women, ethics, and mbas

ABSTRACT. We argue that the declining femaleenrollment in graduate business schools is a manifes-tation of gender bias in business education. Theextant conceptual foundation of business educationis one which views business activity in terms of agame with fixed and wholly material objectives. Thisconcept betrays an underlying value system thatreflects a male orientation. Business education is notmerely amoral, therefore, but is gender biased. Wesuggest that business educators adopt a broadenedbehavioral rubric. Virtue-ethics theory provides sucha rubric.

A disquieting trend is apparent in America’sbusiness schools. Although the number of pro-fessional women in the workforce continues togrow, the percentage of women enrolled in MBAprograms has fallen dramatically since the late1980s (Fuchsberg, 1992). At NorthwesternUniversity’s Kellogg Graduate School ofManagement, for example, female enrollment hasdropped 37 percent since 1986. As Exhibit Iillustrates, similar trends can be observed atother major MBA programs.1 These trends areparticularly alarming when one considers thedramatically

increasing percentage of women oncorporate boards of directors and in managementpositions at all levels (Fryxell and Lerner, 1989;Akaah, 1989):

One of the most significant socio-economic trendsof the past two decades is the unprecedentedincrease in the number of women in the labor

force, particularly that of women holding execu-tive/management positions in business organiza-tions. [Akaah, 1989: p. 375]

This would imply a greater incentive and needfor women to enter business education, yet theopposite appears to be the case. In addition, thesetrends show no sign of abating in the 1990s; justin the past year (1992) both Indiana Universityand UCLA have experienced 17 percent dropsin female enrollment in their respective MBAprograms (Fuchsberg, 1992).

Several reasons have been proposed to accountfor this declining female enrollment (Fuchsberg,1992). There is evidence that women havetraditionally been excluded from senior manage-ment positions by a “glass ceiling”, howeverthe aforementioned increase in the number ofwomen in senior positions over the last few yearstends to vitiate this argument. The high cost ofMBA programs has been proposed as anotherreason, although why cost should deter womenmore than men is not clear. Other suggestedexplanations include the tendency for MBAprograms to favor candidates in their late twentiesand early thirties which, for women, are primechild-bearing years. Statistically, there is someevidence that the increasing numbers of studentsfrom foreign countries, most of whom aremen, tend to be skewing the enrollment trends.Although all of these suggested reasons undoubt-edly have some validity, they do not explain fullyeither the scale of the gender shift or the fact thatthe shift appears to have begun in earnest in thelate 1980s.

In this paper we propose a different explana-tion for the declining enrollment of women ingraduate business programs. Our argument draws

Women, Ethics, and MBAs

Journal of Business Ethics

16: 1201–1209, 1997.© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Cheryl MacLellanJohn Dobson

Cheryl MacLellan is a graduate business student in theCollege of Business in San Luis Obispo.

John Dobson is a business ethics consultant and an AssociateProfessor of Finance at the same institution.

on two recent strands in the business ethicsliterature. First, there is increasing evidence that– broadly measured – women in business envi-ronments are more ethically sensitive than men(Ferrell and Skinner, 1988; Beltramini et al.,1984; Ricklets, 1983); also, women and mendiffer in their ethical orientation (Gilligan, 1982).Second, several arguments have been made tothe effect that contemporary business educationlacks any moral foundation (Dobson, 1993;Bowie, 1991). In light of this evidence, weargue here that the behavioral assumptions thatunderlie business education are not only morallyinsensitive but actually exhibit a significant malebias: these assumptions are based essentiallyon the view of business as a rule-based game.Women are increasingly avoiding MBA pro-grams, therefore, because they find the valuesystem promulgated therein not merely morallyimpoverished but also inherently hostile. As apossible solution, we invoke an alternative behav-ioral foundation for business education. Thisalternative is sensitive to gender differences inmoral orientation and is derived from moralphilosophy’s virtue ethics theory.

Value systems in business education

America’s business schools represent the intel-lectual crucible of contemporary western cor-porate culture (Dobson, 1990). It is in these

institutions that the disparate and undevelopedvalue systems of future business leaders takeshape. The behavioral models of financial eco-nomics have played an increasingly dominant rolein the evolution of business education’s valuesystem (Dobson, 1991). These models are builtentirely on the premise that individuals’ solemotivation is the accumulation of personalwealth: as Noreen observes “. . . the assumption[is] that people act unreservedly in their ownnarrowly defined self-interest with, if necessary,guile and deceit” (1998: p. 359). This rubric isdefined by Bellah (1985) as “utilitarian individ-ualism”; as an ideology it “gives legitimacy to thepriority given to self over others and to thematerial social values of self-advancement” (Ladd,1991: p. 89). These models tend to be presentedby business educators as morally or “value”neutral. But, as Bowie (1991) notes, “there isconsiderable confusion as to whether the profitmaximization claim is a universal empirical claim,an approximate empirical claim, a heuristicassumption, or an ethical obligation” (p. 14).

The financial-economic concept of rationalitythat provides the value foundation for businesseducation is based on the five axioms of cardinalutility as enumerated by von Neumann andMorgenstern (1947): “We wish to find themathematically complete principles which define‘rational behavior’ for the participants in a socialeconomy, and derive from them the general char-acteristics of that behavior” (p. 31). These axioms

1202 C. MacLellan and J. Dobson

EXHIBIT IWomen as a percentage of entering M.B.A. classes

School 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992

Columbia Business School 31% 30% 34% 31% 30%

Indiana University 30 31 27 28 23

Northwestern University 30 32 28 29 27(Kellog School)

University of Chicago 23 24 27 23 23

University of Michigan 25 26 30 26 24

Washington University 31 28 25 29 25(Olin School)

Source: The Wall Street Journal

define rationality in terms of an individual’sability to make consistent preference orderingsover are broad spectrum of choices. Copelandand Weston (1988), authors of a prominentgraduate-level financial-economics text, summa-rize the axioms follows:

A statement that ‘I like Chevrolets more than Fordsand Fords more than Toyotas but Toyotas morethan Chevrolets’ is not rational. . . . [P]eople areassumed to be able to make these rational choicesover thousands of alternatives. . . . Having estab-lished the five axioms we add to them the assump-tion that individuals always prefer more wealth toless. [p. 80]

Note the rule and game orientation of thisrationality construct and, most significantly, theaddition of a sixth axiom: “individuals alwaysprefer more wealth to less”. In financial eco-nomics, therefore, a rational agent is simply onewho pursues wealth in a consistent manner adinfinitum. An individual who donates some of herwealth to charity, with zero expectation of futureeconomic gain through perhaps image buildingor tax credit, is as irrational as an individual whouses a similar amount of wealth (perhaps in theform of $100 bills) to light a campfire whenmore conventional forms of kindling are avail-able. While the former individual may have somejustifiable reason for her donation (and thereforemay be rational given a broader concept ofrationality), her altruism is inexplicable and byinference, therefore, wrong in this rationality isemphasized by Schwartz:

In short, what economics, sociobiology, andbehavior theory claim to show us is that peoplemust be slaves to the maximization of self-interest.What they actually show is that people can be slavesto the maximization of self-interest. This leavesopen for our moral evaluation whether theyshouldbe slaves to the maximization of self-interest.[1990: p. 198]

Thus financial economics presents itself asmorally neutral, but fails to recognize that itsnarrow and rigid invocation of self interest hasmoral implications.2 MacIntyre (1984) makes asimilar point:

Managers themselves and most writers about man-agement conceive of themselves as morally neutralcharacters whose skills enable them to devise themost efficient means of achieving whatever end isproposed. Whether a given manager is effective ornot is in the dominant view a quite differentquestion from that of the morality of the endswhich his effectiveness serves or fails to serve.Nonetheless there are strong grounds for rejectingthe claim that effectiveness is a morally neutralvalue (p. 74).

Several studies have found that the rationalityassumptions promulgated by economic theory doimpact actual behavior and that such behavioris subject to manipulation and modification(Baumhart, 1961; Etzioni, 1991; Ghorbade,1991; Marwell and Ames, 1981).3 For example,in his challenge of the egoistic paradigm, Bowie(1991) concludes that “[l]ooking out for oneselfis a natural, powerful motive that needs little,if any, social reinforcement. . . . Altruisticmotives, even if they too are natural, are not aspowerful: they need to be socially reinforced andnurtured” (p. 19). Such nurturing will not befound in the behavioral assumptions underlyingbusiness education.

