Peter French, corporate ethics and the wizard of oz

Journal of Business Ethics 16 (12-13):1431-1438 (1997)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

For more than two decades, Peter French has been arguing in books, articles and symposia that corporations are genuine actors in the moral universe. Like adult human beings, they can and should take moral responsibility for their actions and be held accountable by the other actors in this universe. I have always argued with my students that the position is both metaphysically incorrect and practically harmful. Now (1995) French has redeveloped his position through 380 pages in Corporate Ethics, probably the most challenging and original Business Ethics textbook yet to appear. It is a work of intellectual sophistication with real world applications. Using the metaphor invaders throughout the book, French argues not only that corporations are moral agents, but also that their moral agency has made the business world of the late twentieth century and of the coming century different from anything of preceding epochs. It is, in his argument, an agency of great potential danger and of great potential benefit, one in terms of which we can address every ethical problem of business. In the essay, I explore Corporate Ethics both on the metaphysical and the practical level.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,795

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
79 (#266,964)

6 months
10 (#427,773)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Corporate moral agency.Denis Arnold - 2006 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (1):279–291.
Toward an Intermediate Position on Corporate Moral Personhood.Kevin Gibson - 2011 - Journal of Business Ethics 101 (S1):71-81.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The Corporation as a Moral Person.Peter French - 1979 - American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (3):207 - 215.
Pensées.Blaise Pascal - 2007 - In Aloysius Martinich, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 111-112.
Peter A. French, Corporate Ethics. [REVIEW]Peter A. French - 1998 - Journal of Business Ethics 17 (12):1364-1366.

Add more references