This study investigates the judgments made by accounting majors when confronted with selected ethical dilemmas that pertain to accounting practice. Drawing upon literature in philosophy and moral psychology, it then examines these judgments for potential gender differences. Five case studies, each involving a specific ethical dilemma that a practicing accountant might face, were administered to 151 acounting majors (males = 67; females = 84), in four sections of intermediate accounting II at a large, state university. The results suggest that although (...) the vast majority of participants wouldnot engage in unethical behavior, a reasonable opportunity exists to improve the participants' ethical awareness. The results do not, however, support the existence of gender differences in ethical judgments. (shrink)

Advanced systems engineering has traditionally paid little attention to ethical concerns relative to other technical and non-technical issues. This is particularly evident in systems analysis, design, and development methodologies. This paper asks if it is possible that the lack of emphasis upon ethical considerations in development methodologies can result in the failure of advanced technology development projects? In order to explore this contention, the paper sets out the findings of a case study of a large-scale advanced technology project in a (...) multinational engineering company involving the implementation of an enterprise resource planning system. The research examined the extent to which ethical issues emerged in the project and assesses the impact of ethical considerations upon the technology development process and its outcomes. Evidence is presented which shows how ethical concerns clearly impacted upon the outcome of the project, supporting the contention that ethics was a success factor in the case presented. However, it was also clear that the kinds of ethical considerations that emerged were highly complex, and associated with an “ethics of care”. The findings suggested that researchers should examine the potential of an “ethics of care” as a way of complimenting the “ethics of rights” currently dominant within engineering ethics. (shrink)

Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li's claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.

Information security can be of high moral value. It can equally be used for immoral purposes and have undesirable consequences. In this paper we suggest that critical theory can facilitate a better understanding of possible ethical issues and can provide support when finding ways of addressing them. The paper argues that critical theory has intrinsic links to ethics and that it is possible to identify concepts frequently used in critical theory to pinpoint ethical concerns. Using the example of UK electronic (...) medical records the paper demonstrates that a critical lens can highlight issues that traditional ethical theories tend to overlook. These are often linked to collective issues such as social and organisational structures, which philosophical ethics with its typical focus on the individual does not tend to emphasise. The paper suggests that this insight can help in developing ways of researching and innovating responsibly in the area of information security. (shrink)

Smartfounding is the opposite of “dumbfounding” introduced by Jonathan Haidt’s research on disgust. Dumbfounders have general competence at thought experiment. However, they are flustered by thought experiments that support repugnant conclusions. Instead of following the supposition wherever it leads, they avoid unsettling implications by adding extraneous information or ignoring stipulated conditions. The dumbfounded commit performance errors, often seeming to regress to the answers of people who lack formal schooling. Smartfounders retain their composure. They practice subversive compliance, obeying the instructions in (...) a way that spoils the aim of the thought experiment. Smartfounders offer a more sophisticated grade of resistance to thought experiment. Whereas the lower grades of resistance are merely fallacious, smartfounding often constitutes a penetrating internal critique of the thought experiment and sometimes of thought experiments in general. (shrink)

Some exceptional and surprising mistakes of scholarship made in the writings of a number of feminist academics (Ruth Bleier, Ruth Hubbard, Susan Bordo, Sandra Harding, and Rae Langton) are examined in detail. This essay offers the psychological hypothesis that these mistakes were the result of political passion and concludes with some remarks about the ability of the social sciences to study the effect of the politics of the researcher on the quality of his or her research.

Even after two millennia, through her adherence to the Hegelian/sartrean model of transcendence versus immanence, Simone de Beauvoir perpetuated the valorization of male risk-taking over the creation and nurture of life, obligations she assigned solely to the female. Nonetheless, her dispassionate, meticulous, phenomenological description of women's lived experience in The Second Sex, combined with her insistence that women, in spite of their oppression, must choose to become subjects, to `engage in freely chosen projects', has spurred contemporary feminist theorists to expand (...) the definition of the ethical and the moral to value female experience. The emancipatory discourse, therefore, has been extended by the work of feminists such as Martha Nussbaum, Luce Irigaray and Carol Gilligan, who insist upon the inclusion of marginalized `others' in the definition of `human being' and `ethical activity'. (shrink)

