Moral Economy and the Ethics of the Real Living Wage in UK Football Clubs

DOBBINS, Tony and PROWSE, Peter (2024). Moral Economy and the Ethics of the Real Living Wage in UK Football Clubs. Journal of Business Ethics.

Preview

PDF s10551-024-05645-8 (1).pdf - Published Version Creative Commons Attribution. Download (857kB) | Preview

Abstract

Real living wages (RLWs) are an important ethical and moral policy to ensure that employees earn enough to live on. In providing ‘a fair day's pay for a fair day's work’, they set an ethical foundation for liveability. This article explores the ethics and moral economy of the RLW for lower-paid staff in the overlooked economy context of UK professional football, illustrated by a qualitative case study of Luton Town Football Club (LTFC). The article provides theoretical insights grounded in moral economy concepts about how a RLW contributes to a broader common good means of enabling fuller human participation in decent working and living conditions. Applying these concepts using a multi-disciplinary moral economy interpretation offers deeper theoretical contributions than economistic interpretations restricted to mainly technocratic economic distributive issues. LTFC are evidently ethically embedded in a moral economy as a local community club paying a RLW, and part of the overlooked economy. The research also contributes to contemporary debates on ‘Common Good’ HRM regarding the role of living wages in addressing grand common good challenges like inequality and quality of working lives.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1503 Business and Management; 1505 Marketing; 2201 Applied Ethics; Applied Ethics; 5001 Applied ethics
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05645-8
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Elements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	06 Jun 2024 13:42
Last Modified:	06 Jun 2024 13:42
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33797

Actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads

Publication Metrics