A conversation between business ethicists and feminist scholars was begun in the early 1990s. How has this conversation developed since then, and how have ensuing debates related to—or failed to relate to—developments in feminist theory? This article seeks to answer these questions in regard to the business ethics (BE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literatures. Through it we advance the illumination and integration of feminist theory in BE/CSR scholarship (Arnold, Reference Arnold2016).
The article proceeds as follows: We begin by defining our terms with respect to gender, feminism, business ethics, and CSR, in section I. In section II we outline the origins of the intersection between BE/CSR and feminism. Then in section III, by means of a bibliographic analysis of the BE/CSR literature, we map the development of conversations about gender since the early 1990s. In particular, we map the salience of gender as a concern, the methodologies adopted, and the ways in which gender has been brought into focus in BE/CSR literature, and point to limitations in the way that feminist theory has been used in the field. We concentrate on the core concerns of feminist scholarship, namely gender relations and gender equality, as these focal points provide the base from which feminist theory contributes to any field. In section IV we draw upon three specific kinds of feminist scholarship, relating to behavior (through work in psychology and related fields), organizations (through feminist organization studies), and economics (through feminist economics). We suggest ways in which each of these theoretical perspectives can be better integrated to advance BE/CSR scholarship, and how such integration might inform new research directions and agendas. Section V discusses wider implications for the field of BE/CSR, notes the limitations of our analysis, identifies further research opportunities, and highlights the contributions of the two articles in our special section.
I. DEFINING TERMS
Gender and feminism are highly contested concepts, making the relationship between the two particularly complex, variable, and contextual. The term “gender” is most commonly used to refer not only to the socially constructed norms, values, roles, and identities accorded to human beings on the basis of their (assumed) sex, but also to the opportunities and threats associated with these. While bodies and identities play significant roles in the construction of gender, institutional and social practices, and power, play important—though often less recognized––roles as well. Indeed, gender is an integral part of all organizational, social, political, and economic practices and processes: Gender is relational and is performed and renegotiated through everyday interactions (Acker, Reference Acker2004; Butler, Reference Butler2004; West & Zimmerman, 1987). Moreover, the intersection of gender with other systems of social inequality and difference, including race, class, and sexuality, are increasingly shown by feminists to be fundamental to the way in which contemporary organizations and societies function and are sustained (Acker, Reference Acker2004; Calás & Smircich, Reference Calás, Smircich, Clegg, Hardy, Nord and Lawrence2006; Gherardi, Reference Gherardi, Tsoukas and Knudsen2010). Gender also plays a role at the level of cognition and epistemology, as gendered associations—for example, cultural associations of the sphere of business and the project of science with masculinity (as contrasted to the relatively feminine associations made with the home and the humanities)—can shape the ways we perceive our social world, and the techniques we choose to analyze it (Harding, Reference Harding1986; Keller, Reference Keller1985).
“Feminism is about the social transformation of gender relations” (Butler, Reference Butler2004: 204), and about the quest for justice through reducing gender inequality by advancing the diverse interests of women (Walby, Reference Walby2011), as well as achieving equity through structural change. The study of women continues to be important in gender studies, however, increasingly the literature also addresses “men as men” (Collinson & Hearn, Reference Collinson and Hearn1994: 2), exploring how different kinds of masculinity are constructed, normalized, and maintained in organizations and societies. The cognitive and epistemological dimension of gender means that feminism also questions masculine biases in how things (e.g., business, ethics, responsibility) are defined, thought-about, framed, and investigated. In addressing gender relations and equality, feminism engages with the concept of power: “Feminist theory is a critique of the status quo and therefore always political,” however, “the degree of critique and the nature of the politics vary” leading to agendas that range from fixing individuals and “reforming organizations; to transforming organizations and society; to transforming our prior understanding of what constitutes knowledge” in the field (Calás & Smircich, Reference Calás, Smircich, Clegg, Hardy, Nord and Lawrence2006: 286, emphasis in the original).
Turning to the other voice in the conversation, we see business ethics and corporate social responsibility as related and overlapping, if reflecting somewhat different assumptions and purposes. Whilst the ethical principles and challenges, and peculiar responsibilities, of business are a long-standing societal concerns evidenced from ancient philosophies of East and West (Moon, Murphy, & Gond, 2017) to social movements against slavery (Knudsen & Moon, Reference Knudsen and Moon2017: chapter 5), their status as part of the management and business academic curriculum is rather more recent. However, they have emerged as distinctive but overlapping fields with professional associations and journals.
Business ethics is concerned with the identification and evaluation of the right thing—and all too frequently, perhaps, the wrong thing—to do in business. To some extent this entails the application of more general ethical concepts and principles to business situations (e.g. Kantianism, utilitarianism). But it has also generated its own ethical frameworks such as stakeholder theory (Donaldson & Preston, Reference Donaldson and Preston1995; Freeman, Wicks, & Parmar, 2004) and integrated social contract theory (Donaldson & Dunfee, 1994, 1995). The field of business ethics can apply to individuals and organizations within or engaged with business.
Corporate social responsibility has had a more recent status as an academic field. It has been variously defined. Some definitions limit the responsibility to actions independent of regulation or market interest. Davis defined CSR as “the firm’s consideration of, and response to, issues beyond the narrow economic, technical, and legal requirements of the firm” (1973: 313), and McGuire contends that “the idea of social responsibilities supposes that the corporation has not only economic and legal obligations but also certain responsibilities to society which extend beyond these obligations” (1963: 144). Other definitions presume that CSR should be integral to the whole business: “CSR refers to the integration of an enterprises’ social, environmental, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities towards society into its operations, processes, and core business strategy in cooperation with relevant stakeholders” (Rasche, Morsing, & Moon, 2017: 6). Yet others frame an inductive definition such as the formative author Bowen who defined CSR as “the obligations of businessmen to pursue those policies, to make those decisions, or to follow those lines of action which are desirable in terms of the objectives and values of our society” (1953: 6). Footnote 1 More recently, anticipating the significance of context, Matten and Moon defined it as “policies and practices of corporations that reflect business responsibility for some of the wider societal good. Yet the precise manifestation and direction of the responsibility lie at the discretion of the corporation” (2008: 405). These more inductive definitions enable account to be taken for the roles that corporations now play in societal governance, and their associated responsibilities, both at a domestic (Moon, Reference Moon2002) and at an international level (Scherer & Palazzo, Reference Scherer and Palazzo2011).
Many scholars regard CSR as being heavily influenced by business ethics (e.g., Garriga & Melé, Reference Garriga and Melé2004) and Carroll’s fourfold typology includes ethical responsibility (referring principally to business conduct) as one of its elements, along with economic, legal, and philanthropic responsibility (1979). However, CSR can also be distinguished from business ethics in several ways. First, its focus is upon the responsibilities of the corporation by virtue of its distinctive ownership and governance structures, although CSR has also broadened to include concern with the responsibilities of other forms of business organizations, whilst the responsibilities of individuals remain more in the ambit of business ethics. Secondly, this concern with the responsibilities of corporations is not solely motivated by concerns of the right thing to do but may also be motivated by the strategic interests of corporations (e.g. McWilliams & Siegel, Reference McWilliams and Siegel2001) and by the relationships of business responsibility to wider systems of governance by which corporations are regulated and in which corporations also assume governance roles (e.g. Knudsen & Moon, Reference Knudsen and Moon2017; Matten & Crane, Reference Matten and Crane2005; Scherer, Rasche, Palazzo, & Spicer, 2016).
As noted, however, for present purposes, unless otherwise specified, we consider business ethics and CSR as a single voice in the conversation with feminism, hence BE/CSR.
II. ORIGINS OF THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS ETHICS/CSR AND FEMINISM
A conversation between business ethics and feminism was begun in earnest in 1990 at a conference held at the University of Virginia’s Darden School, as part of the Ruffin Series in Business Ethics. This brought scholars from women’s studies together with those from BE to explore the significance of gender in the ethical management of business organizations (the field of CSR barely existed at that time). Four overarching feminist themes emerged from this conference (Larson & Freeman, Reference Larson, Freeman, Larson and Freeman1997), broadly reflecting developments in feminist organization studies at that time (Acker, Reference Acker1990). First, contributors pointed out that “corporations are presented as socially constructed organizations that assume, in their practice and ideology, that men are the standard of measurement” (Larson & Freeman, Reference Larson, Freeman, Larson and Freeman1997: 4). Workers are conceived of as having few caring responsibilities that encroach on the workplace (e.g., Acker, Reference Acker1990). Acknowledging this reality, it was claimed, helps make visible “cognitive and gendered biases” (Larson & Freeman, Reference Larson, Freeman, Larson and Freeman1997: 4) that limit our understanding of business institutions, and leads us to question assumptions that, for example, organizations are merit based. Second, contributors highlighted “the power of feminist critiques to bring gender into focus as a central organizing principle of economic life” (4), along with race and class. For example, Martin and Knopoff (1997: 49) note the dependence of organizations on women’s unpaid labour in the home to support and reproduce workers, and argue that, although invisible to many, as a result “bureaucracies will continue to rationalize, legitimate, and perpetuate gender inequality—whether they intend to or not—until that time when men carry a full share of home and dependent-care responsibilities.”
A third theme problematized the role of “unexamined frames,” as in dominant views that are reified and naturalized, and that order our thinking and “govern us,” such that “alternative ways of thinking” about business “are silenced” (Larson & Freeman, Reference Larson, Freeman, Larson and Freeman1997: 5). The feminist theorists at the conference attempted to bring such frames into focus by viewing business institutions from the periphery, adopting the point of view of those who are frequently left out of the centre, and in particular through the standpoint of women (5). Ferguson (Reference Ferguson, Larson and Freeman1997) develops this argument with reference to the variety of different perspectives from the periphery that can inform the debate. She argues that while “liberal feminism’s reforms often enhance the opportunities available to those classes and colors of women who can claim access to traditional institutions” (82), the perspectives of women who operate further out on the periphery of organizations are important in enabling us to see, and alter, “the structures that produce global gender inequities” (83).
Finally, in making gender visible, a fourth theme in the conversation explored how “business ethics is portrayed as feminized in its subordinate position relative to the more central and dominant areas of business management (e.g. finance and accounting). Yet, at the same time business ethics is seen as in collusion with management ideology” creating “business ethics arguments that will find acceptance within traditional business school environments” (Larson & Freeman, Reference Larson, Freeman, Larson and Freeman1997: 5).
It is clear that inviting “outsiders” from the periphery, in this case women’s studies scholars, to contribute to the discourse on business ethics led to a number of creatively disruptive interjections and challenges, particularly from poststructuralist feminist perspectives. Yet as the dialogue progressed, it appears that the focus of debate narrowed, and, it may be argued, in some cases derailed (below we discuss non-feminist research on gender and BE/CSR).
The immediately ensuing conversation, much of which took place in BEQ, focused in particular on the ethics of care (Burton & Dunn, Reference Burton and Dunn1996; Derry, Reference Derry1996; Dobson & White, Reference Dobson and White1995; Liedtka, Reference Liedtka1996; Wicks, Reference Wicks1996; Wicks, Gilbert, & Freeman, 1994). Gilligan (Reference Gilligan1982), a psychologist, had previously identified “different voices” in moral reasoning, demonstrating that both an ethic of justice, based on principles, and an ethic of care, based on relationships, often inform moral judgments. Using psychoanalytical theories popular at the time, Gilligan associated justice ethics with masculine-associated notions of individuality and independence, and care ethics with a more relational understanding of the world more commonly associated with women’s upbringing. Business ethicists adopted the concepts of care and relationality to advance a discussion about the moral grounding of stakeholder theory, and to reinterpret this theoretical perspective with a focus on the relationships that constitute the corporation (Burton & Dunn, Reference Burton and Dunn1996; Dobson & White, Reference Dobson and White1995; Wicks, Reference Wicks1996; Wicks et al., Reference Wicks, Gilbert and Freeman1994). Some of these works (including Derry, Reference Derry1996; Wicks et al., Reference Wicks, Gilbert and Freeman1994) were careful to point out that both men and women use the voices of care and justice, and that both voices contribute importantly to business ethics. Many scholars, however, identified care ethics as a distinctly women’s perspective, or even as the feminist perspective. Studies hypothesizing and emphasizing differences between men and women in the handling of ethical dilemmas in business began to proliferate (White, Reference White1992).
The limitations of conflating care ethics with feminist ethics were explored, early on, by Wicks et al. (Reference Wicks, Gilbert and Freeman1994) and Derry (Reference Derry1996), and more recently by Borgerson (Reference Borgerson2007) and others. Gilligan’s ethic of care and related works represent only a small, if significant, segment of scholarship which attends to gender issues. In particular, the BE/CSR literature on gender following the Darden conference rather sidelined feminist concerns relating to gender relations, and gender equality. Derry (1996: 106) pointed to the fact that there has been less discussion of feminist ethics of justice which “explicitly attempts to solve the inequities of discrimination rather than finding in women’s skills a fortuitous tool to economic efficiency.” Borgerson (Reference Borgerson2007) asserts the need to ensure that the gender equality concerns of feminist theory remain on the business ethics agenda. This point is raised also by Kelan (2008: 427) who, taking her lead from organisational theory and business ethics research which analyses representations of gender in management texts, argues that “there is little space within this web of discourses for an awareness of the continued inequalities experienced by women in relation to men to be voiced.” Not only does the emphasis on a “feminine” care ethics tend to sideline concerns with gender inequality, it may even exacerbate it by reinforcing hackneyed stereotypes and limiting the types of business roles available to women and men (Derry, Reference Derry1996: 105). Stereotyping based on presumed gender differences can cause people to be pigeonholed by, for example, giving women only “caring” jobs and men only “risk-taking” ones. This approach ignores individual capabilities, usually to the further detriment of women as a group.
Thus, in revisiting the conversation we are interested in how the core concerns of gender relations and inequality in feminist theory can be better advanced in BE, and non-feminist approaches that reinforce stereotypes avoided (see below). Finally, we note Borgerson’s (2007) appraisal of the relationship between feminist and business ethics, which called for greater attention not only to relationships, and responsibility, but also to a focus on experience, agency, and power.
The origins of the conversation between gender studies and CSR is more recent than the conversation between gender studies and BE, since the emergence of CSR as a significant field is itself more recent. CSR expanded as a field of research only around the turn of the twenty-first century. This built on earlier but rather isolated studies from the early 1950s (e.g. Bowen, Reference Bowen1953, often regarded as the foundational work; Carroll, Reference Carroll1979; Davis, Reference Davis1960; Preston & Post, 1981). Lockett, Moon, and Visser (2006) trace CSR’s somewhat iterative growth between 1992 and 2002, and judge its academic salience to be roughly comparable to that of entrepreneurship by 2002. If anything, the field has further burgeoned since then, with leading journals of management and of business publishing special issues, review articles, and single papers extending empirical and theoretical knowledge on the topic.
It is in this context that scholarship on gender and CSR emerged. Much of the latter has focused on gender equality per se, exploring this issue not just with reference to corporate boards (e.g. Bear, Rahman, & Post, Reference Bear, Rahman and Post2010), but also in the workplace (e.g., Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2005; Larrieta-Rubın de Celis, Velasco-Balmaseda, Fernandez de Bobadilla, S., & del Mar Alonso-Almeida, 2015), in corporate supply chains (e.g. Barrientos, Dolan, & Tallontire, 2003; Prieto-Carron, 2008), with reference to the community impacts of corporations, in the mining sector for example (Keenan, Kemp, & Ramsay, Reference Keenan, Kemp and Ramsay2014; Lauwo, Reference Lauwo2016), and through corporate run microfinance and entrepreneurship programs targeted at women (e.g. Dolan, Johnstone-Louis, & Scott, 2012; Johnstone-Louis, Reference Johnstone-Louis2017; McCarthy, Reference McCarthy2017; Tornhill, Reference Tornhill, Grosser, McCarthy and Kilgour2016). In addition, attention has been drawn to gender equality in stakeholder relations (Grosser, Reference Grosser2009), and in CSR as a process of governance (Grosser, Reference Grosser2016). Attention to gender equality in CSR research is driven in part by CSR practice, where numerous initiatives now focus exclusively on this issue, as, for example, the Women’s Empowerment Principles Footnote 2 (developed as a partnership between the United Nations Global Compact and UN Women). Many other initiatives attempt to integrate consideration of gender equality within wider CSR programs of work, such as the Global Reporting Initiative’s Footnote 3 gender reporting criteria (informed by a gender working group), and work on gender equality in the Ethical Trading Initiative. Footnote 4 Having stimulated the interest of feminist researchers from a number of disciplines, it is increasingly argued that feminist theory is needed for analysis of such initiatives, although such theory is not often explicitly referenced in this body of work (Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2017).
Next we trace the development of the intersection of BE/CSR and feminism on the basis of a bibliographic analysis of the literature.
III. DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERSECTION OF BUSINESS ETHICS/CSR AND FEMINISM
This section explores the way in which gender has been treated in the BE/CSR business and management academic literature over a quarter of a century period between 1991 and 2015. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative bibliographic analysis (see the Appendix for methodological details and descriptive findings), Footnote 5 we explore 1) the salience of gender in BE/CSR research; 2) methodologies used therein; and 3) the focus of gender in terms of geographical region and issue type. We then explore gender perspectives as represented in the BE/CSR literature. This part of our analysis finds extensive reference to gender differences, in ethical decision making for example, coupled with a significant lack of research on gender equality and gender relations. Thus, the core concerns of feminist theory, which were reflected in the conversation that began at the Darden School in 1990 (discussed above), have subsequently become obscured, thereby limiting the integration of feminist theory in BE/CSR.
Salience
A key question of interest is whether gender has been a conspicuous research topic, or whether as it been a “non-issue.” We investigate, first, the changing salience of the topic of gender in the BE/CSR literature. This enables us to answer the basic questions about how much attention it has received (in proportionate and absolute terms), whether this salience has been uniform over twenty-five years, and, if not, how its salience has varied.
We find that over the twenty-five-year period gender-related papers accounted for 4.8% of the articles published in the BE/CSR in management literature (see Table 1). It is hard to know whether this is intrinsically a high or low score. However, when compared to other bibliographical analyses of BE/CSR over the same time period, reference to gender issues, including the study of women in all parts of the world, is scarcer than reference to other categories of interest/constituencies, as for example Asian topics (6%) (Kim & Moon, Reference Kim and Moon2015: 355). The proportion of gender papers published has fluctuated somewhat, and declined in the last five years of our analysis.
Gender Articles as a Proportion of All Articles Published in BE/CSR Journals, 1991–2015
Note. Raw numbers in parentheses.
It is unclear what significance to attach to this. It should be noted, first, that the BE/CSR agendas have expanded dramatically over the last decade (represented by P4 and P5 in Table 1) and it is possible that newer issues (e.g. those raised by sustainability more broadly, climate change in particular, shared value, global governance) have crowded out the gender issues. Footnote 6 Secondly, despite the proportionate fall of gender’s salience in significance in BE/CSR management journals, the actual number of papers published has continued to rise (from 38 in P1 to 126 in P5), suggesting that the issue has not been sidelined in the context of BE/CSR research.
Methodology
We next examine the methodologies deployed in the analysis of gender in the BE/CSR literature. It is important to know, in as much as gender is a feature of the literature, what the nature of the knowledge has been therein.
We distinguish articles according to the empirical or theoretical methodologies that have been deployed in the analysis of gender, and divide these respectively into quantitative and qualitative; and normative and non-normative (e.g. using conceptual or positive analysis) methodologies.
We find that the literature has been dominated by empirical research (85% of papers over the whole twenty-five-year period), with this trend rising in the three most recent periods of our analysis (Table 2). The majority of these empirical articles use quantitative methodologies (85%). This focus on quantitative research appears to reflect the fact that the majority of papers on gender in the BE/CSR journals investigate gender differences in ethical orientations or behaviour (see below), relating to decision making for example, where quantitative methods are particularly applicable.
Methodological Focus of Gender Articles on BE/CSR Journals, 1991–2015
Note. Raw numbers in parentheses.