Four real-life dilemma cases collected from Hong Kong managers were included, along with two other cases previously used by Weber (1991), in an instrument designed to assess ethical reasoning capacity. This was completed by 86 part-time post-graduate students, all of whom were managers with at least four years working experience. Respondents'' measured ethical reasoning capacity appeared to be at least as high as comparable samples in the U.S.A. The mean ethical reasoning stage varied between cases. Contrary to expectations, the unfamiliarityper (...) se of a case did not affect ethical reasoning which instead tended toward higher measured stages when issues of public hazard or environmental pollution were introduced, and toward lower measured stages where personal or family finances were at stake. Two methodological points were made signalling the need for caution in research of this kind. First, because of reservations about the adequacy of the standard Kohlbergian model of ethical reasoning development, a scoring guide based on a revised Kohlbergian model of ethical reasoning was used to analyze the replies, rendering comparisons with other samples inexact. Second, the possible phenomenon of quasi Stage Five reasoning renders problematic the identification of true Stage Five ethical reasoning. (shrink)

This essay responds to Donna J. Haraway's (2016) provocation to ‘stay with the trouble’ of learning to live well with nonhumans as kin, through practice-based approaches to learning to care for nonhuman others. The cases examine the promotion of care for trees through mobile game apps for forest conservation, and kinship relations with city farm animals in Kentish Town, London. The cases are analysed with a view to how they articulate care practices as a means of making kin. Two concepts (...) are proposed, ‘learning from’ and ‘facing’ the Other, which are thickened through discussions of how caring takes place in each case in relation to a particular category of nonhuman other: animated tree and urban farm animal. Thus while attendant to situations of care involving a specific nonhuman subject, the cases also broker thinking on learning from and facing (the) other kinds of trees and animals, and the interspecies dynamics of which they are a part. The intersectional implications of the practice sites and participants are elaborated, to complexify and affirm situated but also reflexive approaches to caring. In doing this, the authors attend to their own positionalities, seeking to diversify Western-based ecofeminist engagements with caring, while asking what their research can do for the nonhuman other. They formulate and apply a collaborative methodological approach to the case studies, developed through cultivating attentiveness to the nonhuman subject of research. The authors consider in particular how attentiveness to the nonhuman other can facilitate practices of knowing that further a non-anthropocentric and non-innocent ethic of caring. By further interconnecting situations of caring for nonhuman animals and plants, the authors advocate for practices of care that antagonise how species boundaries are drawn and explore the implications for learning to care for nonhumans as kin. (shrink)

This study investigated gender-related differences in ethical attitudes of 318 graduate and undergraduate business students. Significant differences were observed in male and female responses to questions concerning ethics in social and personal relationships. No differences were noted for survey items concerning rules-based obligations. Implications for future management are discussed.

There is an awakening of interest in links between geography and moral philosophy, or ethics. This paper reviews a range of issues where common ground might be found on this new disciplinary interface. These issues include the historical geography of moralities, the notion of moral geographies, inclusion and exclusion in the context of the bounding of spaces, and the moral significance of distance and proximity, as well as the more familiar concern with social justice. Environmental ethics provides a link with (...) the physical side of the subject. Some suggestions are made as to the possible contribution of geography to the understanding of moral issues. (shrink)

I offer a very qualified argument to the effect that rights are grounded in a certain sort of prejudice that privileges individualistic and perhaps masculinist ways of thinking about moral life. I also propose that we look carefully at other conceptions of social ontology and moral life, including the much discussed care conception.

The theory and practise of care is defined and enacted differently in different national as well as cultural contexts, illuminating how differently constructed the personal and societal structures in Europe are. A common trait is however that care work paid or non-paid, private or public is identified with women. To navigate in the landscape of care and ethics requires taking into account the constitutive relation between one’s identity, embodiment and position. The author suggests conceiving care as an existential condition of (...) life demanded from all human beings. This will free care from the identification with women and pave a way towards a more gender equal and just society with less gender segregation in the labour market and at the arena of education. (shrink)

