Call for Papers—Special Issue on Animals and Organizations

Deadline 31 October 2014

Guest Editors:

Julie Labatut, INRA, France

Iain Munro, Newcastle University, England

John Desmond, University of St Andrews, Scotland

René ten Bos, Radboud University, The Netherlands

In recent decades European meat consumers have confronted food scandals that have brought into sharp relief the dark side of their relations with animals. From the ‘Mad cow’ disease outbreak in 1989 to ‘Horsegate’ in 2013, industrial animal welfare and trading systems have been exposed and provoked public questioning of the treatment of animals. Alongside such scandals are wider challenges regarding the capture, treatment and slaughter of wild animals, the use of animals in human sport, laboratory testing and abuse of companion and domesticated animals.

Much of the critical academic study of our organized relations with animals is found in sociology and geography, and particularly science studies (Callon, 1986; Haraway, 2003). Despite the promise that such work holds for addressing questions of power, accountability, ideology and ethics, organization studies has paid scant attention to this work. This special issue is a response to this gap and we invite works that describe, explain and theorize the problematic of ‘organizing animals’.

There are many possible routes into such work. One way would be to address the assumptions and character of contemporary management practices, organizational processes and boundaries as they relate to production, companion and wild animals. In relation to production animals, recent research suggests that some animals are active participants in organizational practices (Budiansky, 1999). Ethnographies of cows, for example, suggests that they actively participate in farm work (Porcher and Schmitt, 2010).

Another route would be to investigate the ethical relationship between organizations and the natural environment through animal-human relations rather than broader ecological studies. For example to what extent do organizations in post-industrial capitalism reflect a disavowal of the ‘animal other,’ or in contrast, develop alternative relations with animals? While animal-human relations are often associated with violence and domination it may be a mistake to consider this as purely one-directional. What alternatives are possible? John Desmond (2010) argues, drawing upon Derrida’s critique of the disavowal of the ‘animal other’, for an ethics of the animal’s point of view. Derrida proposes an ‘animalaise’ in which we are not in a relationship of sympathy with the animal other, but are ‘naked’ in relation to this other.

Work on ‘organizing animals’ could draw from a diverse range of theoretical frameworks including theories such as Actor Network Theory (Böhm et al., 2008; Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005) social movement analysis (Böhm et al., 2008; Davis et al., 2005), business ethics (Desmond, 2010; Jones et al., 2005), post-humanist perspectives (Haraway, 2003), and critical management studies more generally (Burrell, 1997; Clegg et al., 2006).

Possible topics and questions

Expected contributions might include theoretical and empirical studies of a broad set of topics such as the following:

• Business ethics and animal exploitation: for example, the use of animals in the cosmetics and medical industries, the organization of animals in zoos, circuses and wildlife parks. Animal welfare is an important topic in academic literature, but it has not been taken up by organizational scholars or business ethicists to produce conceptual or theoretical advances with this topic (Williams, 2008).

• Eating animals: the organization of animals in restaurants, scandals in the food industry (e.g. BSE, Foot and Mouth, Salmonella, the use of horse meat or other inappropriate food stuffs).

• Animals at work: how animals involved in work practices allow for understanding new forms of professional identities? (Bunderson and Thompson, 2009). How these new companions reflect new forms of management as they are introduced in firms?

• Animals and social movement organizations (e.g. Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace). Many animal rights SMOs are closely connected with other forms of activism and social movement organizations. A founding member of the RSPCA in Britain was William Wilberforce, also a key activist in the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This issue calls for further investigation of the links between the animal rights movement and other emancipatory SMOs.

• Animals in organizational discourse: the role of animal metaphors and analogies in management discourse. This includes not only colloquial speech and motivational texts (‘Who Moved My Cheese?’), but also social critique and debates about alternative forms of organization (‘The Fable of the Bees’, ‘Animal Farm’). We also think here of management parodies such as the role of dogs, cats and rats in the Dilbert comics.

• Anthropomorphism and organization: critically examining the pervasive tendency to classify others based on a hierarchy that places the human at its centre. Examining work places where workers are not regarded as being fully human. Questioning Cartesian assumptions by which some animals are elevated to the status of human and some humans demoted to the status of animals. Is it better to be treated as a pet or as meat is explored in relation to treatment of women, the poor, the disabled and aged (Case, 2005).

• Human animals and theriomorphism: Given humans are animals, can ethology (study of animal behaviour) contribute towards a better understanding of human organization? Is human organization a realm of domestication? Should one take the treatment of the animal as a model for that of humans; the slaughterhouse as a model for the death camps and the Gulag (Burrell, 1997). What are the implications of rapid technological development for the weak animal self (Stiegler, 1998)?