Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-17T22:45:28.124Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The moral dimensions of the employment relationship: institutional implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

HELENA LOPES
HELENA LOPES*
Affiliation:
DINÂMIA'CET-IUL and ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
*
*Email: Helena.lopes@iscte.pt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The paper builds an integrative framework of the moral dimensions of the employment relationship by linking the core specificities of the employment relationship, i.e. the meaningfulness of work, its relational components, the incompleteness of the labour contract and its authority character, to the four moral motives identified by the Moral Foundations Theory, namely care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty and authority. We show that due acknowledgement of the moral dimensions of the employment relationship entails making institutional transformations, namely strengthening rather than discarding employment law and reforming corporate law. Recognizing these moral dimensions would epitomize a radical break with mainstream economics and neo-liberal thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 103 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aghion, P. and Tirole, J. (1997), ‘Formal and real authority in organizations’, Journal of Political Economy, 105 (1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Akerlof, G. and Kranton, R. (2005), ‘Identity and the economics of organizations’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19 (1): 9–32.Google Scholar
Akerlof, G. (1982), ‘Labor contracts as partial gift exchange’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 97 (4): 543–69.Google Scholar
Alchian, A. and Demsetz, H. (1972), ‘Production, information costs and economic organization’, American Economic Review, 62 (5): 777–95.Google Scholar
Bolton, P. and Dewatripont, M. (2013), ‘Authority in organizations: A survey’, in Gibbons, R., and Roberts, J. (eds), Handbook of Organizational Economics, Princeton University Press, pp. 342–72.Google Scholar
Bowie, N. (1998), ‘A Kantian theory of meaningful work’, Journal of Business Ethics, 17 (9): 1083–92.Google Scholar
Bowles, S. (2004), Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions and Evolution, New York: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brousseau, E. and Glachant, J. M. (eds) (2003), The Economics of Contracts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Charmettant, H. (2012), ‘Distinguer l'autorité du pouvoir par la légitimité’, Cahiers d’Économie Politique, 62: 37–74.Google Scholar
Charness, G. and Kuhn, P. (2011), ‘Lab labor: What can labor economists learn from the lab?’, in O. Ashenfelter and D. Card (eds), Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 4, Part A, pp. 229–330.Google Scholar
Christiano, T. (2004), ‘The authority of democracy’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 12 (3): 266–90.Google Scholar
Crawshaw, J., Cropanzano, R., Bell, C. and Nadisic, T. (2013), ‘Organizational justice: New insights from behavioural ethics’, Human Relations, 66 (7): 885–904.Google Scholar
Cropanzano, R. and Mitchell, M. (2005), ‘Social esxchange theory: An interdisciplinary review’, Journal of Management, 31 (6): 874–99.Google Scholar
Deakin, S. (2007), ‘Does the “Personal Employment Contract” provide a basis for the reunification of employment law?’ Industrial Law Journal, 36 (1): 68–83.Google Scholar
Duska, R. (1992), ‘Why be a loyal agent? A systemic ethical analysis’, in Freeman, E. and Bowie, N. (eds), Ethics and Agency Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 143–68.Google Scholar
Edwards, P. (2012), ‘Experimental economics and workplace behaviour’, Socio-Economic Review, 10 (2): 293–315.Google Scholar
Ellerman, D. (1999), ‘The democratic firm: An argument based on ordinary jurisprudence’, Journal of Business Ethics, 21: 111–24.Google Scholar
Favereau, O. (2015), ‘Droit du travail, croissance et emploi: Que faire?’ Communication to the ‘Grand Débat’ of Droit social, 4 December, Paris.Google Scholar
Fehr, E. and Gintis, H. (2007), ‘Human motivation and social cooperation’, Annual Review of Sociology, 33: 43–64.Google Scholar
Fiske, A. (1992), ‘The four elementary forms of sociality’, Psychological Review, 99 (4): 689–723.Google Scholar
Folger, R. (2004), ‘Justice and employment: Moral retribution as a contra-subjugation tendency’, in Coyle-Shapiro, J., Shore, L., Taylor, M., and Tetrick, L. (eds), The Employment Relationship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 29–48.Google Scholar
Freedland, M. (2006), ‘From the contract of employment to the personal work nexus’, Industrial Law Journal, 35 (1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. (1970), ‘The social responsibility of business is to increase its profit’, New York Times Magazine, 13 September.Google Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Lyer, R., Wojcik, S. and Ditto, P. (2013), ‘Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism’, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47: 55–130.Google Scholar
Graham, J., Iyer, R., Nosek, B., Haidt, J., Koleva, S. and Ditto, P. (2011), ‘Mapping the moral domain’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (2): 366–85.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. and Joseph, C. (2008), ‘The moral mind’, in Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (eds), The Innate Mind, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 367–91.Google Scholar
Hart, O. (2008), ‘Reference points and the theory of the firm’, Economica, 75 (299): 404–11.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (2014), ‘The evolution of morality and the end of economic man’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 24 (1): 83–106.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (2013), From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kluver, J., Frazier, R. and Haidt, J. (2014), ‘Behavioral ethics for homo economicus, homo heuristicus and homo duplex’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123: 150–8.Google Scholar
Masten, Scott (1988), ‘A legal basis for the firm’, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 4 (1): 181–98.Google Scholar
McMahon, C. (1994), Authority and democracy: A General Theory of Government and Management, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Minkler, L. (2004), ‘Shirking and motivations in firms: Survey evidence on worker attitudes’, International Journal of Industrial Organization, 22 (6): 863–84.Google Scholar
Muirhead, R. (2004), Just Work, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Oosterhout, J. (2007), ‘Authority and democracy in corporate governance?’ Journal of Business Ethics, 71: 359–70.Google Scholar
Rai, T. and Fiske, A. (2011), ‘Moral psychology is relationship regulation’, Psychological Review, 118 (1): 57–75.Google Scholar
Rebitzer, J. and Lowell, J. (2011), ‘Extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motives’, in Ashenfelter, O. and Card, D. (eds), Handbook of Labor Economics, Amsterdam, North Holland: Elsevier, pp. 701–72.Google Scholar
Rob, R. and Zemsky, P. (2002), ‘Social capital, corporate culture, and incentive intensity’, RAND Journal of Economics 33 (2): 243–57.Google Scholar
Roessler, B. (2012), ‘Meaningful work: Arguments from autonomy’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 20 (1): 71–93.Google Scholar
Rosso, B., Dekas, K. and Wrzesniewski, A. (2010), ‘On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review’, Research in Organizational Behavior, 30: 91–127.Google Scholar
Schwartz, A. (1982), ‘Meaningful work’, Ethics, 92 (4): 634–46.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (2002), Rationality and Freedom, Boston: Harvard: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shweder, R., Much, N., Mahapatra, M. and Park, L. (1997), ‘The “Big Three” of Morality’, in Brandt, A. and Rozin, P. (eds), Morality and Health, New York: Routledge, pp. 119–69.Google Scholar
Simon, Herbert (1951), ‘A formal theory of the employment relationship’, Econometrica, 19 (3): 293–305.Google Scholar
Spencer, D. (2015), ‘Developing an understanding of meaningful work in economics’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39 (3): 675–88.Google Scholar
Steger, M., Dik, B. and Duffy, R. (2012), ‘Measuring meaningful work’, Journal of Career Assessment, 20 (3): 322–37.Google Scholar
Tyler, T. and Lind, A. (1992), ‘A relational model of authority in groups’, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25: 115–92.Google Scholar
Van den Steen, E. (2010): ‘Interpersonal authority in a theory of the firm’, American Economic Review, 100 (1): 466–90.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. (1983, first edition 1975), Markets and Hierarchies, New York: Free Press.Google Scholar