Human dignity in organisations: the cooperative ideal

Abstract

This paper critically evaluates the liberal-humanist critique of neoclassical microeconomics and shareholder-driven corporate governance to articulate a more realistic cooperativist–humanist organisational philosophy of practice. Through an engagement with pluralist heterodox economics, it attempts to reconcile with contemporary concerns and philosophical developments around social ecology and care ethics. Our specific contribution is to develop a microfoundational complement to the macro-relational analysis of leading radical philosophical and political-economic thinkers on the Latin American left. In particular, the worker-inclusive multistakeholder cooperative (MSC) form is arrived at as the ideal firm-level organisation through which to promote diverse human (and non-human) dignity, understood through the lens of an affective-relational ethics of care.