This paper draws a distinction between ‘right MacIntyreans’ who are relatively optimistic that MacIntyre’s vision of ethics can be realised in capitalist society, and ‘left MacIntyreans’ who are sceptical about this possibility, and aims to show that the ‘left MacIntyrean’ position is a promising perspective available to business ethicists. It does so by arguing for a distinction between ‘community-focused’ practices and ‘excellence-focused’ practices. The latter concept fulfils the promise of practices to provide us with an understanding of the best work (...) for humankind and highlights the affinities between MacIntyre’s concept of a practice and Marx’s conception of good work as free, creative activity. The paper concludes with a suggestion that we reflect on the best forms of work so that we can strive to ensure the very best activities, those most consonant with our flourishing, one day become available to all. (shrink)

Organisational restructuring involving cost-cutting, downsizing, and the acquisition and divestment of different functions is an increasingly normalised aspect of employment in both the private and public sectors. This article takes up the question of the effects of restructuring on workers through a study based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews of long-term workers in Finland’s state-owned postal service, using the concept of dignity as an analytical lens. The article distinguishes between everyday, organisational, and social dignity, using this distinction to capture how workers (...) strove to sustain dignity in a process of organisational restructuring that generated dignity threats related to occupational devaluation. The study shows how dignity in postal work has been dependent on a particular historical configuration of public service work involving the employer organisation, employment relations, and occupational values. Cost-driven restructuring has destabilised this configuration, producing a stark separation between dignity in everyday work and the organisational indignities of restructuring in postal workers’ experiences. Feeling unable to affect organisational changes in their work, postal workers have been left to sustain dignity through everyday relationality, and by drawing intra-organisational boundaries to temporary workers and upper managers based on an occupational hierarchy of commitment and competence. The study highlights the significance of organisational support for dignity at work, particularly in relation to the dignity threats generated by prolonged processes of restructuring. (shrink)

In this paper, using Ambedkar’s pioneering vision for engaged Buddhism, we developed the notion of radical interdependence, which consists of four interrelated processes: dialogical recognition; negating invisibilities; dignity as an embodied praxis; ordinary cosmopolitanism. Our research primarily focused on women janitors’ lives in a Mumbai Mall using this conception. Our participants experienced four different kinds of dignity injuries. They used various strategies to preserve personal, intersubjective, and processual dignities. We also found horizontal and vertical ordinary cosmopolitanism strategies to bridge social (...) boundaries between colleagues and mall customers. We further discuss the implications of radical interdependence for organizational research. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethics of the Australian business community’s responses to the phenomenon of modern slavery. Engaging a critical discourse approach, we draw upon a data set of submissions by businesses and business representatives to the Australian government’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade ‘Parliamentary Inquiry into Establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia’—which preceded the signing into law of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018—to examine the business community’s discursive construction in their submissions of the ethical–political (...) concept of freedom. The paper shows how the concept of freedom was employed by Australian business in a manner that privileged their own subject status and advocated for legislation with minimal burden. Relating this contemporary case to a longer historical context, we show how Australian business responses towards modern slavery map onto liberal and neoliberal ethics in which the freedom of the propertied takes precedent over that of the property-less. Further, we show discursive similarities in the arguments presented by modern Australian businesses and certain historical efforts by members of the business community to privilege commercial freedoms in responses to 18th and 19th Century abolitionist movements. Overall, our research makes two important contributions: first, it highlights the value of a critical discourse lens in business ethics research to show how business and other stakeholders in the field construct and shape their own and other’s ethically-laden understanding of reality; and second, it presents a case for considerable scepticism about the motivation of business to employ the freedoms made available to it under neo/liberal discourse to confront a key human rights challenge. (shrink)

Biometric technologies are at the forefront of organizational innovation, surveillance, and control. In many instances, the use of physiological and behavioral biometrics enhances individual and organizational performance. However, they also have the potential to hinder human wellbeing. In particular, recent generations of biometrics are capable of extracting deeper insights into human behavior, enabling organizational surveillance practices, but may also constrain individual rights and freedoms. While biometric technologies have been evidenced to infringe upon privacy and lead to discriminatory practices, little research (...) has examined the impact of biometrics on dignity, an important ethical construct related to human wellbeing. In this conceptual paper, we draw from the theory of affordances to identify and delineate six affordances of biometric technologies, categorized into inhibiting and augmenting biometric affordances. We propose a framework in which inhibiting and augmenting biometric affordances may simultaneously support and humiliate dignity. This separation offers a theoretical base for future empirical research to explore the increasingly pervasive relationship between biometric adoption and human dignity. Moreover, we explain six paradoxical tensions across three forms of dignity—inherent, behavioral, and meritocratic—in the proposed framework. Finally, we discuss why firms should be responsible for addressing the tensions across dignity forms when they adopt biometric technologies to balance the trade-off between wealth creation and human wellbeing. This offers guidance for practitioners on how to integrate biometric technologies without hindering human dignity. (shrink)

Increasing global competition has intensified the use of informal sector workforce worldwide. This phenomenon is true with regard to India, where 92% of the workers hold precarious jobs. Our study examines the dynamics of workplace dignity in the context of Indian security guards deployed as contract labour by private suppliers, recognising that security guards’ jobs were marked by easy access, low status, disrespect and precariousness. The experiences of guards serving bank ATMs were compared with those working in large reputed organisations. (...) The former reported loss of dignity though their inherent self-worth remained partially intact, whereas the latter reclaimed dignity despite the precarious working conditions and the absence of unions. Guards from large reputed organisations evolved strategies by which they took advantage of the client’s vulnerabilities, developed ‘thick’ relationships at work and immersed themselves in 'doing dignity work' to ensure that they are not disposable. ‘Doing dignity work’ was a visible device which involved actions that met or went beyond the norms laid down by the client and was used by security guards to limit the extent of their precariousness. Since the opportunity to reclaim dignity was facilitated by large reputed clients’ adherence to legal regulations, we see implications of the study for the moral economy. (shrink)

The paper addresses an understudied but highly relevant group of people within corporate organizations and society in general—the marginalized—as well as their narration, and criticism, of personal lived experiences of marginalization in business. They are conventionally perceived to lack traditional forms of power such as public influence, formal authority, education, money, and political positions; however, they still possess the resources to impact their situations, their circumstances, and the structures that determine their situations. Business ethics researchers seldom consider marginalized people’s voices (...) and experiences as resources to understand their lives, as demonstrated through a review of 7500 articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly (2000–2019). Only 78 studies included aspects of marginalized groups. 69 of those studies discussed the topic of marginalized groups of people, but without integrating their explicit voices into the text. Only 9 of the 78 articles featured marginalized people’s explicit voices about their marginalization experiences incorporated into the text as a source for exploration. None of the identified studies discussed the potential for theorizing based on such voices. This paper contributes to business ethics theory by developing four theoretical possibilities vis-à-vis the critical voices of marginalized people’s experiences in business: (a) marginalized theory on critical agency and freedom of speech; (b) the gatekeeping role of academia; (c) primary sources; and (d) a participative perspective. Discussing the theoretical potential of quoting the above voices can enrich business ethics research in terms of the theoretical understanding of marginalized groups in business. (shrink)