Very little has been done to find out what corporations have done to build ethical values into their organizations. In this report on a survey of 1984 Fortune 1000 industrial and service companies the Center for Business Ethics reveals some facts regarding codes of ethics, ethics committees, social audits, ethics training programs, boards of directors, and other areas where corporations might institutionalize ethics. Based on the survey, the Center for Business Ethics is convinced that corporations are beginning (...) to take steps to institutionalize ethics, while recognizing that in most cases more specific mechanisms and strategies need to be implemented to make their ethics efforts truly effective. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper investigates whether, in theoretical terms, corporations can be citizens. The argument is based on the observation that the debate on “corporate citizenship” (CC) has only paid limited attention to the actual notion of citizenship. Where it has been discussed, authors have either largely left the concept of CC unquestioned, or applied rather unidimensional and decontextualized notions of citizenship to the corporate sphere. The paper opens with a critical discussion of a major contribution to the CC literature, the (...) work of Logsdon and Wood (Wood and Logsdon 2001; Logsdon and Wood 2002). It continues with a consideration of the nature and role of metaphors for business and of the contestable nature of the political concept of citizenship. It evaluates corporations as citizens through a four-dimensional framework of democratic citizenship offered by Stokes (2002). The analysis suggests that corporations do not easily fit the “liberal minimalist” model of citizenship. It finds, however some possibilities for fit with the three more participatory models. The paper concludes by cautioning against basing corporate citizenship on legal and administrative status or identity, and mapping out specific criteria by which we might determine whether corporations could be considered as citizens by virtue of their participation in processes of governance. (shrink)

Moderate holists like French, Copp :369–388, 2007), Hess, Isaacs and List and Pettit argue that certain collectives qualify as moral agents in their own right, often pointing to the corporation as an example of a collective likely to qualify. A common objection is that corporations cannot qualify as moral agents because they lack free will. The concern is that corporations are effectively puppets, dancing on strings controlled by external forces. The article begins by briefly presenting a novel account (...) of corporate moral agency and then demonstrates that, on this account, qualifying corporations do possess free will. Such entities possess and act from their own “actional springs”, in Haji’s :292–308, 2006) phrase, and from their own reasons-responsive mechanisms. When they do so, they act freely and are morally responsible for what they do. (shrink)

Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top (...) management support to the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

Robots are now associated with various aspects of our lives. These sophisticated machines have been increasingly used in different manufacturing industries and services sectors for decades. During this time, they have been a factor in causing significant harm to humans, prompting questions of liability. Industrial robots are presently regarded as products for liability purposes. In contrast, some commentators have proposed that robots be granted legal personality, with an overarching aim of exonerating the respective creators and users of these artefacts from (...) liability. This article is concerned mainly with industrial robots that exercise some degree of self-control as programmed, though the creation of fully autonomous robots is still a long way off. The proponents of the robot’s personality compare these machines generally with corporations, and sporadically with, inter alia, animals, and idols, in substantiating their arguments. This article discusses the attributes of legal personhood and the justifications for the separate personality of corporations and idols. It then demonstrates the reasons for refusal of an animal’s personality. It concludes that robots are ineligible to be persons, based on the requirements of personhood. (shrink)

Are there any advantages to thinking and speaking about ethical business in the language of citizenship? We will address this question in part by looking at the possible relevance of a vast literature on individual citizenship that has been produced by political philosophers over the last fifteen years. Some of the central elements of citizenship do not seem to apply straightforwardly to corporations. E.g., “citizenship” typically implies membership in a state and an identity akinto national identity; but this connotation (...) of citizenship is obviously problematic for multinational corporations. However, the language of citizenship does help to focus our attention on various legal and political virtues for corporations—topics that have been largely neglected by discussions under other rubrics, such as CSR or sustainability. We finish with an evaluation of the potential benefits and costs of conceptualizing and talking about ethical business practices in thelanguage of citizenship.“Citizen” and “Citizenship” are powerful words. They speak of respect, of rights, of dignity.... We find no perjorative uses. It is a weighty, monumental, humanist word.—Fraser and Gordon 1994: 90[The rhetorical appeal to citizenship often] seems to have no purpose other than to add normative weight to a policy, institution or practice that could just asaptly be described without reference to citizenship.—Weinstock 2002: 244. (shrink)

