On signalling and control in the corporate virtue theatre

Abstract

Contemporary corporate culture is typified by a remarkable interest in projecting virtue: often under the guise of promoting “inclusivity,” “sustainability” and “empowerment.” Yet, this projection rarely translates into meaningful practice, rather it seems to serve principally to obfuscate and distract from more fundamental problems. Aided by a Marxist analysis, we examine the cause for this impasse. We arrive at an interpretation of corporate “virtue” as a phenomenon that is increasingly integrated into a political economy of value, in which virtue is reterritorialised as marketing. We identify how the “virtue theatre” that results from this practice enacts an epistemological domination, in which the worker is made to align their labour to a performance of an “unreality.” This results in a situation in which the interests of Capital and the worker are falsely presented as aligned, which serves to foreclose resistance and requires new strategies to counteract domination.