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Workplace Democracy: Why not?
International workshop
October 25-26, 2007 Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) Convenors : Profs. A. Gosseries & Y. de Cordt With the financial support of the Emile Bernheim Foundation And in collaboration with the Revue de Philosophie économique October 25 - Afternoon session 2 p.m. - 6 p.m. Paper 1 : 2 p.m. - 3 p.m. Abstract : Since ancient times, political philosophers have often attempted to explain the rightful exercise of political power by highlighting its differences with other forms of power. It was crucial for Locke, as it was for Aristotle, to identify the properties of domestic rule in order to make clear, by way of contrast, the end, extent, and origins of political rule. But the premise that political associations differ critically from other kinds of associations has been recently under attack from two fronts. On the one hand, some political philosophers, curious about the range of application of democratic principles, have concluded that these can be extended to other domains, in particular the workplace. On the other hand, the development of stakeholder theory in business ethics, although mainly concerned at first with the identification of the social responsibilities of the firm, has naturally led to arguments against traditional, non-democratic schemes of managerial governance. These two disciplinary approaches grew somewhat independently of each other, but are now unified by their plea to democratize the workplace. In this paper I cast a sceptical eye on this project. To be precise, I make a critical assessment of the possibility of justifying the allocation of voting rights to the stakeholders of the firm on the same grounds on which the enfranchisement of the stakeholders of political communities is justified. My topic is the right to vote for representatives and, by analogy, managers, not specific issues. There are thus two steps in the argument: providing a theory of the right to vote for political representatives, and identifying why it is problematic to translate it to the context of managerial governance. My purpose is not to provide a blow to the project of stakeholder democracy, as it has been called, but to identify some of its normative and conceptual limitations. Respondent : Axel Gosseries Paper 2 : 3 p.m. - 4 p.m. Abstract: The organizational and institutional arrangements that are often said to qualify as examples of workplace democracy are myriad. The term "workplace democracy" is used to refer to everything from worker cooperatives or employee stock option programs (ESOPs) to economic regimes that involve strong trade unions or co-determination. In the light of such diversity, what qualifies an organization or institution as an example of workplace democracy? This paper aims to isolate the values that are held in common by these various organizational and institutional arrangements. At their core, these organizational and institutional arrangements can be defined as alternatives to wage labour-that is, an arrangement in which a worker contracts to follow the directives of another individual in return for some fixed set of economic benefits. A number of values (e.g., equality or autonomy) can be invoked to explain what makes wage labour morally problematic. Depending on the value that is invoked, a given set of organizational or institutional alternatives becomes preferable to wage labour. In examining which alternatives are favoured by different values, the paper considers the ways in which democracy serves as an underlying consideration in describing and advocating for these alternatives to wage labour. Nien-hê Hsieh is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania with a secondary appointment in the Department of Philosophy. His research is in ethics and economics. Recent publications include "Justice in Production," The J. of Political Philos. (forth.); "Is Incomparability a Problem for Anyone?", Econ. & Philos. (2007); and "Rawlsian Justice and Workplace Republicanism," Social Theory and Practice (2005). He holds a B.A. in Economics (Swarthmore College), an M.Phil. in Politics (Oxford), and a Ph.D. in Economics (Harvard). For 2007-2008, he is a Faculty Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Respondent: TBA Debate : 4h15 p.m. - 5h30 p.m. *** October 26 Paper 1: 9h30 - 10h30 a.m.