An enduring question in the cultural study of psychological experience concerns how emotion may play a role in shaping moral aspects of children’s lives as they are mentored into socially preferred ways of understanding and responding to the world at hand. This article brings together approaches from psychological and linguistic anthropology to explore how cultural schemas of normativity are communicated, embodied, and enacted as children participate in day-to-day family activities and routines. Illustrative examples emanate from a videotaped corpus of naturalistic (...) interactional data that document the daily lives of 32 ethnically diverse U.S. middle-class families who reside in the Los Angeles, California metropolitan region. The article employs discourse and narrative analysis to examine how children are apprenticed into perceiving, appraising, and reacting to the emotions of self and others as culturally shaped indicators for proper comportment. Data analysis emphasizes how implicit components of caregivers’ interactions with children (i.e., gesture, gaze, facial expression) intertwine with explicit, verbal communication to constitute intricately layered affective messages that shape the evaluative frames through which children interpret, display, and respond to emotions. The article identifies two culturally salient childrearing practices, “pep talks” and “time outs,” that apprentice children into moral accountable relationships with others by encouraging them to manage their emotions in culturally preferred ways. Study findings suggest that parental communications conveying praise and approval—or conversely indexing disapproval—towards children are emotionally resonant motivational practices in this cultural milieu as children are mentored into culturally meaningful emotional management techniques. The article highlights how children actively employ semiotic socio-communicative resources and it closely traces their sense-making processes in tandem with their discursive contributions to the moment-by-moment interaction. It argues that emotion, morality, and interpersonal relations are critical in shaping children’s acquisition of consensually validated ways of perceiving, feeling, and responding to the phenomena they encounter in their day-to-day lives. This perspective aims towards contextualized understandings that render plausible connections between local contexts of everyday action and broader macro-level discourses and master narratives, such as those associated with a neo-liberal emphasis on cultivating citizens who learn to regulate their emotions on behalf of self and others. (shrink)

Towards the general goal of generating a normative-empirical dialogue about ethics and justice, the present study explored three issues: (1) the extent to which the normative criteria of ethics and justice prescribed by moral philosophers are indeed reflected in managerial professionals' subjective beliefs of what ethical and just work behaviour ought to be, (2) the relationship between people's ought beliefs and their perceptions of actual ethical and just work behaviour, and (3) the relationship between the notions of ethics and justice. (...) To do so, a review of the normative and positive theories of ethics was carried out which revealed the key normative criteria of ethics (i.e., utility, rights, justice, principle and care) and justice (i.e., due procedure and due outcome). Using both the interview and the repertory grid procedures, key determinants of ethical and just work behaviour as perceived by the managerial professionals were generated. These determinants were used to construct the questionnaires for the assessment of people's subjective ought beliefs, and their is judgements, of ethical and just work behaviour. There were three respondent samples: managerial professionals, general public and university students. Results showed that (1) people's subjective ought beliefs closely reflected the normative standards of ethics and justice, (2) there were significant discrepancies between people's subjective ought beliefs and their perceptions of actual ethical and just work behaviour, (3) individual differences in ought beliefs had some influence on is judgements, (4) both the ought beliefs and is judgements pertaining to the notion of justice could be accounted for by measures of the other four criteria of ethics and in particular, the notion of rights. The implications of the findings for normative theories of ethics and for ethics education are discussed. (shrink)

During the last decade, scholars of business ethics have become increasingly interested in the construct of moral courage. However, despite the importance of understanding both moral courage and the factors that might facilitate its expression, this topic has still received relatively limited study and several areas have been identified as being in need of further exploration. These include the need to investigate courage from within a full range of theoretical frameworks, including feminist ones, from within which, little is yet known (...) about this construct; the need for developmental perspectives on moral courage ; and, the identification of developmentally informed approaches for facilitating its expression. This article responds to these needs by providing a conceptual framework for understanding moral courage through a feminist and developmental ethic of care, and by describing the implications of this framework for the expression of moral courage in business and organizational settings. (shrink)

Previous research on the moral foundations of transformational leadership has focused primarily on stage of justice reasoning; this study focuses on developmental mode of care reasoning. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted on data coded from interviews with a sample of Canadian public sector managers ( N = 58) and survey responses from their subordinates ( N = 119). Results indicated that managers’ developmental mode of care reasoning significantly and positively predicted subordinates’ reports of transformational (but not transactional) leadership, with significant (...) differences in follower reports of transformational leadership between those using more versus less advanced modes of care reasoning. Conceptual implications for understanding transformational leadership and the ethics of leadership, directions for future research, and suggestions for leadership interventions are discussed. (shrink)

Efforts to counter software piracy are an increasing focus of software publishers. This study attempts to develop a profile of those who illegally copy software by looking at undergraduate and graduate students and the extent to which they pirate software. The data indicate factors that can be used to profile the software pirater. In particular, males were found to pirate software more frequently than females and older students more than younger students, based on self-reporting.

