Multicultural Ethics and Diversity Discourse – Dr. Molly Pepper

There are several ethical frameworks for understanding why organizations value diversity. Two of the most commonly used are the utilitarian “business case for diversity” and the duty-based deontological approach. This study focuses on a third framework: the ethic of care,  an ethical reasoning approach that can be described as valuing relationships and emotions, and acknowledging each individual’s uniqueness. The study examined diversity statements from organizations on the Fortune 2012 Best companies to Work For list. Results indicate that the ethic of care is at least present in the majority (70 percent) of statements available for analysis. These results suggest that the organizations studied do indeed value individual employees for their unique abilities and may be expanding beyond simply the “business case for diversity” to embrace a rationale that leverages these differences.

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