Organizations and I-Thou Ethics

I teach a class on ethics and communication, and part of that class looks at the ideas of Martin Buber.  Buber distinguished two ways of communicating with others.  I-it communication treats the other person as an object, where you are trying to get something for yourself.  I-thou communication treats the other person as a unique individual and honors the other person for who they are.  I-thou communication is distinctively unstrategic as it involves caring more about the other person’s needs than you care about your own needs.  From an ethical perspective, actions would be ethical in so much as they avoid I-it communication and promote I-thou communication.  For example, you arrive for a meeting a few minutes early, and the coworker who annoys everyone approaches you.  Buber might argue that the ethical thing to do is to engage him or her in conversation.  I-it communication would involve brushing him or her off and moving on to talk to someone more interesting or more important to you.  (There’s a little more to it than this, but I think this summary conveys the point.)  The textbook for this class argues that I-thou communication is appropriate in every context, including organizations.  What do you think?  Could organizational ethics be defined by avoiding treating others as objects and instead honoring them as people?