Chapter Eight. In Defense Of Corporate Honor

Histories of the Dominican Order blame big events in bad times for the friars' troubles, but the evidence presented in this book tells a different story. This chapter discusses four general features of the restructuring of their organization that they undertook. First, administrators made unmistakably deliberate attempts at strengthening command and control. The second general feature of fourteenth-century organizational change is that it redrew lines of authority. In the Province of Aragon provincials sought to gain greater control over decisions previously left to priors of local convents. A third feature is the strengthening of a managerial logic, which is to say that elected leaders grew less interested in traditional means of moral persuasion bound to eternal rewards and punishments than in strengthening corporate command and control here and now. Finally, a fourth feature of corporate reorganization directed by the province's managers is the concern for defending corporate honor. Keywords:Aragon; corporate honor; Dominican order; friars