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

Author(s): Carl Rhodes and Robert Westwood

Source: Journal of Business Ethics , January 2016, Vol. 133, No. 2 (January 2016), pp. 235-248

Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24703689

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J Bus Ethics (2016) 133:235-248 DOT 10.1007/sl0551 -014-2350-1 I ■ 1 CrossMark

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

Carl Rhodes • Robert Westwood

Received: 25 September 2013/Accepted: 30 August 2014/Published online: 14 September 2014 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

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 touch

stones 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 moral izing positions regarding generosity but rather by working in the indissoluble tensions between self and other.

Keywords Ethical generosity • Kafka • Levinas Literature and organization • Reciprocity

C. Rhodes (El) Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia e-mail: carl.rhodes@mq.edu.au

R. Westwood

University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia e-mail: Robert.westwood@newcastle.edu.au

Introduction

This paper interrogates the relation between reciprocity and

ethics as it relates to participation in the world of work and

organizations. This issue of reciprocity has long been a concern of those who study and theorize business ethics. It

has been suggested that people's ethical behaviour in organizations can be evaluated in terms of whether or not

they perceive that others will engage in a 'norm of reci procity' (Deckop et al. 2003). In turn it has been argued that business ethics might be informed by an 'I'll scratch

your back, you scratch mine' mentality (Trevino 1992) such that it is the expectation of return that motivates acting positively towards others. A reciprocal relation can

be defined as one where what one gives to the other is expected to be returned in kind. By implication, with rec

iprocity one's willingness to give to others is based on what

one will get back from them. There is a long standing tradition that regards reciprocity as a mode of ethical relations that constitute a social order based on mutual

exchange and respect, especially when located within a wider social ethic that values cooperative rather than contractual modes of exchange (Westwood et al. 2004).

More recently, writers on business ethics have ques tioned the ethics of reciprocity such that rather than being

based on the expectation of return, reward, and repayment

for 'good deeds', the meaning of ethics is to be founded in

generosity toward others without prior calculation of whether one will receive something in return (ten Bos and

Willmott 2001; Hancock 2008). This thinking, commonly

extending from the ethical philosophy of Levinas (1969, 1985) is premised on the idea that "the ethical exceeds calculation of advantage, of expectation of reciprocity"; a

condition that tests the possibility of whether organizations

can be ethical at all (Jones 2003, p. 228) and demands "that

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236 C. Rhodes, R. Westwood

an attitude of setting the other before the self" supersedes know as 'one of them' to being radically different, face-less market based exchange (Aasland 2009, p. 8). Not doing so, and non-human. The Metamorphosis is a story of ethics, or

it is argued, is tantamount to disguising narcissistic and more precisely about the ambiguous and unbearable exploitative self-interest with the mask of ethical discourse demands of ethics as they relate to reciprocity and generos

(Roberts 2001 ) ity. It is the centrality of these themes that enables the story to While scholars have questioned the possibility of a self- inform and enhance how we understand ethics in organiza

transcendent ethical generosity in organizations (Jones tional settings 2003; Knights and O'Leary 2006; Hancock 2008; Pullen The paper begins by reviewing the ways that reciprocity and Rhodes 2013) such discussions are based on an either/ has been understood in relation to ethics in the business and

or logic that seeks to locate ethics in oppositional relation organizational ethics literatures. Second, we introduce to reciprocity. This reflects the particularities of how rec- Kafka and the story of The Metamorphosis in order to situate

iprocity has been understood in contemporary western our inquiry and explain our methodological approach to the culture as a functional mode of regulating forms of social reading of literature as part of the study of organization. On and economic exchange (Westwood et al. 2004). In this that basis, and thirdly, we provide a reading of the story that

paper we turn our attention to such forms exchange, spe- seeks to bring out its themes and implications for how rec

cifically by exploring the tensions that connect reciprocity iprocity interacts with demands for generosity. Fourth, we and generosity and how this relates to ethics in organiza- use the discussion of Kafka to rethink the ethics of reci tions. To consider this we look to Franz Kafka's well procity in organizational life focussing especially on the known novella The Metamorphosis. mutually constitutive ethical limitations of reciprocity and

Accepting that literature might not be the most con- generosity. We conclude by outlining the challenges to ventional place from which to investigate the practicalities ethics in organizations that a consideration of Kafka por of ethics in organizations, we read this story not just as a tends. We propose the contribution of our paper as being an

darkly humorous work of fiction, but as a thought experi- explication of the limitations of reciprocity as an ethical ment that, like life itself, is "an unstable mixture of fabu- touchstone for organizational life while simultaneously lation and actual experience" (Ricoeur 1992, p. 162); one accepting the immense difficulties of exceeding those limits that can offer new ways to explore, understand and eval- with generosity. The limitations of this rest with the question uate lived experience that complement and extend research of whether one can truly be generous with another being who

into organizations (de Cock and Land 2006). We join an one does not at least in some way identify with as being the established tradition that uses literary sources as a means to same as oneself. In such conditions, we argue, ethics is not

garner insight into the realities of organizational life best served by adopting idealistic positions regarding gen (Czarniawska-Joerges and de Monthoux 1994; Land and erosity but rather by working in the indissoluble tensions Sliwa 2009). We also extend and complement scholarship between self and other, that has reflected on Kafka's work to better theorise

organizations and organizing (e.g. Pelzer 2002; Warner 2007; Keenoy and Seijo 2010; Jprgensen 2012; Munro and Reciprocity and Ethics Huber 2012; Hodson et al. 2013; McCabe 2013).

Our reading of The Metamorphosis engages with the In recent years reciprocity has been celebrated as a central conflicts that occur in the intertwined relations between the and desirable dimension of ethics in organizations. The main character Gregor and his employer and family and the accepted view is one where "economic discourse con forms of exchange they participate in. If ethics, after Levinas structs moral identity such that the reciprocal pursuit of

(1969), involves the generous welcoming of the then in The private interest becomes the sole ethical imperative of Metamorphosis that ethics is both questioned and troubled. subjects in commerce with one another" (Shearer 2002, After all the story begins when a loyal son Gregor wakes up p. 551). This ethics of reciprocity evinces that "the greatest

one day transformed into a giant verminous insect and pro- virtue of capitalism is that [...] it makes the motives of ceeds to trace the goings on in his work and family life that greed and economic self-interest work to promote the this provokes, ending with his death still trapped in an insect- general welfare" as opposed to "self-dealing and plunder"

state. Gregor feels a sense of responsibility to his work that he (Carson 2003, p. 392). In terms of business, to the extent

cannot fulfil, although his employer does not reciprocate any that the interests of others should be considered it is only in

sense of responsibility, instead abandoning him. For the rest relation to how they contribute to the interests of the

of his family this is not just Gregor's metamorphosis, but a organization: "[fjirms must allocate some minimum metamorphosis of their relations with him; most especially amount of value to stakeholders in order to retain access to relations of exchange and reciprocity. Gregor's transfer- the resources they provide" (Harrison and Bosse 2013, mation is one that moves him from being the person who they p. 1). These 'stakeholders' are valued only if they have

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The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity 237

something an organization needs and are willing to take contrast to economic exchange whether that exchange be responsibility for giving (Fassin 2012). positioned as self-interested or reciprocal (Levinas 2007).

