Sexual fetishism in organizations: The case of journal list fetishism

Organizations can encourage their members to over-value means above ends. A case in point is the tendency among academics to over-value standardized ranking lists for academic journals at the expense of high quality research. To make sense of such seemingly perverse object choices, organizational researchers have turned to the concept of fetishism. However, organizational researchers have yet to consider how these fetishes are organized as sexual object choices—a strange omission given the expansive empirical and theoretical literature exploring fetishism as a sexual practice. Drawing a distinction between the fetishism of organizations and fetishism in organizations, the article seeks to redress this oversight.