IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jhudca/v23y2022i3p354-372.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From Productive Work to Capability-Enhancing Work: Implications for Labour Law and Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolas Bueno

Abstract

What makes work useful, on what grounds and for whom? Classical economists distinguished between productive and unproductive labour. They focused primarily on productive labour and its ability to generate wealth for the economy as a whole, which influences why economic policies currently prioritize economically productive work over other forms of work. After reviewing the relationships between work and capabilities in the capability approach, this article addresses the individual and collective impacts of work on capabilities. It introduces a more complex and human-centred distinction between capability-enhancing and capability-reducing work. Finally, it proposes a capability-informed labour policy and designs new rights to assist in better aligning individually and socially capability-enhancing work. It shows how this policy has the potential to free from the economic need to work.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas Bueno, 2022. "From Productive Work to Capability-Enhancing Work: Implications for Labour Law and Policy," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 354-372, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jhudca:v:23:y:2022:i:3:p:354-372
    DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2021.1951186
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19452829.2021.1951186
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/19452829.2021.1951186?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephens, Thomas C., 2023. "The quality of work (QoW): towards a capability theory," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119832, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jhudca:v:23:y:2022:i:3:p:354-372. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CJHD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.