Andrea L Larson and R Edward Freeman.

Andrea L Larson and R Edward Freeman, ed recently made known York: Oxford University Press, 1997 196 pp $4200

This volume of 11 essays apparently originated with the third Ruffin reprimand Series at the Darden instruct of Business at Rutgers University and/or a interview which the editors mention in their introduction. Editors Andrea Larson and Edward Freeman "invited scholars who had not participated in the discourse of business ethics - their primary work having been in what we broadly call women's studies - and leading scholars in business ethics" to "have a conversation" (p 4) The women's studies authors are feminist academics from law, business, and political science who were perhaps rareed to offer a feminist vision of business organizations and practices. The scholars in business ethics, with the same exception, are men, three of whom have authored previous contortions in the Ruffin Series in Business Ethics - Thomas J Donaldson, Edwin M Hartman, and Robert C Solomon The editors do not list parley participants nor say how they pitch uponed them; readers are told solely that "during the years since the talk a number of these scholars disentangleed the themes of these conversations into the essays that comprise this volume" (p 4) Perhaps the time interval between conversation and writing explains why an commentaries are minimally related to the four feminist chapters.

The feminists criticize business ethics for failing to address women's disadvantage in business and management and for serving as apologist for passing from hand to hand business and management practices rather than questioning them and calling for change. According to the editors, the essayists make four points: (1) Business is socially instituteed in ways that represent men (qua men) as the standard; (2) usual business ethics ignores sex although gender, with race/ethnicity and social class, are major fault lines in society, including business contexts; (3) business organizations are dominated on "frames" - ideology, theories, or paradigms - that are habitual, reified, and unquestioned and that silence alternative ways of thinking and depict routine patterns and practices of business as to what extent things "naturally" are instead of exploring in what manner business might be conducted more humanely and inclusively; and (4) business ethics is a feminized or subordinated part of business instruct curricula that colludes with management to justify rather than question prevailing practices; business ethics should challenge hegemonic claims and practices, not apologize for them.

The feminist essays are the core of the work Robin Derry ("Feminism: How Does It Play in the Corporate Theater?") uses interviews with women in corporations and feminist standpoint theory to argue that morality is listening. Effective business ethics requires listening rather than assuming that the imagination can be used to consider all possible viewpoints or evaluate the best interests of all. Past theories of ethics/morality that contemplate only men's lives must change. Joanne Martin and Kathleen Knopoff ("The form relative to sexed Implications of Apparently Gender-Neutral Theory: Rereading Max Weber") deconstruct Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy to make visible the masculinity and masculinism embedded in it. At the time Weber wrote women could not avow property, attend university, or possess most paying jobs; keenly aware of power, Weber failed to descry gender. These authors identify silences in Weber's topic reject claims about the natural that imply that things cannot be done another way, and throw aside dichotomous thinking that denies possibilities and encourages essentialist thinking. They finish optimistically, that contradictions in bureaucracy refer to "leverage-points for gender-related change," eg abolishing norms that require more than full-time work, abolishing training that simply enhances status, and placing more value forward the personal, emotional, egalitarian, and nurturant (p 39)

Marta Calas and Linda Smircich ("Predicando la Moral en Calzoncillos? Feminist Inquiries into Business Ethics") critique business ethics as mirrored in textbooks in the field. Business ethics operates inside patriarchy, justifies market capitalism, contains no "discourse of critical force" (p 52) claims to be "objective, universal, and sex neutral" (p. 53), and advocates a masculine etho that "exclude the feminine voice," they say. They want business ethicists to complete/correct the record, assess bias in knowledge, and make modern theorizing, to have more inclusive and affirming ethical standards. The Spanish in their title, which translates as "Preaching morality in their boxer shorts" is said by dint of Latina women at market about men who behave ridiculously and present the appearances to characterize the authors' view of a certain number of business ethicists.

Kathy Ferguson ("Postmodernism, Feminism, and Organizational Ethics: Letting Difference Be") wants business to take more responsibility for everyone and everything forward the planet. She begins by means of reciting statistics, such as children dying each six seconds, rain forests being razeed every five seconds, and worldwide expenditures forward the military increasing every ten next to the firsts Ferguson says we accept as it is conditions as natural instead of taking responsibility for them. law claims should be viewed as negotiated issues not factual givens; differences should be valued not abhorred. Feminism does "not question the efficiency or effectiveness of business practices but business as usual" (p 80) she concludes