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Social Contract Theory and Gender Discrimination: Some Reflections on the Donaldson/Dunfee Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Don Mayer  and
Anita Cava
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Abstract:

This paper relates Donaldson and Dunfee’s Integrative Social Contracts Theory to the problem of gender discrimination. We make the assumption that multinational managers might seek some guidance from ISCT to resolve ethical issues of gender discrimination in countries indifferent or hostile to gender equality. The role of Donaldson and Dunfee’s “hypernorms” seems especially crucial, and we find that, under their writings thus far, no “hypernorms” exist to make unethical the most blatant acts of sex discrimination in a host country whose local norms tolerate such discrimination. The genesis of “hypernorms” as “global moral minimums” is recounted, and specific application of ISCT to a familiar ethics case (“A Foreign Assignment”) is provided.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 257 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1995

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