Recognition, craft, and the elusiveness of ‘good work’
Recognition, craft, and the elusiveness of ‘good work’
This article seeks to challenge existing understandings of good work. It does so through a critical exploration of recognitive and craft conceptions of work, which are among the richest and most philosophically nuanced of extant accounts. The recognitive view emphasises work’s recognitive value through the social esteem derived from making a valuable social contribution. But by making recognition foundational, it is unable to appreciate the irreducible ethical significance of the objective quality of one’s work activity. The ‘craft ideal,’ by contrast, promises to provide a powerful basis for understanding the importance of rich, rewarding, and morally educative activities, but is undermined by a laudable but misdirected egalitarian impulse which prevents it from being able to properly distinguish good from bad work. One underlying aim of our discussion is to provoke deeper reflection from business ethicists regarding what we might want from an account of good work.
Sinnicks, Matthew
63b27aef-8672-4fa7-b2fa-388c9af51c57
Reeves, Craig
f7333fa5-08d9-4aec-8cfd-aef43a2a163f
Sinnicks, Matthew
63b27aef-8672-4fa7-b2fa-388c9af51c57
Reeves, Craig
f7333fa5-08d9-4aec-8cfd-aef43a2a163f
Sinnicks, Matthew and Reeves, Craig
(2025)
Recognition, craft, and the elusiveness of ‘good work’.
Business Ethics Quarterly.
(doi:10.1017/beq.2025.7).
Abstract
This article seeks to challenge existing understandings of good work. It does so through a critical exploration of recognitive and craft conceptions of work, which are among the richest and most philosophically nuanced of extant accounts. The recognitive view emphasises work’s recognitive value through the social esteem derived from making a valuable social contribution. But by making recognition foundational, it is unable to appreciate the irreducible ethical significance of the objective quality of one’s work activity. The ‘craft ideal,’ by contrast, promises to provide a powerful basis for understanding the importance of rich, rewarding, and morally educative activities, but is undermined by a laudable but misdirected egalitarian impulse which prevents it from being able to properly distinguish good from bad work. One underlying aim of our discussion is to provoke deeper reflection from business ethicists regarding what we might want from an account of good work.
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Sinnicks & Reeves - Recognition, Craft, and the Elusiveness of 'Good Work' BEQ
- Accepted Manuscript
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Sinnicks & Reeves - 2025 - Recognition, Craft, and the Elusiveness of 'Good Work' BEQ
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Accepted/In Press date: 30 December 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 May 2025
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 497563
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/497563
ISSN: 1052-150X
PURE UUID: 708c2b39-2be4-415f-abf4-fa7f1c99498d
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Date deposited: 27 Jan 2025 17:59
Last modified: 14 May 2025 02:07
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Author:
Matthew Sinnicks
Author:
Craig Reeves
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