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CHAPTER FIVE: THE MEANING AND VALUE OF WORK
AN INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ETHICS
Copyright © 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

THIS CHAPTER SEEKS TO
 Encourage students to reflect on the goals and values of their
own career and workplace decisions
 Explain the variety of meanings and values attributed to work
 Distinguish work done as a mere job from work in careers and
professions
 Examine business’ responsibility for providing employees with
meaningful work
 Provide a framework for evaluating business’ ethical
responsibilities to employees
 Provide a framework for evaluating the rights and responsibilities
of employees
Copyright © 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. 5-2

DISCUSSION CASE: SOCIAL ENTERPRISES AND
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS
 What criteria make a career successful?
 Is it possible to find meaning and value at work if
employees are told to check their conscience at the
door?
 The Greg Smith–Goldman Sachs case highlights the
tension that can exist between aggressive pursuit of
profit and personal responsibility and job satisfaction
 Assumptions challenged with growing movements such
as “social entrepreneurship” or “social enterprise”

DISCUSSION CASE: SOCIAL ENTERPRISES AND
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS
• The Grameen Bank model
• The Mozilla Corporation model
• Our changing work environment

MEANS-ENDS REASONING
We work as a means to an end
We take certain courses as means to an end
Is this right? Is this all?

Work is a very important part of our lives and it is
not easily abandoned
 Genesis: curse and punishment for original sin
 Aristotle: necessary for the good life
 Martin Luther: the toil of work contributes to a
higher cause
 Karl Marx: through work we express our humanity;
labor alienates us from this end

To the degree that work is a burden that we must
all endure, business ethics is challenged to
articulate and defend the conditions under which
work can be made fair, just and humane

THE MEANINGS OF WORK
The word “work” has a variety of meanings
 A noun
 A verb
 A job, a profession, a career, trade, labor, occupation,
vocation or a calling

THE VALUE OF WORK
 Why work?
 What is work good for?
 Instrumental value
 Psychic goods

THE VALUE OF WORK
Some jobs provide their holders with particular
meaning and worth.
Work contributes to our identity.
Why, then, must we be paid to work?

THE VALUE OF WORK
Does business have a responsibility to provide
employees with meaningful work?
Do we have a right to work?

THE CONVENTIONAL VIEWS OF WORK
Work is something that must be endured.
- The Classical interpretation of work conceives
of humans as intellectual beings, even though
work is physical.
- The Hedonistic interpretation understands work
as a necessary means for obtaining life’s
pleasures.

THE HUMAN FULFILLMENT MODEL
Work is the primary activity through which
people develop their full potential as human
beings.
 Telos (“Be all that you can be”): Psychological
benefits
 Social benefits
However, not every job contributes to the development
of the human potential.

 What will this work do for me?
 What will this work do to me? What kind of
person will I become through this work?

 E. F. Schumacher: Bad work is “mechanical, artificial,
divorced from nature, utilizing only the smallest part of
man’s potential capabilities…”
 Karl Marx: Under capitalist production, workers
inevitably face a life of alienation from the products of
their work, from the creative process of work, and from
their essence as social creatures

 Pope John Paul II: “work is one of the
characteristics that distinguish humans from the
rest of creatures…only humans work.”
Humans work in order to attain their needs and
wants, but work also shapes humans.

Gregory Baum: “It is through labor that people
create their world, and it is through the same
labor that in a certain sense they also create
themselves.”

Through work
- we exercise our freedom and autonomy in
making choices
- we develop our talents and exercise creativity
- humans create their society and culture
- we express our nature as social beings

THE LIBERAL MODEL OF WORK
The Liberal Model of Work occupies a middle ground
between the conventional model and the human
fulfillment model.
- Workers should be free to choose the ends of their
work.
- Humans can be significantly influenced by their work;
we should make ethical assessments of work based on
how it affects people who perform it

 Norman Bowie
 One of the moral obligations of the firm is to provide
meaningful work for employees
 But what is meaningful work?
 Should meaningful work be given an objective
definition?
 What justification can we find for any normative
objective definition of meaningful work, if work is
subjective?

Liberal theories of justice argue that individual
freedom is a fundamental and necessary
element of social justice.
Primary goods of work include autonomy,
rationality, and physical and mental health

The liberal model of work argues that individuals
have certain rights in the workplace and that
these rights function to protect certain central
and primary goods.

BUSINESS’ RESPONSIBILITY FOR MEANINGFUL
WORK
 The classical model argues that to the degree that
work is necessary and physical, it can not be made
meaningful
 Liberals argue that business has a range of
responsibilities to provide meaningful work
 The Human fulfillment model argues that employers
cannot have the responsibility of making employees
better people

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