Resources: Main Page | Research Methods (A) | Major Theories (B) | Issues and Contemporary Topics (C) | Professional Community (D)
Aisle B (Major Theories): Classical Theories (BA) | Org. Behavior – Individual (BB1) | Org. Behavior – Groups & Teams (BB2) | Org. Behavior – Systems & Culture (BB3) | Contingency Theories (BC) | Org. Design (BD) | Org. Development & Change (BG) | Human Relations Theories (BH) | Institution Theories (BI) | Leadership Theories (BL) | Modern Management Perspectives (BM) | Postmodern & Critical Theories (BQ) | Sociology & Anthropology (BS)
Rack BH (Human Dimension): Care & Care Ethics (BH.C) | Gender and Feminism (BH.G) | Human Relations School | Org. Culture | Org. Climate | Org. Identity
Jump to: Importance | Foundational Works | Research Areas | Curated List of Articles | TAOP Resources | References
“Care” and care ethics regard the study of ways and means of responsibly tending to people’s needs in organizational settings. Resources in this curated list include studies on the showing of concern as an organizational competence, the ethics of care, and how showing care and concern can become entrapping and stressful.
Importance of Research on Care in Organization Studies
The study of care in organizations emerged from feminist theory (see Gender and Feminism) and moral philosophy (see Rack BS – Sociology) but has developed into a distinct area of organizational research that examines how organizations can responsibly attend to human needs and vulnerabilities. In organizational studies, care ethics developed as scholars began examining how organizations could be structured around principles of care rather than just efficiency or profit.
The field examines several aspects of organizational care. It looks at how organizations can create structures and practices that support care work. This includes studying how healthcare organizations, educational institutions, and social service agencies organize their work to provide effective care while also supporting care workers. It also examines how organizations can foster caring relationships among its members. This goes beyond formal care work to look at how organizational cultures and practices can encourage or discourage people from caring for each other’s well-being. Finally, it investigates how organizations can responsibly care for various stakeholders – not just employees and customers, but also communities and the environment.
If one were to summarize the key components of care and care ethics, one might find the following principles useful:
- Relationality. Care ethics sees people as fundamentally interconnected rather than independent. This challenges organizational theories that assume autonomous individual actors.
- Contextuality. Care decisions must consider specific situations rather than applying universal rules. This affects how organizations structure decision-making processes.
- Responsibility. Care ethics emphasizes ongoing responsibility for others’ welfare rather than just following rules or meeting minimal obligations.
- Attentiveness. Organizations must develop ways to notice and respond to needs, including needs that might not be explicitly expressed.
- Competence. Care requires both technical skill and emotional capability. Organizations must develop both aspects to provide effective care.
Contemporary scholars continue developing these theoretical foundations to address new challenges. For instance, they’re examining how care ethics can help us understand artificial intelligence in care work, or how organizations can scale up care while maintaining its essential relational quality. Questions that researchers and practitioners might be asking include these. How can organizations balance care responsibilities with other organizational demands? What structures and practices best support care work in different contexts? How can organizations prevent care worker burnout while maintaining high-quality care? How does technology affect care relationships and practices in organizations? How can organizations scale up care practices without losing the essential human element of care?
Some Foundational Works on the Study of Care in Organization Studies
The intellectual foundations of care ethics in organizations trace back to 1980s. While these initial works weren’t specifically focused on organizations, they established care as a fundamental ethical framework that challenged traditional approaches to moral reasoning. They showed that care involves not just actions but also a particular way of seeing relationships and responsibilities. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list but it provides a sense of where this area of research originated and grew.
Nel Noddings, Caring: A feminist approach to ethics and moral education. This 1984 book is one of many contributions Noddings gave to feminist thought but this may be one of her best-known works overall. She argued that care is “basic in human life that all people want to be cared for” (Smith, 2024) but focused on education, mostly in the home. She presented constructs of “caring-about” and “caring-for” that constitutes her model of care ethics, and that caring-about is less understood and unappreciated. People learn to cared-about issues or concerns by first experiencing being cared-for, then to care about those in proximity, and then ultimate to that which there is no direct contact.
Joan Tronto, Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. This 1993 book explained how care could be understood as both a practice and a political concept in a non-gendered sense. She demonstrated that members of unprivileged groups, especially lower classes and minorities, do a disproportionate amount of care work, claiming that this has led to a degradation of care as legitimate activity which in turn helps keep the privileged in power. Until the foundational conceptions of care and care ethics are challenged, this problem will likely perpetuate.
Contemporary Areas of Research
This is not intended as a representative list of some contemporary areas of interest for scholars. There is probably no area of organizational studies that does not touch on care and care ethics in some way as there is a close relationship (at least conceptually) with matters of organizational climate.