Abstract : The goal of this paper is to cast a new light on the feasibility and desirability of workplace democracy, on the basis of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS, 1759). It is shown that the TMS, by laying emphasis on sympathy, and on the division of Man between the 'examined (i.e. selfish) ego' and the 'examiner ego', brings an original answer to the question of the emergency of workplace democracy: the tendency of each person to put himself in the position of others may not favour the emergency of workplace democracy. Moreover, the TMS, by defining virtue as what generates the admiration of the impartial observer, who puts himself in the position of all members of society, proposes a normative criterion allowing us to evaluate the desirability of workplace democracy, desirability that seems to be decreasing with the existing degree of sympathy. Thus, although the TMS does not lead to a rejection of workplace democracy, it tends, nonetheless, to question some arguments of its defenders, both on the grounds of its feasibility and of its desirability. Gregory Ponthiere is currently a FNRS Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Public Economics and Population Economics (CREPP) at the University of Liege. His research interests include demographic economics and public economics. Respondent: TBA
Paper 2 : 11-12 a.m. Abstract : This paper is concerned with the question of how a move towards the radical democratization of economic enterprises might be motivated from within a broadly Rawlsian framework. I suggest that there are two 'liberal routes' to justifying workplace democracy - the first centred on the value of liberty, and the second centred on the value of equality. I then suggest that a liberal state could incentivize more democratic forms of economic enterprise without any violation of state neutrality or procedural fairness. The first liberal route towards justifying forms of workplace democracy is rooted in the value of liberty. On Rawls's view, our interest in liberty is grounded in our possession of the 'moral power' of being able to frame, revise and pursue a conception of the good. A just set of socioeconomic arrangements must provide the political and social conditions necessary for the adequate development and full exercise of this moral power. Now, with regard to the development of this moral power, I suggest that there is a degree of 'moral risk' associated with hierarchical and non-democratic workplaces. If individuals spend their working week in institutions that treat them as mere functionaries within a rigid hierarchy, then there is a risk of their capacities for autonomous self-direction beginning to atrophy. Therefore, if we are interested in the protection of these capacities, we should organize economic life so that it is not inimical to the moral power of autonomous self-direction. There is a further danger that individuals who spend their working lives in rigid hierarchies will not have the abilities and capacities needed to be active citizens in a democracy. Alongside these worries, we may also want to organize socioeconomic life so that individuals have the maximum capacity directly to exercise their capacity for framing, revising and pursuing a conception of the good through their economic activity, rather than having to relegate their pursuit of this conception to their private activity outside the economic sphere. Hence, both the protection and realization of the capacities for individual autonomy speak in favour of forms of economic organization that find a role for the democratic engagement of individual workers. The second liberal route towards workplace democracy is driven by the value of equality. As Rawls emphasizes (JF, §39) we care about inequality in part because of its effects with regard to status, power, domination and self-respect. Inequalities of income and wealth can be rectified through a process of ex post redistribution (as in a capitalist welfare state), but a 'redistributive' realization of Rawls's second principle would fail to address some of the ways in which inequality is bad, not least because ex post transfer payments will tend to undermine social status and self-respect. One aim of the democratization of economic enterprises would be to realize the value of equality through the organization of economic life in a way that reduced the likelihood of social domination or loss of status. Thus, a move to economic democracy, in moving beyond a 'redistributive paradigm', would offer the potential fully to realize the political value of equality. So - how can a liberal state encourage the kinds of economic democratization that are enjoined by the values of liberty and equality? Given the malleability of the corporate form, and its status as a conventional result of background legal and economic rules, the liberal state can encourage more democratic forms of enterprise through setting up changes in the regulation and taxation of economic enterprises. The state can give tax breaks and special privileges to corporations that meet certain standards for worker-participation in decision making, or which create less authoritarian forms of internal decision-making in some other way. Such policies are not unfair in favouring some corporations over others, as fairness is a property of just background conditions, which protect values of liberty and equality. Those non-democratic enterprises which continued would have no complaint of unfairness if their harsher treatment by the tax and regulatory system was itself necessary in order to secure background judgement. Moreover, policies which discriminated in favour of democratic enterprises would not violate state neutrality, as such policies would be motivated by a general commitment to non-perfectionist values of liberty and equality, rather than by a commitment to any particular conception of the good Martin O'Neill is Hallsworth Research Fellow at the Centre for Political Theory at the University of Manchester. He works on a number of issues in ethics and political philosophy, and is writing a book on Corporations and Social Justice. Respondent : Vincent Aubert Afternoon session
2-3 p.m. Axel Gosseries (FRS, Chaire Hoover): The Property argument against workplace democracy 3h15-4h15 p.m. Marc Fleurbaey (CNRS-CERSES) Workplace Democracy as a Public Good
Respondent: Geert Demuijnck, professor of ethics and political philosophy at the catholic university of Lille (France). His interests include questions of distributive justice, and the ethical foundations of the welfare state. He publishes on topics related to social justice and social policy. 4h15-6h15 p.m.- Debate |
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