Distributive Justice: Pressing Questions, Emerging Directions, and the Promise of Rawlsian Analysis

摘要

Over the years, the concept of distributive justice (DJ) has consistently been defined as addressing how a community treats its members in terms of the assignments of benefits and burdens according to some standard of fairness (Johnson 1956; Jackson 2005). Unlike other aggregate concepts used in social economics and macromarketing (e.g., Quality of Life or living wage) that have dynamically shifted definitions depending on time and place, our understanding of the core meaning of DJ has remained remarkably stable. Despite the definitional stability, as we learn below, this situation does not mean that arriving at a consensus about whether DJ has been attained in specific business situations is simplistic or uncontroversial. Indeed, as we shall see, quite the opposite seems to be the case.