By this way of thinking reciprocity is engaged in For Levinas ethics is avowedly non-reciprocal in that it because it supports the pursuit of a business' own interests: expects nothing in return. This is an ethics of generosity; of "it is just as important for stakeholders to be responsible to 'being for the other' where "I am responsible for the other

the firm as for firms to be responsible to stakeholders" without waiting for reciprocity" (Levinas 1985, p. 98). (Lundescher et al. 2012, p. 58). Indeed, it is suggested that This ethical relation never reverts to the pursuit of one's the responsibilities of the corporation and its stakeholders own advantage, the furthering of one's own needs or even should also be seen as reciprocal, with each giving to the the expectation that the other will give anything back. This

other what is due to them (Fassin 2012). This moralization begs serious questions for those business and organiza of market based exchange (Shamir 2008) also implicates tional ethics that regard reciprocity as the acid test of the individual employee as a 'stakeholder' with moral ethicality; a give and take where labour, money or even responsibility that extends far beyond the employment generosity is to be met by the obligation of repayment. In contract. The employee is thus considered as an economic this process of reciprocal exchange the generosity and actor whose actions are judged in relation not just to task other focus of ethics is always reduced to the terms of the

achievement but to overall economic success of the orga- self; it is rendered knowable and exchangeable. "The first nization. Concomitantly employees are 'responsibilized' movement of economy is [...] egoist" (Levinas 1969, with the assumed moral autonomy to take charge of their p. 176); it is about me, my possessions, my appropriation,

economic obligations to their employers (du Gay 2000). and my justice. When viewed from a managerialist perspective, reci- Levinas is clear in stating that the ethical relation

procity in western discourse is considered as a moral between people is non-symmetrical in the sense that "I am condition of the employment relationship as couched in responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity" terms of organizational citizenship behaviour. By this (1985, p. 98). Levinas uses the term reciprocity to signal a account the logic of the market becomes a moral norm relation between people based on fair and equal mutual imbued in both inter- and intra-organizational relations exchange; not just the exchange of material goods or such that "the notion of behavioural exchange is a funda- money, but also the exchange of care, duty, and attention,

mental aspect of organizations" as it relates not only to Reciprocity begins with the idea that the other is an other financial matters but also to "non-monetary aspects of of me; that we are the same in the sense that "I am to the employment relationships" (Deckop et al. 2003, p. 102). other what the other is to me" (Levinas 1999, p. 100). This moralization of the employment relationship works Moreover, Levinas draws a clear ethical distinction through a conflation of the social and the economic where between reciprocity and generosity such that "the moment the norms of social exchange are subjugated to the realities one is generous in hopes of reciprocity, that relation no of economic exchange (e.g. Cropanzano and Mitchell longer involves generosity but the commercial relation" (p. 2005). This double move of responsibilization and moral- 101). For Levinas ethics is prior to and distinct from rec ization locates working relationships within a norm of iprocity. Levinas is not saying that there is anything reciprocity whereby power-asymmetry is side-stepped 'wrong' with reciprocity, but he does say that it is wrong to theoretically in order to refocus attention on what consider reciprocity as the basis of ethics. Quite the con employees should be doing to live up to their end of the trary, Levinas (2007) insists that a system of reciprocal reciprocal bargain. Hidden within this is a pretence of economic exchange that knows no ethics, that knows no equality whereby the norm of reciprocity "obliges both the humanity, would "be mercilessly bound to being a totali employee and the employer to reciprocate the favourable tarian system" (p. 205) where the economy becomes treatment they receive from each other, leading to benefi- everything, becomes the totality

cial outcomes for both" (Organ et al. 2006, p. 124). Indeed, In recent years Levinas' ethics has been brought to bear it has been asserted that when self-interested behaviour in on work and organizations, most specifically by offering a organizations is bounded by the norms of fairness and critique and alternative to an ethics of reciprocity and reciprocity this can positively influence organizational exchange (Jones 2003). This critique suggests an ethics in performance (Bosse et al. 2009). organizations that moves beyond self-interest and reci

While it may be common in management and business procity and towards generosity. Such thinking has been ethics to consider reciprocity as a guiding moral principle used, for example, to question how organizations engage in

for organizations (Deckop et al. 2003) this normative the commodification of employees (Macintosh et al. 2009), principle is not without its critics. Perhaps the most serious to illustrate the bureaucratic neutering of ethics (Muhr

opposition can be found in the ethical theorizing of Em- 2008), to expose the narcissism of corporate governance manuel Levinas; an approach that considers ethics in direct (Roberts 2001), to problematize the anonymization of real

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238 C. Rhodes, R. Westwood

people through technology (Introna 2002), and to tease out that the multitude of others that extend to and beyond the the ethical contradictions of justice in organizations 'third party' demand an inevitably unmeetable set of (Rhodes 2012). Common to such Levinasian critique is a responsibilities (Rhodes 2012). It is in this sense that view that the "calculation of personal advantage has an Levinas shows how "the presence of the third party no only instrumental concern for the Other and, in failing in one's corrects unlimited responsibility to the Other, it seems to

responsibilities for the Other, one is not simply unethical open a dimension of reciprocity in ethics" (Bergo 1999, but is outside the domain of the ethical" (Jones 2003, p. 183). p. 236), even when that advantage is to be achieved Although economy might re-cast alterity in terms of through reciprocal agreement and exchange. reciprocity and exchange, the labour that goes into work The issue at hand concerns the very character of what also creates the very conditions through which alterity can

happens when business and ethics come into contact with be welcomed, the condition for ethics (Byers and Rhodes each other. As Aasland (2009) explains, the notion of 2007). Hospitality requires a home from which one can be business ethics is most often an "ethics for business" that hospitable. The disjuncture then is that economic life is the is constituted as a "part of the instrumental knowledge" of basis for relations with the other, the basis on which the business (p. 19). This is contrasted with an "ethics in self can be maintained such that it is able to relate to the business" that suggests in organizations themselves it is other in the first place. In Levinas' words "no face can be possible to engage in an ethics that "sets the other before approached with empty hands and closed home" (Levinas myself" (p. 41). Such an ethics is seen to both precede and 1969, p. 172). Cast in this way, it is not so much that ethics

exceed an understanding of human experience as based on is absent in economic exchange, but rather that there is an

market exchange and reciprocity. In such a scheme "the ethical tension between the anonymizing force of exchange invitation of the market system to pursue one's self-interest based reciprocity and the hospitality that they can make must be submitted under a preceding attitude of setting the possible (cf. Levinas 2007). It is this tension, rather than a

