Our blog posts are often prompted by books that we’ve read, but we seldom do book reviews. This post is an exception, because we wish to call your attention to the latest book in the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) series. Mary Gentile created the GVV program, the best platform on the planet for enabling people to effectively speak up for what they believe to be right. Gentile has now co-edited, with Jerry Goodstein, the new Routledge Press book: Giving Voice to Values: An Innovation and Impact Agenda (2021).
As the book’s introduction states, GVV “has fundamentally changed the way business ethics is taught, discussed, and practiced in over 1,200 academic, corporate, and non-profit settings around the world.” We are proud to have partnered with GVV to create an eight-video GVV series.
The new book contains 13 chapters, divided into two parts. Part I, “Strengthening the Impact of GVV within Higher Education,” contains seven chapters:
- Chapter 1, by Ira Bedzow (UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and professor at New York Medical College), notes the parallels between the GVV emphasis on people’s developing their own “moral muscle” and the teachings of virtue ethics.
- Chapter 2, by Ed Freeman and Brian Moriarity (both of UVA’s Darden School of Business) ties GVV to John Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism, pointing out that pragmatic ethics, like GVV, “is about developing methods of practice and habits that enable people to act more effectively in their everyday lives.”
- Chapter 3, by Jerry Goodstein (of the Carson College of Business, Washington State University Vancouver) notes that while GVV focuses on how people can most effectively speak out on behalf of their convictions, it pays us to also pay attention to the listeners. How can supervisors in a corporation, for example, be more skillful listeners, “more attentive to others’ values and their issues and concerns?”
- Chapter 4, by Daniel Arce (of UT-Dallas) explains how Dr. Arce effectively introduces ethics via GVV into his economics courses. He even shares his slides and his belief that GVV “promotes the operationalization of ethics by osmosis.”
- Chapter 5, by Christopher Adkins and Jessica McManus Warnell (both of Notre Dame) recounts the authors’ experience in introducing GVV into business schools—Warnell in an elective course at Notre Dame and Adkins in a required course when he was at William & Mary. They address the difficulties they faced and methods they used to gain success integrating GVV into undergraduate classes, executive education, and co-curricular activities.
- Chapter 6, by Ira Bedzow and Heidi Waldron, discusses how the authors integrated GVV into health professional education at their medical schools—New York Medical College (Bedzow) and Notre Dame School of Medicine Fremantle in Australia (Waldron).
- Chapter 7, by Rebecca Awuah (Ashesi University in Ghana), explores how GVV has been used in schools in Africa to educate that continent’s next generation of ethical leaders.
Part II of the book, aptly entitled “Strengthening the Impact of GVV Beyond Higher Education,” contains six chapters:
- Chapter 8, by Carolyn Plump (LaSalle University School of Business) uses several real-life examples of ethical challenges in the legal profession to demonstrate the value of GVV to ethical attorneys.
- Chapter 9, by Jerry Goodstein, also uses the experience of real companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Prudential Insurance, and the CFA Institute, to illustrate how GVV can be successfully implemented by such organizations.
- Chapter 10, by Liang Yu (Duke Kunshan University in Suzhou, China), describes how GVV has been implemented in the Chinese cultural context.
- Chapter 11, by Rachel Schaming (a professional certified coach), discusses how she has used GVV to assist C-suite clients in her executive coaching practice.
- Chapter 12, by Jane Cote and Claire Kamm Latham (both of Washington State University Vancouver’s Carson School of Business), shares the authors’ experience integrating GVV into the education of professional accountants and two affinity groups—women and social work professionals.
- Chapter 13, by Debra Newcomer (of Nomadic Learning, a digital education platform), explores how GVV can be better leveraged using digital learning tools. We are grateful that Ms. Newcomer mentions Ethics Unwrapped’s GVV videos (pp. 225-226), but must correct her statement (p. 229) that we also created a short podcast series about GVV. While this would be a worthy project, we have not, in fact, created a GVV podcast.
The book ends with a conclusion written by Mary Gentile herself, recounting her personal journey as she created GVV as well as her hopes for GVV’s future.
Ultimately, Giving Voice to Values: An Innovation and Impact Agenda is a worthy and useful addition to the GVV oeuvre. We recommend it.
Resources:
Mary Gentile, Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right (2010).
Mary Gentile (ed.), Educating for Values-Driven Leadership: Giving Voice to Values Across the Curriculum (2013).
Jerry Goodstein & Mary Gentile (eds.), Giving Voice to Values: An Innovation and Impact Agenda (2021).
Videos:
Intro to GVV: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/introduction-to-giving-voice-to-values
GVV Pillar 1: Values: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-1-values
GVV Pillar 2: Choice: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-2-choice
GVV Pillar 3: Normalization: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-3-normalization
GVV Pillar 4: Purpose: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-4-purpose
GVV Pillar 5: Self-Knowledge & Alignment: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-5-self-knowledge-and-alignment
GVV Pillar 6: Voice: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-6-voice
GVV Pillar 7: Reasons & Rationalizations: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-7-reasons-and-rationalizations
Virtue Ethics: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/virtue-ethics