1.1. The Reason-Responsiveness Aspect of Dignity

The term “dignity” is often used in two different senses (Hodson, Reference Hodson2001; Meyer & Parent, Reference Meyer and Parent1992). First, “dignity” signifies something that one should acquire by conforming to some moral standards; thus, not all people have dignity. The second sense involves a strictly egalitarian idea: that dignity is attributed to all persons by virtue of their distinctive character as persons. ^{Footnote 5}

Kant offers perhaps the most sophisticated account of dignity in this second sense (Reference Kant and Gregor1797/1996: 99 [6: 435]). For Kant, dignity, which he characterizes as “above any price” and “inalienable” (1785: 558 [6: 436]), is primarily grounded by autonomy (1785: 558 [6: 436, 440]; Hill, Reference Hill1992: Ch. 2). Kant explains that autonomy—a property of the will of every rational being—is something that makes us capable of legislating to ourselves moral laws, which in turn makes us have dignity. What gives us dignity is that we are agents who are capable of acting for reasons that we justifiably see as reasons—that is, we are capable of reason-responsiveness, to use contemporary philosophers’ language. Elizabeth Anderson (1997: 92) says, for instance, “we act for reasons that we endorse. We do not follow blindly….” Similarly, Gary Watson (Reference Watson2004: 2) says, “we are agents because (and in so far as) we shape our lives by the exercise of normative intelligence,” by which he means a rational capacity to act on reasons to which we relevantly respond.

This broadly Kantian idea that dignity is deeply associated with the reason-responsive aspect of autonomy is widely shared by Western philosophers (e.g., Anderson, 1997; Arpaly, Reference Arpaly2003; Korsgaard, Reference Korsgaard2009; Nagel, Reference Nagel1978; O’Neill, Reference O’Neill1989; Velleman, Reference Velleman2000). ^{Footnote 6} Contemporary Confucian philosophers admit that even Confucians, who barely developed any articulated concept of dignity, should accept the idea about reason-responsiveness and attempt to show that Confucianism is compatible with the idea (Angle, Reference Angle2009, Reference Angle2012; Chan, Reference Chan2002, Reference Chan2014). The idea is that one respects another person’s dignity only if one acts in ways that appropriately recognize another person’s ability to engage in reflective reasoning and to make justifiable claims based on that reasoning—that is, to be reason-responsive. If a person is autonomous in this sense, she must be able to reflectively evaluate reasons for action and direct her own behavior based on reasons she rationally finds acceptable and authoritative, which confers dignity. In contrast, if one asks others to do a certain act without giving a reason that they can justifiably accept as a reason, the others have an objective reason to believe that their status as reason-responsive agents is compromised, so that a fundamental aspect of their dignity is compromised. ^{Footnote 7}

Dignity is a contested notion and different conceptions of dignity can be developed in defensible forms (Bolton, Reference Bolton2007; Dillon, Reference Dillon1995; Hodson, Reference Hodson2001; Mayer & Parent, Reference Meyer and Parent1992; Rosen, Reference Rosen2012). Nonetheless, the broadly Kantian idea that dignity is associated with reason-responsiveness, upon which we rely, is itself plausible and found in various accounts of dignity (Feinberg, Reference Feinberg1980; Harbermas, Reference Habermas2010; Kateb, Reference Kateb2011; Luban, Reference Luban2007; Margalit, Reference Margalit and Goldblum1996; Nussbaum, Reference Nussbaum1998; Raz, Reference Raz1985; Sen, Reference Sen2001). Below, we explain how hierarchy challenges the reason-responsive aspect of worker’s dignity.

1.2. Hierarchy, Authority and the Reason-Responsiveness Aspect of Dignity

Hierarchy is understood in organizational scholarship as “an implicit or explicit rank order of individuals or groups with respect to their relative possession of a valued social dimension” (Magee & Galinsky, Reference Magee, Galinsky, Walsh and Brief2008: 354). In firms, particularly, rank is represented by a specific position within an organizational structure (Mintzberg, Reference Mintzberg1983). Individuals’ job titles denote their rank, and the organization has a formal reporting structure depicted by an organizational chart. Groups try to accord higher rank to those who help the group succeed (Berger, Cohen, & Zelditch, Reference Berger, Cohen and Zelditch1972; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Reference Eibl-Eibesfeldt1989; Emerson, Reference Emerson1962; Goldhamer & Shils, Reference Goldhamer and Shils1939), and people generally assume that higher-ranking individuals possess greater skills, ability, and motivation (Magee, Kilduff, & Heath, Reference Magee, Kilduff, Heath, Brief and Staw2011; Magee & Galinsky, Reference Magee, Galinsky, Walsh and Brief2008).

