THE VIOLENT ORGANIZATION, OR THE ORGANIZATION AS A VICTIM OF VIOLENCE? TOWARD CRITICAL RESEARCH ON ORGANIZATIONAL VIOLENCE

Abstract

The aim of this article is to offer an original interpretation of the literature on the relationship between violence and organization(s). Our first contribution highlights an “epistemic friction” between two bodies of work: one, positivist in orientation, which conceives of violence as a risk weighing on the organization (the organization as a victim of violence); the other, constructivist in orientation, which understands violence as being exercised by the organization on its members and its external environment (the violent organization). We emphasize the productive dimension of this friction for the knowledge produced. Our second contribution consists in bringing together critical literature on the subject, within which we distinguish two sub-currents: works dealing with “organizational” violence, internal to the organization, and those dealing with “organized” violence, produced by organizations on their external environment.