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A “Matter of Opinion, What Tends to the General Welfare”: Governing the Workplace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Michael Keeley
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Abstract:

Opinion surveys and popular media suggest that American workers are disillusioned with their employers and bosses. Governance in organizations is becoming a recognized problem. Classical works on governance call for more virtuous leaders, less selfish followers, and closer attention to the common good. These works were rejected as a basis for governing nations in the 18th century. They are unlikely to provide a basis for governing organizations in the 21st century. This article outlines a liberal-democratic approach to governing corporations, applies this approach to debates over shareholder-stakeholder accountabilities, and proposes special accountabilities to employees.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 243 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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References

1 William D. Liddle, “‘A Patriot King, or None’: Lord Bolingbroke and the American Renunciation of George III,” The Journal of American History 65 (1979): 951–970.

2 James Campbell, Recovering Benjamin Franklin (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), p. 180.

3 See William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993); Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996); Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York: Norton, 1972); Robert C. Solomon, Ethics and Excellence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

4 See, for example, John Orlando, “The Fourth Wave: The Ethics of Corporate Downsizing,” Business Ethics Quarterly 9 (1999): 295–314.

5 New York Times, The Downsizing of America (New York: Times Books, 1996).

6 David M. Gordon, Fat and Mean: The Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial “Downsizing” (New York: Free Press, 1996).

7 One of the best surveys of this genre is still Allan H. Gilbert, Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1938).

8 Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

9 Ibid., p. 34.

10 The Idea of a Patriot King, in Bolingbroke: Political Writings, ed. David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 294.

11 For a nuanced survey of Madison’s role and views, see William Lee Miller, The Business of May Next (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992).

12 To Harriet Martineau, Madison “quoted the remark of Voltaire, that if there were only one religion in a country, it would be a pure despotism; if two, they would be deadly enemies; but half a hundred subsist in fine harmony.” Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (New York: Harper, 1838), p. 195.

13 “Brutus,” Essay VI [To the Citizens of the State of New York], December 27, 1787, in The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, ed. Ralph Ketcham (New York: Mentor, 1986), pp. 284–85.

14 Federalist No. 41 [January 19, 1788] in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Mentor, 1961), pp. 262–64.

15 Ralph Ketcham, James Madison (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), p. 394.

16 James Madison, “Report on the Virginia Resolutions” in The Mind of the Founder, rev. ed., ed. Marvin Meyers (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1981), p. 240.

17 Thomas Donaldson and Lee E. Preston, “The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications,” Academy of Management Review 20 (1995): 87.

18 Adolph A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, rev. ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967; original printing 1932).

19 A. A. Berle, Jr., “For Whom Corporate Managers Are Trustees: A Note,” Harvard Law Review 45 (1932): 1366.

20 Ibid., p. 311.

21 Donaldson and Preston, “Stakeholder Theory,” p. 87.

22 Berle and Means, Modern Corporation, p. 312.

23 Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 38.

24 Donaldson and Preston, “Stakeholder Theory,” p. 87.

25 Berle, “For Whom Corporate Managers Are Trustees,” p. 1367.

26 Christopher McMahon, Authority and Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).

27 Ibid., p. 13.

28 See, for example, Judith N. Shklar, “The Liberalism of Fear,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 21–38.

29 Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People (New York: Norton, 1988).

30 Ibid., p. 19.

31 William Henry Drayton, The Letters of Freeman, Etc., ed. Robert M. Weir (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977), p. 31; William M. Dabney and Marion Dargan, William Henry Drayton and the American Revolution (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962); Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1993).

32 Global variations in workplace governance are described in Richard B. Freeman, ed., Working Under Different Rules (New York: Russell Sage, 1994).