Julian Jonker

• Julian Jonker (Forthcoming), A Dilemma for Expressive Arguments about Markets, Ethics, 136 (2), pp. 273-296. Abstract

  An expressive (or semiotic) argument holds that some social practice is objectionable because it has an objectionable meaning or is required in order to express something valuable. Such arguments have been particularly popular among anticommodificationists. Yet expressive arguments against markets face a dilemma, which we can initially put in terms of a familiar Gricean distinction between two uses of ‘meaning’. Can the dilemma be avoided by a third use of ‘meaning’ to characterize the performative dimension of action? The performative account provides a promising conception of expressive arguments in ethics, but it does not vindicate their use in anticommodificationist claims.

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• Julian Jonker, “Price, Risk, and Exploitation”. In Just Price Theory, edited by Matías Petersen and Joaquín Reyes, (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2025), pp. 48-66 Abstract

  How should market participants set prices in the presence of risk? Some business ethicists argue for minimum safety standards for work and for consumer products, but risk can seldom be entirely eliminated. So there remains an open question whether risks that remain after minimum standards have been achieved should be priced in or mitigated. For example, a firm may face a choice between selling a dangerous product at a low price and selling a safer product at a higher price, or it may face a choice between hiring a worker for a dangerous job at a high wage and hiring the worker at a lower wage but under safer conditions. Expected utility theory counsels a risk-neutral approach to such choices. I argue against this approach on the basis that there are moral reasons for a degree of risk aversion in cases in which pricing in risk threatens to be exploitative.

• Julian Jonker (2025), Is Data Labor? Two Conceptions of Work and the User-Platform Relationship, Business Ethics Quarterly, 35 (2), pp. 153-186. https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2024.25 Abstract

  Some observers of the data economy have proposed that we treat data as labor. But are data contributions labor? Our folk conception of work emphasizes its importance and effort, such that work has a special interpersonal priority and deserves appreciation and compensation. The folk conception does not generally favor counting data as work, and so it serves as an error theory for reluctance to regulate data as labor. In contrast, labor regulation and policy focus on the political economy of labor, and in particular the bargaining dynamics that participants in a labor market face. Labor regulation aims to protect workers against the threats characteristically posed by such bargaining dynamics. Data-transferring interactions between internet platforms and users share similar bargaining dynamics, and so there is a promising functional similarity between labor regulation and proposals for data regulation that would facilitate data strikes and data unions.

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• Julian Jonker (2023), Automation, Alignment, and the Cooperative Interface, Journal of Ethics, online (). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09449-2 Abstract

  The paper demonstrates that social alignment is distinct from value alignment as it is currently understood in the AI safety literature, and argues that social alignment is an important research agenda. Work provides an important example for the argument, since work is a cooperative endeavor, and it is part of the larger manifold of social cooperation. These cooperative aspects of work are individually and socially valuable, and so they must be given a central place when evaluating the impact of AI upon work. Workplace technologies are not simply instruments for achieving productive goals, but ways of mediating interpersonal relations. They are aspects of a cooperative interface i.e. the infrastructure by which we engage cooperative behavior with others. The concept of the cooperative interface suggests two conjectures to foreground in the social alignment agenda, motivated by the experience of algorithmic trading and social robotics: that AI impacts cooperation through its effects on social networks, and through its effects on social norms.

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• Julian Jonker and Grant Rozeboom (Eds.), Working as Equals. Relational Egalitarianism and the Workplace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023) Abstract

  Relational egalitarians propose that the ideal of equality is primarily an ideal of social relations. Yet contemporary workplaces are characterized by hierarchical employer-employee relationships. This raises an urgent practical question: are the employment relationship and other workplace arrangements consistent with the relational egalitarian ideal? That in turn raises a theoretical question: what precisely does relational equality consist in? This book collects papers by moral and political philosophers and normative business ethicists addressing these questions, which are particularly urgent at a time of widening inequality and rapid changes in the nature of work. Contemporary moral and political philosophy has not paid enough attention to the workplace as a site where political power is wielded and questions of moral standing are raised. Business ethics has not paid enough attention to whether and how the relational egalitarian ideal applies to the ethics of workplace arrangements and organizational leadership. Bringing the relational egalitarian ideal to bear on the workplace promises to address these shortcomings. To this end, the contributors to this book respond to two overarching questions. First, they consider whether the relational egalitarian ideal really applies to the workplace; and second, they consider what workplace relations and workplace actors would have to be like in order to realize this ideal. In examining these two questions, the contributors illuminate a number of fraught topics: religious liberty and worker entitlements, the comparative view of discrimination, the distribution of human capital, the value of self-employment, the legitimacy of employer directives, and the ideological underpinnings of hierarchy.

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• Julian Jonker, “The Workplace as a Cooperative Institution”. In Working as Equals: Relational Egalitarianism and the Workplace, edited by Julian David Jonker and Grant Rozeboom, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 174-193 Abstract

  How should workplace authority be exercised in the face of disagreement? This chapter begins by outlining a positivist conception of workplace authority, such that employees lack a moral obligation to obey employment directives without more, but may have reason to adopt a workplace perspective that treats such directives as authoritative. There is reason to adopt such a perspective to the extent that the workplace can be seen as a cooperative institution. Workplace authority can be made compatible with the cooperative conception of the workplace if it is subject to a workplace justification constraint, i.e., if workplace directives are justifiable to all reasonable participants in the workplace. This criterion allows workplace authority to accommodate disagreement to the degree we expect of other liberal institutions. It provides a basis for using workplace authority to achieve the goals of work while respecting the fact that individuals may reasonably diverge in their conceptions of the good. The criterion has an egalitarian justification, but one that aims not at equalizing some dimension of the bilateral relation between employer and employee, but rather at providing an institutional perspective which gives each workplace participant equal standing.

