4. Dignity and Species Difference Within Organizations

The concept of dignity has traditionally been framed by ideas of human rights, such as respect, worth, and esteem. It is a notion that does not usually extend beyond human social interactions within our homes and workplaces. This is largely explained by powerful and ancient distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, based not only on physical and genomic differences but on our vastly different experiential and behavioural registers and our capacities for choice, action, and cognition. The attendant status gap that tracks these apparent differences sustains the ‘moral categories’ of animal and human and helps explain why we tend not to think of dignity as an animal quality. For millennia, however, humans have relied upon the productive capacities of other species for transport, defence, law enforcement and food. The important work that other animals do for the human animal prompts us to think more deeply about the organizational status of that animal and their dignity in labour.