An incongruity currently exists, therefore,between a growing body of normative busi-ness ethics literature, which promotes morallyrestrained behavior, and extant financial-eco-nomic models that assume agents operate in anethical vacuum; what De George (1986) termsthe “Myth of Amoral Business”. By assumingthat the only reasonable motivation for humanbehavior is personal wealth maximization,financial-economic theory has sanctioned andpromoted such behavior within the financialcommunity. Although many practitioners andtheorists realize the need for a broadened conceptof acceptable behavior, financial theory’s con-ceptual rigidity has summarily dismissed anybehavioral motivation save that of wealth maxi-mization as no more than utopian idealism.

Economists, and more particularly financialeconomists, have successfully promulgated thepremise that economic rationality defines themost reasonable mode of behavior within the firm.By arguing that this is how people actuallybehave, i.e. that this is reasonable behavior, econ-

Women, Ethics, and MBAs 1203

omists infer that this is how people shouldshould behave. Financial economics develops animplicit normative agenda. As economic ratio-nality has become increasingly accepted, pri-marily as a result of the growing size and socialstature of business schools, it has evolved from amathematically simplifying methodology to anepistemology. This epistemology is one based onstrict rules of game theoretic logic. As Rasmusen(1989) notes: “During the 1980s, game theoryhas become dramatically more important tomainstream economics. Indeed, it seems to beswallowing up microeconomics, . . .” (p. 13).

Gender and ethics

Carol Gilligan’s (1982) In a Different Voice presentsevidence of significant gender differences inmoral orientation. The “two voices” representtwo selves. The autonomous self separated fromothers in a hierarchical world is predominantamong men. Ethics for this self adopts a game-like quality; the moves that are acceptable andunacceptable are clearly defined before the game,disputes are refereed impartially according to theabstract principle of fairness, and setting a prece-dent becomes worrisome.

The self that is predominant among womenis the connected self, joined to others in a webof relationships. The ethical outlook derivedfrom this connected self is more situational andcontextual than that which a “separate” selfproduces. Instead of the male orientation to“rules of the game”, the dynamics and expecta-tions involved in relationships are central (White,1992). Women tend to conceptualize moralquestions as problems of care involving empathyand compassion, while men conceptualize themas problems of rights. A study conducted by Betz(1989), for example, ask a sample of men andwomen five questions relating to unethicalbehavior. The study revealed that men were morethan twice as likely to be willing to engage inactions regarded as less ethical. The study alsorevealed that men are more likely to work longhours and break rules because men view achieve-ment as competitive. Recent work by Rueggeret al. (1992) supports Betz’s findings. They asked

over one thousand business students to evaluatethe ethical acceptability of each of ten differentscenarios. In four of the ten responses there wasno significant difference between the male andfemale responses. The results of the other sixquestions, however, support the above findingsof significant gender differences in ethical ori-entation. Once again, the male responses tendedto be rule based, and to view the problem as thatof a game. The female responses tended to bemore compassion based and more contextual.

In light of these gender differences in ethicalorientation, the previous section’s account ofwhat – according to economic rationality – con-stitutes reasonable business behavior clearlyexhibits a male gender bias. Collins et al., forexample, summarize this concept of businessbehavior as one in which “work is a game withrules and customs geared to reward traditionalmale behavior” (1988, emphasis added). Similarly,a recent article in Newsweek magazine summa-rizes the views of various abservers that “. . .traditional business-school teaching methods aremale-oriented” (1992: p. 98). Specifically, threecentral attributes of the financial-economicconcept of rationality favor the male orientation.First, the narrow focus on wealth maximizationas the ultimate and sole end of all humanendeavor. Second, the increasing use of a game-theory methodology and conceptualization tomodel business environments. Third, and mostfundamentally, the rigid mathematical axiomapproach to developing a concept of rationalityreflecting a rule, rather than contextual, orien-tation. Thus the very foundation of business edu-cation, namely its rationality assumption, mayactively deter female participation.