Although there has been a proliferation of interest in sustainable business practice, recent research has identified concerns with the relative neglect of the social versus environmental aspects of sustainability. It is argued here that due to its reliance on internally held, concrete and intrinsically motivated forms of responsiveness, as well as its ability to be authentically social versus parochial in nature, that the ethical construct of “embodied care” (Hamington, Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics, 2004 ) has (...) particular relevance as one path through which responsiveness to the human aspects of sustainable business practice might occur. Consideration is given to care as both an individual and organizational level construct. Business case examples are offered and directions for future research described. (shrink)

The paper draws upon new conceptions of place, space, interaction and community in Geography and Media Studies to explore the possibilities of extending existing conceptions of care and caring from the context with which they are traditionally associated—face-to-face encounters within a shared physical locale. It proposes three structures of ‘caring at a distance’, all of which have a core element of mediated or distanciated interaction, and concludes that mass media and electronic networks play a significant role in extending the scope (...) of beneficence beyond our ‘nearest and dearest’ to embrace distant others. (shrink)

Institutional ethics committees (IECs) in health care facilities now create moral policy, provide moral education, and consult with physicians and other health care workers. After sketching reasons for the development of IECs, this paper first examines the predominant moral standards it is often assumed IECs are now using, these standards being neo-Kantian principles of justice and utilitarian principles of the greatest good. Then, it is argued that a feminine ethics of care, as posited by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, is (...) an unacknowledged basis for IEC discussions and decisions. Further, it is suggested that feminine ethics of care can and should provide underlying theoretical tools and standards for IECs. (shrink)

Care Ethics needs to make clear and defensible normative claims. Michael Slote’s work shows how accounts taking care as a sentimental motive can do the needful. Such motive accounts of care can also provide a way to capture the important distinction between care and justice approaches to morality. However, it is important for Care Ethics to establish harmony between caring motives and acting rightly. Slote’s account does so at the cost of an unintuitive account of obligation. We propose another way (...) to capture this harmony. (shrink)

An onslaught of ethically questionable actions by top government, business, and religious leaders during the 1980s has brought the issue of ethics in decision making to the forefront of public consciousness. This study examines the ethical orientation of university students in four decision-making situations. The dependent variable — ethical orientation toward work-related decisions — is measured through student responses to questions following four work-related vignettes. Possible responses to each vignette are structured to permit categorization of respondents into two broad orientations: (...) egoistic and ethical. Independent variables are academic major, ethics in business orientation, gender, and religiosity. Generally, students tended to choose an ethical orientation over an egoistic orientation in each vignette. Business majors were generally no less likely to choose an ethical orientation toward work-related decisions than nonbusiness majors. Respondents characterized by moral unity (belief in the consistency between general ethical principles and work-related ethical standards) were more likely to have an ethical orientation toward work-related decisions than those subscribing to the amoral theory of business. Females showed a consistent tendency to be more ethically oriented toward work-related decisions than males. Finally, respondents high on religiosity tended to be more ethically oriented. (shrink)

Although Christianity's clout on sexuality has generally declined in Britain due to secularization, contemporary conservative Protestantism continues to encourage a conventional construction of sexuality — sex is only for the context of heterosexual marriage. Qualitative interviews with 26 heterosexual women and two lesbian women on how their Protestant church involvement impacted their sexuality revealed the pervasive discourse of a marital-confined sexuality and participants' sense of `accountability' to the group for carrying this out. Such accountability can result in a repressed sexuality (...) that is oppressive. Alternatively, it can produce a `sense of community' that functions as a source of empowerment. The oppressive and empowering nature of accountability, however, can be difficult to untangle because of women's religious commitment and supportive friendships found in church life. Relying on participants' accounts, this article addresses the oppression and empowerment young women experience when they negotiate their gendered identities in relation to a marital-confined sexuality. (shrink)