Higher rank in formal ^{Footnote 8} hierarchies typically grants corporate decision makers power to control the behavior of lower-ranking workers (Scott, Dornbusch, Busching, & Laing, Reference Scott, Dornbusch, Busching and Laing1967; Weber, Reference Weber and Wittich1978). The power to control workers’ behaviors is often called de facto authority—that is, power to rule (McMahon, Reference McMahon1994). Weber (Reference Weber and Wittich1978) described how position in the organization serves as the source of de facto authority in modern bureaucratic organizations. Traditional roles (such as that of priest) and personal qualities (such as charisma and expertise) can augment de facto authority, but they are not necessary within bureaucratic organizations because de facto authority inheres in the hierarchical position a person occupies. ^{Footnote 9}

The inherent nature of de facto authority seems inconsistent with a certain aspect of dignity. As Herbert Simon (Reference Simon and Arensberg1957) points out, higher-ranking decision makers who have authority have power to demand that low-ranking workers follow their orders without giving reasons for demanding compliance. ^{Footnote 10} In other words, when a manager with authority asks a worker to perform a certain act, for instance, cleaning the windows, the worker is required to perform the task simply because the manager so directed it. But the mere fact that one person tells another what to do provides by itself no (acceptable) reason for him to do it (Christiano, Reference Christiano and Zalta2012; Green, Reference Green1990; Perry, Reference Perry, Green and Leiter2012; Raz, Reference Raz1985; Simmons, Reference Simmons1979, Reference Simmons2001; Wolff, Reference Wolff1970). If people have dignity because they can act for reasons they endorse—that is, because they are capable of reason-responsiveness—, acting without reasons, or for reasons they find regrettable, imperils their dignity.

To address the problem of dignity, in this article, we develop the following argument:

3.1. The Service Conception of Authority

One of the most important ideas of authority in the entirety of traditional Chinese thought is Heaven’s Mandate (tianming 天命: Allan, Reference Allan1981, Reference Allan2015; Chan, Reference Chan2014; Ivanhoe, Reference Ivanhoe2007; Pines, Reference Pines, Bell and Li2013; Schwartz, Reference Schwartz1985; Stalnaker, Reference Stalnaker2013; Tiwald, Reference Tiwald2008; S. Kim, Reference Kim2011, Reference Kim2015a, Reference Kim2015b). Historians mostly agree that the idea of Heaven’s Mandate became a substantive political narrative for the first time during the Zhou dynasty (Creel, Reference Creel1983; Pines, Reference Pines2002; Poo, Reference Poo1998). After the Zhou conquered the Shang dynasty (商; about 16^th-11^th century B.C.) it needed to legitimatize its authority with something other than hereditary sucession. Remarkably, the ancient civilization attempted a radical, merit-based approach that authority does not come from lineage but from Heaven, which gives its Mandate to only those who work hard at promoting the good life of the governed. This idea is widely expressed and promoted in various early Confucian texts, including Analects, Mencius, Book of History (Shujing 書經) and Way of King Tang and King Yu (Tangyuzhidao 唐虞之道). Later Xunzi (around 3^rd century B.C.) well articulated the idea in his often-cited passage in a chapter of Grand Digest (Dalue大略):

Also consider a similar passage that Chan (2013: 31) draws upon from an ancient text, Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiufanlu 春秋繁露):

One might think that this ancient Confucian thought is a far-fetched idea to the contemporary mind, because it is unclear whether or not Heaven is still an acceptable idea. Chan (Reference Chan2014) claims, though, that the ancient Confucian approach can make perfect sense even to the contemporary mind, because for early Confucians, Heaven, which is not equivalent to approval of people or popularism, is considered a third party that genuinely cares, defends, and promotes the moral flourishing or good life of people (Ivanhoe, Reference Ivanhoe2007). Roger Ames (2001: 165), pushing the same logic to the end, argues that Heaven is itself the good life of people, calling Heaven the “flower” of “the flourishing community.” ^{Footnote 18} There is room for debate about Ames’s understanding (Ivanhoe, Reference Ivanhoe2007), but it cannot be denied that Heaven’s Mandate is deeply associated with the objectively good life of people.

The idea underlying Heaven’s Mendate can be captured by the less religious Chinese concept, “Elevating the Worthy” (shangxian 尙賢), which is one of the most important ideas in both China’s traditional and contemporary governance discussion (Pines, Reference Pines, Bell and Li2013). The idea is that high-ranking individuals’ authority is legitimate to the extent that they merit that authority; they merit it to the extent that they are competent and committed to enabling a certain type of social functioning critical for the well-being (or good life) of low-ranking individuals (Bell, Reference Bell2015; Chan, 2013; Fan, Reference Fan, Bell and Li2013). The idea of “Elevating the Worthy” can surely be secularly interpreted and applied to organizational communities. That is, the fundamental purpose of conferring authority on a certain person in an organizational community is the well-being or the good life of those who obey the authority. In other words, for Confucians, the legitimacy of hierarchical authority depends fundamentally upon the high-ranking individuals’ commitment to using orders only in the service of protecting and promoting low-ranking individuals’ capabilities to lead the good life, to which Chan (Reference Chan2014) refers as the Confucian service conception of authority. ^{Footnote 19}

Chan’s service conception can be sinologically further strengthened by the recently discovered ancient Chinese bamboo-slip manuscripts. Sarah Allan’s (Reference Allan2015) translations and commentaries show that the service conception was, in fact, the fundamental theme of the early Confucian political thought. For instance, consider the beginning of Way of King Tang and King Yu:

Tang [or Yao] and Yu [or Shun] are the two legendary kings of the Shang dynasty whom early Confucian texts unanimously praise for Tang’s abdication in favor of the meritorious figure, Shun, rather than his own son. In early Confucian texts, selected histories of a past served as a ground for criticisms of existing politics (Lewis, 1999), and the historical legend was widely used in various early Classics to justify the idea of Heaven’s Mandate and “Elevating the Worthy” (Allan, Reference Allan1981, Reference Allan2015). Given that the discovered bamboo-slip manuscripts survived the burning of books and burying of scholars (fenshu kengru焚書坑儒) in 213 B.C. by the first Emperor of the Qin dynasty (秦)—who allegedly attempted to weaken the idea of Heaven’s Mandate in the transmitted texts for his legalistic or anti-humanistic rule—the passage above in Chan’s (Reference Chan2014) service conception can be said to maintain the genuine Confucian idea about authority.

Unlike a contract-based Western view that authority comes from the consent of free individuals over whom authority is exercised, the Confucian service conception takes the human good as the fundamental basis for possessing authority. Because the flourishing of the human good, well-being, or welfare is a reason that low-ranking workers can justifiably accept, then if the authority is committed to serving workers’ good, to perfecting workers’ virtuous relationships and to supporting or bringing about the good of the community workers care about, workers can reasonably accept and defer to the higher-ranking corporate decision makers’ authority, without compromising their reason-responsive aspect of dignity.

What type of good does authority help individuals to realize? Consider the conductor of a symphony orchestra (Fingarette, Reference Fingarette1972; Kim & Strudler, Reference Kim and Strudler2012). The conductor’s authority to direct others creates a possibility for the members of the orchestra that would not exist without the conductor’s authority: coming together in a successful performance. By respecting the conductor’s authority to direct them, the symphony members can each improve their skills and together create a piece of art that could not be achieved without the conductor’s authority, no matter how prodigious the talents of individual orchestra members. Coaches of successful athletic teams play identical roles. By developing the individual talents of athletes and coordinating the efforts of each person, a coach enables performances that the team could not attain without the coach’s authority. Indeed music, coordinated dance, or team play are often-used metaphors in Confucian texts for the adept or good community (Fingarette, Reference Fingarette1983; Ihara 2004). Authority in an organization can function similarly, as it can help individuals’ capabilities and weave together their talents in ways that create a successful whole that individuals could not create or cultivate without that authority (see, e.g., Mencius 3A4).

Notably, this justification for authority hinges on the capability and the commitment of the authority in question. To the extent that high-ranking individuals are committed to achieving these performances in a way that undermines one or more lower-ranking individuals’ ability to live the good life, the authority of high-ranking individuals is inconsistent with the lower-ranking individuals’ dignity. For instance, an advisor can relegate graduate students in a lab to menial tasks, such as citing references for papers, and these tasks can often help students properly develop important intellectual capabilities required to be academics and contribute to the lab’s productivity. But this exercise of authority would be unacceptable if instead of developing their talents, the students are instrumentally used to mechanically do the referencing job all the time, which disrespects their potential to flourish and undermines their overall good life. In this way, the service conception differs from mere coordination. Authorities may not coordinate in whichever way they see fit. Instead, authorities must coordinate in a specific way—one that respects and develops a place in the community for each member of the group.

We point out, however, that we construe the idea of what is good for a person broadly, in terms of what advances the reasons within a morally virtuous person’s motivational set (Williams, Reference Williams1981), that is, the reasons that can be derived from the desires with which a virtuous person, in fact, identifies. Because a virtuous person has other-regarding desires and not merely self-interested desires, our account may on occasion recognize a high-ranking individual’s authority to order employees to make a sacrifice, e.g., take a wage cut during a corporate financial crisis so that the firm can provide health care benefits to its poorest employees.

3.2. The Relational Orientation of Authority

Early Confucians believed that Heaven’s Mandate is best known through an indirect proxy: (affective) relationships between rulers and people (Chan, Reference Chan, Chaihark and Bell2004; S. Kim, Reference Kim2015a, Reference Kim2015b; Tiwald, Reference Tiwald2008). Consider a passage from Mencius:

In the passage above along with many other passages, Mencius well articulates the idea that the best proxy of Heaven’s approval of a certain ruler is overwhelming contentment, love, and admiration from the people. Mencius even developed various operational measures such as “keep track of the sentiments expressed in their [ordinary people’s] songs and ballads, look for indications that oppressed peoples would welcome foreign intervention, and (most importantly) observe how the people ‘vote with their feet’—that is, whose roads they travel by, where they choose to conduct trade, and in whose state they prefer to make their homes (Mencius 1A7, 1B10, 2A5, 5A6, 7B4)” (Tiwald, Reference Tiwald2008: 277).

Setting aside the epistemic issues, the philosophical idea underlying Heaven’s Mandate is that for Confucians, authority is acceptable for lower-ranking individuals to the extent that it is committed to creating the good life of lower-ranking individuals by enabling positive and virtuous relationships with low-ranking individuals (Chan, Reference Chan2014). Early Confucians paid special attention to the connection between authority and human relationships by treating authority, as Angle (Reference Angle2012) explains, as a kind of knot that gracefully ties high-ranking individuals and low-ranking individuals. Similarly, Chan (Reference Chan2014) points out that what makes authority acceptable is not only the high-ranking individuals’ capability and commitment to create successful performances for the good life, but also the positive relationship created between high- and low-ranking individuals. To show the relational orientation, Chan draws upon various passages from The Analects. Consider one of them:

According to the above passages as well as many others (e.g., 13.16; 16.1; 20.1; 2.19), when authorities act in ways that enable positive relationships—for instance, those marked by trust, commitment, care, and support—lower-ranking individuals will be able to accept the authority willingly and gladly, and these can be understood as a proxy of Heaven’s Mandate. That is, authorities become genuinely acceptable only when they are recognized, and willingly complied with by the hearts of lower-ranking people (Chan, Reference Chan2014).

The relational orientation embraced by early Confucians implies that authority is in fact a precarious, vulnerable, and fragile power, because it is in part constituted by the attitudes and commitments of both the high- and the low-ranking individuals. For instance, in The Book of History (Shujing 書經), the Duke of Zhou is repeatedly concerned that although Zhou has been given Heaven’s Mandate to rule the people of Yin, the mandate can easily be lost if the new regime fails to win the people’s hearts (see Chan, Reference Chan2014: 36-7). In particular, Chan (Reference Chan2014: 37) considers the Song Dynasty (宋 960-1279 CE)’s famous poet and politician Su Dongpo (蘇東坡 or Su Shi 蘇軾), who makes the same point with an analogy:

In other words, either side of the relationship can undermine authority by withdrawing the appropriate attitudes of trust, commitment, care, and support—virtues that enable positive relationships within hierarchies. As Schwartz (Reference Schwartz1985: 71) points out, for Confucians “[h]ierarchy itself, to be sure, does not preclude reciprocity.” Early Confucians never think that authority is something a ruler owns in perpetuity. Mencius, for instance, believes that a ruler is the least important element of a society and can be replaced, writing, “The people are the most important, the altars to the land and grain are next, and the ruler is the least important. For this reason, one who wins over the common people becomes the Son of Heaven” (Mencius 7B14.1-2). ^{Footnote 24}

In the Confucian view, leaders who want to be acceptably authoritative must strive to preserve and enhance their relationship by trying to build positive relationships with lower-ranking individuals. The Confucian tradition advises that high-ranking individuals continually remind themselves of the fragility of their authority and devote themselves wholeheartedly to serving others. Acceptable authority cannot be obtained through capability, might, rank, or institutional office alone (Chan, Reference Chan2014; Elstein, Reference Elstein2009; Ivanhoe, Reference Ivanhoe2007; Tan, Reference Tan2010; Tiwald, Reference Tiwald2008).

As we discussed above, an important aspect of winning the hearts of low-ranking individuals is to lead them in ways that are good for their moral life and for flourishing. Unless workers trust that their leaders sufficiently care about the good of the workers, the leaders cannot win the hearts of the workers. If leaders cannot win hearts, then the leaders’ authority is not fully acceptable, so it is inconsistent with workers’ reason-responsive aspect of dignity. How can leaders sufficiently care about the good of the workers? Angle’s (Reference Angle2012) five defeaters of healthy hierarchical relationships, which he develops by drawing upon neo-Confucians’ works like Mou Zongsan, can be good starting points. A leader has adopted a relational orientation only if a leader does not possess at least these defeaters.

The first defeater is rigidity of status or capabilities. If there is no chance for a low-ranking worker to be promoted to a higher position even if he deserves this, or there is no chance to learn capabilities required for him to be promoted, there is not a healthy hierarchical relationship that sufficiently cares about the good of the workers. Unlike popular understanding of Confucianism, early Confucians wholeheartedly support abdication to the worthy (Allan, Reference Allan2015; Tiwald, Reference Tiwald2008), and Mencius is known for his radical suggestion that high-ranking individuals can be justifiably stepped down, exiled, and even killed if they fail to earn the hearts of people by failing to meet their obligations (Mencius 1B6, 1B8). Likewise, from the Confucian perspective, high-ranking corporate individuals should develop a virtue of promoting the worthy and, sometimes, honorably stepping down.

The second defeater is coercion. If a manager coercively exercises her authority to direct her workers to do something, her authority becomes unacceptable, since coercion is a constitutive part of neither the worker’s good life nor the manager’s (Tan, 2004). Confucius teaches in various passages of the Analects the importance of non-coercive, non-legalistic leadership or rule of virtue (e.g., 13.4, 13.6).

The third defeater is involuntary sacrifice or blind obedience. For Confucians, obedience is not always unquestioning. We explain this aspect in Section 3.3 below.

Fourth is what Angle (Reference Angle2012: 132) calls omnivalence, which refers to “situations in which one individual is hierarchically inferior (or superior) across all contexts, even if he or she is not inferior (or superior) to the same others in every one of these contexts.” If, for example, an experienced engineer’s opinion about a mechanical issue is not appropriately respected by her manager because the engineer is hierarchically inferior to the manager, this is not a healthy hierarchical relationship constitutive of the good life for both of them.

The fifth defeater is indefeasibility of the superior’s judgment. Again, unlike popular images of Confucianism, early Confucians believe that remonstration (jian 諫) as well as deference is a virtue for a healthy hierarchy. Interestingly, Confucius admonished Yan Hui, one of his best students (Analects 5.9), saying, “There is nothing that I say that he doesn’t like” (11.4). ^{Footnote 25} David Elstein (Reference Elstein2009) explains that Confucius regards himself as imperfect and fallible, so he gives room for debates to his students and sometimes even encourages disputes. Like Confucius, high-ranking corporate individuals must be open to the defeasibility of their opinions. Confucius consistently makes the same point in Family Reverence (Xiaojing孝經). ^{Footnote 26} Mencius even says, “If the ruler makes some great mistake, then they remonstrate with him. If he does it repeatedly and does not listen to them, they remove him from office” (142). ^{Footnote 27} Accordingly, high-ranking individuals are advised to be open to workers’ opinions about what is good for themselves and for the company.

3.3. Clarifications

Question 1: If the broadly Kantian idea of dignity that we endorse requires that workers be reason-responsive agents who define for themselves what constitutes the good life, isn’t it fundamentally inconsistent with the Confucian idea that high-ranking individuals who serve workers define what is good for workers?

There is no inconsistency. The Kantian idea of reason-responsiveness is not the Wild West idea of freedom of choice, which provides that a person should directly decide everything about his or her life, never deferring to anyone else. As David Luban (Reference Luban2007: 75) explains, this popular American idea is not consistent with the Kantian idea of dignity. A person who intentionally acts wrongly does not act in a reason-responsive way, even if he acts without the threat of coercion. Reason-responsive choice involves respect for the moral law or reason. To the extent that both a managerial leader and her employee both aspire to respect the moral law, there will ideally be congruence in their choices. To the extent that managerial choice involves reasonable attempts to coordinate actions of many different employees, each employee will ideally have reason to defer.

In reality, conflict between managers and employees occurs. For example, managers can act oppressively, exercising authority by assigning an onerous task to an employee or humiliating him. Elements of the Confucian account of authority can mitigate this concern. The moral significance of deference—an important virtue in hierarchical relationships—is undermined if the interaction is colored by oppressive factors (Angle, Reference Angle2012; Chan, Reference Chan2000, Reference Chan2002; Stalnaker, Reference Stalnaker2013; Young, Reference Young1990). Thus an abusive exercise of authority is no acceptable exercise of authority at all, and does not merit deference, even on the Confucian account. More troubling instances of conflict occur when managers and employees reasonably disagree about the right action to undertake. Imagine a manager of a tree-trimming service, who conscientiously tells his employee to climb a tree, which the employee conscientiously believes to be unsafe to climb. If manager and employee reasonably disagree, the climber may thus refuse to climb the tree, and the manager may reprimand him or even terminate his employment in response. The Confucian account cannot explain how to resolve such a conflict, but that is no defect of the account. Some conflicts are intrinsically difficult, and good theory must reflect rather than dissolve that fact.

Question 2: Isn’t the Confucian communitarian account of authority hopeless, because it does not seriously take into account important sociological facts that pervade modern business organizations?

Suppose that the employee has been promoted to a manager position and he has learned and seriously committed to the Confucian communitarian account of legitimate authority. He wants to use his authority to serve his workers and to serve the good life of all involved parties. He wants to win their hearts by sincerely attempting to care about what is good for them. But he faces several difficulties in exercising his authority in accordance with the Confucian idea. Specifically, the employee does not have enough power to do so; higher-ranking individuals constrain his options. Moreover, workers and other stakeholders often have conflicting interests. They share some, but not all, interests. The fundamental capitalist competition often pushes his company to be blindly self-interested and greedy for its survival. Hence, the Confucian communitarian account is a good ideal theory, but business operates in non-ideal conditions (Hamlin & Stemplowska, Reference Hamlin and Stemplowska2012; Stemplowska & Swift, Reference Stemplowska, Swift and Estlund2012; Valentini, Reference Valentini2012).

Confucius himself waited for an ideal ruler, but “the phoenix does not come and the river does not give forth a chart” (Analects 9.9), ^{Footnote 28} so he could not but admit that an ideal dynasty would not come true in his time. We do not deny that the Confucian account of authority is an ideal theory. By ideal theory, we mean a theory that prescribes right action in ideal circumstances, that is, circumstances in which everybody plays by the moral rules. Plainly, all business now operates in non-ideal circumstances. But that does not indicate any problem with ideal theory. Ideal theory does not fail just because those who are to be guided do not comply with it. For example, Kant’s moral principles prohibit lying, but his normative theory is not shown to be a failure just because people, in fact, lie (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2009). His moral principles still set out the telos or the goal to which we all have reason to strive to reach. Likewise, the Confucian account of authority is a model that high-ranking corporate decision makers can use to guide their endeavors. The account gives us reason to think about how to change existing business organizational structures and underlying economic structures, if there are fundamental limitations that high-ranking individuals cannot but face when they attempt to realize ideal behavior. If we have the Confucian view as an ideal, as John Simmons (Reference Simmons2010) recently points out in a debate over the role of ideal theory, we can evaluate between corporate leaders who is closer to the ideal. Some corporate leaders want to use their authority to serve their workers and other stakeholders more than other leaders want to. Some leaders want to win workers’ hearts by sincerely caring about what is good for them more than other leaders care. Acceptable authority is a continuum concept that admits degrees. Just as Confucians view life as a journey toward the good life, we view managers in non-ideal conditions as having the capacity to work toward genuinely serving the lower-ranking workers, and they will attain workers’ hearts to differing degrees. Few are entirely consistent or inconsistent with workers’ dignity.

