Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been hailed as a new means to address gender inequality, particularly by facilitating women’s empowerment. Women are frequently and forcefully positioned as saviours of economies or communities and proponents of sustainability. Using vignettes drawn from a CSR women’s empowerment programme in Ghana, this conceptual article explores unexpected programme outcomes enacted by women managers and farmers. It is argued that a feminist Foucauldian reading of power as relational and productive can help explain this since those involved (...) are engaged in ongoing processes of resistance and self-making. This raises questions about the assumptions made about ‘women’ and what is it that such CSR programmes aim to ‘empower’ them ‘from’ or ‘to’.Empowerment, when viewed as an ethic of care for the Self, is better understood as a self-directed process, rather than a corporate-led strategy. This has implications for how we can imagine the achievement of gender equality through CSR. (shrink)

‘Fair trade’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ consumption emerged in response to rising concerns about the destructive effects of hedonic models of consumption that are typical of late capitalist societies. Advocates of these ‘markets for virtue’ sought to supplant the insatiable hedonic impulse with a morally restrained, self-disciplining disposition to consumption. With moral markets currently losing their appeal, we respond to the tendency to view hedonism as an inhibitor of moral market behaviour, and view it instead as a potential enabler. Drawing upon (...) the concept of ‘alternative hedonism’ (Soper, J Consum Cult 7:205–229, 2007; Cult Stud 22(5):567–587, 2008; Ethics and morality in consumption: interdisciplinary perspectives, Routledge, London, 2016; A new hedonism: a post-consumerism vision, the next system project, 2017), we illustrate how consumers experience both morality and pleasure concurrently; show how they attempt to reconcile these aspects of the experience and elucidate the implications of doing so. Using the moral market for ethical tourism as an exemplar of ‘alternative hedonism’, we identify three ‘self-managing strategies’—moderating, abiding and levelling—that re-structure the moral order of consumption in meaningful ways and with profound outcomes. In the context of anxieties about personal, social and ecological consequences of consumption, we show empirically how self-managing strategies reify a less contradictory framing of consumption by tapping into alternative cultural discourses on morality. We discuss the consequences of these strategies, highlighting how they may legitimise and sustain consumption via moral markets despite the reproduction of social inequality and ecological threats. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:There is considerable overlap between the interests of business ethicists and those of political philosophers. Questions about the moral justifiability of the capitalist system, the basis of property rights, and the problem of inequality in the distribution of income have been of central importance in both fields. However, political philosophers have developed, especially over the past four decades, a set of tools and concepts for addressing these questions that are in many ways quite distinctive. Most business ethicists, on the other (...) hand, consider their field to be primarily a domain of applied ethics, and so adopt methods and conceptual frameworks developed by moral philosophers. In this paper, we discuss some of the salient differences between these two approaches, and suggest some ways in which business ethicists could benefit from taking a more “political philosophy” approach to these questions. Throughout, we underline the importance of seeking greater compatibility among the principles used in normative theorizing about markets, regulations, corporate governance, and business practices. (shrink)

In this collection, the editors again bring together papers that either exemplify the crossing of disciplinary boundaries, or that allow us to do so in and through the conversations they create. The chapters were chosen based on their relevance to similar themes as were discussed in the first volume. By reviewing historical developments in the literature around gender and organization, and by drawing on recent scholarship that disrupts the traditional masculine imaginaries that plague leadership constructs, this book challenges us to (...) radically revise our gendered thinking about leading in organizations. The authors included in this volume offer alternative, interdisciplinary perspectives on the gender constructs that inform the organizing that takes place in business and society. The book delves deeply into how ‘relationality’, as concept and practice, can help us frame a more inclusive approach to gender within contemporary organizations. (shrink)

By deliberately placing ethics under the category of communication, Kierkegaard intended to show that it is like no other science. He distinguished betweendirect communication and indirect communication. Direct communication concerns objectivity and knowledge; indirect communication, on the other hand, has to do with subjectivity (“becoming-subject”). In this paper, the author presents Kierkegaard’s philosophy of communication and ethics with special emphasis on his irony and pseudonymous authorship. He also examines the possibility of a discourse in business ethics, focusing on the educational (...) perspective. He discusses Kierkegaard’s aspects of communication—the communicator, the receiver, and the object—with particular reference to applied ethics. He argues that the Kierkegaardian notion of indirect communication can contribute to renewing business ethics teaching—which in his view is more art than science—in two important ways: (1) when the ethics teacher changes his position in the teacher/learner relationship; and (2) when the relationship between communicator/receiver is strengthened at the expense of the object. (shrink)

