>The standard riposte to arguments like the one in the article is "well, then someone would pay their workers better and make more money, and those firms would come to dominate."
This assumes that workers, firms, and managers are all economically rational agents. Doing so not only overlooks all the findings of behavioral economics and social psychology, but also ignores the major role of ideology in shaping the modern workplace. People mistreat workers because they take their thinking on labor relations from an ideologically-tinted worldview in which you have to mistreat workers to make the economy go -- whether it's conforming to the archetypes has nothing to do with whether it's economically rational.
This assumes that workers, firms, and managers are all economically rational agents. Doing so not only overlooks all the findings of behavioral economics and social psychology, but also ignores the major role of ideology in shaping the modern workplace. People mistreat workers because they take their thinking on labor relations from an ideologically-tinted worldview in which you have to mistreat workers to make the economy go -- whether it's conforming to the archetypes has nothing to do with whether it's economically rational.