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Who are Our Hairdressers? A Plea for Institutions and Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

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Abstract:

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This 2001 Presidential Address critically examines the mission of SBE and how it can be fulfilled. I begin with Brother Leo Ryan’s 1994 Presidential Address, in which he asked how the SBE mission can be accomplished given the growing number of organizations that focus on business ethics. I take up his challenge by focusing on one objective of our stated mission: To help develop ethical business organizations. I examine two ways we might promote this objective: the Moral Market Model advocated by John Boatright in his 1998 Presidential Address and the Market of Morality model advocated by Thomas Dunfee in his 1996 Presidential Address. I argue both views are limited because they focus only on market institutions. I conclude with an example of how breast cancer awareness among African-American women was increased by relying on a multi-institutional approach: organizations (beauty parlors), individuals (hairdressers, who distributed the information), personal relationships, culture, and educational and health care institutions. The question remains: Who are our hairdressers?

Type
Presidential Address
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2003

References

Notes

1 1995 Business Ethics Quarterly 5:4.

2 This is the current mission statement, but the elements are very similar to the mission in 1994.

3 Our success as a forum for ideas actually works against promoting organizational change, since the forum invites and enjoys and controversy. Selling controversy to organizations is difficult, to put it mildly.

4 Berlin, Isaiah. 1978. Russian Thinkers. New York: Viking.

5 Business Ethics Quarterly 1999 9:4 583–591

6 North, Douglass. R. 1991. “Institutions.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5:1.

7 Ibid.

8 The Cato Institute is a libertarian think-tank that, among other things, keeps track of how government transfers wealth to business <http://www.cato.org/>.

9 You may be wondering what happened to the seventh note, la. I simply could not find a way to make it work. I am not in bad company, as Rodgers and Hammerstein had trouble with it, too. They described la as the note that follows so.

10 Business Ethics Quarterly 8:1 (1998).

11 Arrow, Kenneth. 1963/1951. Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

12 Dienhart, John. 1999. New York: Oxford University Press.