Leadership and care ethics. The role of leadership in fostering care-centered organizations represents another important research direction. Scholars are studying how leaders can create cultures that support care work and how they can balance care responsibilities with other organizational demands. Ethical leaders are seen as pivotal in fostering an environment where care is prioritized, and ethical dilemmas are addressed collaboratively (Falkenström et al., 2016). However, the pressure to maintain high standards of care can lead to stress for leaders as well, particularly when they are faced with difficult decisions regarding resource allocation and patient care (Rego et al., 2015). This duality of care as both a strength and a source of stress underscores the complexity of implementing care ethics within organizational frameworks.
The costs of emotional labor. Scholars are exploring how showing care and concern can lead to entrapment and stress. Much of this is being studied among healthcare professionals (not unlike the work of Isabel Mendies, see Episode 88). The emotional labor involved in consistently demonstrating care can result in moral distress, particularly when organizational constraints limit the ability to provide the desired level of care (Ventovaara et al., 2021). For instance, studies have shown that healthcare workers often experience ethical conflicts when their caring instincts clash with institutional policies or resource limitations, leading to feelings of frustration and helplessness (Gaudine et al., 2011). This suggests that organizations should create supportive environments that not only encourage care but also address the potential psychological burdens associated with it (Höglund & Falkenström, 2018).
Support for care workers. Researchers are also examining how organizations can better support care workers. This includes studying how to prevent burnout, provide adequate resources, and create organizational structures that value and reward care work. One stream is promoting the development of clinical ethics support services (CESS) as a practical response to the challenges posed by ethical dilemmas in healthcare settings. These services aim to provide guidance and support to healthcare professionals facing difficult ethical decisions, thereby alleviating some of the stress associated with moral conflicts (Danis et al., 2021; Doran et al., 2016). Research indicates that effective CESS can enhance the ethical climate within organizations, promoting a culture of open dialogue and ethical reflection that benefits both staff and patients (Hoon et al., 2023).
Showing concern as an organizational competence. Some scholars seek to understand the integration of the ethics of care into organizational practices, which emphasizes empathy, person-centered care, and moral resilience among healthcare professionals. This approach could improve the quality of care provided while supporting healthcare workers in navigating ethical dilemmas they encounter in their daily practices (Selvakumar & Kenny, 2021). The ethics of care is increasingly recognized as a useful component of organizational competence, fostering a culture that prioritizes the well-being of both patients and staff (Ramvi et al., 2023).
Implications for practice. These research directions have helped organizations and their leaders recognize the impacts of care work within their organizations. Among them are: (1) the potential needs to redesign organizational structures and processes to support care relationships, (2) develop metrics that better capture the quality of care rather than just quantity or efficiency, (3) create training programs to help workers develop both technical and emotional care capabilities, (4) establish policies that protect both care workers and care receivers, and (5) build leadership capacity for fostering care-centered organizations. Of course, these aims may conflict with pressures that organizations may face to provide care to larger populations with increasingly constrained resources. Researcher have therefore been interested to what extent technologies provide solutions.
Curated List of Resources from Leading Publications
The following list of resources combines a list curated by the Management Learning journal (with shout outs to Cara Reed from ML and our own Jarryd Daymond).
Gherardi, S., and Rodeschini, G. (2016). Caring as a collective knowledgeable doing: About concern and being concerned. Management Learning, 47(3), 266-284.
Care is not an innate human capacity; rather, it is an organizational competence, a situated knowing that a group of professionals enact while attending to their everyday tasks.
The authors propose a post-humanist practice approach to reading care as a matter of concern for those producing care and for society at large. Care is framed as a collective knowledgeable ‘doing’, it is not an object or a quality that is added to work; rather, it is ‘caring’, an ongoing sociomaterial accomplishment.
Through an ethnography in a nursing home for the elderly, Gherardi and Rodeschini describe: (a) how caring was collectively performed in keeping a common orientation, (b) how caring was inscribed in a texture of practices, and (c) how a technological change in nutrition practice mobilized ethics as practice in situated decision-making. Since natural nutrition is being increasingly replaced by artificial feeding, they describe how the collective and organizational ethic of care with tube feeding is talked about in practice, in a front-stage situation and in the back-stage one. In this process, the duality of care as a matter of concern and as the process of being concerned by caring becomes visible.
Gabriel, Y. (2009). Reconciling an Ethic of Care with Critical Management Pedagogy. Management Learning, 40(4), 379-385.