The present study of the psychology of animal rights activists utilizes a qualitative analytic method based on two forms of data: a set of questionnaire protocols completed by grassroots activists and of autobiographical accounts by movement leaders. The resultant account keys on the following descriptives: an attitude of caring, suffering as an habitual object of perception, and the aggressive and skillful uncovering and investigation of instances of suffering. In a final section, the investigator discusses tensions and conflicts arising from these (...) three themes and various ways of attempting to resolve them. (shrink)

The rapid development of assisted reproduction technologies for the treatment of infertility appears to empower women through expanding their individual choice, but it is also creating new forms of suffering for them and their collaborators, especially in the context of transnational third-party reproduction. This paper explores the possibility of framing the ethical discourse around third-party reproduction by bringing attention to concerns of altruistic empathy for women who collaborate in the reproductive process, in addition to those of individualistic choice. This would (...) entail moving beyond an ethic of liberty that is based on self-interest and the language of rights, to an alternative ethic of care that is based on self-restraint and the language of responsibilities. An ethic of care and responsibility would cultivate the empathetic self-reflection of the autonomous actor in relation to those others who are part of the enterprise of bringing a child into the world. (shrink)

Family research has mostly concentrated on relationships between parents and children or between women and men. On the other hand, feminist studies have explained problems within woman-to-woman relationships deriving from patriarchy. This article focuses on problematic adult woman-to-woman family relationships. More specifically, it discusses two women's ambivalent emotions narrated and experienced in their problematic female family relationships. The authors suggest that feminist studies should take into account culturally dominant narratives interlinking female subjectivity and responsibility over the private sphere. Ambivalence arises (...) in situations where individuals encounter contradictorily structured power hierarchies, i.e. simultaneously trying to follow the rules of kinship order and the desire for agency. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is not to provide an overall picture of care ethics, but, rather, to reflect upon the concept of care, which has gained significance in particular scientific contexts. Undoubtedly, the importance of the subject of care represents a challenge on the level of fundamental philosophical positions and a diversified look into the occurring forms of the psychological and social suffering, dependency, and vulnerability. I will shed light on tenets that are considered central to the care ethics (...) and that have led to the setting up of the relationship between care and democracy. By introducing the basic aspects of Carol Gilligan’s and Joan Tronto’s theories, I will emphasize their vocation to be politically relevant. A discussion on the relationship between care and justice on the one hand, and needs and rights on the other, will follow. Can hearing voices of care make democracy more just? How can care ethics provide a concrete support for democracy? On the political level, care ethics builds on the assumptions of the necessary relatedness and equality between individuals who are decisive in the light of the welfare state perspective. Upon closer examination, one may see that the setting up of these relationships is not new to the liberal perspective. Liberalism is historically rooted in the fundamental interconnection between freedom and equality. Virtues such as care and meekness can be formulated in the language of politics, but they still remain unpolitical. On the one hand, engaging in a critical reflection upon such virtues might be an indispensable measuring instrument for distinguishing a good democracy from a bad one. On the other hand, care ethics does not prove to be a real alternative to the ethics of justice. In this regard, care ethics seems to show its feet of clay. (shrink)

Crisis prevention plans are usually evaluated based on their effects in terms of preventing or limiting organizational crisis. In this survey-based study, the focus was instead on how such plans influence employees’ reactions in terms of risk perception and well-being. Five different organizations were addressed in the study. Hypothesis 1 tested the assumption that leadership crisis preparation would lead to lower perceived risk among the employees. Hypothesis 2 tested the conjecture that it would also lead to a higher degree of (...) well-being. Both hypotheses were supported. The results and their implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper addresses the theoretical and methodological issues in women in management research, as the field emerges out of its adulthood and steps into the age of maturity. The four fundamental issues addressed are (i) the need to conduct extensive research in this area; (ii) the need for synthesizing previous research findings and establishing a solid theory base on which further work can progress; (iii) the appropriate methodologies for generating further knowledge in the area; and (iv) future directions for research (...) on women in management, taking both a basic and applied research perspective. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDieser Artikel beleuchtet die tragende Rolle, die Umweltdenken und Umgebungswissen für die Legitimation traditioneller Geschlechterrollen im 20. Jahrhundert spielten. Gezeigt wird, auf welche Weise einflussreiche psychologische und psychoanalytische Konzepte der Kindes- und Persönlichkeitsentwicklung Frauen dazu anhielten, sozio-naturale Umwelten herzustellen, ja, selbst Umwelt zu sein. Expertinnen und Experten verschiedener Denkrichtungen und Generationen propagierten ein ganz ähnliches Bild femininer „Environmentalität“, das heißt: der Disposition und Bestimmung der Frau, Umwelten zu erzeugen und zu verkörpern, die eine gesunde Kindesentwicklung ermöglichen und das Wohlbefinden und (...) den Erfolg des Mannes, gar den Erhalt der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung begünstigen sollten. Dieses Konstrukt weiblichen Umwelt-Seins verpflichtete Frauen auf Ehe und Vollzeitmutterschaft und fixierte sie in Raum und Zeit. Sein reaktionärer Gebrauch in Auseinandersetzungen über alternative weibliche Lebensentwürfe demonstriert, dass leitende Konzeptionen von Entwicklung, Wohlergehen und Identität nicht nur androzentrisch, sondern antifeministisch waren. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of group context on the ethical predispositions of group members. Results indicate that groups exert a powerful influence on individuals' ethical frameworks, and that the patterns of these influences differ depending on the type of ethical framework involved. Individuals' ethical utilitarianism was affected by both leadership style and group cohesiveness. Ethical formalism was most affected by the leadership style in the group.

