Thematic Symposium | Journal of Business Ethics | Deadline December 1, 2020
Intimate partner violence and business: Exploring the boundaries of ethical enquiry
Tracy Wilcox, University of New South Wales, Australia
Charlotte M. Karam, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Laura Kauzlarich, Creighton University, USA
Anne O'Leary Kelly, University of Arkansas, USA
Michelle Greenwood, Monash University, Australia
Intimate partner violence (IPV), is the most common form of violence against women, with around thirty percent of women globally experiencing violence at the hands of their partners (Devries et al., 2013). Intimate partner violence is increasingly recognized as a public rather than private concern, and a "unique" form of workplace violence (O'Leary-Kelly, Lean, Reeves, & Randel, 2008), with significant effects on both employees and organizations. For example, in the US up to seven million workdays were lost due to intimate partner violence in 2003 (Fisher & Peek-Asa, 2011). Workers affected by IPV report reduced productivity and increased absenteeism due, for example, to time needed to attend court, recover from injuries or other physical or mental health effects, or relocate to safe premises (de Jonge, 2018). For employees living with intimate partner violence, work is meaningful in multiple ways. Access to secure, stable employment provides financial independence and, importantly, the means through which they can leave violent relationships and overcome social isolation.
In response to the growing body of evidence to suggest the serious negative impact of IPV on the employer, co-worker, and survivor-employee, questions about employer responsibilities for handling the 'spillover' of IPV into the workplace are increasingly debated. The challenge for organizations is to trace and define the realistic parameters of their responsibilities with regards to IPV, and to tease apart the nuanced intricacies of effective policy development and implementation (de Jonge, 2018).
In considering the ethical dimensions of the organizational engagement with IPV, broader questions about the role of organizations in shaping social and political norms and priorities also arise. The way IPV is seen and negotiated in organizations reflects broader, often gendered and class-based, structures of power, control and privilege.
Given the importance of work to those affected by IPV, and the impacts of IPV on organizations, it is somewhat surprising that this topic has to date received little attention in the business ethics literature. While there is some research focusing on organizational responses to IPV within the Anglo-American context (see, for example, Fisher & Peek-Asa, 2011; Swanberg & Logan, 2007), there is less known about other contexts including the Global South (Tolentino et al, 2017). This Thematic Symposium provides an opportunity to approach the link between IPV and business ethics from micro, meso, macro and inter-level perspectives, employing sociological, political, economic and other theories, problematizing existing knowledge and practices from feminist, critical, post-colonial and other perspectives. We encourage such exploration across a range of areas of inquiry including but not limited to the following:
IPV and the organization of gender. Women experience IPV more frequently and more severely than men, and the violence experienced typically has a different quality (and has been labelled "intimate terrorism" or "coercive controlling violence" as opposed to "situational violence" (Ali, Dhingra & McGarry, 2016)).
The gendered nature of IPV can be understood in the context of broader societal gender relationships, for women and men, in the workplace and beyond. Questions that might be considered include: What is the role of organizations in recalibrating broader social norms around gendered violence? How might feminist ethics inform an analysis of the IPV-organization nexus? In what ways do sociocultural, legislative and religious macro-level institutional forces hinder or facilitate the mobilizing of businesses to support anti-IPV policies and practices at the national or transnational level?
IPV and the blurring of the public and private spheres. Intimate partner violence is often linked to the workplace in reference to the spillover of negative consequences from the domestic arena to the work arena, yet rarely is there consideration for how problems in the workplace can spill over into violence in the home. Furthermore, the distinction between work and home, between the public and the private, is increasingly blurred with seamless technologies and 24/7 availability. Questions that might be considered include: How do workplace norms or cultures enable or constrain assumptions of control and enactments of violence? How do constructions of violence in certain occupational and work cultures (e.g., military, police, construction work) enable spillovers into more violence at home? How do restrictions on women's mobility shape patterns of IPV, how might companies be engaged in this regard?
IPV and the research 'subject'. Women experiencing intimate partner violence face issues of physical and psychological safety, and can experience 're-abuse' under conditions of interrogation (e.g. from police, lawyers and health professionals), and so research in the area demands strong political and ethical considerations. Empirical methods should be deeply and reflexively scrutinized, with alternative (e.g. feminist) epistemologies being considered in this regard. Questions that might be considered include: What might respectful and responsive research ethics for IPV research look like? What are the mechanisms through which researchers' activism can engage IPV survivors to implement concrete change, and what are ethical parameters of that kind of scholarly activism?
IPV and the ethics of HRM. Human resource management is a focal point for organizational practices that relate to IPV (e.g. leave entitlements, training, occupational health and safety requirements). Questions might include: What are the roles and responsibilities of organisations with respect to employment conditions for perpetrators of IPV and those experiencing it? How might a business ethics lens inform consideration of organizational practices around IPV? How might a business ethics lens inform national and regional Human Resource Development plans and Gender Action Plans in developing and transitional economies?
IPV and the 'Other'. The experience of IPV is deeply linked to enactments and embodiments of identity (e.g. self-identification, self-esteem, stigma, isolation), which are further related to economic and social situatedness. Women suffering IPV may also experience disempowerment and exclusion based on class, disability, race, poverty and geographic location (Karam & Jamali, 2017). The experience of IPV becomes one more in multiple axes of differentiation that influence women's inequality in the workplace, in areas such as labor force participation, career progression, and access to resources, for example. Questions that might be considered include: How might notions of feminist or intersectional justice inform organizational responses to IPV? In what ways can the development of IPV policies (sectorial, national and organizational) be better attuned to the embodiments and enactments of identity?
Manuscript Development Workshop
A manuscript development workshop is planned for Thursday 6th August 2020 in Vancouver, prior to the SBE/ AOM meetings. Participation in this workshop will provide developmental feedback to authors but is not mandatory for submission to the Thematic Symposium. Draft full papers should be submitted to Tracy Wilcox t.wilcox@unsw.edu.au before June 15, 2020.
Submission Instructions
Authors are strongly encouraged to refer to the Journal of Business Ethics website and the instructions on submitting a paper (please format the paper in the JBE style). For more details about the types of manuscripts that will be considered for publication see http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/applied+ethics/journal/10551
Submission to the Thematic Symposium by December 1, 2020 is required through Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/busi/
Upon submission, please indicate that your submission is to this Special Issue of JBE.
Questions about expectations, requirements, the appropriateness of a topic, etc., should be directed to the guest editors of the Thematic Symposium: Tracy Wilcox t.wilcox@unsw.edu.au, Charlotte Karam ck16@aub.edu.lb, Laura Kauzlarich lauramizaur@creighton.edu, Anne O'Leary Kelly AO'Leary-Kelly@walton.uark.edu or Michelle Greenwood michelle.greenwood@monash.edu