Care and Possibility

In the Article, Care and Possibility: Enacting an Ethic of Care Through Narrative Practice by Thomas Lawrence and Sally Maitlis the authors seek to "explore how an ethic of care could be enacted in organizations, arguing that it would involve narrative practices embedded in enduring relationships, such as work teams” (p. 1). The authors main goal in this article is to articulate three domains of discursive practice as well as three specific narrative practices" (p. 1). The idea of an ethic care has dated back as far as the early 1980's. "Liedtka suggested that caring organizations require not only caring individuals as members but the active support of caring members through organizational goals, systems, strategies, and values" (p. 3) . An ethic of care can be stemmed back to the beginning of one’s existence and practiced through new relationships and empathy of situations. Such an example is the care between mother and child that becomes natural for them with others. In an organization this may be based off of how coworkers communicate such as sharing stories with one another and opening up about themselves, and therefore have the potential of creating concrete relations with one another. "Discursive forms of practice include talking, listening, sharing stories, etc." (p. 6). Caring narrative practice can help build resilience within a team through the combined hope and efforts towards a shared goal. These ideas and themes of practices are the result of feminist and organizational writing that allows one to examine the structure of care in an organization.