One of the core challenges presented by ascriptions of moral responsibility to corporations is to identify who or what is being held responsible. A significant source of controversy in attempts to answer this challenge is whether or not responsibility can fall on a ‘corporate entity’ distinct from the individuals that make it up. In this article I argue that both sides of this debate have incorrectly assumed that the possession of moral agency is a necessary condition for holding moral (...) responsibility. I go on to argue that it is sufficient for a corporate entity to be a ‘morally significant system’, that is a non-agential system created by moral agents, and I develop an account of such systems. I conclude by setting out the implications of this analysis for our practices of holding corporations morally responsible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Since the dawn of capitalism, corporations have been regarded by the law as separate legal “persons.” Corporate “personhood” has nonetheless remained controversial, and our understanding of corporate personhood often influences our thinking about the social responsibilities of corporations. This essay, written in honor of Prof. Thomas Donaldson, explores the tension in recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Delaware Chancery Court about what corporations are, whose interests they serve, and who gets to make decisions about (...) what they do. These decisions suggest that the law does not unequivocally support Donaldson’s vision of corporations as “moral” persons. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend what may seem a surprising view: that John Stuart Mill’s famous harm principle would, if taken to be what justifies government action, disallow the existence of corporations. My claim is not that harmful activities of currently existing corporations warrants their losing corporate status according to the harm principle. The claim, rather, is that taken strictly, the harm principle and the legal possibility of incorporation are mutually exclusive. This view may be surprising—and I do (...) not at all mean to attribute it to Mill—but if I am right, it should be obvious. It should also encourage us to think more about the nature of the markets within which business occurs. (shrink)

This article addresses our failing ability to hold business corporations to the public interest, or even to bare legality. It defends, in brief compass, the reasonableness of the expectation that corporations provide public benefits as consideration for their public privileges. But as succeeding sections recount, the traditional instrument for holding corporations to the public interest has gradually been undermined; and our standard, punitive tools for holding them even to bare legality, suffer from inherent limitations and fail adequately (...) to deter corporate misconduct. A more adequate approach would be to supplement the current punitive regime with reform of corporate governance in directions that would decrease the temptation of managers to engage in misconduct in the first place. Several possibilities are considered, with the most promise found in allowing corporations to be owned by Danish-style “industrial foundations.” Among its advantages, the reform is realizable and would reduce incentives to corporate misconduct without compromising on performance. Industrial foundations also customarily direct a portion of corporate profits to charity, in effect reinstating the norm that for-profit corporations provide public benefits. (shrink)

Many corporations are large, powerful, and wealthy. There are massive shortfalls of global justice, with hundreds of millions of people in the world living below the threshold of extreme poverty, and billions more living not far above that threshold. Where injustice and needs shortfalls must be remediated, we often look towards agents’ capabilities to determine who ought to bear the costs of rectifying the situation. The combination of these three claims grounds what I call a ‘linkage-based’ account of why (...) corporations have demanding positive duties to the global poor. In this paper, I put forward a distinctive linkage-based account of corporations’ positive duties centred on the idea of dependence and the importance of meeting agents’ core needs. In addition to outlining and defending this account, I will show that we can utilise its basic conceptual components to make headway on questions that have received insufficient attention in the business ethics literature; specifically, we can say something substantive about the weighting of needy agents’ competing claims to assistance, and about the limits to the demands that can be lodged against corporations on the basis of others' unmet needs. Having integrated considerations of duties' grounding, their comparative weight, and the limits of their demandingness into a single account of corporate positive duty, I conclude by discussing a challenge to attributing to corporations duties owed to the worst-off amongst the global poor. (shrink)

