Friday, November 02, 2007
Stoll awarded for “Boycott Basics”
 Dr. Mary Lyn Stoll, assistant professor of philosophy, will receive the dean’s prize for best paper at the 14th Annual International Vincentian Business Ethics Conference this weekend at the Standard Club in Chicago. The conference for business professionals and academics is sponsored by the U.S. Vincentian Universities and hosted by DePaul University.This year’s conference is called “Ethical Leadership in the 21st Century Corporate World.” Stoll is receiving the award for her paper “Boycott Basics: Moral Guidelines for Corporate Decision Making,” which she presented at last year’s conference. In the paper she examines a number of boycotts, including American Family Association (AFA) boycotts of Ford and Proctor & Gamble, and recommends moral guidelines for how companies should deal with them. Ford came under fire from AFA for advertising in gay-themed publications, holding diversity training, and offering domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples. The automaker handled the boycott badly, Stoll said, and ended up alienating both sides - first pulling its advertising from gay-themed publications under pressure from AFA, and then changing its mind after meeting with GLBT groups. “The surest way to muck up the bottom line when faced with a boycott threat is to flip flop,” she writes in the paper. “This opens up a company to the charge that it never really cared about ethics and so deserves no moral credit.” In an interview with USI News and Information Services, Stoll said, “Ford had really strong domestic partner benefits and had won awards from gay rights groups. Then after the boycott, they said they would stop advertising in gay-themed publications. But it didn’t gain them the opposition because they didn’t give up the benefits. They alienated both sides, and that was problematic. They should have taken that more seriously and said they were making a principled moral stance.” She argues in her paper, “If a company is sufficiently able to engage with those who advance moral critiques, then calls for change by advocacy groups need not be seen as a threat. Rather, it can be an opportunity to show the public at large that a company is attentive to moral censure and capable of making fair decisions on its own. Rather than simply giving in to whatever demands are made, a company can learn to better present the case for its policies and turn points of censure into points of praise for handling the situation well.” Stoll’s dissertation dealt with moral obligation in a global economy focusing upon the environment, the poor, and ways in which businesses help or hinder our ability to meet moral obligations. She has published several articles on business ethics, marketing ethics, and on corporations and free speech rights. She is a contributing editor to Stakeholder Theory: Essential Readings in Ethical Leadership and Management (Prometheus Books, 2007). She taught at Minnesota State University, Mankato and at Muskingum College before joining USI in 2005. She teaches introductory ethics, introduction to philosophy, contemporary philosophy, political and legal philosophy, and logic and critical thinking. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Purdue University in 2002. At this year’s conference she will present a paper entitled “Fishing for Sustainability,” which examines the collapse of global fisheries and suggests how businesses can find ways to engage in sustainable fishing practices. Wendy Knipe Bredhold News and Information Services 812/461-5259 wkbredhold@usi.edu |
Copyright © 2013 University of Southern Indiana. All rights reserved.