In this paper, we explore the possible contributions of empirical moral philosophy to professional ethics in teacher education. We argue that it is both possible and desirable to connect knowledge of how teachers empirically do and understand professional ethics with normative theories of teachers’ professional ethics. Our argument is made in dialogue with the moral philosophy of Charles Taylor and the emerging tradition of ‘empirical ethics’ in psychiatry. We also draw on empirical data from a larger empirical project on teachers’ (...) professional ethics in Norway. Our main contribution is the development of a method for empirical professional ethics that involves three steps: articulation, disturbance and expansion. (shrink)

In Simple Rules for a Complex World, Richard Epstein claims to be focusing on legal simplicity, and on the link between legal simplicity and a legal system less intrusive on individual liberty. It turns out, however, that Epstein's conception of simplicity is itself soaked with the substantive idea of individual liberty. The consequences of this are that the claim that legal simplicity brings individual liberty becomes true by definition, and that Epstein avoids taking on the important and interesting questions of (...) whether and when legal simplicity, more conventionally understood, produces less legal instrusiveness and thus, under Epstein's own conception, more liberty. (shrink)

The popular media has repeatedly pointed to pride as one of the key factors motivating leaders to behave unethically. However, given the devastating consequences that leader unethical behavior may have, a more scientific account of the role of pride is warranted. The present study differentiates between authentic and hubristic pride and assesses its impact on leader ethical behavior, while taking into consideration the extent to which leaders find it important to their self-concept to be a moral person. In two experiments (...) we found that with higher levels of moral identity, authentically proud leaders are more likely to engage in ethical behavior than hubristically proud leaders, and that this effect is mediated by leaders’ motivation to act selflessly. A field survey among organizational leaders corroborated that moral identity may bring the positive effect of authentic pride and the negative effect of hubristic pride on leader ethical behavior to the forefront. (shrink)

This study investigated gender related moral reasoning in student essays containing arguments on moral issues. Undergraduate students in a medical ethics course viewed two films on morally controversial issues. The students wrote brief essays about the films which were transcribed and numerically coded to conceal the author's gender from the evaluator. Using a coding scheme originated by Lyons, the evaluator classified each essay as a justice/right essay or a care/response essay or an equal response essay. Subsequently, calculations were made to (...) determine the percentage of male authored essays that were justice/rights essays or care/response essays and the percentage of female authored essays that were justice/rights or care/response essays. The males (87.7%) tended to exhibit the justice/rights moral orientation, and the females (69.4%) exhibited the care/response moral orientation. Several different calculations were made to determine various degrees of gender related orientations also. The difference in orientation was highly statistically significant (p≤0.001). These data contribute to understanding moral orientation and development. Interpretations are given to explain some differences between the genders and help explain the traditional roles in society that males and females have played historically. (shrink)

Proportionality is one of the most important adjudicatory tools, in human rights decision-making, primarily employed to balance rights and interests. Despite this there is very little feminist analysis of its use by the courts. This article discusses the doctrine of proportionality and considers its amenability to feminist legal methods. It relies on theories of deliberative democracy to argue that the proportionality test can be applied in a manner that facilitates a more “interactive universalism”, allows for greater participation in decision-making and (...) enables the courts to be more attentive to the disadvantaged. The commonalities between proportionality and feminist theory are examined, and its contribution to developing and reconstituting a more relational and contextual concept of rights is explored. (shrink)

