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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2015
Contrary to criticisms by Thomas McInerney, Durable Goods proposes a realistic and empirically testable “covenantal” ethic for moving management and labor beyond tactics of mutual coercion and evasion. Nonetheless, two questions asked by McInerney remain germane. First, should the moral claims of management and labor always receive equal moral consideration, as a matter of justice? To this substantive question Durable Goods admittedly provides a less than satisfactory answer. Second, can the normative theory proposed by Durable Goods, based in part as it is on the Bible, meet the standards of cogency, coherence, and parsimony appropriate to business ethics as a field of rigorous inquiry? This methodological question remains unaddressed.
1 The problem may due in part to a very selective reading, as indicated by his footnotes, both of the history Durable Goods recounts, and of the theory it develops. The historical side includes chapters 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, and 14. Almost half of his footnotes refer to the Biblical chapter (chapter 4); he also refers once or twice to chapters 11 and 13. The theory-developing side of the book includes chapters 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, and 17. He devotes six footnotes to two pages within chapter 7, and makes passing references to some of the other chapters (chapters 5, 12, 16, 17). With the exception of his comments on chapter 7, he simply does not engage the arguments these chapters make.
2 For example, one important theme of his argument is that I simply “assume the moral grounds of the free-market economy,” and so lack a standpoint from which to criticize the injustices of the globalizing economy (220–221). Given the independent value my theory places upon cooperation (which directly contradicts the individualism enshrined by free-market ideology) and worker self-representation (set in deliberate and permanent tension with management prerogative), I find the charge misplaced, at best. Another criticism seems based upon a misreading. He asserts that I have erroneously inferred support for property rights from a 1987 United Churches of Christ statement. My point was more modest; all I was reporting was the smidgen of legitimation implied by the absence of a condemnation, as the text of mine he quotes demonstrates. The UCC presses for economic democracy, by which it means increased avenues for participation in economic decisions. With the exception of one phrase (“In a modern economy, participation might include worker, community or public ownership”), it makes no reference to changing, qualifying, or abandoning property rights.
3 McInerney, 218. See his recurring discomfort with the term “lovingkindness” at the top of 217 and 218–219.
4 Herman, 38–9. Chapter 3 is devoted to developing a definition of covenanting in industrial settings.
5 Herman, chapters 5 and 9.
6 A distinctive feature of religious moral argumentation is that it often connects fact and value in a visceral way, typically by claiming that what already exists, as a glimmering of what is good and right, also serves as the norm for what ought to be. For further discussion, see Herman, “From the Truly Real to Spiritual Wisdom: Religious Perspectives on Business Practice,” in Herman (ed.), Spiritual Goods: Faith Traditions and the Practice of Business (Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2001): 17–29.
7 So I infer when he attacks the idea that management enjoys the “benefit of certain moral positions,” specifically property rights (217), and then reluctantly grants the point (218) for the sake of pursuing his argument that the weaker position of labor provides a moral warrant for coercive legal tactics: “… law seems the better alternative.”(219) If I have understood his original argument correctly, McInerney objects that I have wrongly attributed the property rights legally vested by stockholders in the corporate board, to management as its agent, and therefore that managerial prerogative does not enjoy moral standing based on property rights (217–218). I would counter that the property rights enjoyed by stockholders and the board form an important part of the moral, to say nothing of legal, basis of the right to manage, even if the moral value which supports property rights is more utilitarian than deontological—more based on the aggregate wealth created than the protection of agents against trespass.
8 Herman, 108–110.