Conceptualising Work in Economics: Negating a Disutility
批评标准经济学将工作仅视为获取收入和消费的手段，提出基于需求的工作概念，强调工作对劳动者福祉的形成性影响，并主张集体干预以提升工作生活质量。
Summary This paper starts from the premise that economics has offered a one‐sided conception of work. Standard economic theory, specifically, has defined work as a means to income and consumption; it has failed to grasp the importance of work as an end in its own right. The aim of the paper is to develop an alternative conception of work that captures the formative impacts of work on the well‐being of workers. The paper firstly outlines and criticises the different definitions of the disutility of work found in economics. It then offers a critical assessment of happiness research on work. The idea that the effects of work on worker well‐being can be captured by job satisfaction data and that the importance of work can be reduced to a subjective feeling in the heads of individual workers – two key aspects of happiness research – are challenged. The final part of the paper develops novel ideas about how the economics of work should progress in the future. The section proposes a needs‐based conception of work and then uses this conception to make the case for collective intervention aimed at enhancing the quality of work life.