Abstract
Using two contemporary cases of the global #MeToo movement and UK-based collective Sisters Uncut, this paper argues that a more in-depth and critical concern with gendered difference is necessary for understanding radical democratic ethics, one that advances and develops current understandings of business ethics. It draws on practices of social activism and dissent through the context of Irigaray’s later writing on democratic politics and Ziarek’s analysis of dissensus and democracy that proceeds from an emphasis on alterity as the capacity to transform nonappropriative self-other relations. Therefore, the aims of the paper are: (i) to develop a deeper understanding of a culture of difference and to consider sexual difference as central to the development of a practical democratic ethics and politics of organizations; (ii) to explore two key cases of contemporary feminist social movements that demonstrate connected yet contrasting examples of how feminist politics develops through an appreciation of embodied, intercorporeal differences; and (iii) to extend insights from Irigaray and Ziarek to examine ways in which a practical democratic politics proceeding from an embodied ethics of difference forms an important advancement to theorising the connection between ethics, dissent and democracy.
Highlights
Whilst the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have made strides in considering gender, Grosser and Moon (2017) note there is rarely explicit reference or substantive exploration of feminist theory to understand gendered differences and issues in business ethics
Feminist social activism and protest offer a new way of understanding gendered differences in business ethics, where complex events and the tensions and challenges that arise remind us “what is possible when feminists assemble the combined forces of our bodies, practices, and ethics” (Tyler 2018, p. 60)
The two cases discussed present opportunities to understand the complex dynamics of dissent and radical democracy based on intercorporeal and embodied differences that offer “a better place to locate business ethics...in practical modes of dissent and disturbance to corporate sovereignty arising within civil society.” (Rhodes 2016, p. 1509)
Summary
Whilst the field of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have made strides in considering gender, Grosser and Moon (2017) note there is rarely explicit reference or substantive exploration of feminist theory to understand gendered differences and issues in business ethics. These perspectives offer insight into the politics of difference, namely how gendered differences are constructed and how they enable and constrain the dynamics of corporate power and privilege in organizations (Karam and Jamali 2015) To translate this further into organizational terms, feminist ethics and politics offer ways of disturbing organizations, pushing beyond constructed categories assigned to us, such as gender, race and class, and engaging in a politics of disturbance of organizational order “through critique, resistance and opposition to the self-interested sovereignty of business and to the pretense of corporate immutability in the name of capitalism” This provides a practical ethics for understanding dynamics of oppression and discrimination that go beyond narrowly defined and reductive notions of gender in mainstream business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature, such as the focus on instrumental approaches to women’s empowerment, gender equality and corporate leadership (Grosser and Moon 2017; Grosser and McCarthy 2018)
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