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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz
Voice Without Say: Why Capital-Managed Firms Aren’T (Genuinely) Participatory, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Why are most capitalist enterprises of any size organized as authoritarian bureaucracies rather than incorporating genuine employee participation that would give the workers real authority? Even firms with employee participation programs leave virtually all decision-making power in the hands of management. The standard answer is that hierarchy is more economically efficient than any sort of genuine participation, so that participatory firms would be less productive and lose out to more traditional competitors. This answer is indefensible. After surveying the history, legal status, and varieties of employee participation, I examine and reject as question-begging the argument that the rarity of genuine …
Where Did Mill Go Wrong? Why The Capital-Managed Rather Than The Labor-Managed Enterprise Is The Predominant Organizational Form In Market Economies, 73 Ohio State L.J. 219 (2012, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
In this Article, I propose a novel law and economics explanation of a deeply puzzling aspect of business organization in market economies. Why are virtually all firms organized as capital-managed and -owned (capitalist) enterprises rather than as labor-managed and -owned cooperatives? Over 150 years ago, J.S. Mill predicted that efficiency and other advantages would eventually make worker cooperatives predominant over capitalist firms. Mill was right about the advantages but wrong about the results. The standard explanation is that capitalist enterprise is more efficient. Empirical research, however, overwhelmingly contradicts this. But employees almost never even attempt to organize worker cooperatives. I …
Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights, Lance A. Compa
Corporate Social Responsibility And Workers’ Rights, Lance A. Compa
Lance A Compa
[Excerpt] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) brings an important dimension to the global economy. CSR can enhance human rights, labor rights, and labor standards in the workplace by joining consumer power and socially responsible business leadership—not just leadership in Nike headquarters in Oregon or Levi Strauss headquarters in California, but leadership in trading house headquarters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and leadership at the factory level in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Ten years ago, I would not have said this. I viewed corporate social responsibility and corporate codes of conduct as public relations maneuvers to pacify concerned consumers. Behind a facade of …