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Business Ethics and Sexual Harassment

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Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics
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Ethics and workplace sexual harassment

Introduction

Notwithstanding the progress made in business ethics over the past several decades, discrimination, inequality, and unsafe work environments persist (Brenkert 2019). A jarring exemplar is workplace sexual harassment, as exemplified by the explosion of harassment allegations in the media as a result of the #metoo movement. The persistence of sexual harassment in the workplace is due, at least in part, to organizational mismanagement of the phenomenon, which is in turn based on inadequate law. The makers of both public and organizational policy have ignored a sizeable body of scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of workplace sexual harassment, allowing the continuance of conditions that foster sexual harassment and discourage reporting.

Keyton and Rhodes (1997) noted the paucity of scholarly work on business ethics and sexual harassment. Almost two and a half decades later, and despite the continuing pervasiveness of...

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Correspondence to Heather M. Clarke .

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Clarke, H.M. (2021). Business Ethics and Sexual Harassment. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1023-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1023-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

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