Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:40:18.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, N. (1984). “Women in International Management: Where are They?” California Management Review, 26, 78–89.Google Scholar
Cahoon, A.R. (1991). “Gender Differences in Management.” The Practicing Manager (October, 1991), 13.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. (1983), Corporations and Morality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. (1989), The Ethics of International Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Dunfee, T. (1994), “Toward a Unified Conception of Business Ethics: Integrative Social Contracts Theory,” Academy of Management Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, 252–284.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Dunfee, T., “Integrative Social Contracts Theory: A Communitarian Conception of Economic Ethics” forthcoming in Economics and Philosophy.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Thomas & Gini, Al (1993), Case Studies in Business Ethics (3d. ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.Google Scholar
Dunfee, T. (1991). “Extant Social Contracts.” Business Ethics Quarterly 1, 22–37.Google Scholar
Ford, J. (1992). “Sexual Harassment Taken for Granted.” Japan Times Weekly (Intl. Ed.), Feb. 10–16, 4.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. (1970), “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13, 1970, 32–33, 122–126.Google Scholar
Nadelmann, E. A. (1990). “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society.” International Organization 44: 479–526.Google Scholar
Rhoodie, E. (1989). Discrimination Against Women: A Global Survey of Economic, Educational, Social and Political Status of Women. London, UK: McFarland and Company.Google Scholar
Shue, H. (1981) Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Vincent, R. J. (1986). Human Rights and International Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar