Corporate Social Responsibility Through a Feminist Lens: Domestic Violence and the Workplace in the 21st Century

Domestic violence is a serious issue, and the costs for business of failing to address the impacts of domestic violence in the workplace are high. New technologies and economic shifts towards services sector industries are fast dissolving the boundaries between the workplace and the home in many national labor markets. Moreover, companies are now expected to meet higher standards of behavior in fulfilling their responsibilities to employees and wider society. These developments present challenges for ethical reasoning about the limits of employer responsibility in relation to domestic violence. While a number of possible approaches have something to contribute, this paper argues that feminist theories provide the most useful framework for ethical reasoning about the issues domestic violence raises for business organizations. The practical value of such reasoning is then illustrated by applying the organizing framework developed by Yuan et al. (J Bus Ethics 101:75—92, 2011) to examine how recurring domestic violence-related initiatives can be integrated as routine practices in firm operations. The paper thus provides a structured qualitative study of theory and practice for dealing with the impacts of domestic violence in the workplace.