‘Have you ever taken sufficient care of yourselves?’ By asking the elite Athenian youth this question, Socrates implies that the liberation of self and the capacity to govern are inseparable. Drawing on the lectures given by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France in 1984 – only recently made available to the public – we show the consequences of the return to this ancient care‐of‐self ethic in the organizational context. After reviewing the contributions made to business ethics by these two (...) philosophers, we propose four phases necessary to the emergence and constitution of a moral subject in organizations: self‐awakening, self‐evaluation, self‐transformation and self‐presentation. We then suggest various managerial practices and behaviour inspired by this philosophical parrhesia embodied by the Greek philosopher wherein the manager should have a personal relationship with his or her own activity. Finally, we discuss implications of our study in the field of business ethics and propose an agenda for future research. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between business ethics and philosophy, specifically in relation to the field and persons working in it. The starting point is a grammatical one: business ethics by the rules of grammar belongs to ethics. In terms of academic disciplines, it belongs to applied ethics, which belongs to ethics, which belongs to practical philosophy, which belongs to philosophy. However, in the field of business ethics today one will seldom meet colleagues from philosophy; instead, they will come from (...) business, applying business studies perspectives, approaches, and increasingly quantitative methods. This article provides empirical evidence that today the three top journals with “business ethics” in their titles are mostly run by business scholars with PhDs in business. The article compares the three journals today with their inaugural issues and finds that at their inception all three were run by a majority of philosophers. The article discusses six possible explanations for this shift and provides suggestions for how to bring business ethics back to philosophers. (shrink)

The paper examines the contribution of the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the subject of ethics in organizations. The paper combines an analysis of Foucault’s work on discipline and control, with an examination of his later work on the ethical subject and technologies of the self. Our paper argues that the work of the later Foucault provides an important contribution to business ethics theory, practice and pedagogy. We discuss how it offers an alternative avenue to traditional normative ethical theory that (...) both converges and diverges with other extant alternatives. By situating ethics as practices of the self, and by demonstrating the conditions under which freedom in organizations can be exercised, Foucault’s ethics attempt to connect an understanding and critique of power with a personal project of self. He therefore provides a theory of subjectivity that potentially informs a reshaping of contemporary virtue ethics theory, value-based management, and business ethics teaching. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Lateral hiring is the intentional action of one employer to identify, solicit, and hire an individual or group of employees currently employed by another firm, a practice often pejoratively labeled “poaching.” We use the method of critical genealogy to demonstrate that the norms that discourage lateral hiring are constructions used by powerful employers to control the turnover of their employees, making them subjects of their employer’s power rather than free and autonomous people in their own right. We suggest instead that (...) ethical responsibility for entertaining or rejecting lateral hiring offers rests with the focal employee(s). We conclude that the form and symmetry of loyalty between employees and their current employers are the determinants of the appropriateness of an employee’s decision to entertain and accept outside offers. These conclusions imply responsibilities for employers to forge (and employees to honor) symmetrical relational loyalty in the workplace, but not for alternate employers to refrain from making lateral hiring offers. (shrink)

‘Have you ever taken sufficient care of yourselves?’ By asking the elite Athenian youth this question, Socrates implies that the liberation of self and the capacity to govern are inseparable. Drawing on the lectures given by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France in 1984 – only recently made available to the public – we show the consequences of the return to this ancient care‐of‐self ethic in the organizational context. After reviewing the contributions made to business ethics by these two (...) philosophers, we propose four phases necessary to the emergence and constitution of a moral subject in organizations: self‐awakening, self‐evaluation, self‐transformation and self‐presentation. We then suggest various managerial practices and behaviour inspired by this philosophical parrhesia embodied by the Greek philosopher wherein the manager should have a personal relationship with his or her own activity. Finally, we discuss implications of our study in the field of business ethics and propose an agenda for future research. (shrink)

The leadership development industry regularly claims to aid in developing effective, ethical leaders, using 360-degree psychometric assessments as key tools for so doing. This paper analyses the effects of such tools on those subjected to and subjectivised by them from a Foucauldian perspective. We argue that instead of encouraging ethical leadership such instruments inculcate practices and belief systems that perpetuate falsehoods, misrepresentations and inequalities. ‘Followers’ are presumed compliant, malleable beings needing leaders to determine what is in their interests. Such techniques (...) pursue productivity and profitability, rather than ethical leadership. We examine the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, a widely used 360-degree tool that measures transformational leadership, as an illustrative case study to substantiate these criticisms. (shrink)