Abstract
This book, as one of 15 current publications in Palgrave’s Humanism in Business series, is the second in that series to offer a contribution regarding dignity and organisation and sets out to distinguish ‘workplace dignity’ as a specific theoretical concept distinct from those put forward in previous publications. The intended readership of the book is primarily business school academics interested in concerns of politico-economic theory and business ethics but not necessarily those aware of critical management or human relations literatures. Based on Kantian and Daoist teaching, workplace dignity is defined as ‘the intrinsic, unalienable worth of everything in the workplace, which should be respected, protected and promoted’ (p. 74) and is proposed as a needful yet developmental concept which can be practically operationalised in organisations.
Dignity is an emergent term in the management and organisation studies literature, with wider application among political and labour movements for restitution or recognition in conditions of exploitation than in mainstream management theory. However, this book distances itself from the small corpus of existing work and, in particular, from ‘Marxist’, labour or exploitation (indignity)-oriented works. The inhibiting force against the achievement of dignity is identified as over-individualising neoliberal ideology, which does not only economically affect workers in the organisation but also is corrosive of broader social values and detrimental to the environment. Workplace dignity is thus proposed as a moral goal of relations that might be attained by a reinvigoration of democratic processes in the workplace.
The first section of the book deals with the theoretical contribution of the book, with significant effort made to identify the relevance of the scholarship to contemporary political as well as economic events but little easy introductions to the varied conception of dignity across the fields of medicine, human rights, philosophy and the broad corpus of management. Chapter 1 focuses primarily on the ‘malfunctions’ of contemporary capitalist society, emphasising the perverse incentives of neoliberal politics and cultures of individualism in producing or exacerbating problems of environmental degradation, poverty, political discontent and low integrity among leaders. This well-worn narrative serves to explicitly link the concerns of human dignity with those of the proposed concept of workplace dignity. As a cross-disciplinary term, this situates the author’s discussion clearly in relation to work on economic development and organisational justice, as well as business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR), while in several respects, distancing the text from the work of scholars concerned with work quality and the sociology of work. However, there remain significant correlations between the interests of this text and Randy Hodson’s (2001) Dignity at Work or Sharon Bolton’s (2007) Dimensions of Dignity at Work. A more detailed conceptual discussion regarding human dignity and workplace dignity is established over the next two chapters, yet this discussion is inhibited by a poor standard of copyediting which reflects poorly on the publisher’s quality processes.
While Chapter 2 positions the book in the context of political theory regarding human dignity that derives primarily from debates on human rights, this and the subsequent chapter concentrate on foregrounding duties. By expanding on duties and drawing closer correlation between the business ethics literature and work on dignity, this book’s contribution lies in its expansive definition of workplace dignity to incorporate social, economic and environmental concerns rather than a limiting perspective on individual workers as foregrounded in the work of previous scholars. Chapter 3 presents the author’s detailed four-stage model for organisations who (1) must strive to meet their duties by avoiding dignity violations. The definition incorporates subsequent stages (2) of respect for the dignity of other entities (persons and materials) by allowing for their expression of intrinsic worth, (3) protection of this through development of supportive structures and cultures and (4) promotion of strategies to enhance non-instrumentalist orientations.
This approach acknowledges developments in philosophy and human rights including several critiques of existing work by promoting a relational view of dignity: the human being is central but dignity inhabits relations between self, other and non-human entities rather than inhabiting subjective perceptions or normative ascriptions. This approach addresses critiques of dignity as solely a matter of social status (legitimately or illegitimately ascribed) or of subjective ‘feeling’, although such an approach is neither entirely novel nor elaborated in depth. The implications of such an approach are also not fully explored, and in this lies the weakness of the argument presented: that at the core of the concept of dignity as it is defined lies an orientation towards separate and distinct individual entities, yet foregrounding a relational definition requires a more sophisticated and non-essentialist conception of persons and non-persons alike. To give the author the benefit of the doubt, however, such a detailed theoretical debate may not be appealing to the broad audience to whom the book mainly speaks.
The case for the need for the concept of workplace dignity in broader management scholarship is made in Chapter 4, where the author outlines how far neoliberal ideology is embedded in certain concepts and the extent to which they may also be outmoded by changed and updated conceptions of business and work in contemporary capitalist societies. Challenging the neutrality of such concepts as the psychological contract, social exchange theory and work engagement, the author identifies that while breaches of dignity may be experienced subjectively and emotionally, these experiences when shared demonstrate an awareness of (un)ethical intentions. Consequently, dignity is neither an individual experience nor a responsibility that can be individualised. The author proposes the dignified workplace as one in which everyone in the organisation upholds four key values: equality, openness, responsibility and the principle of positive contribution. The debate here reiterates that of authors concerned with the quality of work life (QWL). Chapter 5 then continues to address the problematic individualisation of moral appeals, including the inspiration of ‘the almost metaphorical individual in the Nazi and Gulag concentration camps who was able to retain his/her dignity, who did not break down in the quest for survival, and thereby saved the dignity of the Others’ (p. 154). An interesting reflection of this chapter is on the nature of workplace dignity as neither transient nor static but rather relies on a perspective that values both long-term and short-term relationships.
