Death, Retirement, or Redeployment for Unproductive Farm Animals? Dispositional Tensions in Organizational Routines

Human–animal relationships, including ethic of care relationships, are of growing interest to organization studies, reflecting the substantial role of animals in organizing processes. While some scholars approach these as working relationships, few studies examine the organizational routines established to manage animals in the period after they have been retired due to age, illness, or lack of productiveness. Through a multiple case study of four contrasting sectors in France (dairy ewes, horses, experimental animals, hens), we take a Foucauldian theoretical standpoint, based on the concept of ‘Dispositif,’ to map and analyze the different patterns and dynamics of this organizational routine. Our results indicate that ‘death’ organizational patterns are the most common, with animals other than horses typically being killed immediately upon retirement. However, operators often attempt to implement work-around organizational patterns to ‘save’ animals and ensure them a decent retirement. We explore the numerous and complex interactions between heterogeneous elements that form the different patterns of the routine (actors, instruments, discourses, values, places, machines, etc.), to explain how the routine is both a driver and a result of ‘ethical blindness’ or ‘ethical foresight’ in the management of culled animals. We then interpret the dynamic of the routine as a complex interplay between three major dispositives that govern our relationships with animals. Unfolding and understanding this interplay is useful for progressively acting on various levers (such as artifacts of the routine) and for collectively endeavoring toward a long-term commitment to ethical foresight.