The finance of virtue: removing the genderbias

If the extant financial-economic approach todeveloping a rationality concept were the onlyfeasible one, then the above evidence of malebias would seem inevitable. Indeed it wouldimply that men are more rational than women.There exists, however, an alternative approach tomodelling rationality. Virtue ethics theory, which


encompasses a logically coherent and morallyinclusive substantive rationality concept, providesa feasible alternative. Moreover, virtue ethics hasbeen recognized as a particularly gender neutral– perhaps even feminine – notion of rationality(Pearsall, 1986).

Virtue-ethics theory provokes a completereevaluation of the economic concept of sub-stantive rationality. From a virtue-ethics per-spective the moral impoverishment of economicrationality is reflected in both its failure torecognize the virtues, and its substitution of thepursuit of external goods for the pursuit ofinternal goods as the agents ultimate end.Detailed expositions of virtue ethics have beengiven elsewhere so only a skeletal outline willbe supplied here (MacIntyre, 1984 and 1988).

Virtue ethics is founded in Aristotelian moralphilosophy and focuses on the character andmotivations of the agent, and on the agent’sability to pursue excellence through virtuousacts. A recent definition of virtue is supplied byMacIntyre (1984); “A virtue is an acquiredhuman quality the possession and exercise ofwhich tends to enable us to achieve those goodswhich are internal . . .” (p. 191). He distinguishesbetween internal and external goods as follows;

It is characteristic of what I have called externalgoods that when achieved they are always someindividual’s property or possession. Moreover char-acteristically they are such that the more someonehas of them, the less there is for other people.. . . External goods are therefore characteristicallyobjects of competition in which there must belosers as well as winners. Internal goods are indeedthe outcome of competition to excel, but it ischaracteristic of them that their achievement is agood for the whole community who participatein the practice. [1984, pp. 190–191; emphasisadded]

Thus virtue ethics subsumes the extant extantexternal-good based rationality. The pursuit ofexternal goods is no longer recognized as theultimate end of human endeavor, but rather asa means to the achievement of excellence.Nussbaum defines this excellence as “the end ofall desires, the final reason why we do whateverwe do; and it is thus inclusive of everything that

has intrinsic worth [i.e., internal goods], lackingin nothing that would make a life more valuableor more complete” (1991: p. 38). A centralfeature of virtue ethics is its concept of substan-tive rationality as fundamentally a moral process;“one cannot be practically rational without beingjust – or indeed without the other centralvirtues” (MacIntyre, 1988: p. 137). Thus ratherthan being some peripheral appendage or con-straint on a substance-based rationality concept,this approach places morality at center stage.

Another feature of virtue ethics is its conceptof rationality as something which is learnt. Thisconcept ties in with the empirical evidence sum-marized above concerning the malleability ofhuman behavior. Economic rationality, on theother hand, rests on the premise that wealthmaximization is an inevitable law of nature; it isthe agent’s sine qua non. Jensen and Meckling(1976), for example, summarily dismiss any con-sideration of alternative possible behavioral moti-vations as no more than a “ ‘Nirvana’ form ofanalysis” (p. 328). Contrarily, in virtue ethics,becoming rational is a process of enlightenmentthat extends beyond the individual to involve thewhole community. It thus favors the femaleethical orientation in that the importance ofrelationships and community is emphasized. Inreference to the virtue-ethics approach to ratio-nality, MacIntyre observes that “one cannot thinkfor oneself if one thinks entirely by oneself, . . .it is only by participation in a rational practice-based community that one becomes rational. . .” (1988: p. 396). Thus rationality in virtueethics is a shared rationality with a shared con-ception of what is ultimately desirable in allhuman endeavor. The virtue-ethics approachcasts the firm in a role that is far more activeand intrusive than merely :a nexus for a set ofcontracting relations among individuals” (Jensenand Meckling, 1976: p. 310) or “an abstractengine that ‘uses money today to make moneytomorrow’ ” (Miller, 1986: p. S452). The firmbecomes a nurturing community. “Corporationsare real communities, neither ideal nor idealized,and therefore the perfect place to start under-standing the nature of the virtues”(Solomon,1992: p. 325). Solomon emphasizes the linkbetween virtues-ethics and this expanded role of


the firm as a nurturing community: “It [virtue-ethics] is an Aristotelian ethics precisely becauseit is membership in a community, a communitywith collective goals and a stated mission – toproduce quality goods and/or services and tomake a profit for the stockholders” (Solomon,1992, p. 321).4

