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White, Gilligan, and the Voices of Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

William Martin  and
Bill Shaw
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Abstract

This commentary finds much to like about the work of Professor Thomas I. White, “Business, Ethics, and Carol Gilligan's ‘Two Voices.” (Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1992) At the same time it suggests further work is needed on the following points: (1) White must consider how males respond to dilemmas if he hopes to articulate a difference between male and female methods of responding; (2) White must support his conclusion that the “ethics of care” is the ethic most likely to produce the results that he assumes to be true, and further explain why he thinks that the studies he chooses support the “ethics of care,” and (3) White must explain why the “ethics of care” is not just as likely to produce a result opposite to that found by researchers.

Type
Response Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 437 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1993 

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References

Notes

1. Thomas, I. White, Business, Ethics, and Carol, Gilligan's Two Voices, Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol.2, No. 1 (January 1992), pp. 51–61.Google Scholar

2. Ishmael, P. Akaah, “Differences in Research Ethics Judgements Between Male and Female Marketing Professionals,” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 8 (1989), pp.375–81.Google Scholar The case studies which White reprints from Akaah are: (1) A project director went to the Marketing Research Director's office and requested permission to use an ultra-violet ink to precode a qestionnaire for a mail survey. The project director pointed out that although the cover letter promised confidentiality, respondent identification was needed to permit adequate cross tabulations of the data. The Marketing Research Director gave approval. (2) A recent study showed that several customers of X company were misusing Product B. Although this posed no danger, customers were wasting their money by using too much of the product at one time. But, yesterday, the Marketing Research Director saw final comps/sketches on Product B's new ad campaign which not only ignored the problem of misuse but actually seemed to encourage it. The Marketing Research Director quietly referred the advertising manager to the research results, well known to all of the people involved with product B's advertising, but did nothing beyond that. (3) The National Marketing Advisory Council (former top marketing executives and marketing educators who advise the Commerce Department) has a task force studying inner city prices. The head of this study group called to ask if they could have a copy of a recent X company study which showed that inner city appliance prices are significantly higher than in suburban areas. Since X Company sells appliances to these inner city merchants, the Marketing Research Director felt compelled to refuse the request(53-54).

3. John, H. Barnett and Marvin, J. Karson, “Managers, Values, and Executive Decisions: An Exploration of the Role of Gender, Career Stage, Organizational Level, Function, and the Importance of Ethics, Relationships and Results in Managerial Decision-Making,” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 8 (1989), pp.747–71.Google Scholar Again, we offer the reader a brief summary of the case studies White refers to: (1) You are a newly appointed marketing director attending a trade association meeting. The marketing director of your chief competitor is carrying a stack of copies of the competitor's marketing plan for next year. After the competitor has gone you discover that he has dropped one of the copies. Would you: A. Contact your competitor and return the plan unread. B. Read the plan. (2) You are the new director and major shareholder of a large corporation. The corporation is currently being sued by a customer claiming the customer has received a personal injury. While going through your predecessor's personal files, which only you will see, you find some information supporting the customer's personal injury claim. There is a large sum of money at stake, and you are presently in good shape to win the case. Would you: A. Reveal the information. B. Not reveal the information. (3) You have recently resigned from your position as a sales consultant for a photocopier firm, and you will be leaving in several weeks. A customer is interested in purchasing a used copy machine, and you have a recent model which the customer feels would meet company needs. You stand to make a good commission on the deal. However, you know that the customer could purchase a brand new copier from your firm for the same amount of money during a special rebate period. The commission on the new product, however, is substantially less than that on the used machine. You would: A. Inform the customer about the special rebate. B. Not inform the customer about the special rebate(55-56).

4. Akaah at 378.

5. White chastises the researchers for their unwillingness to draw conclusions, failing to recognize, perhaps, that their reluctance was well-founded.

6. Akaah at 378.

7. Cf. Anthony Brandt, The Moral Superiority of (a) Men (b) Women, Playboy Magazine, p. 92.

8. Naturally, a detailed comparison of the positions of Kohlberg and Gilligan, and the latter's dependence on the former (which is, of course, well-recognized and documented, even by Gilligan herself), would take us into an entirely different paper. Unfortunately for his discussion, White does not consider the possibility of using Kohlberg's position, refined along Gilligan's lines, to illuminate the different responses of men and women in the test cases he examines. As will be shown in the remainder of this paper, such a refinement is a fruitful alternative to White's approach.

9. As paraphrased in Ethics and Moral Reasoning, pp.27-28, from Lawrence Kohlberg's Moral States and Moralization: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach, in Moral Development, ed. T. Lickona, pp.31-53.

10. It should be noted that Kohlberg uses the terms good boy and nice girl in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive fashion. He is not saying the men and women should make their moral decisions on the basis of their perception of their goodness or niceness, but simply that they do (at least at stage three).

11. As suggested by the virtue of “toughness” which many business-ethicists see as central to a viable notion of excellence in business. Cf. Robert C. Solomon, Ethics and Excellence (1992).

12. This is a reasonable supposition, based on the average age of the study groups (36) and the years in which the studies were carried out (1987-89). See Akaah and Barnett/Karson above.

13. The relatively small difference between the men and the women sampled (see again Akaah and Barnett/Karson) is explicable on this account: there is no clear decision for the women, but there is at least a slightly greater impetus for the women to choose the ethical alternative. On White's account, it is hard to understand why the responses of the women did not differ from the responses of the men by a much greater percentage than the researchers reported.