Reviews

Is Networking For You? A working woman's alternative to the Old Boy System by Barbara B. Stern, Prentice Hall, Inc., 1981, pp. 216, $ 5.95, paperback. General appraisal Specific ratings Accuracy of Information Scope Clarity of writing Value of book

xx good fair good good

Is Networking For You ? is a pragmatic self-help approach to professional women who are frustrated by the male 'team-sport' approach to business which excludes them. One of numerous recent works on Networking (e.g. Women's Networking by Carol Kleiman, Networking by Mary Scott Welch), Stern captures the concerns of career women who both need an alternate route to power and need the peer support which they do not receive from their male colleages. Stern addresses the difficulty which women professionals have in taking themselves seriously as professionals. She talks of the alienation which women executives experience from both their male and female peers. For both emotional support and career advancement, it is necessary for women to establish a socially based community of like-minded female professionals. As Stern puts it, Every woman on a professional level knows that the best jobs are gained through contacts and connec-

Deborah C. Poff, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Guelph

tions, the Who do you know method. But every woman has not had access to this NETWORK for all the old reasons: exclusion from clubs, locker rooms, golf games. Women want to become part of the power structure, but can no more storm the barricades of the men's room than they can overturn Rotary rules. And so, the only practical alternative to entering the old boy network has been to form new woman networks. (p. 45) While business men make many of their most important contacts and decisions during luncheon meetings, women are systematically (whether by intention or not) excluded from such meetings. Stern cites a study of women executives at a major oil company in Houston that showed that eighty percent ate lunch alone in their offices. Having argued for the necessity of women's networks, Stern spends the major part of this book on the 'how to' of setting up a network. Drawing on her own experience, she provides advice on such things as structure, meeting places, newsletters, directories and rules of conduct. She speculates upon the psychological and sociological bases for some needs (e.g. women need a club of their own to avoid the debilitating tension which arises from waiting at a bar for a female colleague to arrive and feeling vulnerable to sexual advances from men). Finally, she concludes that networking among women is the guarantee that equality between the sexes will be achieved. In a time of cut-backs on women's studies and childcare facilities, it is the women "who are not afraid to accept power" who will be in the position to "use this power for the good of one half of the human race". (p. 213) Generally, I found the book to be a wellwritten treatment of a position which women

Journal of Business Ethics 1 (1982) 73--74. 0167-4544/82/0011--0073500.20. Copyright © 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland and Boston, U.S.A.

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are increasingly adopting in professional circles. The uneasiness I feel when reading Stern's book is, I believe, with the position generally and not with her specific analysis. One has the feeling when reading Stern (and similar theorists) that she is saying that men do not play fair and that they are underhanded and deceitful in their business dealings. She then concludes that women should behave the same way. Although I can appreciate

the argument that one has to be in a position of power to implement change, the possibility of co-option into an acknowledged evil is not to be dismissed lightly. I might further add that given the simplicity of the position, one book on networking is probably sufficient reading on the subject. Given her clarity of presentation, Stern's work could be that book.

(Received 18 July 1981)

Reviews

C. B. McPherson, Property, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1978, 207 pp. McPherson has rendered an extremely useful service in collecting together an anthology of 'mainstream and critical' positions concerning property. The concept of property, how we think about it, and how we utilize it, is absolutely fundamental to any society, yet it is remarkably little studied. Perhaps this is because it is so basic. However, an understanding of the ways in which we think of property is important and McPherson has gone some way toward promoting its study with this anthology. He begins his essentially historical review of property with Locke's defence of unequal property (1689) and ends with Charles Reich's defence of property as the necessary condition of freedom within and against a society dominated by the political power and financial largesse of government (1964). Between, he covers most of the obligatory stops along the way. The principle of selection appears to be that of playing off defences of private property against attacks on it. Locke's defence is followed by Rousseau's critique, then Bentham's utilitarian defence of the status quo is followed by Marx's attack on the injustice of private control of the means of production; and finally Mill and Green are balanced by Veblen and Tawney. The collection ends with Cohen's exposition of the sovereignty inherent in private property and Reich's requirement that there be just this private sovereignty over and against the power of government. This technique of historical thesis and antithesis is rendered especially effective by the selections which McPherson has chosen. Veblen and Tawney are stylists of the first order and their selections recommend themselves naturally to the reader. The passage chosen from Marx, 'The Modern Theory of

