The Ideology of Silence at the Harvard Business School: Structuring Faculty’s Teaching Tasks for Moral Relativism
The Structuring of Work in Organizations
ISBN: 978-1-78635-436-5, eISBN: 978-1-78635-435-8
Publication date: 17 August 2016
Abstract
Business schools offer a unique window into the making of corporate morals since they bring together future executives at formative moments in their professional lives. This paper relies on an analysis of faculty’s teaching tasks at the Harvard Business School to better understand the making of corporate morals. More specifically, it builds on a coding of teaching notes used by faculty members to highlight the importance of silence in promoting a form of moral relativism. This moral relativism constitutes, I argue, a powerful ideology – one that primes business leaders not to vilify any moral stand. In such a context, almost anything can be labeled “moral” and few behaviors can be deemed “immoral.”
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to Gabriel Abend, Lisa Cohen, Siobhan O’Mahony, Kelley Packalen, and Victor Seidel for their comments on previous drafts of this paper.
Citation
Anteby, M. (2016), "The Ideology of Silence at the Harvard Business School: Structuring Faculty’s Teaching Tasks for Moral Relativism", The Structuring of Work in Organizations (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 47), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 103-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20160000047015
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited