V&R emerged from my teaching at Loyola’s business school. This good article accurately describes much that passes for ethical reflection in US business schools (https://newrepublic.com/article/148368/ideology-business-school).
Jesuit business schools are different, however, and serious reflection on the role of business in hampering or fostering the common good is on-going.
I have proposed Scheler’s estate as the most moral plan for business and, as ever, Cucinelli is my principal exemplar (see V&R Chapter 5 and use search bar for many individual blog posts on Scheler and other businesses).
The New Republic article points to the troubling emergence of a gig economy in the US (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/now-hiring-for-a-one-day-job-the-gig-economy-hits-retail/2018/05/04/2bebdd3c-4257-11e8-ad8f-27a8c409298b_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2ce700f9b04b). I see the attraction of flexibility to companies and even to certain workers who want the freedom to flit between limited commitments. However, firms used to be places of loyalty or, put differently, trust (see Pope Benedict on distributive justice V&R Chapter 3).
A casualty of the gig economy is trust: see a number of unpleasant instances relayed in “The End of Employees” (Lauren Weber, WSJ: behind paywall). Significant here is that parts of the gig economy work because of transparency, e.g. Lyft and Uber, for instance, but transparency is not the same as trust: it is a way to minimize the need for trust. Cell phone tracking might keep spouses apprised of where each is but that knowledge is different from trust. There are some moral goods delivered by transparency technologies, however (http://www.ethicsoffashion.com/blockchain-x-ethical-markets/).
Trust stems from solidarity, a keen interest of both The New Republic and Catholic social thought, and only certain business plans foster solidarity.
