Caring and conflicted_with authors_as submitted.pdf (151.29 kB)
Caring and conflicted: mothers' ethical judgements about consumption
journal contribution
posted on 2015-09-09, 14:50 authored by Teresa Heath, Lisa O'Malley, Matthew Heath, Victoria StoryVictoria StoryLiterature on consumer ethics tends to focus on
issues within the public sphere, such as the environment,
and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as
family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–
behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by
consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon
a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic,
and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically
masculine understanding of morality, which
foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating the
importance of context to consumption decisions and
articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight
how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is
particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of
others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation
of care ethics provides both theoretical insights
and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is
explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical
dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by
mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an
ethical consumption orientation (representing impartial concerns) with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has
been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in
fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which
involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the
implications of our findings for theory and practice and
how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied
more widely.
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Business
Published in
Journal of Business EthicsVolume
136Issue
2Pages
237 - 250Citation
HEATH, T. ... et al, 2016. Caring and conflicted: mothers' ethical judgements about consumption. Journal of Business Ethics, 136(2), pp 237–250.Publisher
© Springer Science + Business MediaVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2014-11-20Notes
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2441-zISSN
0167-4544eISSN
1573-0697Publisher version
Language
- en