other before the self' (Aasland 2004, p. 8, italics added). sense of self-righteousness, that characterises the ethical This submission, however, is no straightforward matter and life. We ask then how might this ethical tension be lived,

it has been claimed that the ethical approach to the other and is it at all possible to expect an ethics based on a has been pragmatically refused by the market and exchange Levinasian being-for-the other to be found in socio-eco driven rationality of organizations (Lewis and Farnsworth nomic relations? 2007). Moreover, such rationality is seen as an affront to

ethics in that at best it embodies "an ethics of a symmet

rical intersubjective reciprocal obligation that nullifies Approaching Kafka [people's] radical differences" (Macintosh et al. 2009, p. 758). This too is a nullification of ethics in that the In questioning the possibility of a generosity based ethics demands for reciprocation fail to respond to the sanctity of in economic and organizational relations we turn to liter

the other. The question that this invokes is "how we might ature; in particular to Franz Kafka's novella The Meta ensure that in economic life we hold ourselves accountable morphosis. While such a turn may not appear as an obvious to the other—not as a reciprocal subjectivity, but as one methodological approach we do feel that it is one that is whose being obligates us" (Shearer 2002, p. 569). justified by both provenance and reasoning. Using fictional The moral high ground might be too easily being sources to study organizational phenomena is a well climbed, with Levinas's ideas being used to cast judgement established methodological tradition. More than half a on the organizational and managerial other with the latter's century ago Whyte (1956) discussed the contemporary own trace of alterity lying in theoretical tatters. We need novels of his time to support his thesis regarding 'the not be too quick in using Levinas' as an ethical gold organization man'. Whyte's method was to examine the standard where radical generosity replaces economic and literary and cultural texts of his time in terms to support his

reciprocal exchange. Levinas (2007) realises only too well analysis of life in the United States as it was emerging in the absolute necessity of economy; it is just that he does not the 1950s. More generally studying organizational life in

celebrate it (see Dewmond 2007). The phenomenological literature was justified in the view that "any perception of condition that Levinas points to is one where to live with reality ought to be relevant to the study of administration in

ethics is to always to not live up to ethics. The world is not an age of organization" (McCurdy 1973, p. 52). Such about me being responsible for you as if it was only you methodological positions have been fruitfully developed and I who existed. The multitude of others, here and there, and extended to inform important developments in orga past and present, always interrupt the purity of what Bau- nizational research. The novel has attracted particular man (1993) called the 'moral party of two' (see also attention and this has been directly guided by the publi Aasland 2007). This interruption is ethically unbearable in cation of Czarniawska and de Monthoux's Good Novels

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The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity 239

Better Management in 1994. This collection of edited field, perhaps unsurprisingly, the almost exclusive focus papers was inspired by the belief that literature was a has been on exploring how Kafka might help us understand valuable and important way that matters of organization the dysfunctions of "bureaucracy, power and authority, and business could be understood and learned about. rationality and [...] alienation" (Warner 2007, p. 1019; e.g.

Czarniawska and de Monthoux encouraged scholars to Luban et al. 1992; McDaniel 1979; Parker 2006; Warner "confront the world of the novel with the world of social 2007). Studies of Kafka and organizations also include

science" (p. 14). Such efforts of confrontation have yielded Pelzer's (2002) discussion of disgust, Wasserman's (2001) important insights into organizational matters. Recent interpretation of Kafka as an industrial reformer and Munro examples include reading Jaroslav Hasek's The Good and Huber's (2012) reflection on the mythology of Soldier, Svejk (Fleming and Sewell 2002) and Charles bureaucracy. This work testifies not only to its Kafka's Bukowski's Factotum (Rhodes 2009) to develop an relevance to studying organizations, but also to how his understanding of the subtle ways that employee resistance texts exhibit an ambiguity and polysemousness that permits

operates in organizations; a demonstration of how Kafka's varying and multiple readings and interpretations. His work sheds light on issues as wide ranging as bureaucracy, work, in that sense, is writerly (Barthes 1975) in that its

power, authority, rationality, and alienation (Warner 2007; meaning cannot be ascertained from within the text itself as Munro and Huber 2012); and how Haruki Murakami's A if pre-packaged and encoded awaiting for the good reader Wild Sheep Chase can serve to profane leadership thinking to find a hidden treasure. (Sliwa et al. 2012). Attention has not been restricted to the Reading Kafka calls for participation; it requires the genre of the novel with the related form of the short story reader to do some of the 'writing' (cf. Barthes 1975) of its

also having been considered. Herman Melville's classic meaning rather than being a passive consumer of it. Ka Bartelby the Scrivener has, for example, been read to kfa' s text is not covered by a veil to be lifted so as to reveal inform discussions of worker identity (ten Bos and Rhodes truth or meaning; it is a weave of words we are invited to

2003) as well as to problematize the very relationship interweave ourselves in. In the spirit of this inter-texture, it between reading literature and studying organizations is perhaps not surprising then that the modes or paradigms (Beverungen and Dunne 2007). of interpretation that have been used to work through

Methodologically we are not engaging in an act of lit- Kafka run the gamut from the psychoanalytic, to the erary criticism, an interesting intellectual divertissement, Marxist, anti-capitalist, social realist, nihilistic, through to nor even an exercise of mining material from one domain post-structuralist, deconstructionist and feminist; this that is illustrative of issues in another. We concur with the reflects not only the openness of the textual work but also

contention that management and organisation studies perhaps the deliberate ambiguity and lack of position-tak should take the texts of literature seriously as sites of and ing by Kafka (see Preece 2002). The endless interpretations

resources for critical observation, analysis, and insights of Kafka have led some to see a mythologising effect into those areas of human activity that fall within their (Hawes 2008; Northey 2002) and there is certainly a ro normal purview (de Cock 2000). Our approach is to take manticisation of the author in the frequent ascription of elements of a cultural narrative (in this case one of Kafka's prescience or vision to Kafka in foreshadowing later literary works) and to engage with it in terms of its developments in the mundane workings of capital and the potential for informing and inspiring critical commentary nature of organisational life, but also in the totalitarian and analysis of issues germane to business and organiza- trends in national politics. tional ethics. We do so, not just to deliver illustrative The text we have chosen for interrogation is Kafka's material as a supplement to organisation theory but because novella The Metamorphosis; one of his more popular literature provides theoretical, critical, and analytical works and one that has already been the subject of a good potential in its own right. We regard literary narrative as deal of commentary and analysis (e.g. Bloom 1988; "an immense laboratory for thought experiments" that can Cantrell 1978; Corngold 1973; Dodd 1995; Ryan 2007; help us understand the "the elusive character of real life" Schaefer 1988). The interpretations of this story, in com (Ricoeur 1992, pp. 159 and 162). mon with those of Kafka's whole oeuvre, are various and

