Manager-employee relationships: Guided by Kant's categorical imperative or by Dilbert's business principle

Journal of Business Ethics

Volumn 17, Issue 15, 1998, Pages 1623-1632

  Borowski, Paul J ^a  

^a ST JOHN'S UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001999170     PISSN: 01674544     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006071503101     Document Type: Review

References (19)

1. Information dealing with the Malden Mills manufacturing plant fire and the subsequent response by the CEO, Aaron Feuerstein appears in an article entitled "They Call their Boss a Hero" written by Michael Ryan and appeared in The Baltimore Sunday Sun, Parade Magazine of September 8, 1996.
2. This argument in effect states that management agrees (promises) to maximize stockholder wealth in return for specific compensation. Following from this is the argument that such relationship imposes an obligation on management that is inconsistent with any other responsibility other than maximization of the company's profit.
3. Milton Friedman: 1962, Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, Chicago), p. 133.
4. For a discussion of a Proposed Bill of Right for Employees see David E. Ewing's: 1977, 'A Proposed Bill of Rights', as found in Freedom Inside the Organization (E.P. Dutton, New York), pp. 144-151.
5. The following section is a brief look at The Dilbert Principle (HaperCollins Publishers, New York, 1996) written by Scott Adams. While primarily a comic strip that appears throughout the country, Mr. Adams has appeared to touch a common belief that exists in the "Corporate World" about the prevailing attitudes concerning management and workers.
6. Scott Adams: 1996, The Dilbert Principle (Haper-Collins Publishers, New York), p. 7.
7. Immanuel Kant: 1956, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (Harper & Row Publishers, New York), p. 22.
8. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 96.
9. Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work) (Daughters of St. Paul, Boston), p. 17.
10. Alfred North Whitehead: 1979, Process and Reality: Corrected Edition, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., London; reprinted ed., The Free Press, New York), p. 15.
11. R. Campbell: 1988 (April), 'Moral Justification and Freedom', The Journal of Philosophy 85, 192.
12. The phrase the other is printed this way throughout the text in order to connect it with the phrase as it is used in the writings of Emmanuel Levinas. "One has to respond to one's right to be, not by referring to some abstract or anonymous law, or judicial entity, but because of one's fear for the Other . . . Responsibility for the Other, for the naked face of the first individual to come alone. A responsibility that goes beyond what I may or may not have done to the Other or whatever acts I may or may not have committed, as if I were devoted to the other man before being devoted to myself." Emmanuel Levinas, 'Ethics as First Philosophy', in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989), pp. 82-83.
13. John B. Cobb, Jr.: 1965, A Christian Natural Theology: Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead (Westminster Press, Philadelphia), p. 124.
14. Alfred North Whitehead: Process and Reality, p. 222.
15. Alfred North Whitehead: 1951, 'Immortality' in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Tudor Publishing Company, New York), pp. 689-690.
16. Alfred North Whitehead: 1927, Religion in the Making (University Press, Cambridge), p. 30.
17. Charles Hartshorne: 1976, 'Beyond Enlightened Self-Interest', in Religious Experience and Process Theology: The Pastoral Implications of a Major Modern Movement, eds. Harry James Cargas and Bernard Lee (Paulist Press, New York), p. 318.
18. Alfred North Whitehead, 'Immortality', p. 684.
19. Paul Arthur Schlipp: 1951, 'Whitehead's Moral Philosophy', in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (Tudor Publishing Company, New York), p. 610.