Gender and governance in developing economies

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12193
• Author: Beverly Dawn Metcalfe,Fida Afiouni,Charlotte M. Karam
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Date: 01 October 2018

Business Ethic s: A Eur Rev. 2018;27:287– 293 . wileyonlinelibrar y.com/journal/beer  

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© 2018 John Wiley & So ns Ltd

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12193

EDITORIAL

Gender and governance in developing economies

1 | INTRODUCTION

In this special is sue our aim is to showcase dif ferent types of resea rch

being conducted at the intersection between gender and governance

and to highlight how e ach can more spe cifically co ntribute to busi‐

ness ethics and bu siness–society empirical and theoretical investiga‐

tions of the develo ping economies i n the global sou th. To do this,

we encouraged con tributions fr om various disci plines hoping t hat a

multidiscipli nary convers ation would help to: (1) unveil c omplex and

intersecting dynamics shaping the gendered nature of diverse gov‐

ernance syste ms and forces spanning differ ent levels of analysis and

(2) expand the mainstream paradigms adopted, questions posed, and

methods used in r elevant research . The result is a collec tion of five pa‐

pers that capture both organization‐based quantitative investigation

more common to busi ness ethics and management re search and the

less widely used critical and ethnographic qualitative research meth‐

odologies. Together, the p apers explore dy namics at and/or across the

individual laborer/employee level, the organizational/corporate level,

and in national, i nternational, and transn ational spaces. It is our hope

that this multip licity of contributi ons will not only encour age rich con‐

versations but also a stretching of the parameters within which the

governance–gender relationship is examined and understood.

In what follows, we f irst descri be the nature of govern ance

broadly, and then na rrow down to highlig ht specific geop olitical

and market‐economic c hallenges tied t o issues of gender an d gov‐

ernance in develo ping countries s pecifical ly. Our critique is, t here‐

fore, position ed within broad er social theo ry about the f irm and

whether it is abl e to move beyond its economic fun ction to support

positive social c hange toward gender justice. O ur critique questions

both the ‘capabil ities’ of organizations an d their market position and

‘authority ’ in the global political ec onomy (see Banerjee, 2014; Levy

& Kaplan, 20 07). We also consider cor porate social re sponsibiliti es

(CSR) as busine ss activities which embr ace how governance is con‐

ceptualized and p racticed in the act of governi ng (Haufler, 2001). In

this latter consi deration, the instituti onal forces governing CSR and

the business sy stems from whic h they emerge are s een to largely

follow corporate rationality arising from the ideological and politi‐

cal assumptio ns about the role of the firm in contem porary society

and stages of glo bal capitalism (see Banerje e, 2014; Özkazanç‐Pan,

2018). Our hope is to str etch business ethics inq uiry to consider the

complexities a nd varied possibilities for new m odels of governance

that are more att uned to the power dynamics r elated to gender and

their negative ramifications.

2 | DEFINING GOVERNANCE FROM A

MULTISTAKEHOLDER AND MULTILEVEL

PERSPECTIVE

Loosely defined, governance concerns rule‐based decision‐making

and oversight (OECD, 2012) an d as such it is multilevel and multid i‐

mensional. Gove rnance is a comple x construct a nd has struc tures

spanning both formal and informal arrangements, as well as global

and local levels ( Wieland, 2001). Although gover nance in the busi‐

ness and managem ent literature h as traditiona lly been tied to co r‐

porations and b usiness enterp rises in the deve loped economi es of

the global nor th and has been largely focu sed on the economic role

of business in soci ety (Jamali & K aram, 2016; Sunda ram & Inkpen,

2004; Voltan , Hervieux, & Mills, 2017), there i s an increasing inter‐

est in explori ng the multifa ceted nature of govern ance and how it

shapes transactions beyond the organization and beyond mainte‐

nance of market econ omic systems. H ere therefore , transact ions

take on differe nt forms emergi ng from interac tions betwe en mar‐

kets, transnational alliances, state, multinational enterprises, organi‐

zations, and other business stakeholders (World Bank, 2014).

Indeed, curr ent models of govern ance in business et hics and

management research are increasingly adopting a more global and

multilayered pe rspective w ith social, econ omic, and envi ronmental

aims (Grant & McG hee, 2014; Levy & Kaplan, 20 07) traced between

and across thes e stakeholde rs and ever expan ding to include n on‐

traditional b usiness actors such as: non ‐profit organizations, NG Os,

public secto r entities, and ot her signific ant groups (Barke meyer,

2009; Dentche v, Balen, & Haezendonck , 2015; Moon & Vogel, 2008;

Rasche & Gilber t, 2012; Vogel, 2005; Wadham & Warren , 2013). As

argued by Scher er and Palazzo (2011, p. 16), with t his multista ke‐

holder positi oning and the grow ing influence of bu siness genera lly,

firms are incre asingly involved t hemselves in com plex systems of

governance; that is, increasingly involved “in global business regu‐

lation and in the p roduction of gl obal public goo ds.” With a move

beyond viewing gover nance issues as s olely associate d with board

representation and the behaviors of boards therefore, governance

today, and as seen throu ghout this special issu e, is a dynamic term. It

is a term that can have v arious formulation s relevant to exploring t he

relationship between gender and governance from assessing ethical

decision‐maki ng and legal fra meworks that reg ulate in some ways

the constitut ion and effec tiveness of the b oard to involving activi‐

ties that have tra ditionally be en associated wit h state or inter state

oversight (Margol is & Walsh, 2003; Matten & Crane , 2005; Scherer