Abstract

Ethical cultures play a key role in shaping actors’ behaviors within organizations. While they can encourage ‘good’ actions and decisions, they can also trigger highly problematic ones. Building on the work of Zygmunt Bauman and Tommy Jensen on the notion of adiaphorization, we explore the organizational processes that contribute to the managerial production of ethical insensitivity, particularly in the face of managerial violence. Based on the study of what managerially led to a tragic wave of suicides at France Télécom in the late 2000s, the article makes two main contributions: (1) an empirical exploration of Jensen’s (2010) conceptual framework and (2) a better understanding of the key role played by certain rhetorics to support adiaphorization.