Collegial Relationships and the Non-Monetary Goods of Work
Abstract
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.
This article offers a novel account of collegial relationships and shows how it is of value to the normative assessment of work arrangements. We first argue that the literature on collegial relationships has overlooked an important form that such relationships take: next to professional relationships (Betzler and Löschke 2021) and collegial friendships (Mlonyeni 2023), there are collaborative relationships, which can produce the distinct goods of shared achievement and shared experience. We then argue that attending to collegial relationships can refine the normative assessment of work arrangements. This argument proceeds in three steps. Drawing on the example of click work, we first illustrate the possibility of collegiality gaps: work can be arranged in ways that severely restrict the opportunity to form collegial relationships (of each type). We argue that collegiality gaps are normatively relevant and that their possibility extends far beyond click work. Finally, we show how attending to collegiality gaps can help refine accounts of the non-monetary goods of work and improve ongoing debates about the desirability and permissibility of specific employment arrangements, like gig work. The article closes by briefly assessing the political upshots of collegiality gaps, distinguishing an individual and a societal perspective on the value of collegiality.
Keywords: interpersonal relationships, collegial relationships, gig work, achievement, future of work, labour platforms, non-monetary goods of work