Toward an Employee Responsibilities and Rights Paradigm

Abstract

Current changes in the nature of the workforce, organizational structures, and institutions of society underlie the considerable, and growing, worldwide orientation toward a workplace responsibilities and rights paradigm. Analysis of the moral, legal, bureaucratic, and social construction of reality literature provides a broad definition of rights and responsibilities based on (a) the basic injunction to do no harm, (b) the obligatory character of rights, and (c) the reciprocal nature of workplace interrelationships. Further, the article analyzes in detail the development of rights-responsibilities concerns in modern workplaces. It identifies some major characteristics of employee! employer responsibilities and rights, and also provides a scheme for studying, understanding, and organizing knowledge in the emerging field underscored by the notions of responsibilities and rights. The underlying paradigm suggested by the article can be understood in terms of two dimensions: Focus are (e.g., organizational entry, job incumbency, continued emmployment, and postemployment issues) and approaches, perspectives, or strategies (e.g., philosophical, legal, collective activity, human resource rights, and management education strategies).