There has been tremendous growth in the sales of certified fair trade products since the introduction of the first of these goods in the Netherlands in 1988. Many would argue that this rapid growth has been due in large part to the increasing involvement of corporations. Still, participation by corporations in fair trade has not been welcomed by all. The basic point of contention is that, while corporate participation has the potential to rapidly extend the market for fair (...) trade goods, it threatens key aspects of what many see as the original vision of fair trade – most notably a primary concern for the plight of small producers and the goal of developing an alternative approach to trade and development – and may even be undermining its long-term survival. The primary purpose of this article is to explore the normative issues involved in corporate participation in fair trade. In order to do that, however, it first provides a positive analysis of how corporations are actually involved in fair trade. In order to achieve both of these ends, the article draws upon global value chain analysis. (shrink)

Multinational corporations face a litany of challenges regarding ethical decision-making as they traverse new variables in each country they operate in. Presented here is a new approach to ethical decision-making research for multinational corporations with the inclusion of moral virtues, national culture, and a feedback mechanism. The new proposed model builds off of the existing work by Trevino’s Person-Situated Interactionist Model. Hofstede’s work on individual national culture characteristics is used to move the conversation forward by explaining the relationships (...) between individual moderators in Trevino’s model and the effect of national culture on them. The new proposed model recommends the inclusion of moral virtues, with honesty and integrity as examples, as individual moderators in the decision-making process based on previous work. It contributes to the literature by introducing moral virtues into traditional ethical decision-making process models and introduces a new variable with a feedback mechanism for future learning. The paper concludes with recommendations for the future direction of research for ethical decision-making models for multinational organizations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Although a research focus on the increasing involvement of corporations in shaping and maintaining the global rules of the game points out promising avenues for future research, it simultaneously makes clear how little currently established, mostly managerial conceptual frameworks have to offer in making sense of these developments. It is argued that we need to expand the rather restricted perspectives that these frameworks provide, in order to explore new conceptual foundations that will not only enable us to travel the (...) confines of the different disciplines involved with the study of the changing role of business in shaping the global rules of the game, but that can also systematically connect normative and positive research questions at the conceptual level. Three directions for this search for new foundations are briefly explored. (shrink)

Are the current practices of large corporations incompatible with democratic political ideology? Are multinational corporations too powerful to be constrained by democracy in practice? This paper makes a strong case that the answers may be “yes.” For example, large local corporations can constrain the democratic process in small towns on matters such as tax exemption, by threatening to leave the area. also large multinational companies can apply force to national congressional votes on product safety reform by threatening (...) to move home offi ces to other countries (taking their products and tax dollars with them). The author argues that in many cases democracy is not functioning properly due to the power of corporations to constrain the ability of citizens to freely enact laws. (shrink)

This article applies Ayn Rand's insights in metaphysics and epistemology to the question What is a corporation? Historically, there have been three main answers: the fictional entity theory, the aggregate theory, and the real entity theory. Drawing principally upon Rand's discussion of the nature of entities in her epistemology workshops, this article proposes a fourth possibility. The preceding theories assume that if a corporation is an entity it must exist as a separate entity. The theory defended in this article challenges (...) this assumption, and considers the implications for the moral and political status of corporations. (shrink)

The author critiques the expedient application of market valuation principles by the transnational corporations and other large firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry on a number of issues like patents, pricing, irrational drugs, clinical trials, etc. He contends that ethics in business is chiseled and etched within the confines of particular social structures of accumulation. An ascendant neo-liberal social structure of accumulation has basically shaped these firms' sharp opposition to the Indian Patents Act, 1970, government administered pricing, etc. The (...) author contends that the practice of neo-liberal economics is strongly associated with a "one dimensional" ethics that privileges market valuation principles over all others. This seems to inevitably generate a social counter-movement that struggles for social protections. He critiques neo-liberal business practices from a perspective that derives from the work of the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi. Before the present phase of liberalization in India, markets were "managed", but without a "welfare state" in place. Moving toward deregulation of the markets without a welfare state in place is unethical. Keeping the debilities of the institutional framework of public policy in mind, the author adopts a Polanyian perspective that places its trust and hope in the growing social legitimacy of the counter-movement in opposition to both neo-liberal business practices and the degenerate behavior of state agencies. (shrink)

