Employee rights, moral imagination, and the struggle with universal values

a quick overview of Werhane's contributions to ethics in employment

Norman E. Bowie

pp. 29-44

in: R. E. Freeman, Sergiy Dmytriyev, Andrew C. Wicks (eds), The moral imagination of Patricia Werhane, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

This paper traces the evolution of Patricia Werhane's theory of employee rights as she moves from the traditional human rights view to a socially constructed view of employee rights. In the course of that evolution, I argue that Werhane has a less robust view of human rights than she did when she first proposed a theory of human rights. I then argue that if Werhane adopted Martha Nussbaum's human capabilities approach, she could have both a traditional account of employee rights and plenty of room for the exercise of moral imagination.

Cited authors

Werhane Patricia