The need for a philosophically grounded and human-centred ethical questioning for the management of people in organisations[La nécessité d’une interrogation éthique philosophiquement ancrée et humainement centrée pour la gestion des hommes dans les organisations]

Do ethics have any relevant meaning and practical scope in management? What would be these ethics which management might need? To answer those questions, we observed our environment, simply and directly, questioning our conditionings and our pre-conceived intentions by a phenomenological approach (Husserl, 2004). Our study is thus based on a four years immersion, in several organizations, collecting datas through direct observation and investigations using the critical incidents technique (Flanagan, 1954). Datas were then analysed through the grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This study, which dealt with the phenomena of « demotivation » at work, allowed us to identify a lack of vision and ethical awareness in management practices. This crucial need for Ethics seems to be partly due to the fact that management seems to ignore life and human beings. But could this lack at least partially be filled by ethics, and by what kind of ethics? As ethics seem to be increasingly more invoked in management, through ethical committees or social responsibility of enterprises, for example. Maurice Thévenet indicates ethics "became the means to talk when you have nothing to say" (2009), it would then participate in a kind of fashion. Ethics management needed is not that one, as management is a science of action and efficacy (Rojot, 2005). Thus, after a quick excursion into philosophy, homeland of ethics, we propose philosophically grounded ethics. Ethics become a means to reveal certain sources of frequent confusions in management. It invites us to weigh the meaning of the words and to query our space of possible action. Because we seem to be culturally inclined to build our social reality in an illusory but binding way and simultaneously wanting things that do not depend on us or which are by definition impossible. Such Ethics appear to be grounded on purely individual action that cannot be delegated. It belongs to each of us, if desired, to enter in ethics. From the management point of view, ethics allow us to base management on a less illusory and absurd perception of our environment, to refocus its purpose on human beings, not its chimeras. For managers, it becomes a question of promoting "awake" people who are aware of life and its limitations, who know how to welcome others in trust. The key words are space, time and trust. By listening and sharing, it becomes possible for everybody to build together the sense of action and the means to achieve goals Thus, the individual is recognized humanly, he is understood, he understands what he is involved in and he believes in what he does. The liberated individual is able to express its unique nature and its full effectiveness. Thus, ethical foundation of the managerial action allows the management to meet its goal of efficiency.