The remaining 15% of the papers in this twenty-five-year period can be classified as reflecting theoretical research. Whereas there was a relative balance of non-normative and normative theoretical papers in the first five-year period of our analysis, subsequently non-normative papers (usually conceptual) have tended to dominate. This might be considered broadly consistent with a Kuhnian scientific paradigm in which theorising initially dominates a new field (Kuhn, Reference Kuhn1962) and subsequently this is complemented by increasing empirical research, initially qualitative to frame knowledge and then quantitative to substantiate it (see Lockett et al., Reference Lockett, Moon and Visser2006, for an extended discussion of the CSR literature and Kuhnian conceptions of science). A principal concern with empirical matters might be considered the prerogative of business and management journals, given the significance of substantive issues for the field. However, feminist researchers point to the need to unearth the experience of women and others on the margins of society in order to reframe the key questions in our field and in this respect, further qualitative studies need to be encouraged. Overall, conclusions as to the nature of knowledge at the BE/CSR interface appear premature given the rather narrow issue focus of the gender related BE/CSR literature (see below).
Moreover, when feminist theory is utilised in the gender papers in the BE/CSR field, we note that these draw predominantly upon feminist ethics of care (we will have more to say about this below). While other feminist theoretical work is referenced, its potential is rarely explored in depth.
Geography and Issue Type
Exploring gender analysis in terms of geographical region and issue type is important because it enables us to contextualize the analysis of gender in this literature. We can then ascertain whether, for example, gender is addressed in its various international contexts, or whether it is considered particularly in some regions (e.g. the global North) and neglected in others (e.g. the global South). Secondly, we can assess whether the gender analysis is concerned with social, environmental, ethical, or stakeholder issues. Footnote 7 Thirdly, we also investigate the perspective on gender that the papers take, distinguishing those papers whose principal focus is on the issue of gender equality and its significance as a normative standard or objective, as compared to those whose principal focus is on gender difference and its significance for explaining business behavior, for example.
Regarding geographical region, findings reveal a domination of focus on Europe, North America, and Australasia with some growth in those papers that focus on Asia (Table 3). This is consistent with the wider CSR findings (Kim & Moon, Reference Kim and Moon2015). However, Africa and South/Central America barely figure in the BE/CSR and gender literature. Feminist postcolonial and transnational theory, as applied in the gender and management journals, would suggest that this finding reflects the focus of the majority of Western scholarship, including feminist scholarship, which often fails to explore the voice of the “other” (e.g., Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2017). Finally, there has also been a steady representation of papers with attention to no geographical focus.
Geographical Focus of Gender Articles in BE/CSR Journals, 1991–2015
Note. The figures presented do not represent a count of papers; they represent a count of the references to the regions (see Appendix). Percentages in the “total” row indicate total proportions of references to geographical regions. No focus = articles with no clear geographical focus. Multi-region focus = articles with focus on two or more areas.
Following Kim and Moon (Reference Kim and Moon2015), we investigate the issue focus of papers by distinguishing among social, environmental, ethical, and stakeholder issues. The papers on gender in the BE/CSR journals overwhelmingly focus on the issue of ethics (63% of our total sample of papers – see Table 4). This reflects the predominance of ethics in the literature. However, in the last five years of our analysis, this orientation changed quite dramatically with the ethics-focused papers falling off to about 40% of the total. This decline was compensated for with greater focus on CSR as opposed to business ethics, as the gender and CSR literature began to emerge, with greater attention to social and stakeholder issues.
Issue Focus of Gender Articles in BE/CSR Journals, 1991–2015
Note. Raw numbers in parentheses.
Gender Perspectives
We now turn our attention to gender perspectives within BE/CSR literature, and especially how the core concerns of feminist theory, namely gender relations and gender equality, are addressed. Here we find that these concerns are the focus of a relatively small minority of papers: over the twenty-five-year period studied, just 21% of papers in our sample had a primary focus on gender relations and gender equality. It thus appears that the integration of feminist theory in this field of scholarship remains quite limited.
In contrast, 48% of our sample treat gender as a variable, focusing in particular on gender differences in ethical decision making. These studies address responses to ethical dilemmas by, for example, university students, business managers, CEOs, accountants, and consumers, categorized by gender. Others discuss gender differences in attitudes towards CSR issues, such as environmental issues. Beyond this group of papers (and not included in this 48%), others address the impact that gender diversity has on ethical decision making in business organizations. What this analysis tells us is that the field of gender and BE/CSR has been, until recently, heavily focused on a very narrow set of research questions about gender differences.
In sum, we find a growing number of papers addressing gender issues in the BE/CSR literature, but that proportionately this focus is declining in the key journals in our field. We have witnessed an increase in empirical over theoretical papers, and in particular those using quantitative methodologies. The theoretical articles in our sample are mostly non-normative. We identify significant space for future research on gender and BE/CSR in developing country contexts in particular. While the overwhelming focus in the gender papers in BE/CSR journals has been on ethics, we are currently seeing a rise in such research addressing social and stakeholder issues, as the field expands from business ethics to a greater focus on CSR. In this context we see a move beyond individual ethics and responsibility, to more structural issues relating to corporations and their impacts upon gender equality/inequality at a societal level, in line with a similarly broad focus in the CSR literature more generally. Thus, while only a small proportion of research in this field over the twenty-five-year period studied focuses on gender equality per se, this may be changing. Finally, while our analysis focused on the BE/CSR journals, we also investigated the extent to which the gender and management journals address BE/CSR. We find that while many of the workplace issues addressed are of relevance to BE/CSR, explicit discussion of these fields of research is almost invisible therein, where only 0.4% (13) of all papers published in three gender economics, organization, and society journals over the twenty-five-year period, refer to BE/CSR. This suggests a lack of interdisciplinary dialogue, for example between those researching gender and organizations, where there is a focus on gender equality per se (see section on feminist organization theory and BE/CSR below), and BE/CSR (see Appendix).
In the next section we return to our focus on clarifying and further integrating feminist theory in BE/CSR.
IV. FEMINIST THEORY INTEGRATION: BEHAVIORAL STUDIES, ORGANIZATION STUDIES AND ECONOMICS
This section illustrates how key cognate literatures for BE/CSR—behavioral studies, organization theory, and economics—have been deployed by feminist scholars. We argue that renewal of the conversation between gender and BE/CSR research depends upon, among other things, further illumination and integration of feminist theory, and we illustrate this point with reference to these three areas of feminist scholarship.
Feminist Behavioral Studies
Whilst the investigation of gender differences in attitudes or behavior has become a popular mode of research across a number of disciplines, it often leads to misleading conclusions. What can be—at most—statistically confirmed from studies using gender as a variable is a difference between the average scores of men and women on some respective measure. Yet such average differences are mostly quite small, especially in comparison to what is generally quite substantial intra-group variation, and these results do not permit conclusions to be drawn about the behavior of any individuals or about the unobserved underlying “essence” or “nature” of a group. Often, statistically significant differences are not found at all. For example, Jaffee and Hyde (Reference Jaffee and Hyde2000) completed a meta-analysis of 113 studies of moral reasoning that had been inspired by Gilligan’s insights concerning care and justice orientations. Contrary to the many claims about women’s presumably distinct ethical orientation, they found that over two-thirds of the samples failed to yield a statistically significant association between moral orientation and gender. While the remaining studies tended to find, overall, a small average tendency for men to favor a justice orientation and women to favour care, the results were also consistent with considerable use of both orientations by individuals of both sexes. Nelson (Reference Nelson2015) found similar results in a meta-analysis of studies about risk preferences.
Yet “gender difference” studies are often misrepresented as reflecting fundamental biological differences between men and women—ignoring potential effects of socialization, context, and/or group dynamics—and generally fail to report the degree of similarity between the genders (Fine, Reference Fine2010; Hyde, Reference Hyde2005; Nelson, Reference Nelson2014). Moreover, there is evidence that studies that find gender difference in a stereotypically-expected direction may be more likely to be published than those that do not (Nelson, Reference Nelson2014). Moving from the individual level to the company level, studies examining the gender composition of boards of directors are often compromised by the false assumption that men and women represent distinct behavioural categories, the implausible assumption that men and women on boards are drawn randomly (rather than highly selectively) from their respective populations, and/or the assumption that gender composition directly impacts board behavior rather than perhaps being jointly causally determined.
Hence—and this is the key point here—the large literature on gender differences in ethical styles (as well as management styles, risk-taking, competitiveness, etc.) in which differences are exaggerated is, by the definition adopted at the start of this article, non-feminist. Better quality empirical work that accurately portrays similarity as well as difference, and looks at social as well as biological reasons for differences in behaviour, should of course still be welcomed. However, for the most part, this body of research fails to contribute to the illumination and integration of feminist theory into BE/CSR research.
Feminist Organization Theory
The importance of integrating feminist organization theory (FOT) in CSR scholarship is addressed by Grosser and Moon (Reference Grosser and Moon2017). These authors illustrate how six strands of feminist theory—liberal, radical, psychoanalytical, socialist/gendered organizations, post-structural, and transnational/(post)colonial—are deployed in feminist organization studies, and how each has informed, at least implicitly, the gender and CSR literature. Mapping these approaches with reference to six strands of CSR theory (ethical, instrumental, stakeholder, political, institutional, and critical), Grosser and Moon (Reference Grosser and Moon2017) point to new research directions for each. Here we build upon that mapping exercise with reference to ethical approaches in particular as these are most commonly used at the BE/CSR interface. We consider how revisiting the 1990 conversation at Darden, and our bibliographic analysis of the literature since then, extend our understanding of how to better apply FOT in the context of BE/CSR.
With respect to ethical approaches to CSR, Grosser and Moon (2017) draw upon liberal feminism to suggest a need for increased scholarship on equal opportunities, with respect to involvement in ethical decision-making for example. Our bibliographic analysis confirms that attention in the BE/CSR gender literature is focused on gender differences in ethical decision making rather than equal opportunities therein. Thus the latter remains a significant research gap which, if addressed, could advance integration of FOT in BE/CSR.
In addition to exploring representation and voice in business ethics decision making as gendered phenomena, we would suggest that research could better articulate the relationships between gender equality and business ethics. Such research could be framed with reference to literatures on hypernorms and business ethics, human rights, or inequality in business and management. Research here might build upon the conversation that emerged from the Darden conference, in particular Derry (1996: 106-7), who referenced three normative goals deriving from the work of Tong (Reference Tong1993) and Jagger (Reference Jagger, Becker and Becker1992) in particular:
-
1. To articulate moral critiques of actions and practices that perpetuate women’s subordination;
-
2. To prescribe morally justifiable ways of resisting such actions and practices;
-
3. To envision morally desirable alternatives that will promote women’s emancipation.
By implication, “feminist approaches to ethics are actively committed to social change by means of critically recognizing subordination, creating resistance, and envisioning alternatives” (Derry, Reference Derry1996: 107). Applying these goals to business organizations, Derry (1996: 107) then imagines what a “feminist firm” would look like, identifying challenges relating to workplace practice, marketing, and investment, for example. We note that the gender and BE/CSR literature has begun to address such issues as they relate to the workplace in particular (e.g. Bear et al., Reference Bear, Rahman and Post2010; Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2005; Larrieta-Rubın de Celis et al., Reference Larrieta-Rubín de Celis, Velasco-Balmaseda, Fernández de Bobadilla and del Mar Alonso-Almeida2015; Prieto-Carron, 2008; Terjesen & Sealy, Reference Terjesen and Sealy2016), but less so with respect to marketing and investment, and that many opportunities remain for further investigation of these agendas within a literature on gender equality and BE/CSR.
With respect to FOT, Grosser and Moon (Reference Grosser and Moon2017) find that psychoanalytic feminist theory, focusing on the difference between women and men, and the articulation of supposedly feminine values relating to the ethics of care and relational leadership, for example, has had a major impact upon ethical research in CSR. Our bibliographic analysis of BE/CSR gender research confirms and substantiates this finding with respect to the fact that such perspectives predominate in approximately half of the papers in this analysis. As noted above, we see a future for empirical work that accurately portrays similarity as well as difference, and that looks at social as well as biological reasons for differences in attitudes and behaviour between men and women. Yet, given that such research can reinforce gender stereotypes, we argue that this not a good avenue for integrating feminist theory in BE/CSR.
Radical FOT affirms the importance of women-centred knowledge, defined as knowledge that is generated as far as possible outside patriarchal structures (Calás & Smircich, Reference Calás, Smircich, Clegg, Hardy, Nord and Lawrence2006; Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2017), via women-only focus groups, for example. Grosser and Moon (Reference Grosser and Moon2017) argue that this theoretical perspective could bring insights and contributions to BE/CSR relating to stakeholder issues and methodologies employed (e.g. McCarthy & Muthuri, Reference McCarthy and Muthuri2016). Yet, despite the fact that the gender and CSR literature has begun to explore the contribution of women’s NGOs to CSR (Grosser, Reference Grosser2016), our bibliographic analysis serves to confirm Grosser and Moon’s (2017) assertion of little reference to this body of theory in BE/CSR.
One of the main contributions of FOT is that it moves us beyond the study of individual women and men to address the ways organizations, and organizational theories, are themselves gendered (Calás & Smircich, Reference Calás, Smircich, Clegg, Hardy, Nord and Lawrence2006; Gherardi, Reference Gherardi, Tsoukas and Knudsen2010; Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2017). One of these approaches adopts socialist feminist/gendered organization theory and suggests a need for ethical analysis of the gendered nature of organizations, and its implications for gender equality and social justice. Such organizational level approaches to gender are not novel to the BE/CSR literature. For example, the conversation begun at the Darden conference led to interrogation of “‘masculinist’ assumptions” (Wicks et al., Reference Wicks, Gilbert and Freeman1994: 475) in business ethics itself, particularly stakeholder theory. Rhodes and Pullen, drawing on both FOT and critical business ethics, interpret business ethics as part of a “masculine drive for public greatness” on the part of patriarchal corporations (2017: 11). We consider that the extension of such approaches will be important in facilitating further integration of FOT into the BE/CSR literature.
