Enabling the Voices of Marginalized Groups of People in Theoretical Business Ethics Research

Abstract

The paper addresses an understudied but highly relevant group of people within corporate organizations and society in general—the marginalized—as well as their narration, and criticism, of personal lived experiences of marginalization in business. They are conventionally perceived to lack traditional forms of power such as public influence, formal authority, education, money, and political positions; however, they still possess the resources to impact their situations, their circumstances, and the structures that determine their situations. Business ethics researchers seldom consider marginalized people’s voices and experiences as resources to understand their lives, as demonstrated through a review of 7500 articles published in the Journal of Business Ethics and Business Ethics Quarterly (2000–2019). Only 78 studies included aspects of marginalized groups. 69 of those studies discussed the topic of marginalized groups of people, but without integrating their explicit voices into the text. Only 9 of the 78 articles featured marginalized people’s explicit voices about their marginalization experiences incorporated into the text as a source for exploration. None of the identified studies discussed the potential for theorizing based on such voices. This paper contributes to business ethics theory by developing four theoretical possibilities vis-à-vis the critical voices of marginalized people’s experiences in business: (a) marginalized theory on critical agency and freedom of speech; (b) the gatekeeping role of academia; (c) primary sources; and (d) a participative perspective. Discussing the theoretical potential of quoting the above voices can enrich business ethics research in terms of the theoretical understanding of marginalized groups in business.

Ethics at the Centre of Global and Local Challenges: Thoughts on the Future of Business Ethics

“…The role of social organizations, vital for conveying needs “on the ground”, is also vital from a CA perspective. Alm and Guttormsen’s ( 2021 ) work on marginalized communities working for business corporations, and the challenges of “voice-rich” research, using case example of social organizations for which community voice is central to shaping their policies and operations, is a clear link to Sen’s work on the importance of public reason. Work on social enterprises (SE) also highlights the importance of clear CSR policies that ensure that they not only create social value and social goods in a responsible way, but that their internal CSR, behaviour towards employees and volunteers is also socially responsible also (Cornelius et al, 2008 ).…”

The Invisible Racialized Minority Entrepreneur: Using White Solipsism to Explain the White Space

“…More recently, Alm and Guttormsen (2021) ground marginalization of populations in ignorance embodied through a failure, particularly by academic institutions, to embrace marginalized populations' critical agency, or people's ability to critically analyze their own social circumstances in ways that empower them to act and transform the situation (see Giovanola, 2009;Sen, 1985). Morris (2017) suggests that the White faculty predominating the academy constitute gatekeepers limiting epistemological research on race and racism.…”

“…More specifically, in study 2, we ask 'how is the identity of the racially minoritized entrepreneur reflected in their own discourse and how do universities represent this group within its entrepreneurship discourse?' By capturing the settings, identities, and the voice of the racially minoritized outgroup (Alm & Guttormsen, 2021), it becomes possible to evaluate the appropriateness of university discourse in reaching this population. Media, such as website content, calls for multimodal analysis to evaluate both the text and images (van Leeuwen, 2008).…”

Bringing Excitement to Empirical Business Ethics Research: Thoughts on the Future of Business Ethics

“…These concepts are central to the philosophy of ethics, but have not necessarily been discussed in depth in the context of (un)ethical leadership before. Thus, we suggest that there may be valuable insights gained from extending the current operationalizations of ethical leadership constructs and rethinking existing research models through the integration of values and philosophies that may be more central populations that are marginalized (Alm & Guttormsen, 2021 ) and in settings that include different cultural perspectives (Palanski et al, 2021 ). Future studies that integrate local cultural values into their theoretical model may be particularly insightful in guarding the field’s epistemic diversity and in helping to challenge some of our implicit assumptions on (un)ethical leadership.…”