Synonyms
Business; Corporations; Economics; Feminine; Feminism; Feminist; Masculinity; Profit maximization; Sexism; Shareholder value maximization
Definition/Introduction
According to the mainstream economic theory of the firm, the sole purpose of a business is to maximize profits or shareholder wealth. Research pointing the gendered nature of this ideology offers alternative approaches that have significant implications for the field of business ethics and for the professional ethics of economists.
Masculinist Bias in the Theory of the Firm
The theory of the firm propounded by mainstream (neoclassical) economic theory has been increasingly adopted by management educators, the business media, and policymakers, as well as by academics who take a critical stance towards business. In that theory, the essence of the firm is assumed to be profit maximization. Against the backdrop of this increasingly popular belief, an explicit concern with ethics (beyond, perhaps, a minimal concern with...
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References
Borgerson JL (2007) On the harmony of feminist ethics and business ethics. Bus Soc Rev 112(4):477–509
Ferber MA, Nelson JA (eds) (1993) Beyond economic man: feminist theory and economics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Larson A, Freeman RE (eds) (1997) Women’s studies and business ethics: toward a new conversation. Oxford University Press, New York
Nelson JA (2003) Separative and soluble firms: androcentric bias in business ethics. In: Ferber MA, Nelson JA (eds) Feminist economics today: beyond economic man. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Nelson JA (2016) Poisoning the well, or how economic theory damages moral imagination. In: DeMartino G, McCloskey D (eds) The oxford handbook of professional economic ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 184–199
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Nelson, J.A. (2023). Gender and the Economic Theory of the Firm. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22767-8_255
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22767-8_255
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