In turning to Kafka we note that his work has attracted a multiple. One reading is that The Metamorphosis deals monumental amount of analysis and commentary since it with a visceral sense of alienation from one's own identity

began to be published around 1913. Even by 1977 there (Kohzadi et al. 2012). Others see it more broadly as a deep were as many as 10,000 published works on Kafka questioning of the nature of self-perception (Posner 1985) (Goodden 1977) and Kafka commentary has gone on to or a parable exploring the stultifying effects of misfortune become a virtual industry in its own right. Although more and physical deformation on the fate of humanity (Rowe

limited in volume, management and organisation studies 2002). For still others it is more personal, read as an Oe has not been immune from an attraction to Kafka. In this dipalstory dealing with the main characters' fraught

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240

relationship with a dominating father (Livesay 2007), itself mirroring what might be assumed to be Kafka's relation

ship with his own father. It is certainly most common to focus attention on the character Gregor Samsa even though

the story is very much about the changes his metamor phosis has on those around him (Straus 1989). It is also common to interpret the notion of transformation, which is

centrally carried by the metaphor of 'metamorphosis' entrenched in the stories title, as relating to and manifest in

the character of Gregor. It is, after all, a story based on

what happens after Gregor wakes up one morning to find "himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin"

(Kafka 2002, p. 2)1. In our case we read The Metamorphosis in terms of how

it can inform our understanding of the ethics of social and

economic relations, alterity and generosity; in particular as

a story of what happens to self-interest and reciprocation

when the other person one is dealing with becomes so 'other' that one can no longer see him through any real mode of identification. As suggested earlier, we do not take

the story as an allegory for organizations that might be hiding some kernels of knowledge secreted in the pages by

its author as if like a buried treasure. Instead we respect the

work as a narrative reflection and expansion on the vicis situdes and tensions social and economic human relation

ships. The connection of this to organizational life is not so

much that the story is a depiction of that life (although that

is present in parts) but rather that is speaks directly meaning of ethics and reciprocal relations that, as discussed

earlier, is a central part of contemporary understanding of

ethics in organizations. The Metamorphosis thus provides us with a creative way of reconsidering the issues central to

scholarship in business and organizational ethics; in par ticular, and as reviewed earlier, those that concern the ethics of reciprocity. In sum, our methodological approach follows Czarniawska (2009) proposition that rather than just considering literature as fictive representation of organizational life to be studied, it is of value to studying organizations on account of the theories embedded in it, especially in the case where such "theories latch onto deficiencies of the dominant thought system" through a well-established tradition by which novelists "formulate

theories of society before the social scientists" (p. 368). It is in this way, as we will demonstrate, that we claim that

within The Metamorphosis such a novel theory can be read;

in particular a theory of the tensions between ethics and

reciprocity.

1 There are numerous published versions of the story, the citations in the text are to the ebook version made available by the Project Gutenberg with a copyrighted translation by David Wyllie.

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C. Rhodes, R. Westwood

The Metamorphosis and the Extreme Demand for Generosity

If ethics, after Levinas (1969), involves the hospitable welcoming of the absolutely other without concern for self

interest and with no expectation of reciprocity, then it is in

The Metamorphosis that the manifestation of such ethics

between people is troubled at its core. It is troubled at the very level of the face of the other that Levinas (1969) regards as the site where the self is confronted by ethics.

The story concerns the aftermath of Gregor Samsa waking

up on an ordinary morning transformed into a giant insect.

In the unfolding of the story this is not just Gregor's metamorphosis, but a metamorphosis of his relations with

those around him; initially his employer and then his family. Gregor's transformation is one that moves him from the person who they know to being radically different

both from them and from his former self. The family is faced with a relation to extreme alterity of a brother and

son who they can no longer identify with, who no longer is

one of them, who no longer has a face. As well, as an insect

Gregor is divested of anything worth exchanging; he can

no longer participate in economic or reciprocal relations. On this basis we can read The Metamorphosis as a story of ethics, or more precisely about the demands of ethics as

they relate to alterity, reciprocity, and economy.

Gregor's metamorphosis into a verminous insect at the

outset of the story is startling not only because of the nightmarish change to Gregor but because of the surre alistically muted response of Gregor to that nightmare. On

observing that he has turned into a "horrible vermin" (Kafka 2002, p. 1) and realising that "it wasn't a dream" (p. 2), Gregor muses: "[wjhat's happened to me?" He then objectively peruses his room and thinks "[h]ow about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense" (p. 2). But that is met by an almost absurdist mundane realisation that he is used to sleeping on his right side, but his new morphology prevents that. This uncanny and horrific turn of events is juxtaposed with the

prosaically mundane. The first issue of everyday reality that comes into question is Gregor's employment as a travelling salesman. Upon starting to realise what has happened to him Gregor's very next thought, and note that this is just four brief paragraphs into the novella, is about his work rather to his wicked fate:

"Oh, God", he thought, "what a strenuous career it is

that I've chosen! Travelling day in and day out. Doing business like this takes much more effort than

doing your own business at home, and on top of that there's the curse of travelling, worries about making train connections, bad and irregular food, contact with different people all the time so that you can

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The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity 241

never get to know anyone or become friendly with that 5 years earlier his father's business had run into dif them. It can all go to Hell!" (p. 2) Acuities and collapsed and the family incurred debt. His

This and subsequent passages make it clear that while Gregor loathes his job, he feels a deep sense of obligation and commitment to it on account of his responsibilities to

his family. Gregor needs the income it provides to support

his family and to pay off his father's business debts: "If I

didn't have my parents to think about I'd have given in my

notice a long time ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think" (ibid).

Gregor's constitution of himself is as a man of ethics

and responsibility who must engage in paid work, as a form

of economic exchange, in order to meet his obligations to his family and to the maintenance of their home. After

fantasising about quitting his job and while still apparently

unaware of the implications of his radically altered fate Gregor is still preoccupied with his responsibilities. He rationally surmises that it might only be another Ave or 6 years before he is able to pay off his father's debt so as to

enable him to then "make the big change" (ibid.). Gregor

next frets about getting up and getting to work, about train

times and being late. He worries about company staff realising he was not at work on time and the boss coming down to the house and accusing him of being lazy. This . , , _ ,. , , _

,. , „ . , . judge even before he realises what has happened to Gregor, immediate concern about his work intimates an obsessive , . , . , , , , , .,

father, it is assumed at this stage, was unable to work, although concrete reasons are never speciAed. Gregor, as

the only son and eldest child in a patriarchal family, assumes the role of breadwinner. There appears to be a moüvation based on a sense of familial obligation, of responsibility to the others of his family. Familial obliga tions and Alial responsibilities were perhaps more legiti mately fore-grounded in Northern European socio-cultural

contexts at the turn of the last century, and perhaps par ticularly within the cultural context of the Jewish com

munity in the European diaspora of which Kafka was a part. There are also clear indications in the text of Gregor's

persistent petit bourgeois concerns. He is not only anxious

about his familial obligations, but also with bourgeois sentiments about proper behaviour, good etiquette and form, and not disturbing the order of things. This is so even

though his own corporeal being has become an obvious affront to all of that. One way or another though Gregor's

motivation arises from a sense of responsibility to others.

