Organizing With Care: Managing Vulnerability While Finding a Way in an Emerging Organization

• In Event: 30.081 - Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: 30.081-5 - Organizational Theory SIG Posters

Abstract

The paper is an empirical investigation into ways in which teachers of a small, newly formed private school co-construct communicative norms in a turbulent and risk-laden policy context. Specifically, I investigate ways in which these teachers explicitly and implicitly act with an ethic of care while organizing and enacting schooling. Using an ethnographic study design and critical ethnographic methodology (Carspecken, 1996), combined with Korth’s (2003) conceptualization of Care-in-Action, I identify ways in which teachers in a risk-laden context consciously and unconsciously care for each other while making strides and missteps in organizing a newly-opened private school. I present examples of care following Korth’s typology, and then theorize ways in which an ethic of care is an antecedent to organizational trust.

Author

• Rodney S. Whiteman, Indiana University