Ethics, Embodied Life and Esprit de Corps an ethnographic study with anti-money laundering analysts
Résumé
Our highly sensitive ethnographic study with anti-money-laundering analysts delves into the
understudied link between embodiment and ethics in organizations. We begin by reclaiming the
importance of bodies and embodiment in the business ethics literature, which largely assumes
preeminence of the mind over the body. We then draw on French phenomenologist Michel
Henry’s theory of the subjective body to advance our understanding of ethics as endogenous
embodied practice rooted in life. Through the experiential realities of our ethnographic work,
we show how the two interrelated dimensions in which embodiment occurs (subjective body
and organic body) operate at two interrelated levels (subjective and intersubjective experience)
to advance theory on the implications of corporeal ethics in organizations. More specifically, by
reclaiming and specifying the ontologically embodied and shared dimensions of ethical subjectivity
in life, we show the emergence and development of an esprit de corps, which allows embodying
collective ethical practice while resisting to continuous external pressures.
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