The number of transnational corporations - including parent companies and subsidiaries - has exploded over the last forty years, which has led to a correlating rise of corporate violations of international human rights and environmental laws, either directly or in conjunction with government security forces, local police, state-run businesses, or other businesses. In this work, Gwynne Skinner details the harms of business-related human rights violations on local communities and describes the barriers, both functional and institutional, that victims face in (...) seeking remedies. She concludes by offering solutions to these barriers, with a focus on measures designed to improve judicial remedies, which are the heart of international human rights law but often fail to deliver justice to victims. This work should be read by anyone concerned with the role of corporations in our increasingly globalized society. (shrink)

This article develops contractarian business ethics by applying social contract arguments to a specific question: What are the pre-legal (or moral) rights and responsibilities of corporations? The argument uses a hypothetical social contract to show the existence of for-profit corporations in democratic capitalist societies is consistent with Rawls’s fundamental principles of justice. Corporations ought to have recognised their rights to be autonomous, to pursue private purposes, and to engage in economic activities. Corporations have a responsibility to (...) respect the freedom and human rights of all people, and not to interfere with government programs that ensure people have the education and training they need to find and keep corporate employment and that provide a safety-net that prevents destitution. If corporations have any other rights and responsibilities, those rights and responsibilities need to be established by actual social contracts, probably in the form of legitimate democratic processes. (shrink)

Retail corporations orchestrate much of what happens in today’s food supply chains. From setting sky-high cosmetic standards for fresh produce to bundling off close-to-expiry products at discounted prices, retail’s contribution to food waste often extends beyond its in-store numbers. By occupying a powerful position in a globalised food system, these corporations enable chronic overproduction and consequently, the removal of surplus food from supply chains. This, in turn, contributes to the unfair distribution and overexploitation of food resources, further exacerbating (...) the globally pervasive problem of food insecurity. To realise the right to food and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of halving global per capita food waste by 2030, we argue that retail corporations must be held accountable for their direct and indirect contribution to food waste. We posit that to make a tangible difference, they must move away from the current voluntary corporate social responsibility approach to food waste reduction and instead invest in robust due diligence mechanisms and transparent reporting systems in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the upcoming EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Based on Pillar II of the Guiding Principles, we propose a five-step approach to accountability for food waste that may lead to serious actions towards the relaxation of cosmetic standards, abolition of unfair trading practices, and improvement in demand forecasting, thereby reducing the volume of food that ends up as waste. (shrink)

The business and human rights movement shares several goals with the Benefit Corporation movement: corporations respecting human rights; maintaining a “wide aperture” so that all impacts of a company on people and communities are addressed; and creating rigorous standards of conduct and means of accountability. This paper argues that nonetheless the movements are traveling along parallel tracks and thus missing an opportunity for mutual learning that can improve their effectiveness. The BHR movement can look to B Corps for concrete (...) examples of viable companies that value human rights intrinsically and not just where there is a “business case” to do so. The B Impact Assessment, the B Corp certification tool, can better ensure that B Corps are in fact respecting human rights by adopting BHR standards. And both movements must give greater consideration to the potential contradiction between unlimited scaling—a key goal of B Corps—and the ability of large multinational corporations to respect human rights. (shrink)

At a time when nationalism is rising and support for democratic values is declining, this paper considers the role that businesses and corporations play in building and undermining social trust. It was published as part of the Future of the Corporation programme led by the British Academy.

