Abstract
My commentary calls attention to what makes Mr. Bowie's paper well worth intensive consideration. In my brief evaluation, however, I only lay out three incoherent elements of his proposed family model of labor-management relations.
I argue that complete job security is not compatible with complete freedom to change firms; that, in practice, such security for all employees is not compatible with the shifting demand of our economic system, and that the model includes two kinds of spouse relationships — one affectional and another competitive — that are incoherent with one another. My point is not that Mr. Bowie's model is fatally flawed, but that it needs to be improved.
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Donald R. Koehn is Associate Professor at Illinois Wesleyan University. Previously, he worked at the University of Maine (Orono) and at the Southern Methodist University. His most important papers on ethics are ‘Normative Ethics that Are Neither Teleological Nor Deontological’, delivered at the 69th annual meeting of the Easter Division of the American Philosophical Association, Boston, 1972, and published in Metaphilosophy, July, 1974; and ‘A Laissez Faire Approach to Business Ethics’ in Profits and Professions, edited by Pritchard and Ellin, Humana Press, 1983, pp. 113–133.
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Koehn, D.R. Commentary upon ‘should collective bargaining and labor relations be less adversarial?’. J Bus Ethics 4, 293–295 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381771
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381771