ABSTRACT
The spread of the HIV epidemic has posed numerous problems for employing organizations. Even though the number of infected employees and the consequent loss of human resources in the western industrial countries has not been as great as was anticipated early in the epidemic, the HIV virus has left its imprint on many aspects of organizational practice. On the one hand, there are the lives that have been disrupted and damaged by prejudicial and discriminatory practices but, on the other hand, there have also been attempts to improve, within the sphere of the workplace, the understanding of difference and to develop a more just and tolerant practice. In effect, the epidemic has served to expose many of the principles of organization that are normally taken as given and, in particular, it has revealed operations of power and control that are frequently submerged in the ebb and flow of ‘ordinary organizational life’. Thus, the epidemic has threatened a potential disruption of the key organizing principle of rationality and what has been detailed in the preceding chapters can be read as attempts by actors, in various capacities and through various institutions, to achieve either a reorganization or a protection of these established principles.