His employer, however, feels no such responsibility towards Gregor. When the chief clerk visits his house to

investigate why he has not arrived at work he is quick to

orientation towards it; an orientation that is further sig nalled by the information that Gregor has not been ill and

missed a day's work in 15 years.

As Gregor thinks about not being able to get to work he

reAects on other employees asking:

speculating that Gregor might have absconded with some money that had been entrusted to him. The clerk is not allowed into the room so has to talk beside Gregor's door. He berates Gregor for failing his obligations to both his

family and the business. Gregor, ever loyal, tries to reply and while this reply makes sense to him all the others can

Were all employees, every one of them, louts, was hear is animal sounds. Gregor Anally is able to open the there not one of them who was faithful and devoted door and the horror of his transformed body is revealed to who would go so mad with pangs of conscience that he the clerk. Gregor starts again trying to apologise, insisting couldn't get out of bed if he didn't spend at least a that everything will be normal. The clerk leaves the house couple of hours in the morning on company business? as quickly as he can, screaming. He is never to be seen (p. 5) again. The harsh logic of the employment relationship is

that social relations are terminated as soon as it is clear that

the other is no longer one of us and that reciprocation is not Duty and devotion to work clearly inform Gregor's sense of morality. His mother conArms that he "only ever thinks , T , • , t , . „ , , r , possible. In this story, no ethics are at play on the part of about business and that [h]is idea of relaxation is ^ J r J r working with his fretsaw" (ibid: 6). Even when his altered ^

,, c , , . . c It is highly signiAcant that Gregor is able to observe that: state is encountered by his family and then by the arrival of r , , ~ , ° „ , , 6

[ejven before the Arst day had come to an end, his father had

explained to Gregor's mother and sister what their Anances

and prospects were" (p. 14) thereby already signalling the

the odious chief clerk from his ofAce, Gregor is still trying

to And a way to get to work. We are told that Gregor "felt a

great pride that he was able to provide a life like that in ,. ^ , , • • , . , r ,. . , , „ , 4 salience of the family s economy, Gregor s place in it and

such a nice home for his sister and parents, (p. 12) What , „ , . ' „ , . . ri,. . . . the possibilities of alternatives. Gregor reAects on the time of

are we to make of this work-onentation? Why is Gregor so „ ,, ,,,, his father s business collapse and how he had thrown himself

into work with "a Aery vigour", getting promoted and being

able to earn money for the family.

committed to his job even though it is unfulAlling and rather repugnant to him?

One interpretation is that invited by Gregor himself,

which is that he feels he must support his family and must Gregor converted his success at work straight into exchange his labour for money to enable this. We are told cash that he could lay on the table at home for the

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242 C. Rhodes, R. Westwood

benefit of his astonished and delighted family [...]. wider economy. The family as a whole, sans Gregor, They had even got used to it, both Gregor and the invests itself into all manner of work activity. family, they took the money with gratitude and he

was glad to provide it, although there was no longer

much warm affection given in return, (p. 14)

They carried out absolutely everything that the world

expects from poor people, Gregor's father brought bank employees their breakfast, his mother sacrificed

herself by washing clothes for strangers, his sister ran back and forth behind her desk at the behest of the

customers, (p. 22)

The language of reciprocity, of giving for what one gets in

return, is spoken clearly. Gregor's contribution to the economy of the family was very significant and initially

there was a reciprocal exchange in terms of familial regard Later his mother begins to sew "fancy underwear" (p. 21)

and appreciation. However, his economic value came to be for a fashion shop and his sister takes a sales job. A taken for granted and the exchange relationship weakened transformation of the family has begun that mirrors in such that there was no 'warmth' shown in exchange for his reverse Gregor's own transformation and decline. More contribution. Although Gregor continued selflessly in his over, this is primarily a transformation driven by and sense of obligation, it is pointed out that he notices and manifest within the circuits of economic exchange. Not memorises the nature of the familial exchanges and the only has his sister, who was pampered and did nothing withdrawal of affection even from an early stage. before, taken a job, she also learns French and shorthand so

The past, however, turns out not to be as Gregor had that she "might be able to get a better position later on" (p. believed it to be. Post-metamorphosis, and listening in on 21). the family discussions about the state of their economy, What is interesting is the ways that the forms of reci Gregor realises that the family is not bankrupt, and not as procity the members of the family engage in externally badly off as he had imagined. Some funds had been interact with those forms of reciprocity going on within the retained from the business days, plus some of the money he family. An important example is the relationship between

had brought to the family had also been saved. Gregor Gregor and his sister Grete. Prior to the metamorphosis reflects, without much irony, that " [h]e could actually have Gregor and Grete seem to have been moved by unconditional

used this surplus money to reduce his father's debt to his sibling affiliation. This continues immediately after Gre boss, and the day when he could have freed himself from gor's transformation with Grete quickly assuming respon

that job would have come much closer" (p. 15). He accepts sibility for his care. The mother's love and concern also his father's financial management and apparently endorses seems at first to be unwavering and she is very solicitous

the petit bourgeois values of "thrift and caution" (ibid.). regarding his health and well-being. An ethics of generosity One might have expected disillusionment, that Gregor had is present. Gradually, however, the support and care begins

toiled under the false belief that the family was bankrupt to weaken, becoming an obvious chore for the sister who no

and needed every 'penny' he could contribute. But Gregor longer remembers or experiences Gregor's reciprocation of persists in his sense of obligation in the face of this her care. This goes to extremes when the family come to information. Indeed, while he wishes for reciprocation in realise that Gregor is not going to transform back into human kind, he does not expect it as a necessary reprise from what form; they start to contemplate killing him and in so doing to

he has given to the family. "renounce comprehension absolutely" (Levinas 1969, Engaging in the paid economy for the purpose of sup- p. 198). It seems that his difference, his non-humanness and

porting the home continues as a theme through the story, his alterity escalate such that Grete and the mother find it especially in terms of how the other family members must increasingly difficult to relate to him as son/brother, as

now collectively replace Gregor as the 'bread winner'. family member, as he is no longer recognised as a fellow Indeed, the presence of this theme draws a parallel between human. Extreme alterity does not spawn ethics in this case in

the familial and work relations in that they can both be that Gregor has lost his face, lost his humanity and as such

dominated by economic matters, such that ethics and rec- has exceeded the limits of generosity,

iprocity come also to be so dominated. But in relation to Any vestige of an ethics of unconditional responsibility, this economic and exchange driven moral system, as an care, recognition, and generosity slowly dissolves. The insect he no longer has anything to give to either employer family employs a new 'charlady' to care for Gregor. Ini

or family so can engage in neither generous nor reciprocal tially, she does this with an almost burlesque good humour,

relations; his existence relies purely on the generosity of but soon she too exhibits a disregard for his care and begins

others who might care for him, at least by providing food. to pile rubbish into his already confined room and to not Given his inability to work, what was Gregor's contri- keep the room or him clean. Even paid 'care' is unre

bution to the family needs to be replaced and to do so the sponsive to the needs of Gregor and he drifts further away other family members begin to enter the circuits of the from inclusions in the economy, family, the household, and

