Corporate accountability is never far from the front page, and as one of the world's most elite business schools, Harvard Business School trains many of the future leaders of Fortune 500 companies. But how does HBS formally and informally ensure faculty and students embrace proper business standards? Relying on his first-hand experience as a Harvard Business School faculty member, Michel Anteby takes readers inside HBS in order to draw vivid parallels between the socialization of faculty and of students. In an era when many organizations are focused on principles of responsibility, Harvard Business School has long tried to promote better business standards. Anteby's rich account reveals the surprising role of silence and ambiguity in HBS's process of codifying morals and business values. As Anteby describes, at HBS specifics are often left unspoken; for example, teaching notes given to faculty provide much guidance on how to teach but are largely silent on what to teach. Manufacturing Morals demonstrates how faculty and students are exposed to a system that operates on open-ended directives that require significant decision-making on the part of those involved, with little overt guidance from the hierarchy. Anteby suggests that this model-which tolerates moral complexity-is perhaps one of the few that can adapt and endure over time. Manufacturing Morals is a perceptive must-read for anyone looking for insight into the moral decision-making of today's business leaders and those influenced by and working for them.

"In this sparkling book, Michel Anteby challenges managerial images of polished efficient organizations that relegate employees' personal relations and private goals to a controlled periphery. As he focuses a skilled ethnographer's attention on the production of unauthorized personal objects within a French aeronautical factory, Anteby gradually reveals a profound truth about paid labor for others: workers make labor contracts bearable for themselves by creating space for their own creativity and relations to fellow workers."--Viviana Zelizer, author of "The Purchase of Intimacy"

""Moral Gray Zones" is superb. Rich, judicious, and well written, this trenchant portrayal of how control really gets done, moves the sociology of meaning forward."--Harrison White, author of "Identity and Control"

""Moral Gray Zones" brings classical mid-twentieth-century social theory into the twenty-first century. This lively look at a dying trade--craft workers in the modern factory--has relevance to almost any work world today. In fine detail, Anteby makes it clear that beneath surface performance contracts and economic exchanges at work lies a rich if hidden interaction in which laborers seek dignity and respect for what they do from coworkers and managers. That they succeed more often than not makes for a terrific tale of considerable interest--dramatically and theoretically. A marvelous book."--John Van Maanen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"The book channels the spirit of industrial sociology of the 1950s, when students of work and organization encountered the shop floor up close and came away understanding how everyday behaviors formed the woof and warp of industrialization's socialfabric. Anteby's use of the production of homers for understanding relations between workers and managers is ingenious."--Stephen R. Barley, Stanford University

"An accessible good read, "Moral Gray Zones" makes a distinct contribution toward the understanding of informal structures, situated moralities, occupational cultures, and systems of control."--Peter V. Marsden, Harvard University

""Moral Gray Zones" is first-rate qualitative organizational analysis. Effectively organized and cogently argued, I was impressed by Anteby's marshalling of diverse streams of evidence. The extension of his ideas through the vast literature on multiple occupations is particularly stimulating."--Calvin Morrill, University of California, Irvine

Corporate accountability is never far from the front page, and as the world's most elite institution for business education, Harvard Business School trains many of the future leaders of Fortune 500 companies. But how does HBS formally and informally ensure faculty and students embrace proper business standards? Making unprecedented use of his position as a Harvard Business School faculty member, Michel Anteby takes readers inside HBS in order to draw vivid parallels between the socialization of faculty and of students. In an era when many organizations are focused on principles of responsibility, Harvard Business School has long tried to promote better business standards. Anteby's rich account reveals the surprising role of silence and ambiguity in HBS' process of codifying morals and business values. As Anteby describes, at HBS specifics are often left unspoken; for example, teaching notes given to faculty provide much guidance on how to teach but are largely silent on what to teach. Manufacturing Morals demonstrates how faculty and students are exposed to a system that operates on open-ended directives that require significant decision-making on the part of those involved, with little overt guidance from the hierarchy. Anteby suggests that this model - which tolerates moral complexity - is perhaps one of the few that can adapt and endure over time. Manufacturing Morals is a perceptive must-read for anyone looking for insight into the moral decision-making of today's business leaders and those influenced by and working for them.