The ethic of criticism has stood at the heart of western pedagogy for centuries. It has been the basis of science, morality and art as well as for the building of social and political institutions.
The author argues that this ethic of criticism is sometimes at odds with the ethic of care, one that commits the carer to look after and take responsibility for the well-being of the cared-for. This ethic of care is further undermined by contemporary consumerism and its inroads into the fields of education and learning. The resulting perception of management as a field of study for young people is entirely instrumental— an effective stepping stone to launch a career, but one devoid of either intrinsic interest or social value.
The author makes a plea for an enduring reconciliation of an ethic of care with an ethic of criticism as the basis for management education that is both interesting and socially useful.
Heath, T., O’Malley, L., & Tynan, C. (2019). Imagining a different voice: A critical and caring approach to management education. Management Learning, 50(4), 427-448.
This article discusses the use of the moral philosophy known as the ethics of care to critically engage management students in ways that favour the development and enactment of a critical and responsible mentality towards business. We use this ethics to ground critical thinking in a moral framework in order to create a conversation in which new possibilities for sustainable and ethical practices might be discovered. Specifically, we identify four teaching practices that allow students to experience being both ‘cared for’ and ‘one-caring’ and explore how this creates a deeper and more critical moral engagement with those affected by businesses. We further propose a framework for applying a care-ethical approach for teaching and learning.
Smith, S., & Kempster, S. (2019). In whose interest? Exploring care ethics within transformative learning. Management Learning, 50(3), 302-318.
This article brings attention to a seemingly pervasive and underlying assumption in critical management education that transformative learning is a good thing. We explore this assumption through a series of narratives examining the ethics of educators overtly seeking to enable transformative learning with owner-managers in order to impact their businesses. The focus on owner-managers is of significance in terms of transformative learning because of the centrality of the owner-manager to the delicate ecosystem, that is, the small and medium business. The article makes salient relational care in critical management education and the need for educators to engage in a moral dialogue regarding the relational impact of transformative learning in pedagogic designs. Such dialogue necessitates addressing in whose interest is transformative learning being sought, along with the orientation and framing of such learning.
Carlsen, A., & Sandelands, L. (2015). First passion: Wonder in organizational inquiry. Management Learning, 46(4), 373-390.
Wonder is the first passion in all inquiry and our reason to know, yet a phenomenon that is largely neglected in organizational research. Taking a relational and process approach, we develop a theory for the role of wonder in organizational inquiry. We propose that wonder in inquiry unfolds as a twofold movement between receptive appreciation and self-transcendent search, and we chart wonder’s course in four stages or “moments” of arousal, expansion, immersion, and explanation. Examples from generative experiences in qualitative research, hydrocarbon exploration, and feature journalism are used to illustrate and qualify this theory. At last, we emphasize main implications for organization studies in the importance of wondering together, of upholding the mysteries of wonder, and of keeping wonder alive in our conversations.
Related Episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast
119: Management & the Worker — Roethlisberger & Dickson
112: Hierarchies & Promotion – The “Peter Principle”
108: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life – Goffman
105: Manifest & Latent Roles — Alvin Gouldner
101: The Motivation to Work — Frederick Herzberg
99: Gendering in Organizations — Joan Acker
94: Situated Learning – Lave & Wenger
88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies
78: Patterns of Bureaucracy — Alvin Gouldner
71: Managerial Behavior — Melville Dalton
66: Workplace Isolation – Forester
59: Theory X and Y – Douglas McGregor
54: Measuring Organizational Cultures – Hofstede
53: Taylorism in Motion — Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times
49: Engineered Culture and Normative Control – Gideon Kunda
47: Organizational Identity — Albert & Whetten
45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred Alford
Milton Hershey and an Organization’s Commitment to its Members
38: Socialization and Occupational Communities – Van Maanen
35: The Managed Heart – Arlie Hochschild
34: Sociotechnical Systems – Trist and Bamforth
Reflections on Wieliczka
33: Foreman – Master and Victim of Doubletalk
32: Organizational Stupidity with Mats Alvesson and Bjorn Erik Mork LIVE
Related Resource Pages
Rack BA — Classic Organization and Management Theory
Rack BB1 – Organizational Behavior (Micro-Individual)
Rack BB2 — Organizational Behavior (Meso-Groups and Teams)
Rack BB3 — Organizational Behavior (Macro-Org/System)
Rack BC — Contingency Theory
Rack BD — Organizational Design
Rack BG — Organizational Development and Change
Rack BH – Human Dimension – Culture, Climate, Identity
Rack BI — Institution Theory
Rack BL — Leadership Theories
Rack BM – Modern Management Theories
Rack BQ — Postmodern and Critical Theories
Rack BS — Sociology & Anthropology
References
Anthropic. (2024). What is the subfield of scholarship into care and the study of ways and means of responsibly tending to people’s needs in organization settings; What are the foundational theories and theoretical approaches in the scholarship of care and care ethics; Please elaborate more on the contemporary research areas. What are scholars most interested in and what are the implications for practice. Claude (March 2024 version) [Large Language Model].