This paper examines the advent of the Web as a critical media tool in the promotion and sale of goods to consumers and the ethical questions it raises that are issues of public policy. We examine four traditional ethical rationales that guide organizational decision-making – utilitarianism, distributive justice, moral rights of man and relativism, further characterized as "ends-based", "equity-based", "rules-based" and "comparison-based" rationales – and we apply them to four moral dilemmas attributed to the proliferation of dot.com companies as they (...) relate to consumer welfare. We find that ethical rationale in the New Media is largely non-existent, and where it exists, it is primarily reactive and driven by utilitarian or relativistic reasoning. We attribute this condition to the newness of the industry and to its economic context, representing, as it does, many characteristics embodied in the concept of the "perfect market." We offer some remedies to improve ethical conduct by e-business. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFrom Kohlberg’s moral reasoning approach, this study analyzes the decision-making process of a group of Swedish newspaper editors. We use a qualitative methodology to examine how editors respond to three ethical dilemmas related to company loyalty, journalistic values, and newsroom diversity. Findings suggest that commercial considerations do not outweigh the inherent ethical/journalistic influence on decisions concerning the newsroom. Further categorization reveals that ethical and managerial reasoning co-exist in a news media landscape that requires capturing readers and investors without neglecting journalistic (...) values and norms. In investigating the moral, ethical, and business aspects of newspaper editors’ decision-making process, our findings reveal the delicate balance Swedish editors strive for during an increasingly difficult and transitional period in journalism. (shrink)

Should the liberal state accommodate the cultural traditions of minority groups even if these traditions infringe upon the rights of women? This article discusses two empirical cases that pose just this problem for public policy in the Netherlands: requests for surgical reconstruction of the hymen and gender-selective abortion. While hymen reconstruction is linked to a cultural norm that young women, but not young men, remain virgins until marriage, sex-selective abortion is linked to a cultural preference for sons. The autonomy of (...) women is at issue in these cases in two ways: the traditions limit their autonomy, yet it is the women who demand the medical intervention. The cases illustrate the complexities of women's agency under oppressive social conditions. The author develops a moral argument concerning these two cases that understands the women in question as moral agents, while taking into account these complexities. The article does not pit multicultural and feminist concerns against each other. Instead, it is argued that good feminism may well require acts of multiculturalism. It is not desirable, so it is argued, to restrict access to abortion or to ban hymen repair. (shrink)

There has been a recent surge of research interest in videogames of moral engagement for entertainment, advocacy and education. We have seen a wealth of analysis and several theoretical models proposed, but experimental evaluation has been scarce. One of the difficulties lies in the measurement of moral engagement. How do we meaningfully measure whether players are engaging with and affected by the moral choices in the games they play? In this paper, we survey the various standard psychometric instruments from the (...) moral psychology literature and discuss how they might be applied in the evaluation of games. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between an employee's level of moral reasoning and a form of work performance known as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Prior research in the public accounting profession has found higher levels of moral reasoning to be positively related to various types of ethical behavior. This study extends the ethical domain of accounting behaviors to include OCB. Analysis of respondents from a public accounting firm in the northeast region of the United States (n = 107) support a (...) positive and significant relationship between moral reasoning and two dimensions of OCB: interpersonal helping behaviors and sportsmanship behaviors. This study controls for previously identified determinants of OCB (e.g., procedural justice) and demographic variables (age, sex, tenure and social desirability). Results suggest that moral reasoning accounts for professional behaviors that are perceived as intrinsically good by the employee and economically beneficial by the employer. (shrink)

Through an analysis of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy (2008, 2009, 2010), this text will consider the ways in which contemporary postfeminism can be read as a dystopic narrative. The protagonist of the novel (and the rest of the trilogy) is Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who through an ethics of care, disruption of the heteronormative script, and a critical posthuman embodiment offers an alternative to the dystopic present offered by postfeminism. In Katniss’ dystopian world, Collins constructs a narrative (...) that highlights the continued need for a feminist politics of engagement and activism that works against claims for neo-liberal individualism. (shrink)