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The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity 243

ultimately humanity. This turn coincides, we suggest, with son. The son's economic devaluation signals the reinvigo the strengthening perceptions of both his radical difference ration of the father. But not a healthy, liberatory reinvigo

and his incapacity to make a material or economic con- ration; rather one in which he dons the uniform of service and tribution to the family. Gregor is no longer recognizable as again enters the economic circuits for a second tilt at the human, and he is void of the capacity for reciprocation; as minor achievements of petit bourgeois wealth and status. In

such rendered ethically worthless his life literally being of part the implication seems to be that re-engaging with work no value to others. Ethics, humanity, and economy seem and re-entering the zones of commerce has re-invigorated the now to be intimately related; without any economic value old man. The uniform is not without significance as earlier in

and identification, Gregor's can no longer exert an ethical the story Gregor himself reflects with pride and sense of demand on his family for reciprocation. He is beyond the positivity on his own appearance in uniform as a lieutenant in

limits of both reciprocity and generosity; he is just too the army as depicted in a photograph on a wall of the other. apartment. Furthermore, the father assumes the same work

related obsession that Gregor displayed and this is illustrated in relation to the uniform which his father refuses to take off

Rethinking the Ethics of Reciprocity at home, even sleeping in it—'as if always ready to serve and expecting to hear the voice of his superior even here' (p. 21).

Across the various relationships and economies at play in The transformation of the father can be seen as part of Kafka's fiction, and as a fantastic exaggeration of the the ethics of reciprocal economic exchange represented in possible, human ethics is deeply questioned. Can we still the story. The son's exit from the workplace is replaced by have ethical relations with someone who not only cannot the re-entrance of the father. It is the father who completes

participate in economic exchange or reciprocity but also the exchange since it is he who throws the apple that lodges who is so radically different that we cannot even identity in Gregor's back, becomes infected and possibly is with him as one of us or as part of humanity? Such a responsible for his death. There is a perverse inversion question might indeed be the very primary focus of ethics; here. The son is supposed to, albeit typically in a more unconditional hospitality to the other whom we do not benign manner, supplant the father. This is the 'natural consider to be the same as oneself (Levinas 1969). Indeed order of things'. But here the father supplants the son, and

for Levinas it is this hospitality that is not just a particular indeed, in a further perversion, kills the son. Family rela virtue or value, but rather hospitality "is ethicity itself, the tionships are twisted and emptied of value in the face of

whole and the principle of ethics" (Derrida 1999, p. 50). In economic imperatives and opportunities. He who has one sense it seems Kafka is saying that such unconditional nothing to give gets nothing. hospitality is not possible; that ethics is not possible! With Crucially it is the status of Gregor' alterity, his trans Gregor's employer the failure is sudden and without formation into non-human, that is central to his metamor engagement; Gregor is simply abandoned even though he phosed ethical status. Indeed, Gregor is excluded from continues, at least for a while, to feel a sense of loyalty and ethics in that his transformation has robbed him of a human

obligation. The failure is, however, more vividly illustrated face, and excluded him too from economy in that he can no

in Gregor's relationship with his father and his father's longer give in order to receive. The response is that he is own transformation. On seeing his father some time after confronted by his father's violence, initially merely Gregor he had chased Gregor back into his room, Gregor com- being driven into his room, but later it is a more violent ments on this explicitly: attack that at least contributes to his death. The violence

begins to circulate around the family. Even Grete's once genuine sibling love and compassion is converted into violence and disownership, marked profoundly when she stops calling Gregor 'he' and instead refers to him as 'it' :

"we have to try and get rid of it" (p. 27). These are the signs that herald the death knell to the possibility of ethical

relations with Gregor's alterity; the very point where ethics

reaches its limits. The absence of Gregor's face in his insect form works also to disturb the distinction between

alterity and sameness. While Levinas (1969) maintains that

the infinity of alterity is to be found in the face of the other

Gregor's facelessness as the source of him being aban This is almost an inverted or perverted Oedipal dynamic. doned shows that human relations fall down because he The father is reborn through the demise and death of his cannot be face-to-face. Shown is that what made possible

Springer

The same tired man as used to be laying there entom

bed in his bed when Gregor came back from his busi

ness trips, who would receive him sitting in the armchair in his nightgown when he came back in the

evenings; who was hardly even able to stand up [...] He

was standing up straight enough now; dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, the sort worn by

the employees at the banking institute; above the high,

stiff collar of the coat his strong double-chin emerged;

under the bushy eyebrows, his piercing, dark eyes

looked out fresh and alert. (Kafka 2002, p. 20)

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244

Gregor being united with his family was that they all had faces, and this possession of a face was a source of identity and sameness, rather than difference. The face is revealed

here as not being pure alterity (as Levinas' has it) but as the

source of identity and identification; the source of reci procity. What is perhaps even more bleak is Gregor's continued sense of ethical obligation to his family as he does not fail to see their faces, nor to recognize his lack of

face. But, his selfless toil as dutiful son making a viable economic contribution to the family is shown to no longer

be possible; the family abandon him as his face disappears

and his alterity expands beyond the limits of generosity. He

has nothing to give, not even a smile.

Gregor's past response to what he takes as the ethical demand of his family is revealed as valueless in their own

terms, and the ethics of radical generosity is unattained,

perhaps unattainable. Imperatives for identification and reciprocation and the arid dynamics of economic relations and transactions remain the order of the day. It is in this

sense that Kafka speaks to a contemporary situation. In an environment and a time where economic rationalism is

sovereign and economic imperatives preeminent, Kafka's

is a cautionary tale that has currency. It is a story that is

deluged, however, under the rhetoric of performativity, of

work and organizational commitment, of the normative control strategies and disciplinary practices that are part

and parcel of not only contemporary management, but also

of current mainstream management and organization the

ory other than in its proportionally rather limited critical

fringes. If anything The Metamorphosis might teach us that

ethics is hard, if not impossible, under such conditions.

So where does this leave us in terms of the question we set

out to address, the question of the possibility of ethics based

on selfless generosity in the context of socio-economic relations? There is room for pessimism! In one sense an ethics of generosity that extends beyond self-interested instrumentalism in business (Aasland 2007) is questioned to

it score by Kafka. It fails. In part this failure is about the inability to conceive of how, within the inevitability of economic life, we might base our actions on unrequited obligation rather than reciprocation (Shearer 2002). What is

shown is that ethics is overtaken by the harsh realities of an

ethics of reciprocity. If reciprocation as an ethical norm is

based on the idea of mutual backscratching (Trevino 1992)

then we can imagine that Kafka is showing us how when one

loses the ability to scratch and when one becomes so strange

that the notion of being touched is abhorrent, then there will

be an immediate exclusion from either ethical or reciprocal

relations. Indeed the question of who has something to exchange, seems supplemented by the question of who do I

recognize as worthy of exchanging with.

