The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

Abstract

This paper interrogates the relation between reciprocity and ethics as it concerns participation in the world of work and organizations. Tracing discussions of business and organizational ethics that concern themselves, respectively, with the ethics of self-interest, the ethics of reciprocity, and the ethics of generosity, we explore the possibility of ethical relations with those who are seen as radically different, and who are divested of anything worth exchanging. To address this we provide a reading of Franz Kafka's famous novella The Metamorphosis and relate to it as a means to extend our understanding of business and organizational ethics. This story, we demonstrate, yields insight into the unbearable demands of ethics as they relate to reciprocity and generosity. On this basis, we draw conclusions concerning the mutually constitutive ethical limitations of reciprocity and generosity as ethical touchstones for organizational life while simultaneously accepting the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of exceeding those limits. In such a condition, we argue, ethics is not best served by adopting idealistic or moralizing positions regarding generosity but rather by working in the indissoluble tensions between self and other.

Kafka on gender, organization and technology: The role of ‘bureaucratic eros’ in administering change

“…With his focus on the administrative workings of ‘bureaucratic eros’, Kafka's portrait of bureaucracy radically differs from Max Weber's well‐known ideal types of bureaucracy and rationalization (Ossewaarde, ). There are many understandings that Kafka and Weber share (Beck Jørgensen, ; Huber & Munro, ; Munro & Huber, ; Rhodes & Westwood, ; Warner, ). Kafka shares with Weber a deep cultural and technological pessimism (Warner, , p. 1020) .…”

“…He wakes up one morning from a nightmare and finds himself changed into a monstrous cockroach. Being afraid of his dominant boss, his only concern is to get to work (Rhodes & Westwood, ; Robertson, , p. 80; Warner, ). His consciousness of work and organization is gendered (cf.…”

“…The use of novels to study organizational phenomena is ‘a well‐established methodological tradition’ (Rhodes & Westwood, , p. 238). In the 1950s, William H. Whyte investigated organizations in contemporary fiction, to illustrate his thesis of the rise of the ‘organization man’ — a bureaucrat who takes the vows of organizational life, who is mastered and dwarfed by his worship of organization (Whyte, , p. 237).…”

“…Patriotta (, p. 568) claims that ‘novels provide a useful template for ontological inquiry into organizations’. Rhodes and Westwood (, p. 236) stress that novels can be used as ‘a means to garner insight into the realities of organizational life’, so that we can ‘better theorize organizations and organizing’. Vachhani () stresses that studies of the novel make us more sensitive to affective connections, experiences and relations in studies of work and organization.…”

Virtual Special Issue on Humanities and Business Ethics

“…Literature Rhodes and Westwood's (2016) ''The limits of generosity: lessons on ethics, economy, and reciprocity in Kafka's The Metamorphosis'' shows how humanitiesinspired examination of our ethical tendencies can complement burgeoning scholarship on behavioral ethics inspired by the social sciences. Surely, Kafka's famous, imaginary insect is an even more compelling case study in difference than reality could produce.…”