Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T02:41:57.317Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Let’s Clean Up and Bring Some Order Here! Moral Regulation of Markets in Yaoundé, Cameroon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

Aurélie Toivonen  and
Ignasi Martí
Aurélie Toivonen
Affiliation:
Tampere University
Ignasi Martí
Affiliation:
Universitat Ramon Llull
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines activities and processes through which projects of moral regulation are implemented as well as lived, transformed, and resisted by their targeted actors. Our ethnographic study focuses on discourses and practices of civic duty for orderly and hygienic conduct in the rehabilitation of marketplaces in Yaoundé, Cameroon. By drawing on the inhabited institutions approach and the literature on ethics as practice, our analysis extends research on moral work to put forward a perspective on moral regulation as a situated practice. We show how moral work is built on individual reflections but is simultaneously negotiated through actors’ relationships, that is, responsibilities to family, interactions within the community, and personal history.

Keywords

moral regulationmoralitymoral workinhabited institutionsethics as practicestreet vendors
Type
Article
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 136 - 168
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barley, S. R. 2008. Coalface institutionalism. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Sahlin, K., & Suddaby, R. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism: 491–518. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Z. 1993. Postmodern ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Becker, H. S. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Binder, A. 2007. For love and money: Organizations’ creative responses to multiple environmental logics. Theory and Society, 36(6): 547–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. N., & White, P. J. 2016. The moral work of subversion. Human Relations, 69(1): 5–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clegg, S., Kornberger, M., & Rhodes, C. 2007. Business ethics as practice. British Journal of Management, 18(2): 107–22.Google Scholar
Creed, W. E. D., DeJordy, R., & Lok, J. 2010. Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6): 1336–64.Google Scholar
Delbridge, R., & Edwards, T. 2013. Inhabiting institutions: Critical realist refinements to understanding institutional complexity and change. Organization Studies, 34(7): 927–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, J. 1992. Force of law: The “mystical foundation of authority.” In Cornell, D., Rosenfeld, M., & Carlson, D. (Eds.), Deconstruction and the possibility of justice: 3–67. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar
Desmond, M. 2016. Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city. New York: Crown.Google Scholar
Dobbin, F. 2001. Why the economy reflects the polity: Early rail policy in Britain, France, and the United States. In Granovetter, M. & Swedberg, R. (Eds.), The sociology of economic life: 22–36. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Duneier, M. 2000. Sidewalk. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Durkheim, É. 1973. On morality and society: Selected writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Emerson, R., Fretz, R., & Shaw, L. 2001. Participant observation and fieldnotes. In Atkinson, P., Coffey, A., Delamont, S., Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. (Eds.), Handbook of ethnography: 352–68. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, G. A. 2012. Group culture and the interaction order: Local sociology on the meso-level. Annual Review of Sociology, 38(1): 159–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, M. 1982. The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4): 777–95.Google Scholar
Gandolfo, D. M. 2014. The street sweeper and the mayor: Transgression and politics in Lima. In Drinot, P. (Eds.), Peru in theory: 143–66. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Goffman, A. 2015. On the run: Fugitive life in an American city. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gordon, R., Clegg, S., & Kornberger, M. 2009. Embedded ethics: Discourse and power in the new South Wales police service. Organization Studies, 30(1): 73–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gouldner, A. W. 1954. Patterns of industrial bureaucracy. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hallett, T. 2010. The myth incarnate: Recoupling processes, turmoil, and inhabited institutions in an urban elementary school. American Sociological Review, 75(1): 52–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallett, T., & Ventresca, M. J. 2006. Inhabited institutions: Social interactions and organizational forms in Gouldner’s patterns of industrial bureaucracy. Theory and Society, 35(2): 213–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampel, C. E., & Tracey, P. 2016. How organizations move from stigma to legitimacy: The case of Cook’s Travel Agency in Victorian Britain. Academy of Management Journal, 60(6): 2175–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, A. 1999. Governing morals: A social history of moral regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jackall, R. 1988. Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 1(4): 598–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janney, J. J., & Gove, S. 2017. Firm linkages to scandals via directors and professional service firms: Insights from the backdating scandal. Journal of Business Ethics, 140(1): 65–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalleberg, A. L., & Vallas, S. P. 2017. Precarious work. Bingley, UK: Emerald.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ketokivi, M., & Mantere, S. 2010. Two strategies for inductive reasoning in organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 35(2): 315–33.Google Scholar
Kjonstad, B., & Willmott, H. 1995. Business ethics: Restrictive or empowering? Journal of Business Ethics, 14(6): 445–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langley, A. 1999. Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review, 24(4): 691–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, T. B. 2008. Power, institutions and organizations. In Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Sahlin, K., & Suddaby, R. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organizational institutionalism: 170–97. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, T., & Suddaby, R. 2006. Institutions and institutional work. In Clegg, S., Hardy, C., Lawrence, T., & Nord, W. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organization studies: 215–54. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukes, S. 1974. Power: A radical view. London: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Madden, D. J., & Marcuse, P. 2016. In defense of housing: The politics of crisis. London: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Martí, I., & Fernández, P. 2013. The institutional work of oppression and resistance: Learning from the Holocaust. Organization Studies, 34(8): 1195–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, K. M. 2018. Reclaiming the discarded: Life and labor on Rio’s garbage dump. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, I. 1992. Codes of ethics. Some uses and abuses. In Davies, P. (Ed.), Current issues in business ethics: 97–106. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nyberg, D. 2008. The morality of everyday activities: Not the right, but the good thing to do. Journal of Business Ethics, 81(3): 587–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pina e Cunha, M., Rego, A., & Clegg, S. R. 2010. Obedience and evil: From Milgram and Kampuchea to normal organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 97(2): 291–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prasad, A. 2014. You can’t go home again: And other psychoanalytic lessons from crossing a neo-colonial border. Human Relations, 67(2): 233–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinecke, J., van Bommel, K., & Spicer, A. 2017. When orders of worth clash: Negotiating legitimacy in situations of moral multiplexity. In Cloutier, C., Gond, J.-P., & Bernard, L. (Eds.), Justification, evaluation and critique in the study of organizations: 33–72. Bingley, UK: Emerald.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, C. 2016. Democratic business ethics: Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and the disruption of corporate sovereignty. Organization Studies, 37(10): 1501–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhodes, C., Pullen, A., & Clegg, S. R. 2010. “If I should fall from grace …”: Stories of change and organizational ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 91(4): 535–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, J. C. 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scully, M., & Creed, W. E. D. 1999. Restructured families: Issues of equality and need. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 562(1): 47–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shadnam, M., Crane, A., & Lawrence, T. B. 2018. Who calls it? Actors and accounts in the social construction of organizational moral failure. Journal of Business Ethics, 165(4): 699–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelby, T. 2007. Justice, deviance, and the dark ghetto. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35(2): 126–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelby, T. 2016. Dark ghettos: Injustice, dissent, and reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.Google Scholar
Spradley, J. 1979. The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. 1990. Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. M. 1998. Basics of qualitative research techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
ten Bos, R. 1997. Essai: Business ethics and Bauman ethics. Organization Studies, 18(6): 997–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tronto, J. C. 1993. Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
van Maanen, J. 1988. Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
van Maanen, J. 2011. Tales of the field: On writing ethnography (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, L. 2013. Symbolic power and group-making: On Pierre Bourdieu’s reframing of class. Journal of Classical Sociology, 13(2): 274–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. 1968. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wolcott, H. F. 1994. Transforming qualitative data: Description, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar