Chapter Overview

Chapter ten considers the ethical responsibilities business has for addressing the significant economic and social inequalities remaining in the wider society. It begins with a sexual harassment case involving a woman employed in the construction industry. Then it makes the point that an increasingly diverse workforce has not yet translated into increased diversity in positions of authority, equality of wages and benefits, and in positions of power and prestige, citing many of the inequalities women and minorities are burdened with in terms of their absence from higher-paying blue-collar and management jobs.

There is a specific admonition for readers of the chapter to take the point of view of different parties to the affirmative action and preferential treatment debates to better understand what the debates are about. The view that as long as business does not deny equal treatment and equal opportunity it has fulfilled its legal responsibility concerning discrimination in work and commerce is considered at great length with emphasis on determining that point at which discrimination becomes unethical or unfair. The importance of reflecting on and understanding the meaning of terms in the language used to debate affirmative action and preferential treatment is stressed with special attention given to the ambiguity surrounding their meanings. The differences in policies of preferential treatment in hiring decisions are explained and the deontological arguments supporting and challenging these policies are presented in detail.

Finally, the chapter addresses sexual harassment in the workplace examining the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission's guidelines for defining illegal sexual harassment, the two fundamental types of illegal sexual harassment, and the difficulty in determining the standard that is best suited for interpreting what constitutes unreasonable interference with a person's work: that of the ideally reasonable person, the average reasonable person, the ideal reasonable women, or the average reasonable women.

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