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The moral dimensions of the employment relationship: institutional implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

HELENA LOPES
HELENA LOPES*
Affiliation:
DINÂMIA'CET-IUL and ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
*
*Email: Helena.lopes@iscte.pt
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Abstract

The paper builds an integrative framework of the moral dimensions of the employment relationship by linking the core specificities of the employment relationship, i.e. the meaningfulness of work, its relational components, the incompleteness of the labour contract and its authority character, to the four moral motives identified by the Moral Foundations Theory, namely care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty and authority. We show that due acknowledgement of the moral dimensions of the employment relationship entails making institutional transformations, namely strengthening rather than discarding employment law and reforming corporate law. Recognizing these moral dimensions would epitomize a radical break with mainstream economics and neo-liberal thought.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 103 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2017 

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