Do women have stronger ethical business principles than men?
What if men are morally inferior to women? If, as UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business Professor, Laura Kray noticed in her MBA students and discussed recently on NPR, "men tend to have more lenient ethical standards than women," how might that affect the future of corporate social responsibility? Such potentially show-stopping findings could prove a significant challenge for those corporations working to develop a thriving sustainability leadership pipeline.
I followed up with Kray, and also talked with Jill Bamburg, co-founder of Bainbridge Graduate Institute, about how gender differences in ethical decision-making might be addressed, and two issues emerged:
Gender differences
According to Kray, men and women each need different kinds of support to enable them to stick to their principles. Men tend to apply ethical standards egocentrically and to see these decisions as "just business". Helping them feel secure that making an ethical decision won't make them look weak or lessen their manhood will be crucial. On the other hand, women see ethical decisions as "beyond business" and outside of ego. When women believe there is real potential to collectively change things, as Kray puts it, "we will keep women in the game."
The purpose of business
What is mainly taught to business school students, male and female, is the traditional rule of business: that maximizing shareholder value at all costs is the goal. But, as Bamburg noted during a recent phone interview: "You shouldn't play in a game that compromises your morals." Instead, business school students need support, as she put it, "to lead a principled life, and to use business as a vehicle for what they want to do and where they want to make an impact".
Ethics and manhood
If the "it's just business" mindset is the norm for men who make unethical choices, how do we shift that – both to counter men's lack of ethics and to support women's tendency to hold to their principles?
In research conducted with Michael Haselhuhn, Kray found "that men's lower ethical standards in business negotiations are driven in part by their desire to prove their masculinity (if negotiations are a "man's game", then the implication is that men who are not at the top of the pecking order are somehow less manly). The way to counter such outdated thinking, she suggests, would be to help men to "embrace their feminine side, to become more balanced and whole in their business approach, and therefore more secure in themselves".
In 2009, Catalyst conducted research that seems to relate. In Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives, co-authors Jeanine Prime and Corinne A Moss-Racusin cited four common masculine norms in men (those studied were mainly in managerial positions from North American and western European cultures), which include:
avoid all things feminine (noted as perhaps the cardinal rule)
be a winner
show no chinks in the armour
be a man's man
The norms found by Catalyst indicate just how hard it might be to help men embrace their feminine sides. But, as my own research has shown, learning to talk about ethics without relating it to "women's ways" will be crucial for encouraging men to think in a more diverse, holistic and relational way about ethical decision-making.
Maximizing purpose
But perhaps, what we consider the ultimate guiding purpose of business may be at the root of the ethics issue. If simply maximizing shareholder profits continues to be the goal, men and women in business schools are already well trained in this. If, however, "maximizing the fulfillment of purpose" can be made the norm, as per Bamburg's work, good business should mean tending to the more relational aspects of (including people, planet and profit).
As Bamburg explains in a 2013 TEDx presentation, maximizing profit means that people and planet automatically get less focus. Instead, we need to make tradeoffs, as she puts it, among those three "Ps" in order to further purpose.
Shifting the focus of decision-making in this way would include the teaching of, but more importantly, the intentional rewarding of ethical decision-making by all. When making the ethical choice is the clear and cultural expectation of any organization, it is more likely to happen.
Aging means better ethics
If the hope for business with purpose lies in better supporting women in their natural tendencies to make ethical choices and in helping men get more comfortable with relational business thinking, then we can all find comfort in this: Kray has found evidence that suggests people become more ethical as they age, rather than less. "By encouraging a broader, relational perspective, age and experience usually lead people to feel more comfortable in their own skin and therefore less prone to ethical biases."
Andrea Learned is the author of Don't Think Pink and communications strategist on sustainability leadership development through social media engagement.