The second section of the book broadly presents an outline of practical application of the author’s proposals regarding how work might be organised towards the promotion of workplace dignity. Chapter 6 advocates the role of active workplace democracy, proposing organisations engage in non-instrumentally oriented ‘human dignity development’ (HDD) rather than human resource management. While this chapter highlights and addresses several difficulties faced by democratic forms of organisation to prevent degeneracy of the democratic function and emphasises the role of external engagement with a range of stakeholders, it is not clear how non-human interests are to be adequately represented. The main concern of the author, however, is that such processes may capitulate to a focus on instrumentality, suffer from ossification and groupthink or other corruption. Re-iterating the Kantian distinction between means and ends, a drive for efficiency in organisation is acknowledged as laudable provided efficiency is recognised as an orientation and not an intrinsic goal, although the link between this and the profit-motive of most organisations is not discussed. Chapter 7 expands on the challenges of the appropriation of dignity by an instrumentalist agenda, given the extensive progress of individualisation as an accompanying feature of neoliberal ideology. Emphasising that a conception of collectivity is absent or wholly commodified in contemporary culture, the underlying assumptions of management research are targeted as material in need of a paradigm shift towards dignity. The message here highlights not that such research is finding the wrong answers but rather is asking the wrong questions regarding the perceptions of individual workers (for example, in relation to the psychological contract) rather than meeting the relational obligations between the organisation and its variety of stakeholders.
Readers of this journal are likely to find the application of these concepts to the particular case chosen by the author of most interest, as Chapter 8 focuses on the case of the neoliberal university. However, those hoping for a detailed empirical case will be sadly disappointed (and would do better to enjoy Evans 2005 or Parker & Jary 1995). Discussing the various shifts in the education sector and associated changing managerial mechanisms now frequently employed in the ‘production process’ of contemporary university life (mainly in the United Kingdom and United States), the chapter outlines how a neoliberal ideology has increasingly become hypernormalised through new public management (NPM). A deeper engagement between staff, students and communities is proposed to offer a possibility of restoring workplace dignity. Yet, considering the historically democratic structure of (at least some of) these organisations and availability of secondary research material of substantial historic depth, it is disappointing that this is not more fully explored, particularly in relation to the dangers of corruption and entitlement which are acknowledged dangers of degenerative democratic processes in Chapter 6 and which many of us with experience of working in universities may well be familiar. It is nonetheless proposed that a regeneration of such processes and meaningful connection between research and teaching obligations through concentrating on how functions promote dignity would play a part in the rediscovery of these organisations’ ‘true purpose’.
Chapters 9 and the concluding chapter revisit the earlier concerns of the book and reiterate the arguments regarding the malfunctions of contemporary society, offering workplace dignity as a call to arms for workers and scholars alike. Through actively engaging in attempts to reverse hypernormalisation, to question and curtail the instrumentality of neoliberal ideology by posing the question of ‘how does this contribute to dignity’ in all processes and activities – in short by putting dignity on the agenda – the essential contributive function of organisation in all its forms towards the production of good rather than goods may be restored. Education, the author points out, has a key role to play in this. The book closes with a call to engage with and critique the work, acknowledging its limitations in overgeneralisation and scope due to the novelty of dignity as a concept in organisation studies in general and in business ethics in particular.
These strengths of this book therefore lie primarily not in its content or extension of existing work on dignity but in its ambition to create a different audience. There are distinct correlations between Bal’s discussion of workplace dignity and HRM and that of Bolton’s (2007) dignified workplaces, in which opportunities for learning and development, voice and equality of opportunity are all featured. The extension of the conception of dignity to recognise non-human and environmental concerns is closely aligned with the interests of the CSR literature but is not novel and can be found in several contributions to the previous book on Dignity and the Organisation in the Palgrave series. The significance of locating dignity in relations rather than in individuals is also an idea which has been discussed in a variety of publications, including Hodson’s (2001) focus on relations of workplace solidarity. In this book, this is perhaps the area which requires the most development, as the language continues to emphasise an essentialist notion of persons, things and organisations rather than a relational understanding. If these entities possess intrinsic worth rather than worth inherent in their relations, there is a contradiction of metaphysics here that needs to be resolved in order to progress the conceptual understanding further, and this contradiction may in part stem from the commitment to Kantian philosophy rather than that proposed by the introduction of Daoism. However, for those who have yet to identify the contradictions of management theory and are reading this book as an introductory text, these questions may be addressed and further considered in future debate which will be all the richer for drawing from a broader pool of scholarship.