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The extent to which Amartya Sen’s capability approach is prefigured in Karl Marx’s views comes into sharper focus when one notes that Marx and Friedrich Engels explicitly argued that the transformation from capitalism to communism would involve the development of “a totality of capacities”. Sen also cites the notion of “false consciousness” in developing his view of objectivity and claims a Marxian pedigree for the notion of “objective illusion”. He suggests that public discussion can make evaluative judgements better informed and less parochial, so that they connect more closely with what people have reason to value. The author argues that this line of argument is also closely related to views John Stuart Mill advanced in his discussion of the “competent judges” and in his defence of liberty of thought and discussion.

The approach used is conceptual analysis and discussion of historical texts.

The chief findings are that Amartya Sen’s works on capability and objectivity have deeper affinities with some of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ views than has been hitherto appreciated by scholars. However, some of the claims which Sen makes about objectivity and false consciousness are prefigured in the writings of J.S. Mill.

Because some of these affinities between the works of Sen, Marx and Mill have not previously been recognised, the paper’s elucidation of them is a new contribution to the literature.

Sen's notion of capability is often referred to by its standard definition “the various combinations of beings and doings that a person can achieve and value”. But do economists truly understand all what is meant by it? The concepts of agency as well as the notion of capability do not only refer to economics, but also to a rich philosophical tradition of thought. The purpose of this paper is thus to propose a philosophical hermeneutic of the concept of capability.

The notion of capability has been heavily linked first to Aristotle and then to Libertarianism (Nussbaum), but it also have been referred to Marx and recently to Kant (Crocker). It is, in fact, a matter of interpretation, for Sen does not exclusively ground the notion of capability into one or another tradition of thought. The paper proposes to find in Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur some insights to understand the concept of capability.

The paper hints to a shift by not only measuring capabilities but also directly agency, thought of as the inter‐temporal sphere of effective freedom one as reasons to value. The inclusion of time is precisely what compels us to search for the bearer of capabilities; for the person is the only point that gives and achieve continuity into the constant changes occurring both to the context and to the personal valuation of the capability set.

The hermeneutic gives to the concept of capability an ethical coherence through time it usually lacks both in Sen and in Nussbaum. The paper should be of interest for philosophers and social scientists eager to work or apply the capability approach throughout time.

Sen has recently acknowledged his “immense” debts to the liberal tradition of J.S. Mill and, to much lesser extent, to T.H. Green. This essay explores how identifying himself so enthusiastically with Mill sheds light on one’s understanding of Sen’s defense of the capabilities approach. But trying to understand him through the lens of Mill can be a double-edged sword. Sen not only risks causing his readers to append too much Mill to capabilities liberalism, but he also risks encouraging them to misinterpret Mill. These implications naturally bear significantly on how compelling readers find both Sen’s conception of distributive justice and the public policy recommendations based on it. Besides exploring some of the problematic implications of Sen’s readily identifying with Mill’s liberalism in particular, this essay also speculates on what it means to identify with any political philosophical tradition and how such identification colors and adds momentum to both one’s political theorizing and practical recommendations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Textual interpretation.

As noted above, this paper examines how Sen’s esteem for J.S. Mill sheds light on the capabilities approach. It also suggests that using Mill to understand Sen better is fraught with difficulties.

The paper also speculates on what it means to identify with a particular political philosophical tradition much as Sen identifies with Mill’s liberalism.

This paper also explores how such identification with a particular political philosophical tradition colors and adds momentum to both one’s political theorizing and practical recommendations.

Using Mill to understand Sen better is certainly worthwhile. On the other hand, doing this sort of thing risks distorting Mill and even Sen.

Purpose – This capstone chapter introduces Amartya Sen's important and innovative theory of justice to researchers on fairness in groups and organizations. Here, I discuss how Sen's theory can provide grounding for both philosophical and social scientific work on justice and how social science research can inform and be informed by Sen's theory.

Design/methodology/approach – In this chapter, I discuss Sen's new book, A Theory of Justice, and explain the main aspects of Sen's theory of justice. I then draw conceptual linkages between Sen's theory and those introduced in each of the other chapters included in this volume.

Findings – I show that Sen's view of justice goes beyond social contract theories that attempt to identify ideal institutional arrangements to seek practical solutions that increase justice as experienced by actual people in the world. Rather than parallel endeavors, Sen's approach reveals philosophy and social science to be deeply connected to each other and to justice by providing a unifying theme by which various social scientific traditions are shown to study aspects of the same underlying phenomena. Further, I demonstrate how philosophy and social science together can increase justice in the world.