Carlsen, A., & Sandelands, L. (2015). First passion: Wonder in organizational inquiry. Management Learning, 46(4), 373-390.
Danis, M., Fox, E., Tarzian, A., & Duke, C. (2021). Health care ethics programs in U.S. hospitals: Results from a national survey. BMC Medical Ethics, 22(107). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00673-9
Doran, E., Kerridge, I., Jordens, C., & Newson, A. J. (2016). Clinical ethics support in contemporary health care. The Oxford handbook of health care management, 164-187.
Falkenström, E., Ohlsson, J., & Höglund, A. (2016). Developing ethical competence in healthcare management. Journal of Workplace Learning, 28(1), 17-32. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl-04-2015-0033
Gabriel, Y. (2009). Reconciling an ethic of care with critical management pedagogy. Management Learning, 40(4), 379-385.
Gaudine, A., LeFort, S., Lamb, M., & Thorne, L. (2011). Ethical conflicts with hospitals: the perspective of nurses and physicians. Nursing Ethics, 18(6), 756-766. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733011401121
Gherardi, S., and Rodeschini, G. (2016). Caring as a collective knowledgeable doing: About concern and being concerned. Management Learning, 47(3), 266-284.
Heath, T., O’Malley, L., & Tynan, C. (2019). Imagining a different voice: A critical and caring approach to management education. Management Learning, 50(4), 427-448.
Höglund, A. & Falkenström, E. (2018). The status of ethics in Swedish health care management: A qualitative study. BMC Health Services Research, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3436-8
Hoon, E., Edwards, J., Harvey, G., Eliott, J., Merlin, T., Carter, D., … & O’Callaghan, G. (2023). Establishing a clinical ethics support service: lessons from the first 18 months of a new Australian service–a case study. BMC Medical Ethics, 24(1), 62.
Ramvi, E., Hellstrand, I., Jensen, I., Gripsrud, B., & Gjerstad, B. (2023). Ethics of care in technology‐mediated healthcare practices: a scoping review. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 37(4), 1123-1135. https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.13186
Rego, A., Araújo, B., & Serrão, D. (2015). The impact of hospital organization in the ethical act of hospital management. Journal of Hospital Administration, 4(6), 14. https://doi.org/10.5430/jha.v4n6p14
Scite. (2024). What are contemporary areas of research studies on the showing of concern as an organizational competence, the ethics of care, and how showing care and concern can become entrapping and stressful. Scite (April 2024 version) [Large Language Model].
Selvakumar, S. and Kenny, B. (2021). Ethics of care and moral resilience in health care practice: a scoping review. Clinical Ethics, 18(1), 88-96. https://doi.org/10.1177/14777509211061845
Smith, M. K. (2024), Nel Noddings, the ethics of care and education. infed.org. https://infed.org/mobi/nel-noddings-the-ethics-of-care-and-education/.
Smith, S., & Kempster, S. (2019). In whose interest? Exploring care ethics within transformative learning. Management Learning, 50(3), 302-318.
Ventovaara, P., Sandeberg, M., Räsänen, J., & Pergert, P. (2021). Ethical climate and moral distress in paediatric oncology nursing. Nursing Ethics, 28(6), 1061-1072. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733021994169
The inclusion of external links is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute endorsement by TAOP or any of its members.
Jump to: Importance | Foundational Works | Research Areas | Curated List of Articles | TAOP Resources | References
Rack BH (Human Dimension): Care & Care Ethics (BH.C) | Gender and Feminism (BH.G) | Human Relations School | Org. Culture | Org. Climate | Org. Identity
Aisle B (Major Theories): Classical Theories (BA) | Org. Behavior – Individual (BB1) | Org. Behavior – Groups & Teams (BB2) | Org. Behavior – Systems & Culture (BB3) | Contingency Theories (BC) | Org. Design (BD) | Org. Development & Change (BG) | Human Relations Theories (BH) | Institution Theories (BI) | Leadership Theories (BL) | Modern Management Perspectives (BM) | Postmodern & Critical Theories (BQ) | Sociology & Anthropology (BS)
Resources: Main Page | Research Methods (A) | Major Theories (B) | Issues and Contemporary Topics (C) | Professional Community (D)