2026/04/25 by Nela Smolovic Jones, Owain Smolović Jones, Caroline Clarke · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Management and Organizational Studies #Labor Movements and Unions #Gender Diversity and Inequality
paper · doi:10.1177/01708406261447714
openalex publication_date 2026/04/25 · openalex created_date 2026/04/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/03
Although an ethics of care is increasingly recognized as offering an alternative set of values and practices to organizations significantly shaped by neoliberal and patriarchal norms, its proponents have yet to contend with how care can help overcome the hostile contexts within which it usually operates. This study explored the political role of care in catalyzing and sustaining resistance to careless organizations. In doing so, it theorizes the concept of caring against , enriching understanding of how care can be a means and an end, building and enhancing resistance to achieve caring outcomes. We approach this challenge as a tangible and material one—practices of care enacted by and between bodies that build and sustain resistance in work, home, social, and transit spaces. Conceptually, we drew on feminist organization studies’ accounts of care and space, further deepening insight into their embodied dimensions through the theory of Sara Ahmed. Empirically, we built the concept of caring against through a qualitative study of hospitality workers who unionized and organized for strike action, allowing insight into mobilizations with and for care in an industry where patriarchal norms are dominant and abuse of women workers commonplace. We posit the caring against concept as comprising four practices that deploy care to engender and, subsequently, sustain resistance: shaping carelessness , absorbing care , interstitial politicizing , and fortifying defiance . The study enables future theorization of care within organization studies as an active political force that does not merely survive carelessness but holds the capacity for mobilizing organizational alternatives that may challenge it.