We note also that such contributions to BE/CSR have hitherto usually stopped short of returning to the issue of gender equality. We consider that their impact on the field can be enhanced by doing just this. Researchers may take a lead here from the gender and organization literature, where, for example, Phillips (2014: 443) utilizes eco-feminist theory to explore the “‘logic of patriarchy’ based on interrelated and cross-cutting dualisms that support the subordination of nature and other oppressed groups,” including women.
FOT reveals that organizations are also gendered through their reliance on unpaid care work, done predominantly by women. The disadvantaging of workers with caring responsibilities which effectively support and sustain organizations and societies undermines merit-based workplace practice, and limits our overall understanding of business organizations and what makes them work well. This issue is a focus of attention in feminist economics also. Yet, despite the fact that Martin and Knopoff (Reference Martin, Knopoff, Larson and Freeman1997) highlight this in the debate following the Darden conference, our bibliographic analysis reveals that little literature addresses this issue.
Although poststructuralist/postmodern feminist theory as witnessed in FOT (Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2017) was presented at the Darden conference (e.g. Martin & Knopoff, Reference Martin, Knopoff, Larson and Freeman1997), our bibliographic analysis reveals that such approaches have not been prominent in the BE/CSR literature since then. We consider that a return to these perspectives and associated methodologies would facilitate the integration of feminist theory in BE/CSR by offering potential to increase reflexivity on the part of researchers and to bring missing voices and perspectives to the conversation. In addition, the finding in our bibliographic analysis that most gender and BE/CSR research focuses on Europe, North America, and Australasia supports Grosser and Moon’s (2017) arguments that considerable work needs to be done to integrate transnational/(post)colonial FOT in BE/CSR. This would bring perspectives from Third World women to defining and applying ethical norms, and CSR, in relation to business, a process that appears particularly relevant in the context of globalization.
In sum, our return to the conversation at the Darden conference, and our analysis of the literature since then, serve to confirm a number of suggestions regarding the potential to integrate feminist theory in BE/CSR (Grosser & Moon, Reference Grosser and Moon2017), and to add to these. In particular we point to the need for better articulation of the relationship between gender equality and business ethics; extending interrogation of masculinist assumptions in business ethics theory and practice, and relating this analysis back to concerns about gender equality itself; ethical analysis of the contribution of unpaid care work to business organizations as it relates to gender equality; revisiting feminist textual deconstruction analysis as a research methodology in BE/CSR; and focusing more energy, resources, and attention to bringing the voices and perspectives of Third World women to processes that define and apply ethical norms in relation to business.
Feminist Economics
At about the same time the Darden conference was raising challenges to BE/CSR, feminist economists were challenging the conventional definitions, models, and methods of the field of economics. In the volume Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (Ferber & Nelson, Reference Ferber and Nelson1993), contributors pointed out the distortions that a one-sided view had created in the image of the economic actor, in theories of the household, in empirical research, and in policy making. When conventional economics treats people as autonomous, self-interested, and rational agents, the contributors pointed out, they ignore the equally important interdependent, social, and emotional dimensions of human life—dimensions that are more closely culturally associated with women and women’s traditional roles. “Work” is usually defined in the economics discipline as paid work only, excluding unpaid work, much of which is done by women. Women are often missing as subjects of study, and policy options of particular interest to women (e.g., concerning inequalities within households, or child care) are often given short shrift. Many of these discussions of the exclusion of women and women’s roles in economics developed parallel to—though largely in isolation from—similar discussions in the BE/CSR and feminist organization studies fields.
The Beyond Economic Man volume also began to set out an epistemological and methodological critique of the economics discipline that has perhaps even more far-reaching implications for the field of BE/CSR. As mentioned earlier, the fourth theme that arose at the Darden conference pointed to two issues. One is that BE/CSR often seems to occupy a “feminized” and subordinate position relative to areas of management deemed more central, such as finance. According to mainstream economic doctrine, the purpose of a firm is to maximize profits or shareholder wealth. Many scholars have discussed how writings during the 1970s by economists (Friedman, Reference Friedman1970; Jensen & Meckling, Reference Jensen and Meckling1976) gave a large boost to this idea’s academic and popular respectability. This doctrine, they point out, has increasingly come to permeate management education, the business media, and even the executive suite itself, as well as academic studies (Applebaum & Batt, 2014; Bratton, Reference Bratton2011; Ghoshal, Reference Ghoshal2005; Smith & Rönnegard, Reference Smith and Rönnegard2016; Stout, Reference Stout2012). Against the backdrop of this economist-supplied belief, BE/CSR is often considered to be at best a weak addition to, or at worst a distraction from, the underlying “principles” of capitalism and business. Only when making a “business case” for ethics and responsibility (by which is meant showing that they increase profits), does the BE/CSR field, from this viewpoint, address central management concerns.
The second issue mentioned at the Darden conference is that BE/CSR is often observed by those on the academic left, including a number of feminists (e.g. Calás & Smircich, Reference Calás, Smircich, Larson and Freeman1997; Ferguson, Reference Ferguson, Larson and Freeman1997; Pearson, Reference Pearson2007; Rhodes & Pullen, Reference Rhodes and Pullen2017; Roberts, Reference Roberts2015), as insufficiently critical of systemic issues and therefore in collusion with central management profit-oriented interests. That is, it is said to merely provide window-dressing on a fundamentally oppressive capitalist system. Consideration within BE/CSR of epistemological insights from feminist economics, however, could help the field move past these limiting views.
Feminist economists working in the 1990s drew on feminist studies of science from the 1980s in order to analyze their own discipline. Feminist scholars of science (e.g., Harding, Reference Harding1986; Keller, Reference Keller1985) had pointed out that since its beginnings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European science had been based on notions of separation, detachment, and reason. Ideas of connection, relationship, and emotion—associated with notions of a lesser-valued femininity—were emphatically excluded. Feminist economists noticed that such an analysis, applied to economics, provided a systematic explanation for biases in models and methods, in addition to biases concerning the chosen subjects of study.
Feminist scholars of science demonstrated how such a one-sidedly masculinist conception of science leads to serious biases and only “weak objectivity,” as contrasted to “strong objectivity.” To be reliable, knowledge should be as free of bias as possible and provide insights into real world phenomena. They showed how such strong objectivity can only be attained as a social project, through carefully examining findings from multiple points of view (Harding, Reference Harding1986; Keller, Reference Keller1985). Thus the use of mathematics in economics, for example, while often taken as a sign of cool detachment from the object of study and therefore of scientific rigor, can at most provide a model with internal consistency, not objectivity.