Prior to his transformation Gregor is involved in various

forms of reciprocation with his employer and in turn in

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C. Rhodes, R. Westwood

generosity with his family. He can be considered 'ethical' in that this engagement is both generous and yields mutual

benefits (Organ et al. 2006, p. 124). He exchanges his labour in a job that he hates without a word of complaint, and with the money he earns he offers generous support to

his family without the expectation of return. Through his exchanges the success of the work organization and the family are enhanced, just as a strategic approach to busi ness ethics has told us it should (Bosse et al. 2009). But this

complicates the ethics of alterity that Levinas asserts. Whereas for Levinas (1985) ethics arises as a passive obligation to the other who precisely is not the same as the

self, what Kafka's story highlights is how an ethics of reciprocity is precisely at odds with this. Reciprocity knows no alterity; it knows no generosity. This suggests is

that the 'moral norm' of reciprocity no matter how it is

perceived as being a more ethical position on economy that

the pursuit of self-advantage (Carson 2003) is in itself no ethics at all. Instead while it might be described as an enlightened self-interest it is still at the heart of it instru

mentally self-interested. This is a morality that privileges those with the power to engage in exchange and with the

benefit of sameness. Kafka puts in relief how following an

ethics of reciprocity means that those who are poor or are

truly different, deserve no ethics.

But Kafka goes even further than this in that the story not

only questions the ethics of reciprocity, but more radically it

also troubles the very possibility of the human recognition of

alterity. Gregor's metamorphosis from human to insect robs

Gregor of the human face that Levinas ( 1969) insists is central

to ethics; his is not the alterity of the fellow human, but of the non-human. This consideration of the non-human extends

Levinas' ethical purview in that while he may have been "the

quintessential thinker of alterity and ethics [...he...] was relatively uninterested in the alterity of animals" and his writing remains ambivalent as to whether animals have a face

in his ethical sense (Perpich 2008, p. 150).2 Levinas is thus commonly regarded as a humanist philosopher who maintain

the thesis that "nonhuman animals are not the kinds of beings

2 While it is true that Levinas was 'relatively uninterested' in animals, he was not entirely uninterested. In a short chapter of his book Difficult Freedom (Levinas 1990) Levinas recalls his time as a Jewish prisoner of war incarcerate by the Nazis in Germany. These we conditions that he says robbed the prisoners of their humanity; as Jews they were treated as 'subhuman' and akin to apes. Levinas recalls how he and his fellow prisoners were befriended by a stray dog

that they named Bobby. In the dog's lively and excited response to the prisoners Levinas states that: "He would appear at morning assembly and was waiting for us as we returned, jumping up and down and barking in delight. For him, there was no doubt that we were men" (p. 153). Despite the possibility of this encounter reflecting the alterity of the dog and its capacity for ethics, Levinas does not develop this and for the most part his work assumes that "animal life is inherently and brutally self-serving" with ethics retained by him entirely for humanity (Plant 2011, p. 57).

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The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity 245

that elicit an ethical response in human beings—which is to settings there is a requirement to shift attention from ethics

say, the Other is always and only the human other" (Calarco to justice (e.g. Aasland 2007; Byers and Rhodes 2007; 2010, p. 113). In The Metamorphosis this ambivalence is Muhr 2008). The idea, following Levinas, is that an ethics escalated because with Gregor we have someone who rec- of selfless devotion to the other comes into question in ognises himself as human although he is in an non-human social contexts on account that there will always be more body, thus confusing the categories of human/non-human. So, than one other who demands one's responsibility. This

even after it is clear that the ethics of reciprocity has broken situation, characterised by Levinas as the entry of the third,

down, the question that arises for both the family and is one that demands that the needs of the other and the employer is that is Gregor, the son-insect, worthy of an ethics others all be accounted for. In this case "it is necessary to

of generosity? compare and to prioritise between several others, and I am The answer does not arrive immediately for all, and Gre- also responsible for how I compare and prioritise" (Aas

gor' s transformation is above all a transformation of the others land 2007, p. 224). Such a scenario, as it relates to work, who have relationships with him. In the end, however, the requires the comparison of people and the weighing up of

answer is a resounding NO from all sides. This negation of the needs so as to decide where and to whom one's generosity

possibility of both ethical and reciprocal relations poses hard is directed (and to whom it is not). This 'weighing up' is

questions to Levinasian ethics, in that it suggests the ethical the process of justice that is said to define the ethical relation with alterity cannot be distinguished so easily from dilemmas central to organizational life (Rhodes 2012). the reciprocal relationship with the same. For the family and What this suggests is that, in practice, the unbounded

for the employer Gregor does not deserve ethical status generosity of ethics becomes constrained by the demand because he is no longer the same as them; no longer in pos- for justice (Bevan and Corvellec 2007) and results in the session of a human face. His failure to reciprocate is on the need for social and organizational order manifested in rules

level of materiality, as well as on the level of being; he is not and equality (Knights and O'Leary 2006), In taking up this

the same. As such if the question that orients Levinas' phi- responsibility, however, it is acknowledged that the origi

losophy is "where does the human animal break with ani- nal response to the ethical demand of the other becomes mality and become properly human?" (Perpich 2008, p. 114), compromised to the extent that justice inevitably involves a The Metamorphosis reverses this to ask: where does the certain "harshness and violence" (Byers and Rhodes 2007, human animality break with humanity and become properly p. 248). Such might be the harshness meted out against non-human? The answer we get from this story is that this Gregor by his employer and his family, break occurs when we can no longer see ourselves in the other. Such a turn to justice, however, does not resolve the

Moreover it is this break that signals the limit of generosity. ethical challenges that Kafka poses. The Metamorphosis The ethical relation is thus doubly broached; first in regarding emphasises this and one might say that at least to some

the other in relation to its service to us, and second in extent justice was at play in the story, to a lesser extent acknowledging alterity only in terms of identification/same- with Gregor's employer and to a greater extent with his

ness. The story thus serves to destabilize the central Levian- family. Indeed, it would seem they worked through the

sian distinctions of self/other and sameness/difference, so as various ethical demands placed upon them both in relation to reveal their non-independence. The extent that Gregor is to Gregor and in relation to one another and as a result took

considered as worthy of reciprocal relations prior to his actions that enacted a necessary compromise between all of transformation was largely down to what others could gain these demands. Indeed, their actions to finally alienate from him, and the fact that others identified with him as 'one Gregor completely, a matter that reaches its full potential in

of them'. Thus when Levinas (1969) defines the face as "the his death, are not guided by individual self-interest, but way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of more from interest in preserving the family. This is 'just' in

the other in me" (p. 50), Kafka's story shows that the relation the sense that given the conditions actions had to be taken of the face-to-face already is based on that excess being in response to the demands, using Levinas' terms, of the compromised. To be human is to face a face and this invokes 'other others'. Such a call to justice, whether it is in this

the ethical relation to the other, but does so on the basis of fictional case or in the case of organizational ethics, still

having established sameness (i.e. both having a face) of those leaves unaddressed the more challenging questions that animals that belong to humanity. Kafka has led us to about the limits of ethics: can one be

ethical to an other who is entirely destitute of means to

reciprocate, and with whom one cannot at all identify? Conclusions How can one be ethical towards the other whose alterity is

so extreme they invoke no sense of sympathy?

In considering how Levinasian ethics might translate into If justice is at play in The Metamorphosis it is one where organizations it has been suggested that in workplace the distribution of goods is directed entirely away from one

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246 C. Rhodes, R. Westwood

of the others; Gregor the insect whose face-lessness means the sad condition Kafka makes us aware of. It is a condition

that he cannot even be properly regarded as an 'other'. And that suggests that if business ethics is to be located within so an invocation of justice does not resolve the ethics of the notion of reciprocity then those outside the possibilities

this situation. Instead we are left with the stark realisation of reciprocal based market exchange or reciprocal identi

that perhaps an ethics of unconditional hospitality and fication deserve no ethics. Stakeholder theory might pro extreme alterity is barely conceivable, if at all possible. pose reciprocal responsibility (Lundescher et al. 2012; This is a realisation that points to the possibility that the Fassin 2012) as the high road to 'business excellence' limits generosity lies precisely where identification ends (Goodstein and Wicks 2007), but if one cannot reciprocate and real alterity begins. There is an uptake of Levinasian then it means that one's stake no longer counts, and if one

ethics that suggests business ethics is narcissitic and self- is different then it counts even less. What is left is a centred (Roberts 2001; Dewmond 2007) and that in morality only for the insiders so that to suggest that reci response demands an organizational ethics that exceeds procity transcends self-interest (Deckop et al. 2003) is self-interest and reciprocation (Jones 2003). Our discussion revealed as a miserable and selfish sham. So, while it might

here, however, suggests that such approaches echo a sad be asserted that social existence opens ethics to reciprocity naiveté over the realities of social and economic life. It is (Bergo 1999), the question is who and who not is that not enough to criticize the ethics of reciprocity so dominant opening directed to; most importantly, who is excluded

in organizations and hope to replace it with administrative from the benefits of reciprocation? Such are the ethical arrangements that seek justice on the basis of a superior limitations of reciprocity; limitations which mark out how

ethics of generosity and alterity. What Kafka offers is a is included and who is excluded from ethics. On that basis theorization of ethics that is located in the tension between it is clearly not enough to assert that mutual backscratching

the two; the tension arising from the limit of always constitutes a worthwhile ethics of organization (Trevino wanting to see and least some vestige of oneself in the 1992) such that reciprocation becomes the ethical criteria other with whom one engages ethically. on which organizations can be judged (Deckop et al. 2003). In terms of the issue of ethics and organizations we What matters ethically is what happens to those who can follow Kafka in suggesting that the pertinent question is not reciprocate and who we cannot identify with,

not whether business ethics is possible beyond reciprocity Read as a story about ethics, economy, reciprocity, and (Jones 2003: Bevan and Corvellec 2007) but rather who self-interest The Metamorphosis does not lend itself to easy might those others be who are so 'other' they are seen as moralizing, or to a retreat to ethical idealism. Kafka's face-less in the ethical sense? Who are the others whose pessimism seems profound. In the end Gregor's family cut ethical demand requires no positive response? Who are the off all ethical relations with him, rendering him an 'it' with others with whom no reciprocation is possible and no no face and value for human interaction. Perhaps if the generosity is offerred? It is clear that in the unfortunate conditions were different we could condemn them as history of modern organizations alterity has been forsaken, unethical. But, they are not portrayed as evil people, nor do whether those others be the poor and the destitute (Imas they necessarily evoke a sense of moral repugnance. If and Weston 2012), the old, disabled or female (Zanoni anything their behaviour, in such extreme circumstances, is 2011), the foreign, the alien, or the simply the anonymous. quite understandable. Moreover, if there is something to Whole categories of people have been disparaged and learn from this story it might very well arise from being disregarded as faceless and undeserving of ethical atten- shaken by this understanding. If we might identify with tion; rendered, like Gregor, as verminous. Outcast also are anyone in the story it is least likely to be Gregor, his in the ones who cannot be identified with in the masculine sectitude making his alterity all too extreme for us as well image of the gendered organization (cf. Acker 1990); those as for his family. It is because of the possibility of under

who are not man enough, not white enough, not strong standing and identifying with the family's response that enough, not physically able enough; not smart enough or The Metamorphosis does not provide a means through without the means, either financial or skill-based, to which to judge the ethics of others as if we might damn exchange. these people for abandoning their son. Instead the story

The others of organization are cast aside as unworthy calls us to consider our own ethics as we imagine ourselves because they cannot reciprocate on the terms that are to be in their position. Gregor's family fails him yet he offered to them and cannot be identified with as worthy of never abandons his love for them; indeed the only ethics

generosity; terms defined by the powerful. A business we really find in the story is that of Gregor the insect who ethics founded on reciprocation (Carson 2003; Harrison never stops loving and caring for others. And when he most and Bosse 2013, cf. Shearer 2002) reveals its limitations as strives for the love and affection of his mother and sister

it damns such people while an ethics of generosity seems they just want him to die. It is this realization from the limited conversely as being pointlessly idealistic. This is story which is most frightening.

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The Limits of Generosity: Lessons on Ethics, Economy, and Reciprocity 247

If we look at the world of work and of organizational

politics the kind of intolerance for difference and economic

non-productivity at the level of extremity found in The Metamorphosis is not so farfetched. No matter how much we

might criticize an ethics based on self-interest or reciprocity,

and no matter how much we might attest to an ethics of

generosity, The Metamorphosis implores us to be wary of moralizing. It is possible to criticize a business ethics pre

mised on economic self-interest and reciprocity as being narcissistic (Roberts 2001) or egotistical (Dewmond 2007). It

is possible also to attest to the limits of other people's business

ethics (Jones 2003) and to assert that its practice is unethical

(Introna 2002). But what our reading of Kafka suggests is that

such positions, while important, are idealistic in their moral

izing in that their focus is on casting ethical stones on business

from the lofty height of theoretical reflection. Kafka does not

share this idealism, nor does he participate in such high flying

moralizing. Instead reading Kafka alerts us to the demand for

ethical generosity while at the same time offering a deep

understanding of how it is so nearly impossible, and why self

interest and reciprocity are such driving forces. The invitation

is not to condemn business as a self-seeking and reciprocalist,

caring nought for anyone else, but rather to take the more

ethically challenging position of understanding it from within;

that is from within ourselves. This is not to dismiss the pos

sibility of an ethics of generosity in organizations, but rather to

question our complicity in how we manage the inevitable

tensions between identity, ethics and reciprocity. We are all

implicated. We are all tainted.

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