D. Stewart, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Guelph

Colonization' is particularly apt when balanced against the more familiar selection from the Manifesto. Green's defence of private property as the condition of the development of human personality and life is signally more readable than Hegel's original formulation of the doctrine, while Locke and Rousseau are by way of being absolutely necessary parts of the canon. Having said this, however, one must also say that, inevitably, there are gaps. The ancients, (Plato in particular) are missing. Proudhon surely deserves a "place in such a collection, and while Cohen and Reich deservedly represent contemporary legal thought, there are no contemporary economic or philosophical perspectives represented. Such omissions, however, are almost certainly due to space limitations. McPherson himself contributes a contemporary philosophical perspective in his introductory essay 'The Meaning of Property' and in his concluding paper 'Liberal Democracy and Property' which is worth discussion. Both essays cover essentially the same ground; they argue that (a) property is a right rather than a thing, (b) that there are three types of property: private property, state property, and common property, (c) that liberal democracy requires this last form of property if it is to remain true to its ethical justification, the free and independent development of the individual. McPherson defines private property as the right to exclude others from something. State property is defined as an extension of this concept, the only difference being that it is the 'fictional' private person, the state, which retains the right to exclude. State airlines are cited as an example of such property. The true contrary of private property is not, then, state property but common property which is defined as the right not to be excluded from something. McPherson then argues that private property is inconsistent with the ethical ideal of liberal democracy precisely because it excludes some members of society from using, and/or benefitting from, that

JournaI of Business Ethics 1 (1982) 75--77. 0167-4544/82/0011-0075500.30. Copyright © 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland and Boston, U.S.A.

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Reviews which is privately owned. Conversely, comm o n property accords with this ethical ideal by guaranteeing each man some use of, or benefit from, the property. The central difference between state property and c o m m o n property is that the right of ownership is extended to all members of society in comm o n property while, with state property, the right of ownership is still restricted. Those without funds, for example, are denied the right to use, or to benefit from, state owned airlines. They, thus, have no property right in the airline. There are a number of problems with this line of thought, however. The idea of each of us using a public park or a highway is clear and well-defined but the sort of use a private individual might make of a genetics laboratory, an automobile plant, a paper-box manufacturing plant and so on is not clear. Some forms of property, in other words, are designed for public use while others are not. One may, o f course, still benefit from that which one cannot profitably use, yet even here the sort of benefit which one could reasonably expect to have a right to is not clear beyond a (limited?) range of creature comforts. There is a more important problem however with the idea of c o m m o n property as the right not to be excluded from something and that is that it does not address itself to the problem of power as delineated by Cohen and Reich. The central justification of private property is that it gives man the means to develop his own conception of his life. Property gives him the right of decision over the use and/or benefit which he seeks from things. It is precisely this power of decision so crucial to h u m a n self-development which seems to be, in large part, denied by McPherson. He explains his position as follows: The right to use them [public parks, highways, etc.] is then a property of individuals, in that each member of society has an enforceable claim to use them. It need not be an unlimited claim. The state may, for instance, have to ration the use of public lands, or it may limit the kinds of uses anyone may make of the

streets or of common waters (just as it now limits the uses anyone may make of his private property), but the right to use the common things, however limited, is a right of individuals. (Property, p. 4.) McPherson's claim is that c o m m o n property differs from private property in that it excludes no one and that with respect to the power o f decision it does not differ significantly from private property since the state has the right to regulate the use of private property as well as c o m m o n property. Yet this latter claim is patently wrong. The degree of control which the state has over c o m m o n property is so m u c h greater than that which it has over private property as to yield a significant difference in kind. I can build a house, a sauna, a shack, cut timber, farm, graze cattle, play cricket or whatever, within a very wide limit, on private property, b u t all these major uses are denied me on c o m m o n property, and rightly so, for there must be an adjudication o f conflicting uses of c o m m o n property. This is not so concerning private property. There is the presumption that the power o f decision rests with the owner and not with an adjudicator and that, for precisely this reason, this property is o f value in the development o f the owner's personality, Now, this power can have ill effects on others and for this reason the state reserves the right to limit this power, but the state does not prescribe the uses allowed as it must do for c o m m o n property. Indeed, though there is a limit to private property right, that limit is always a negative one whereas concerning both state and c o m m o n property we are dealing, not with a negative limit, but a positive intention and/or end. Highways, for example, are for traffic and other uses are prohibited by law. This is not so with private property even in the case of something designed with one end in mind. If one misuses, let us say, one's television, that is not a matter for law. Therein lies the difference between private and c o m m o n property. In one case the owner decides, in the other the state decides and what was c o m m o n property becomes effec-

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tively state property as more and more uses and hence users are excluded. Not all common property need become state property, but there is a tendency in this direction. The crucial problem, however, lies with the denial of the power of free decision concerning common property. Cohen was absolutely correct in saying that property is sovereign power. (Property, p. 159) For good or ill it has this character and to strip this fundamental essence from property is to make property a meaningless concept. Worse, perhaps, by

transferring the power from the individual to the state we are in danger of returning to a feudal state in which both political and economic power are completely concentrated in the hands of one body. McPherson's book is important whatever view one takes of his own concept of property, however, because it recognizes that property is a fundamental concept in social, political and economic theory and that it should be part of the basic curriculum. This anthology helps to make that possible.

(ReceivedJune 1981)