Lord Acton and Employment Doctrines: Absolute Power and the Spread of At-Will Employment

James S. Bowman () and Jonathan P. West ()

Journal of Business Ethics, 2007, vol. 74, issue 2, 119-130

Abstract: This study analyzes the at-will employment doctrine using a tool that encompasses the complementarity of results-based utilitarian ethics, rule-based duty ethics, and virtue-based character ethics. The paper begins with a discussion of the importance of the problem followed by its evolution and current status. After describing the method of analysis, the central section evaluates the employment at-will doctrine, and is informed by Lord Acton’s dictum, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.â€\x9D The conclusion explores the implications of the findings. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Keywords: at-will employment; civil service reform; employment doctrines; ethical theory; power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-006-9224-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:74:y:2007:i:2:p:119-130

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9224-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().