In a follow-up volume to Beyond Economic Man published ten years later (Ferber & Nelson, Reference Ferber and Nelson2003), the implications of a feminist critique for the theory of the firm were explored (Nelson, Reference Nelson, Ferber and Nelson2003). The idea that firm performance is always, naturally, and perhaps exclusively about profitability is, it turns out, no more than an invention by economists who wanted to make their discipline seem more like physics and therefore more “scientific” and masculine (Nelson, Reference Nelson2011; Stout, Reference Stout2012). While making a profit is one goal (of possibly many), businesses are not, in fact, legally required—not even in the United States, much less in Europe and elsewhere—to earn every single dollar of profit that might be possible. Neither, in many real-world markets with powerful firms, does market competition enforce profit-maximization (Bratton, Reference Bratton2011; Nelson, Reference Nelson2011; Stout, Reference Stout2012). Many, including some more open-minded economists, now recognize that businesses could not survive if populated only by opportunistic “economic man”: cooperation, trust, and social and emotional motivations clearly play as great a role in economic organizations as they do in any other social organization (Bowles, Reference Bowles2016; Fehr & Falk, Reference Fehr and Falk2002; Stout, Reference Stout2012). That is, an unmerited belief in universal “principles” and “laws,” propagated by economists in work that is underpinned by masculinist biases, has served to veil the highly varied and intrinsically social nature of businesses, markets, and capitalist economies. This belief underlies both the marginalization of business ethics by those who make financial concerns central, and its demonization by those who see BE/CSR as a merely a tinkering with oppressive capitalist practices (Gibson-Graham, Reference Gibson-Graham1996; Nelson, Reference Nelson2006).
Getting away from sexist biases allows us to looks at firms as entities that are both (inherently) relational and (potentially) value-creating. Feminist economics further reveals that the tendency—in the main business literatures, business education, the media, and increasingly in corporate leadership itself—to sideline issues of ethics is itself a result of sexist biases in the formation of the economics discipline. Recognition of the gendered origins of the shareholder wealth maximization ideology could help the field of BE/CSR as a whole—both when it explicitly deals with gender issues and when it does not—claim its place in the core of management scholarship and practice.
V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
We have revisited the origins of the conversation between BE/CSR and feminism, and conducted a bibliographic analysis of the literature over the twenty-five-year period since then. Identifying gender relations and gender equality as the central concerns of feminist theory, we have assessed the field of BE/CSR gender research and found it somewhat lacking in its attention to these core tenets of feminism. We note that while research on gender equality has become more prominent in the field in recent years in the context of CSR, it remains a relatively minor focus therein. In order to advance the field with respect to the integration of feminist theory we have clarified insights arising from three closely related bodies of work: feminist studies of behavior, feminist organization studies, and feminist economics. In illuminating these we have shown how they raise challenges for BE/CSR, and simultaneously, point to new avenues for research with the potential to further our understanding of gender inequality in business itself, and at the business-society interface. They also help us address other intersecting inequalities. Moreover, the feminist theoretical perspectives discussed here have wider implications for BE/CSR in that they lead us to rethink a number of core concepts relating to business, business ethics, and CSR.
Examination of feminist studies of behavior, drawn from psychology and related fields, should encourage a re-evaluation of the frequent focus on gender differences that has arisen, particularly, in the BE literature. A more sophisticated approach—both in terms of feminist understanding, and in terms of the appropriate use of statistics—would generate and interpret empirical findings more carefully and so avoid reinforcing false stereotypes.
The implications arising from further integration of FOT in BE/CSR are to encourage research that focuses on gender equality itself, and that investigates business ethics as a gendered phenomenon. This could clarify the numerous ways in which gender equality can be understood as an issue of ethics in business: through discussion of hypernorms, human rights, the contribution of unpaid care work to business organizations, and inequality more broadly. Research on the ways in which women experience CSR interventions is also encouraged by FOT, and both of the articles in the special section make contributions in this regard. In particular, FOT leads us to focus more energy, resources, and attention to bringing the voices and perspectives of Third World women to processes that define and apply ethical norms in relation to business, and to further our understanding of CSR initiatives that focus on women. Through their analysis of women’s entrepreneurship programs, and women’s empowerment initiatives, in the context of CSR, where women in the global South are the objective and supposed main beneficiaries of CSR, the articles in the special section both advance knowledge in this respect. FOT also has implications for research methodologies in BE/CSR beyond exploring the voice of the “other,” extending to research that interrogates masculinist assumptions in our field, through revisiting feminist textual deconstruction analysis for example, which is an area where future research could focus.
The feminist re-evaluation of economic orthodoxy demonstrates the sexist biases underlying core economic theories, and invites BE/CSR researchers to be more careful about deferring to economistic arguments. It points out that the idea of profit maximization has its origins in masculinist pretensions rather than scientific investigation. This recognition could free BE/CSR both from its marginalization within management studies and from its too-easy dismissal by many who seek transformative change. If BE/CSR scholars were to point out, at every opportunity, the dogmatic and misleading nature of the shareholder value maximization doctrine, the field could become both more central and more effective in analyzing and advocating for justice and care. One way to do this would be for gatekeepers of BE/CSR scholarship to stop treating favorable views of shareholder wealth maximization or narrow business-case arguments as acceptable default assumptions. Dissertation advisors, reviewers, and journal editors could require authors to, at a minimum, engage with the literature arguing for a broader and less gender-biased theory of the firm, if not reject these lines of argument entirely. Scholars critical of capitalism who rely on profit-maximization assumptions could be likewise challenged. BE/CSR scholars could work to challenge the narrow theory of the firm within general management journals as well. Lastly, business education could be redesigned towards spending less time on stale and misleading theories imported from the economics department, and more on issues of ethics.
We do wish to mention a few limitations of our approach. With respect to the bibliographic analysis, first, our sample of literature is derived from only the leading BE/CSR journals. Second, given that policies for usage of abstracts and key words vary among journals and over time, it was not possible to apply our key-word-search method uniformly. Accordingly, judgements of the research assistant and authors played a greater role for papers where there were no key words or abstracts. However, standard practices intended to ensure coding reliability were applied (see the Appendix). Finally, in moving to further integrate feminist theory in our field we have been limited to summaries of key contributions of three fields of feminist research. Clearly there are further insights to be gleaned from interdisciplinary research informed by a wider range of feminist theory.
