ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors describe the humanistic promise and the transformative, and perhaps, subversive, potential of contemporary ‘caring management’ projects and address their shortcomings, drawing on their study of managers’ experiments in promoting workers’ well-being, recognition and participation. They consider the potentialities of ‘caring management’ to foster equal participation to decision-making, interpersonal recognition or to allow for the expression of emotions and vulnerability in the work-place; and also address the risks of alienation and reification associated with such managerial humanism. The authors highlight the pre-conditions of the enactment of “caring management” in business organizations. They discuss the problematic tendency of ‘caring management’ to de-politicize collective experience and to reproduce relations of domination. The notion of an ethics of care, which puts relationships and the consideration of the diversity of social situations at the heart of its ethics, stems from the feminist works of authors such as C. Gilligan and N. Noddings.