Furthermore, the relational orientation helps to ameliorate the issues of power, conflict, and inequality described earlier. Conflict in hierarchical business organizations exists primarily because power is often exercised only in the interests of those who own the means of production (Sewell & Barker, Reference Sewell and Barker2006). When power is exercised in this way, managers dominate, subordinate, and exploit workers. The organization is then rife with conflict between those of differing hierarchical levels (Kabanoff, Reference Kabanoff1991). However, other forms of hierarchy are possible. Organizational theorists have long recognized that authority can be exercised in the interests of everyone. Authority can promote fairness and efficiency that benefit each organizational member (Gouldner, Reference Gouldner1955; Weber, Reference Weber1962). We suggest that authority can also promote positive relationships when authorities adopt a relational orientation. The service and relational orientations reduce conflict by requiring managers to promote the good of workers themselves, rather than using them as tools for others’ benefit.

Question 3 : Why not expand the scope of our argument beyond low-ranking individuals to also address concern for other stakeholders?

We agree with the core of the suggestion. In fact, by low-ranking individuals early Confucians mean, literally, all people including widows and orphans (S. Kim, Reference Kim2011). The Confucian account can address the interests of various stakeholders. Suppose that a worker, Liang, is ordered by a high-ranking decision maker to do a certain corporate activity that, in turn, negatively influences the natural environment of a local community. Liang’s compliance with the order is morally questionable to the extent that members of the local community have a valid interest in their natural environment. Typically, complying with an order that requires a person to do an ethically questionable work is itself not a constitutive element of a person’s good life. Thus, Liang cannot rationally accept an authority’s exercise that entails unreasonably harming stakeholders’ valid interests.

We focus primarily on low-ranking individuals because the authority relationship is between managers and workers, not managers and other stakeholders. That is, authority is fundamentally second-personal (Darwall, 2009). When a high-ranking individual issues an order to Liang, expecting him to comply with that order as one that gives him a reason for action, it is Liang who is expected to take the order as a reason for action. Members of the local community who care about the natural environment are not positioned to take the high-ranking individual’s order as a reason for action, nor are they expected to treat it as a demand. The relationship between the high-ranking individual and stakeholders is, strictly speaking, not an authority relationship. This does not mean that stakeholders’ interests do not matter to the legitimacy of managerial authority. As we discussed above, they indirectly matter.

3.4. The Problem of Dignity Revisited

Previously, we claimed that authority can be problematic for the dignity of lower-ranking individuals because it can require them to act without good reason. In this way, hierarchies seem to enable high-ranking individuals to insult the reason-responsive capacity of lower-ranking individuals that makes them have a certain dignity. Therefore, if the Confucian account of authority can provide a reason for authority that lower-ranking individuals can reasonably accept, then it can handle the problem of dignity while at the same time reconciling dignity with the authority conferred by hierarchy.

Any reasonable individual necessarily has good reason to care about living the good life. The Confucian communitarian account of authority explains how managerial authority defined by the account can help lower-ranking individuals live the good life. Hence, the Confucian account provides a reason for authority that low-ranking individuals can rationally accept.

As we have discussed, by the Confucian communitarian account, there are two primary conditions for justifying hierarchical authority. The first refers to the authority’s commitment to creating excellent performances in a way consistent with the good life of low-ranking individuals. The second refers to the authority’s commitment to creating positive and virtuous relationships between higher- and lower-ranking individuals to enable a good life for both parties. To attain acceptable and non-dignity compromising authority, high-ranking individuals are expected to show a good track record of competency in serving the well-being of the low-ranking individuals by enabling their performance and by creating positive relationships with them.