Current research in moral development suggests that there are two distinct modes of moral reasoning, one based on a morality of justice, the other based on a morality of care. The research presented here examines the kinds of moral reasoning used by managers in work-related conflicts. Twenty men and twenty women were randomly selected from the population of first level managers in a Fortune 100 industrial corporation. In open-ended interviews each participant was asked to describe a situation of moral conflict (...) in her or his work life. The results indicated a clearly preferred mode of moral reasoning among the participants who described moral conflicts. Nearly all of these predominated with a justice orientation. These findings suggest that a correlation between gender and preferred mode may be context specific. (shrink)

In a Different Voice is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond.

CHAPTER I OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON § i. — DEFINITION PRACTICAL principles are propositions which contain a general determination of the ...

Managerial reasoning is characteristic of a care-relationship ethics:1. If a corporation provides certain community values to corporate members not reducible to their self-interested economic or professional objectives; 2. If such values are generated by a division of labor based on interdependence, reciprocity and concern for another's self-realization; 3. If it's based on promoting an ethical corporate self independent of its economic value. Such an ethic is appropriate, given employees' tremendous personal contributions, the unique position of private industry to provide distinctive (...) resources without committing extensive social resources, and due to its potential for reducing managerial moral fragmentation and hypocrisy. (shrink)