Abstract
Many jobs today are alienating: they damage the working person in psychological, mental, intellectual or psychosomatic ways; the psychosomatic damage may be permanent. This ill is due to a disregard for the basic psychological needs not gratified in a large number of workroles. It can be remedied without revolutionizing either the political or the economic-legal systems of pluralist democratic societies. Rather, we should revolutionize the image of the rank-and-file working person and attempt radical experiments in implementing new and democratic structures in the workplace. The feasibility of all this is demonstrated by many successful and viable reforms. These are system-atically overlooked by backward-looking social scientists (Taylorist traditionalists, neo-Marxists and technological determinists).
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Judith Buber Agassi is Visiting Professor in Sociology at Frankfurt University. Her most important publications are: Mass Media in Indonesia (Center for International Studies, M.I.T., Cambridge, 1969), Women's Pension Rights and Practices (Soroptimists International of Europe, Haifa, 1976), Women on the Job: The Attitudes of Women to Their Work (Lexington Books, Lexington, 1982) and An Evaluation of Approaches in Recent Swedish Work Reforms (Report, Psychological Institute, Stockholm University, 1985).
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Agassi, J.B. Dignity in the workplace can work be dealienated?. J Bus Ethics 5, 271–284 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383093
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383093