How Should We Interpret Institutional Duty-Claims?

Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies 18 (1):27-34 (2013)
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Abstract

It is rather natural to suppose that what we mean when we say that an institutional organization has a moral duty is parallel to whatever it is that we mean when we say that an individual has a duty. I challenge this interpretation on the grounds that it assumes that institutional organizations possess those characteristics or abilities requisite for moral agency—an assumption which I argue is highly suspicious. Against such an interpretation, I argue that we have very good reasons to suppose that the term 'has a duty' is used equivocally across individual and institutional contexts. In other words, the meaning of an institutional duty-claim is quite different than that of an individual duty-claim, so much so that we ought to recognize that institutional duty-claims are not really duty-claims at all.

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Utilitarianism: For and Against.J. J. C. Smart & Bernard Williams - 1973 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Bernard Williams.
Persons, Rights, and Corporations.Patricia Werhane - 1988 - Journal of Business Ethics 7 (5):336-340.
Organizations as true believers.Deborah Tollefsen - 2002 - Journal of Social Philosophy 33 (3):395–410.

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