Originality/value – Sen's theory of justice, though influential in economic and policy circles, is largely unfamiliar to social psychologists and organizational scholars. I introduce these fields to Sen's theory of justice and show how it is useful for social psychological approaches to the study of fairness in groups and organizations.

The capability approach is a normative framework that seeks to evaluate the quality of life through the evaluation of individual freedoms. It is behind the Human Development Index and it is increasingly applied in educational research, mostly in topics related to inequalities and curriculum development. This chapter provides an overview of the use of the capability approach in higher education. It first outlines its two versions, the evaluative version of Sen and the relational version of Nussbaum, arguing their complementary nature. Second, it points out its major critiques, namely the difficulties in its operationalisation. Finally, it reviews some examples of its application in higher education research, focusing mostly in Western-based contributions.

This paper is an attempt to understand how Amartya Sen's thinking on development and freedom has evolved from his critique of welfare economics and his concern with underdevelopment and poverty. It is argued that Sen has done a great deal to rescue welfare economics from the consequences of methodological individualism by seeking an objective basis for comparisons of well‐being, by insisting on the need for interpersonal comparability and by creating a space for normative evaluations. Sen's contribution to the human development approach with its emphasis on positive freedom has also helped to provide a valuable counterweight to the dominant free market approach. However, some concerns are expressed that the approach does not give sufficient attention to long‐run dynamics and that the conception of capability employed is not helpful for the understanding of development

This chapter examines discourses and social practices at individual, community, and institutional levels related to non-majority Vietnamese ethnic girls’ access to and participation in secondary school. This critical analysis utilizes Sen's framework of capabilities to illustrate differences in discourse and social practice that exist around poverty, and the ways in which gendered relations and ethnic traditions are intertwined with the discourse and practices of poverty to affect girls’ choices and well-being in and through secondary education. We particularly draw on girls’ and their parents’ constructions of these issues as they negotiate and are affected by them. We argue that strategies must move beyond the discourse that ethnic traditions and gendered relations are barriers to girls’ education to consider the inequalities and lack of capabilities that perpetuate poverty and unequal gendered relations for non-majority ethnic groups in societies.

The aim of this paper is to introduce the special issue of the International Journal of Manpower on capabilities, work and human resource policies and practices. After presenting the main concepts of the capability approach, inspired by Amartya Sen's work, the paper goes on to review the major findings of the contributions to this issue.

Bringing together economists and sociologists, the special issue develops a relevant range of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

The special issue adopts the capability approach as a yardstick to assess corporate policies from the combined perspective of economic and human development. It asks how firms can contribute to developing sustainable human capabilities at work.

Human resource management is mainly oriented towards optimising workers’ labour for the benefit of employers and shareholders. The papers in this issue provide some well‐documented suggestions on how to break with a reductionist understanding of employees as “human capital”, considered from the sole viewpoint of economic efficiency, by introducing a shift in perspective towards an integrated approach, embracing both economic and human development.

The human development and capability approach (HDCA) and its associated participatory method is receiving growing attention as a useful conceptual development for comparative international education. HDCA challenges the economism so prevalent in world development thinking and, instead, looks at development as a process of enhancing persons’ incrementally achieved substantive freedoms from deprivations. The centrality of the person replaces the centrality of income growth.

The application of HDCA to the study of the role of education that promotes social justice change is illustrated by using an empowerment-capability framework to the long-term study of the benefits of village schooling for rural girls in western China.

Using HDCA to identify influences on social change, we derive a much more nuanced and valuable multi-dimensional view of human development, which enables us to draw broad implications for more effective policy. National policies should use a multi-dimensional informational base including equality, sustainability, and non-market dimensions of well-being as well as market production.

As a way of dealing with Nigeria’s macroeconomic challenge of unemployment and its concomitant socio-economic problems, the federal government, in 2006, made entrepreneurship study a compulsory course for all higher education students irrespective of their area of specialization. However, studies have shown that the programme is yet to achieve its goals as many Nigerian graduates still remain unemployed long after graduation. Using Sen’s capability approach, this paper aims to investigate business incubation as an effective tool for enhancing entrepreneurial capabilities beyond entrepreneurship education.

This study has engaged both quantitative (survey questionnaire) and qualitative methodologies (semi-structured interview).

The result shows that through business incubation, budding entrepreneurs have increased access to infrastructures and resources necessary for entrepreneurial success, thereby enhancing their real opportunities (capabilities) for success.

For greater effectiveness, business incubation should be integrated into the current entrepreneurship education programme in Nigeria.

This study is a debut of research endeavours which theoretically assess entrepreneurship programmes via the capability approach lens. It has developed a conceptual model for assessing business incubation using the capability approach.