Browsing by Author "Sayers J"

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    Posthuman Affirmative Business Ethics: Reimagining Human-Animal Relations Through Speculative Fiction
    (Springer Nature B V, 2022-07) Sayers J; Martin L; Bell E
    Posthuman affirmative ethics relies upon a fluid, nomadic conception of the ethical subject who develops affective, material and immaterial connections to multiple others. Our purpose in this paper is to consider what posthuman affirmative business ethics would look like, and to reflect on the shift in thinking and practice this would involve. The need for a revised understanding of human-animal relations in business ethics is amplified by crises such as climate change and pandemics that are related to ecologically destructive business practices such as factory farming. In this analysis, we use feminist speculative fiction as a resource for reimagination and posthuman ethical thinking. By focusing on three ethical movements experienced by a central character named Toby in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, we show how she is continually becoming through affective, embodied encounters with human and nonhuman others. In the discussion, we consider the vulnerability that arises from openness to affect which engenders heightened response-ability to and with, rather than for, multiple others. This expanded concept of subjectivity enables a more relational understanding of equality that is urgently needed in order to respond affirmatively to posthuman futures.
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    The potential of gender (and intersectional) equality indices: the case of Aotearoa New Zealand’s public service
    (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited in association with the International Labour Office, 2024-06-07) Parker J; Donnelly N; Sayers J; Loga P; Paea S; Rönnmar M; Hayter S
    The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted in a multi-faceted and gendered manner on the labour market in most countries. In Aotearoa New Zealand, high-level gender indices (GIs) have broadly captured this impact, helping to inform sectoral policy reform. However, these indices seldom capture more qualitative, nuanced and connected aspects of (in)equity despite increasing labour market and workplace diversification, and more scholarly attention on how these inequities are created, perpetuated or nuanced. The need for finer-grain analysis of women’s diversity encouraged a transdisciplinary study of working women in several public service agencies in New Zealand. Experts, employees and managers in the sector participated in in-depth interviews to help generate institution-specific gender indices which can be used alongside ‘conventional’ quantitative measures to closely assess workplace (in)equities. This study thus extends the conceptual parameters of GIs applied at national levels; provides a framework of equity considerations and (emergent) indicators for inclusion in organizational-level equity policy development; and briefly assesses meso-level equity indices with respect to the gender-responsive/accommodating/transformative or ‘gender-inclusive’ framework used throughout this volume.