Hierarchy and Protestant Ethic: A Radical Re-examination of Employement Relationship and Organization

• In Event: History of Sociology and Social Thought Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 2: Rethinking Power and Hegemony in Social Theory

Abstract

Herbert Simon’s (1951) seminal model of the employment relationship has had a lasting influence across economics, management, and labor studies by conceptualizing authority as a source of decisional flexibility distinct from market contracts. The model is commonly interpreted within a neoclassical framework and credited with justifying organizational hierarchies. This paper revisits this model by situating it within the broader corpus of Simon’s work on the ethical and socio-cognitive foundations of employment, especially, a quasi-Weberian understanding of society and work developed in Public Administration. Drawing on this work, my paper reconstructs the model as a formal investigation of social domination. It highlights the moral and socio-cognitive underpinnings of the employment relationship and relates them to the society’s value system. The paper argues that Simon’s approach ultimately appeals to the Protestant ethic and advances a historically and culturally conditioned, and in this sense radical, conception of hierarchy in organizations and society.

Author

• Rouslan Koumakhov, NEOMA Business School