Friendship with the company: Building corporate leadership through humanistic consultancy

Abstract

The paper argues that successful corporate leadership involves an irreducible humanistic dimension, namely that it is a task for companies to ensure that the employee's workplace actually contributes to the individuals' quality of life. Working hours take increasing parts of our overall lives, and in many cases we spend more time at work than with our loved ones. Thus the traditional ethical requirements of companies to be fair and impartial to their employees are no longer sufficient. Friendship with the company is the relationship which most closely describes the ideal working arrangement and at the same time founds a new generation of norms to govern corporations' behavior.