Abstract
This paper traces the evolution of Patricia Werhane’s theory of employee rights as she moves from the traditional human rights view to a socially constructed view of employee rights. In the course of that evolution, I argue that Werhane has a less robust view of human rights than she did when she first proposed a theory of human rights. I then argue that if Werhane adopted Martha Nussbaum’s human capabilities approach, she could have both a traditional account of employee rights and plenty of room for the exercise of moral imagination.
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Notes
- 1.
In this section I draw on Werhane (1985) and Werhane and Radin (2004). The topics discussed in this section appear in separate book chapters and texts as well.
- 2.
Some parts of the paper were written for the presentation in the conference in Pat’s honor held at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, in April 2016
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
For an account of Nussbaum’s Aristotelian non-relativist virtue grounding, see Nussbaum (1993): 242–276).
- 6.
In her later book, Employment and Employee Rights, the discussion of meaningful work occurs primarily within discussions of motivation techniques and outplacement. A right to meaningful work and the content of such a right is noticeably absent-a concern that I have already discussed more generally regarding the lack of emphasis on employee rights in that volume.
References
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Bowie, N.E. (2018). Employee Rights, Moral Imagination, and the Struggle with Universal Values: A Quick Overview of Werhane’s Contributions to Ethics in Employment. In: Freeman, R.E., Dmytriyev, S., Wicks, A.C. (eds) The Moral Imagination of Patricia Werhane: A Festschrift. Issues in Business Ethics(), vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74292-2_3
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