12:00pm
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1:15pm |
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Faculty Research Talk with Gil Hersch
(Special Event)
TITLE
Can your boss make you work out?
ABSTRACT
To what extent is corporate-level paternalism legitimate? Since there has been an increase in both quantity and variety of corporate level wellness programs and workplace well being policies in recent years, this is an important question to address. I compare corporate-level paternalism with state level paternalism, and argue that the former is more permissible than the latter. Consequently, if paternalistic policies are deemed legitimate by the state, they can be deemed fair game for corporations. To make this argument I rely on the difference between citizens, for whom the main expressive tool available is 'voice,' and employees, for whom 'exit' is the main expressive tool available (Hirschman, 1970). Focusing only on this difference, I argue that paternalistic policies are more permissible when the employee can avoid them through ending their relationship with the corporation (exit) than they are when the citizen can influence whether the paternalistic policy is implemented (voice).
BIO
Gil Hersch is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Virginia Tech Department of Philosophy and the Program in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics). Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the George Mason University Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. Hersch received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego in 2016. He earned a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Hersch specializes in ethical issues at the intersection of economics and policy, especially as they relate to happiness and well- being. His dissertation is on the use of measures of well- being in public policy. Currently, Hersch is focusing on a project in which he defends the lack of a weighting algorithm for a dashboard of well-being indicators such as the OECD's Better Life Index.
Lunch is provided
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540-231-1981