• Julian Jonker (2023), Rights, Abstraction, and Correlativity, Legal Theory, 29 (), pp. 122-150. https://doi.org/10.1017/S135232522300006X Abstract

  I survey several counterexamples (by Raz and MacCormick) to Hohfeld’s conjecture that a claim-right is correlative to a directed duty and (by Cornell and Frick) to Bentham’s suggestion that a claim-right is correlative to a wronging. We can vindicate these claims of correlativity if we acknowledge that entitlements like claim-rights and directed duties admit of degrees of abstraction: that they may be general rather than specific, unspecified rather than specified, or indefinite rather than definite. I provide an error theory consisting in linguistic and practical reasons for why we articulate normative incidents in ways that threaten correlativity. And I deny that abstraction imposes a heavy metaphysical cost on rights theory, though I leave open whether abstraction excludes certain explanatory accounts of rights such as the interest theory or will theory.

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• Julian Jonker (2020), Risk and Asymmetry in Development Ethics, African Journal of Business Ethics, 14 (1), pp. 23-41. https://doi.org/10.15249/14-1-244
• Julian Jonker (2020), Directed Duties and Moral Repair, Philosophers' Imprint, 20 (23), pp. 1-32.
• Julian Jonker (2020), Generic Moral Grounding, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 23 (), pp. 23-28. 10.1007/s10677-020-10074-3
• All Research from Julian Jonker »

Past Courses

• LGST1010 - Law and Social Values

  This course presents law as an evolving social institution, with special emphasis on the legal regulation of business in the context of social values. It considers basic concepts of law and legal process, in the U.S. and other legal systems, and introduces the fundamentals of rigorous legal analysis. An in-depth examination of contract law is included.

• LGST1018 - Law and Social Values

  This course presents law as an evolving social institution, with special emphasis on the legal regulation of business in the context of social values. It considers basic concepts of law and legal process, in the U.S. and other legal systems, and introduces the fundamentals of rigorous legal analysis. An in-depth examination of contract law is included.

• LGST2160 - Emerging Economies

  This course explores important issues in conducting business internationally in and with emerging economies. Much of the course attempts to define emerging economies and to understand the changes occurring in these countries. The course also examines the position of emerging economies in the global context, and how broad social issues affect the development of emerging economies and the ability to establish relationships or conduct business in emerging economies.

• LGST9200 - Ethics in Bus & Econ

  The seminar explores the growing academic literature in business ethics. It also provides participants an opportunity to investigate an ethical issue of their choosing in some depth, using their field of specialty as context. The seminar assumes no previous exposure to business ethics. Different business ethics theories and frameworks for investigating issues will be discussed, including corporate social responsibility, corporate moral agency, theories of values, and corporate governance. In turn, these theories will be applied to a range of issues, both domestic and international. Such issues include: corruption in host countries, the management of values in modern corporations, the ethical status of the corporation, ethics in sophisticated financial transactions (such as leveraged derivative transactions), and gender discrimination in the context of cultural differences. Literature not only from business ethics, but from professional and applied ethics, law, and organizational behavior will be discussed. Often, guest speakers will address the seminar. At the discretion of the class, special topics of interest to the class will be examined. Students will be expected to write and present a major paper dealing with a current issue within their major field. The course is open to students across fields, and provides integration of ideas across multiple business disciplines.

• MGMT6560 - Global Immersion Program

  The Global Immersion Program is a pass/fail, 0.5 credit course that is designed to provide students with an in-depth exposure to international business practices and first-hand insights into a foreign culture. In past years, programs were offered in India, the Middle East, China, South America, Southeast, Asia, and Africa. The program offers students the opportunity to learn about a foreign business environment by way of academic lectures and a multi-week study tour, allowing students to visit with corporate and government officials, network with alumni, and take cultural excursions.

• The Claude Marion Endowed Faculty Scholar Award, 2022
• Society for Business Ethics Best Conference Paper, 2020
• Aloe Award for Best Conference Paper, Business Ethics Network - Africa, 2019
• Society for Business Ethics Best Conference Paper, 2018

• Illuminating our world, The Oxford Think Festival - 12/13/2019 Description

  The Oxford Think Festival brings together some of our most inspiring and exciting minds to illuminate the big issues and ideas of our time.

  Beyond the comparative test for discrimination
  Julian Jonker
  Analysis

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Brené Brown on Values, Vulnerability, and Playing to Win, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/22/2025
• Data-First Leadership in the Age of AI, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/22/2025
• Adopting AI: Starting Small While Thinking Big, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/22/2025
• Where Artificial Intelligence Stands Heading Into 2026, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/19/2025
• Inside Time’s Best Inventions and Innovation Selection Process, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/18/2025
• Free Versus Fair Trade in a Changing Global Economy, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/17/2025
• Breaking Down the College Football Playoff With Advanced Metrics, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/17/2025
• Decoding the AI Bubble: Tulips, Dot-Coms, or Something Else?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/16/2025
• Can Reminders Help You Save More Money?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/15/2025
• How Banks Can Be Change Agents in Climate Consciousness, Knowledge @ Wharton - 12/15/2025