Tending to the Particular : Navigating Tensions Around Principles of Alternativity Through an Ethics of Care
Friedrich, Jonas and Lüthy, Christina LU
(2025)
In Journal of Management Studies
- Abstract
Alternative organizations must continuously address conflicts that emerge regarding diverging prioritizations and interpretations of autonomy, solidarity, and responsibility. We explore how tensions around alternative moral principles can be navigated through relational processes that attune to others' needs, emotions, and concerns. Building on an organizational ethnography of a cooperative campaign agency, we mobilize ethics of care as a research lens to trace and analyse how relational activities that are infused by an ethical attention to particular others assist the organization in dealing with these tensions. Our findings show that three relational activities – inquiring, deliberating, and responding – constitute a “relational... (More)
Alternative organizations must continuously address conflicts that emerge regarding diverging prioritizations and interpretations of autonomy, solidarity, and responsibility. We explore how tensions around alternative moral principles can be navigated through relational processes that attune to others' needs, emotions, and concerns. Building on an organizational ethnography of a cooperative campaign agency, we mobilize ethics of care as a research lens to trace and analyse how relational activities that are infused by an ethical attention to particular others assist the organization in dealing with these tensions. Our findings show that three relational activities – inquiring, deliberating, and responding – constitute a “relational tension-navigation circuit” that enables the alternative organization to evoke, map, and situatively settle tensions around alternative principles by embracing the vulnerability, plurality, and flourishing of others. We contribute to relational, ethical, and processual research in alternative organizing by showing how the particular and the general can be productively enfolded in alternative organizations. Furthermore, we conceptualize a broad, ethically and relationally grounded understanding of revisability that supports alternative organizations in finding targeted adaptations and provisional solutions to address conflicts and tensions.
(Less)
- author
- Friedrich, Jonas
and Lüthy, Christina
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-07-15
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- alternative organizing, collectivist-democratic organizations, conflict, ethics of care, process, relationality
- in
- Journal of Management Studies
- publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:105010958370
- ISSN
- 0022-2380
- DOI
- 10.1111/joms.13259
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Management Studies published by Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- id
- 19a8f69d-8833-403c-8e77-d9e1ffa12f00
- date added to LUP
- 2026-01-20 14:44:11
- date last changed
- 2026-01-20 14:45:22
@article{19a8f69d-8833-403c-8e77-d9e1ffa12f00,
abstract = {{<p>Alternative organizations must continuously address conflicts that emerge regarding diverging prioritizations and interpretations of autonomy, solidarity, and responsibility. We explore how tensions around alternative moral principles can be navigated through relational processes that attune to others' needs, emotions, and concerns. Building on an organizational ethnography of a cooperative campaign agency, we mobilize ethics of care as a research lens to trace and analyse how relational activities that are infused by an ethical attention to particular others assist the organization in dealing with these tensions. Our findings show that three relational activities – inquiring, deliberating, and responding – constitute a “relational tension-navigation circuit” that enables the alternative organization to evoke, map, and situatively settle tensions around alternative principles by embracing the vulnerability, plurality, and flourishing of others. We contribute to relational, ethical, and processual research in alternative organizing by showing how the particular and the general can be productively enfolded in alternative organizations. Furthermore, we conceptualize a broad, ethically and relationally grounded understanding of revisability that supports alternative organizations in finding targeted adaptations and provisional solutions to address conflicts and tensions.</p>}},
author = {{Friedrich, Jonas and Lüthy, Christina}},
issn = {{0022-2380}},
keywords = {{alternative organizing; collectivist-democratic organizations; conflict; ethics of care; process; relationality}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{07}},
publisher = {{Wiley-Blackwell}},
series = {{Journal of Management Studies}},
title = {{Tending to the Particular : Navigating Tensions Around Principles of Alternativity Through an Ethics of Care}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joms.13259}},
doi = {{10.1111/joms.13259}},
year = {{2025}},
}