©2016 Business Ethics Quarterly 26:4 (October 2016). ISSN 1052-150X DOI: 10.1017/beq.2016.17 pp. 479–502 Hierarchies and Dignity: A Confucian Communitarian Approach Jessica A. Kennedy Vanderbilt University Tae Wan Kim Carnegie Mellon University Alan Strudler University of Pennsylvania ABSTRACT: We discuss workers’ dignity in hierarchical organizations. First, we explain why a conlict exists between high-ranking individuals’ authority and low-ranking individuals’ dignity. Then, we ask whether there is any justiication that reconciles hierarchical authority with the dignity of workers. We advance a communitarian justiication for hierarchical authority, drawing upon Confucianism, which provides that workers can justiiably accept hierarchical authority when it enables a certain type of social functioning critical for the good life of workers and other involved parties. The Confucian communitarian perspective shows that promoting workers’ good life or well-being is an important condition for protecting their dignity. KEY WORDS: hierarchy, authority, dignity, Confucianism, communitarianism INTRODUCTION I N THIS ARTICLE, we discuss workers’ dignity in hierarchical business orga- nizations. 1 If a person who has a price cannot have dignity (Kant 1785/1996: 84 [4: 434]), 2 one might believe that irms are an ideal place for dignity, for, as Ronald Coase (1937) memorably claims, a price mechanism that occurs in a market signiicantly wanes inside irms. The moral reality, however, is not that simple. As Coase also points out, “[i]f a workman moves from department Y to department X, he does not go because of a change in relative prices, but because he is ordered to do so” (387: italics ours). In irms, hierarchy replaces much of the price mechanism 3 and, as we explain below, poses challenges to a worker’s dignity. 4 Largely, two options exist to protect the worker’s dignity: eliminate hierarchy altogether or reconcile it with dignity. In this article, we consider the feasibility of the second path, exploring ways that the problem of dignity, which we explain soon, can be handled without eliminating hierarchical structures altogether.