Overview of the Special Section
The two articles in the special section illuminate feminist theory, and contribute to its further integration in BE/CSR, in different but complementary ways. Johnstone-Louis (Reference Johnstone-Louis2017) brings insights from feminist economics regarding the narrow and gendered definition of work to elucidate how women’s entrepreneurship as a CSR phenomenon can be better understood. She develops a conceptual framework bridging the artificial separation of production from reproduction to provide a tool for analysis of the status of unpaid/care work in CSR. In so-doing she facilitates the development of more gender-aware research, and more positive gender equality outcomes in BE/CSR practice. Her analysis shows how ignoring insights from feminist economics, and particularly those relating to the ongoing responsibility assigned to, and assumed by, women for caring roles in families and society worldwide can lead to the exacerbation of gender inequality through CSR.
Setting out to interrogate what it means to empower women in the context of CSR, McCarthy (Reference McCarthy2017) brings a feminist Foucauldian reading of power to analyse a CSR women’s empowerment programme in Ghana, showing how the women involved engage in relational and productive processes of resistance and self-making. Articulating empowerment as an “ethic of care for the self” reveals it to be a self-directed process, rather than a corporate-led strategy. The resulting analysis has significant implications for strategies that aim to achieve women’s empowerment, and gender equality, through CSR. Thus, while acknowledging economic issues, McCarthy (Reference McCarthy2017) points to the need to go beyond the analysis of gender and CSR as an economic phenomenon alone, to further explore women’s agency. Moreover, in bringing the voices of Ghanaian women to the debate, and illustrating how these may contest assumptions about women’s empowerment in the CSR literature, this paper contributes to integration of transnational/(post)colonial feminist theory in BE/CSR, and advances a research agenda that highlights issues of resistance and power (Borgerson, Reference Borgerson2007; Derry, Reference Derry1996) in gender and BE/CSR.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Dennis Arnold and Bruce Barry, as previous and current editor in chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, for their support with this special section, and Bruce Barry for support in developing this article. We thank R. E. Freeman for his support for this project in its early stages, and also the numerous reviewers whose work enabled the development of the special section. We are grateful to Luisa Murphy and Louise Thomsen for their work on the bibliographic analysis. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the VELUX Chair for Corporate Sustainability at Copenhagen Business School, which facilitated research collaboration on this article.
APPENDIX: BIBLIOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS DETAILS
In this Appendix we present methodological details of a bibliographic analysis aimed at capturing and summarizing how gender has been treated in the BE/CSR academic literature over the period between 1991 and 2015.
Our approach broadly follows that used to investigate the salience, methodologies, and focus of the CSR literature overall (Lockett et al., Reference Lockett, Moon and Visser2006), and of the topic of CSR in Asia in leading CSR journals and in Asian business and management journals (Kim & Moon, Reference Kim and Moon2015). Thus we are able to make some broad comparisons of the treatment of gender in the field with other treatments of BE/CSR literature. Moreover, the evaluative criteria of salience, methodologies, and focus offer the basis for specific insights into the question of the treatment of gender in this literature.
The analysis was undertaken in two main stages: the creation of the database, and the further coding of those articles selected for the database.
Creation of Article Database
We first selected journals to represent the BE/CSR field. These were the four leading BE/CSR journals as rated by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS, 2015), each rated at CABS 2 or higher on a five point scale of 1–4/4*. These are Business Ethics: A European Review (CABS 2); Business Ethics Quarterly (CABS 4), Business and Society, (CABS 3), Journal of Business Ethics (CABS 3).
Second, search terms for articles in the selected journals were identified: women, woman, feminist, feminism, gender.
Third, we searched for articles published in the selected journals during the period from 1991-2015, applying the identified search terms to article titles, abstracts, and keywords. In cases where neither abstracts nor keywords were available, the search terms were applied to the full article text.
In general terms our approach to creating the database was an expansive one, designed to capture as much literature as possible rather than to delimit overly the initial search. The first list of potential articles was then subject to further scrutiny. The preliminary dataset was reviewed and decisions were made on inclusion or exclusion of what seemed to be marginal or ambiguous cases. The decisions to exclude papers were made for a variety of reasons. For example, the initial search yielded many papers whose concern is individual ethics or ethics of organizations that are not businesses. Likewise the initial search yielded many papers that refer to women but do not focus on issues of gender and organizations or business, or BE/CSR specifically. Book reviews, review articles, editorials, and bibliographies were also excluded.
Coding and Classification
The second stage involved analyses of the selected journal articles in order to identify qualitative attributes of each paper related to its study of gender. This consisted of analyses of:
-
1. The methodology of the papers, mainly empirical or theoretical:
-
a. if empirical, whether they were mainly quantitative or qualitative.
-
b. if theoretical, whether they were mainly normative or non-normative (e.g. conceptual, explanatory).
-
-
2. The focus of the papers:
-
a. by geographical region: focused on Europe, North America, Australasia, Asia, Africa, South / Central America, with no geographical focus, or with a multi-regional focus. In this case, the count was of references to different geographical regions in each paper, rather than counting a single geographical region as the focus of the papers (e.g., a paper focusing on countries from two different regions was scored for each region).
-
b. by issue: social, environmental, ethical, or stakeholder.
-
c. by gender perspective: gender equality, gender difference, or neither.
-
A number of measures were taken to maximise the reliability of the article selection and subsequent coding. First, a researcher was appointed who brought experience with this form of analysis of academic literature. She was the main coder for Kim and Moon (Reference Kim and Moon2015)’s analysis of CSR in Asian business and management journals and of discussion of Asia in CSR journals. Second, the researcher provided feedback on preliminary analysis, engaging two of this article’s authors to inform final selection criteria and search terms. To assure reliability in selection and coding of articles, the two authors reviewed the initial database of papers, the decisions about what to include and what to exclude from the final data base, and also the final database created by the research assistant. Discussions were held between the researcher and the two authors to resolve the small number of papers where there were initial differences of interpretation or where the research assistant was unsure of how to code the methodology or focus of the papers.
The initial search of the literature yielded 3,587 journal articles. After closer analysis and review, 441 of these were deemed substantively relevant to our research objectives. These articles were then divided into the respective five-year periods in which they were published (P1: 1991–1995; P2: 1996–2000; P3: 2001–2005; P4: 2006–2010; P5: 2011–2015), allowing us in the main analysis (Tables 1 through 4) to consider trends over time.
Using a similar methodology we also investigated the extent to which the gender and management journals address BE/CSR. We selected three leading gender journals: Gender, Work & Organization; Feminist Economics; and Gender & Society. Gender, Work & Organization and Feminist Economics both feature on the CABS journal index, and are rated CABS 3 and CABS 2 respectively (Feminist Economics rated CABS 3 in 2010 and 2009). Gender & Society is not ranked on the CABS list but is ranked A* on a four point scale of C–A/A* in the most recent edition of the Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality list (ABDC, 2016) in the management research field. For the creation of this database we used the search terms corporate social responsibility, corporate responsibility, sustainab*, and ethic*. In view of the extremely low salience of BE/CSR in these journals (accounting for only 0.4% of papers [n = 13] over the twenty-five-year period), further analysis was precluded.
