entertainment media", Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 25 Nos 7/8, pp. 73-95. Deci, E.L., Koestner, R. and Ryan, R.M. (1999), "The undermining effect is a reality after all extrinsic rewards, task interest, and self-determination: reply to Eisenberger, Pierce, and Cameron (1999) and Lepper, Henderlong, and Gingras (1999)", Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 125 No. 6, pp. 692-700.
Recognizing employees
247
CCM 20,2
248
Delios, A. (2010), "How can organizations be competitive but dare to care?", The Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 25-37. Deranty, J.P. (2008), "Work and the precarisation of existence", European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, pp. 443-463. Dutton, J.E., Worline, M.C. and Frost, P.J. (2006), "Explaining compassion organizing", Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 51, pp. 59-96. Eby, L.T., Maher, C.P. and Buts, M.M. (2010), "The intersection of work and family life: the role of affect", Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 61, pp. 599-622. Elangovan, A.R., Pinder, C.C. and McLean, M. (2010), "Callings and organizational behavior", Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 76 No. 3, pp. 428-440. Foss, N.J. (2008), "Human capital and transaction cost economics", SMG Working Paper No. 2, Copenhagen Business School Working Paper Series. Fraser, N. and Honneth, A. (2003), Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-philosophical Exchange, Verso, London. Frost, P.J. (2003), Toxic Emotions at Work: How Compassionate Managers Handle Pain and Con?ict, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Gellner, E. (1996), Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals, Penguin, London. Geuss, R. (2008), "Philosophical anthropology and social criticism", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 120-130. Gilligan, C. (1982), In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Gonzalez, J.A. and DeNisi, A.S. (2009), "Cross-level effects of demography and diversity climate on organizational attachment and firm effectiveness", Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 30, pp. 21-40. Goodwin, N. (2005), "The social impact of multinational corporations: an outline of the issues, with a focus on workers", in Mazlish, B. and Chandler, A. (Eds), Mapping the Multinational Corporations: The New Global Leviathans in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Greenwood, M.R. (2002), "Ethics and HRM: a review and conceptual analysis", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 36, pp. 261-278. Guion, R.M. (1998), Assessment, Measurement, and Prediction for Personnel Decisions, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Gutmann, A. (1994), "Preface", in Gutmann, A. (Ed.), Multiculturalism: Exploring the Politics of Recognition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. ix-xii. Habermas, J. (1981), The Theory of Communicative Action, Beacon Press, London. Heinich, N. (2009), "The sociology of vocational prizes: recognition as esteem", Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 85-107. Hodson, R. and Roscigno, V. (2004), "Organizational success and worker dignity: complementary or contradictory?", American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 110, pp. 672-708. Holgrewe, U. (2001), "Recognition, intersubjectivity and service work: labour con?icts i n call centres", The German Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 37-54. Honneth, A. (1995a), The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Con?icts, Polity Press, Cambridge. Honneth, A. (1995b), "Work and instrumental action: on the normative basis of critical theory", in Wright, C.W. (Ed.), The Fragmented World of the Social, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, pp. 1549.
Honneth, A. (1997), "Recognition and moral obligation", Social Research, Vol. 64 No. 1, pp. 30-32. Honneth, A. (2008), "Reification and recognition: a new look at an old idea", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 17-96. Honneth, A. (2009), "Work and recognition: a redefinition", paper presentation at Work and Recognition: An International Conference, Macquerie University. Honneth, A. and Fraser, N. (Eds) (2003), Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-philosophical Profile, Verso, New York, NY. Honneth, A. and Margalit, A. (2001), "Recognition", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 75, pp. 111-139. Islam, G. and Zyphur, M.J. (2008), "Concepts and directions in critical industrial/organizational psychology", in Fox, D., Prilleltensky, I. and Austin, S. (Eds), Critical Psychology, Sage, London, pp. 110-135. Jay, M. (2008), "Introduction", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 3-16. Judge, T.A., Heller, D. and Mount, M.K. (2002), "Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: a meta-analysis", Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87 No. 3, pp. 530-541. Kahungunu, N., Erakovic, L., Puhi, N. and Pio, E. (2010), "Relational well-being and wealth: Maori business and an ethic of care", Academy of Management Proceedings. Kalleberg, A.L. (2009), "Precarious work, insecure workers: employment relations in transition", American Sociological Review, Vol. 74, pp. 1-22. Kallinikos, J. (2003), "Work, human agency and organizational forms: an anatomy of fragmentation", Organization Studies, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 595-618. Konzelmann, S., Conway, N., Trenberth, L. and Wilkinson, F. (2006), "Corporate governance and human resource management", British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 44 No. 3, pp. 541-567. Lamont, M. (2000), The Dignity of Working Men, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Lear, J. (2008), "The slippery middle", in Jay, M. (Ed.), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 131-146. Levinson, D.J., Darrow, C.N., Klein, E.B., Levinson, M.H. and McKee, B. (1978), Seasons of a Man's Life, Knopf, New York, NY. Liedtka, J. (1999), "Linking competitive advantage with communities of practice", Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 8, pp. 5-16. Loehlin, J.C. (1992), Genes and Environment in Personality Development, Sage, Newbury Park, CA. Lukacs, G. (1971), History and Class Consciousness, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (translated by Livingstone, R.). McAllister, D.J. and Bigley, G.A. (2002), "Work context and the definition of self: how organizational care in?uences organization-based self-esteem", Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 45 No. 5, pp. 894-904. McCrae, R.R. and John, O.P. (1992), "An introduction to the five-factor model and its applications", Journal of Personality, Vol. 60, pp. 175-215. Pless, N.M. and Maak, T. (2004), "Building an inclusive diversity culture: principles, processes and practice", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 54, pp. 129-147. Prasad, A., Prasad, P. and Mir, R. (2011), "One mirror in another': managing diversity and the discourse of fashion", Human Relations, January 31, pp. 1-22. Reskin, B.F., McBrier, D.B. and Kmec, J.A. (1999), "The determinants and consequences of workplace sex and race composition", Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 25, pp. 335-361.
Recognizing employees
249
CCM 20,2
Rigby, M. and O'Brien-Smith, F. (2010), "Trade union interventions in work-life balance", Work, Employment & Society, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 203-220. Sayer, A. (2007), "Dignity at work: broadening the agenda", Organization, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 565-581. Sennett, R. (2006), The Culture of the New Capitalism, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Sewell, G. and Barker, J.R. (2006), "Coercion versus care: using irony to make sense of organizational surveillance", Academy of Management Review, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 934-961. Simon, H.A. (1951), "A formal theory of the employment relationship", in Simon, H. (Ed.), Models of Bounded Rationality, MIT Press, Cambridge. Townley, B. (1993), "Foucault, power/knowledge, and its relevance for human resource management", The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18, pp. 518-545. van Marrewijk, M. and Timmers, J. (2003), "Human capital management: new possibilities in people management", Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 44, pp. 171-184. van Prooijen, J.W. (2009), "Procedural justice as autonomy regulation", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 96 No. 6, pp. 1166-1180. Weiss, H.M. and Kurek, K.E. (2003), "Dispositional in?uences on affective experiences at work", in Barrick, M.R. and Ryan, A.M. (Eds), Reconsidering the Role of Personality in Organizations, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 121-149. Whyte, M. (2003), Marxism and Media Studies Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends, Pluto Press, London. Winstanley, D. and Woodall, J. (2000), "The ethical dimensions of human resource management", Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 5-20. Zanoni, P., Janssens, M., Beauchop, Y. and Nkomo, S. (2010), "Unpacking diversity, grasping inequality: rethinking difference through critical perspectives", Organization, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 9-29. Further reading Cascio, W.F. (2000), Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life and Profits, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Cavell, S. (1976), Knowing and Acknowledging,' in Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 238-266. Honneth, A. (2003), "Redistribution as recognition: a response to Nancy Fraser", Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-philosophical Profile, Verso, New York, NY, pp. 110-197 (translated by Golb, J. and Ingram, J.). About the author Gazi Islam is Associate Professor of Business Administration at Grenoble Ecole de Management and Insper. He completed his PhD in Organizational Behavior at Tulane University, where his research focused on organizational identity, voice, and power relations. His current research interests include the organizational antecedents and consequences of identity, and the relations between identity, group dynamics and the production of group and organizational cultures. In addition, he attempts to link identity and organizational culture to wider issues of national culture, ideology, and civil society. Gazi Islam can be contacted at: [email protected]
250
doc_865335047.docx