Humiliation: A standard organizational product?

Humiliation is treated as a random event, an error in a modern organization. This paper claim is to the contrary—that humiliation, legitimate or not, is a standard organizational by-product, considered to be an unavoidable if regrettable effect of power. The paper presents examples of organizational humiliation and discusses it in the terms of a social act and of an emotion. Contrary to what might be expected, humiliation is not limited to personnel issues; budget and accounting procedures are also arenas permitting humiliation to be produced. The pervasiveness of the phenomenon is scrutinized, ending with a plea for non-instrumental approach to negative phenomena in organizations.