This article seeks to contribute to the thinking of forms of corporateness, sociality and authority in the context of, but also beyond, neoliberalism, the neoliberal state and neoliberal accounts of the corporation. It considers neoliberalism in relation to the theological genealogies of modernity, politics and economy, and the way in which neoliberalism itself functions as a secular religion—one which intensifies liberal individualism and involves a blind faith in the market redefining all social interactions in terms of contract. I turn to (...) the theological genealogies of sovereignty and economy, and of the corporation, as a way of grounding a radical consideration of collectivity and sociality. For, while the rise of neoliberalism is associated with the growth of multi-national or trans-national corporations, the privatisation of state assets and the corporatisation of public institutions, each of these involve not a diminishing of the state or the project of state sovereignty but rather its reformulation, reaffirmation and intensification. The corporation, despite being redefined as the interaction of fundamentally self-willing and contracting individuals operating in the market, is still fundamentally intertwined with state sovereignty. Attempts to address or respond to corporate power need to go beyond calls for greater regulation of corporations, increased corporate social responsibility or even the desire to eliminate corporate personhood. Rather, what is required is a greater emphasis on the notion of corporateness that undergirds the theological genealogy of the corporation—for if neoliberalism functions as a religion then part of the solution may be a theological one. (shrink)

The constitutions of many nations have been explicitly or implicitly founded upon principles of the social contract derived from Thomas Hobbes. The Hobbesian egoism at the base of the contract fairly accurately represents the structure of market enterprise. A contractarian analysis may, then, allow for justified or rationally acceptable universal standards to which businesses should conform. This paper proposes general rational restrictions upon multi-national enterprises, and includes a critique of unjustified restrictions recently proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and (...) Development (OECD). I propose restrictions that may be tighter than the OECD and international law currently demand, because reason requires that the activities of enterprises accord with standards of environmental and governmental sustainability in addition to consortium, national law and international law agreements. I argue that it is justifiable that indictments may be presented by a citizen or a government against the local arm of a multinational enterprise in response to violations committed by an arm within a different country. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 70-72.

Interactions between corporations and nonprofits are on the rise, frequently driven by a corporate interest in establishing credentials for corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this article, we show how increasing demands for accountability directed at both businesses and NGOs can have the unintended effect of compromising the autonomy of nonprofits and fostering their co-optation. Greater scrutiny of NGO spending driven by self-appointed watchdogs of the nonprofit sector and a prevalence of strategic notions of CSR advanced by corporate actors weaken (...) the ability of civil society actors to change the business practices of their partners in the commercial sector. To counter this trend, we argue that corporations should embrace a political notion of CSR and should actively encourage NGOs to strengthen “downward accountability” mechanisms, even if this creates more tensions in corporate–NGO partnerships. Rather than seeing NGOs as tools in a competition for a comparative advantage in the market place, corporations should actively support NGO independence and critical capacity. (shrink)

Corporations wield power in today’s economies, and political theories of the corporation argue about the legitimacy conditions of corporate power. This paper argues in favour of a double-fiduciary theory for corporations. Based on a concession theory of markets, it sees all markets as authorized by states (in the name of society), for the purpose of creating economic value, or wealth. Hence corporations, as much as non-incorporated firms, have a fiduciary duty to the state/society to create wealth, in (...) the competitive structure of the market. However, their pursuit of wealth often creates unbalanced relations of power between corporations and their stakeholders, which can at some point be classified as instances of domination. Therefore, corporations need to be subjected to a second fiduciary duty, i.e. not to dominate others in the economy. This duty is also, in the final instance, owed to the state/society. In an era when everyone can incorporate their business, states/societies can be interpreted as having, through corporate law, mandated shareholders as ‘proximate beneficiaries’, to incentivize corporations to create wealth. Now states/societies need to think about how to prevent corporations from dominating others. New mechanisms of accountability towards stakeholders and/or citizens as proximate beneficiaries are needed. Only in this way can corporations be effectively held to account for both of the fiduciary duties which characterize their normative status. (shrink)