In summary, virtue-ethics theory supplies alogically coherent and morally inclusive conceptof rationality.5 As such it provides a feasible alter-native – or more accurately an extension – to therigid rule-based rationality concept that is cur-rently promulgated in business education. Inaddition, virtue ethics overcomes the malegender bias inherent in financial economists’extant rationality constructs. Broadening theconceptual foundation of business educationalong lines suggested by virtue ethics theory,therefore, will engender an educational environ-ment that does not present itself a priori as hostileto female moral sensibilities.6 By adopting thisbroadened concept of what constitutes rationalbehavior, business schools could rebalance theextant gender imbalance caused by an exclusivepreoccupation with the financial-economicnotion of rationality.

Conclusion

This paper identifies a cause of, and a remedyto, the declining female enrollment in graduatebusiness schools. The cause is identified as themale gender bias inherent in current businesseducation. This bias results from the ubiquitousconcept of human rationality as narrow, rulebased, morally impoverished, and predicatedexclusively on the limitless pursuit of personalmaterial gain. To remedy the declining femaleenrollment, we suggest that business educatorsadopt a broadened concept of what constitutesreasonable human behavior. Just such a conceptis supplied by virtue-ethics theory.

Notes

1 This trend does not appear to be limited to themajor schools. For example California Polytechnic

State University in San Luis Obispo, which operatesa relatively small program with a provincial focus, hasexperienced a drop in female enrollment from 34percent of the total graduate intake in 1988 to 30%in 1992.2 The relativistic nature of the concept of self interestis well established in moral philosophy (Lukes, 1977,Hollis and Lukes, 1982). As MacIntyre (1988) notes:

Agents in the Homeric poems can certainly be saidalways to act in their own interests as they under-stand them, but the interest of an individual isalways his or her interest qua wife or qua host orqua some other role. . . . [T]here is not the samecontrast between what is to one’s own interest andwhat is to the interest of others as that which isconveyed by modern uses of ‘self-interest’ andcognate terms. [p. 20]

Thus the fact that economic rationality assumes self-interested agents is not necessarily an indictment. Thecriticism of this concept made here is that self-interestis too narrowly defined therein.3 In a broader context, human susceptibility wasmade very clear in the laboratory experiments con-ducted by Milgram (1974):

. . . [O]rdinary people, simply doing their jobs, andwithout any particular hostility on their part, canbecome agents in a terrible destructive process.. . . [E]ven when the destructive effects of theirwork become patently clear, and they are asked tocarry out actions incompatible with fundamentalstandards of morality, relatively few people have theresources needed to resist authority. [p. 6]

4 An interesting analogy can be drawn between therole of the polis in directing human endeavor, andrecent work by North (1991), Romer (1990), andothers in industrial-organization theory that highlightsthe importance of institutional infrastructure inguiding human activity. North notes that the entre-preneur within the firm (North uses the term “orga-nization”) is constrained and directed by theinstitutional infrastructure. But he also notes that“[t]he subjective perceptions (mental models) ofentrepreneurs determine he choices they make”(p. 5). And it is the infrastructure, the polis, that helpssculpt these mental models: “It is the institutionalframework that dictates the kind of knowledge per-ceived to having the maximum pay-off ” (p. 10).5 Indeed MacIntyre argues that, of the variousconcepts of rationality, virtue ethics has proved themost robust:


. . . those who have thought their way through thetopics of justice and practical rationality, from thestandpoint constructed by and in the directionpointed out first by Aristotle and then by Aquinas,have every reason at least so far to hold that therationality of their tradition has far to hold that therationality of their tradition has been confirmedin its encounters with other traditions . . . [1988:pp. 402–403]

6 See Dobson (1993) for some preliminary discussionof the practical issues involved in structuring abusiness oriented rationality concept along lines sug-gested by virtue ethics.

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Department of Business Administration,California Polytechnic State University,

San Luis Obispo, California 93407,U.S.A.


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