The capability approach developed by Amartya Sen focuses on the enhancement of people’s capabilities, i.e. their real freedom to choose a life course they have reason to value. Applying the CA to the organizational context, the focus of human resource management is transformed, shifting away from the needs of the organization to the freedoms of the individual. This shift happens also inside the so-called ‘liberated companies,’ firms with an organizational form that allows employees the complete freedom, along with the responsibility, (...) to take any actions they decide are best. In this paper we show the contribution of the capability approach for management and for organizational ethics by focusing on this innovative model of ‘liberated companies.’. (shrink)

Its importance for understanding social dynamics notwithstanding, the concept of agency is one of sociology’s more controversial ideas. The debate around this concept has mostly been developed at a theoretical level and the empirical studies tend to rely on socio-psychological interpretations of agency as a stable, inner force capable of influencing prospects, decisions, and behavior with little room for change in agency capacity. Social sciences, though, should take a more dynamic stance on agency and highlight the role of the different (...) elements of the social context that can enable or hinder individual agency capacity. Prompted by recent developments of the Capability Approach, this article proposes a framework for the study of agency that defines individual agency as the result of a conversion process of personal resources shaped by conversion factors. Conversion factors operate at micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis, each of which can be oriented toward past experiences, present conditions, and future prospects. This article also seeks to analytically distinguish three types of agency outcome: adaptation, autonomy, and influence. Such a framework will facilitate the transformation of the slippery notion of agency into more tractable empirical phenomena which increase its analytical and critical capacity. (shrink)