In a world characterised by intense global poverty, do active corporate efforts to help the global poor constitute discretionary acts of charity, to be praised but not to be thought of as mandatory? Or, conversely, are such efforts a matter of binding moral duty? The traditional position among business ethicists – and still, perhaps, the dominant one – is that there is no such duty, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances such as rescue cases. In recent years, however, several (...) authors have made the case that corporations have quite wide-ranging positive duties to the global poor. This entry outlines the contours of the various arguments given in favour of the latter position, before highlighting two theoretical challenges which arise if we are to embrace this position – first, the issue of determining what sorts of actions count as adequately fulfilling positive duties to the global poor, and, second, the question of what limits there are, if any, to the demandingness of corporations’ positive duties. (shrink)

Should we conceive of corporations as entities to which moral responsibility can be attributed? This contribution presents what we will call a political account of corporate moral responsibility. We argue that in modern, liberal democratic societies, there is an underlying political need to attribute greater levels of moral responsibility to corporations. Corporate moral responsibility is essential to the maintenance of social coordination that both advances social welfare and protects citizens' moral entitlements. This political (...) account posits a special capacity of self-governance that corporations can intelligibly be said to possess. Corporations can be said to be "administrators of duty" in that they can voluntarily incorporate moral principles into their decision-making processes about how to conduct business. This account supplements and partly transforms earlier pragmatic accounts of corporate moral responsibility by disentangling responsibility from its conventional linkages with accountability, blame and punishment. It thereby represents a distinctive way to defend corporate moral responsibility and shows how Kantian thinking can be helpful in disentangling the problems surrounding the concept. (shrink)

In both the literature and practice, it has been advocated that companies should have a profit cap. Utilizing corporate social contract theory, this article posits that under at least three conditions, companies do not have a general moral duty to cap their profits. These conditions entail that a company adheres to the contracting principles of its stakeholder relationships, that the constitutive stakeholders of the company have not otherwise stipulated in the corporate social contract, and that the macrosocial (...) contract does not prescribe otherwise to the company. The first two conditions are company-specific and hence do not constitute a generic moral imperative, and there is currently insufficient evidence for the third, generic condition. (shrink)

The damaging and harmful effects of the activities of some corporations on the consumers, employees, and natural environment, have given rise to the need to subject corporate policies, decisions, and actions to a moral evaluation. But due to the peculiar nature of the corporation, being a collective and a legal creation engaged in the activity of business, such evaluation has become a controversial matter, at least among philosophers. This controversy can be formulated as a question of whether corporations (...) have certain moral obligations which are over and above their legal and economic duties. Among the various ways of approaching this question, I focus on two general ones. The first concerns the ethical nature of corporate acts. Here I show why the business nature of corporate acts is no reason to exempt corporations from having moral obligations. The second concerns the moral status of corporations. Here I show why it remains meaningful to regard corporations as moral agents and thus as appropriate bearers of moral obligations. On the whole, I therefore argue for the view that corporations have moral obligations of their own. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory usually focuses on the moral responsibility of corporations towards their stakeholders. This article takes the reverse perspective to shed light on the moral responsibility of stakeholders—specifically, investors or 'financiers'. It explicates a distinction between two types of financiers, creditors and shareholders. Many intuitively judge that shareholders have greater or more extensive moral responsibility for the actions of the corporations they invest in than do bondholders and other creditors. Examining the merits of possible arguments for or (...) against treating owners and creditors differently elucidates which arguments can support the moral duties of investors generally, and different duties for different groups of investors specifically. The paper considers three possible lines of arguments, rooting investors' responsibility, respectively, in how they enable corporate conduct, how they benefit from it, and to what extent they are complicit in it. The paper argues that a notion of complicity is the only tenable ground for holding investors liable; sketches an account of complicity based on the recent philosophical literature on collective intention and collective action; and concludes that shareholders but not creditors can generally be seen as complicit on this account. (shrink)

Recent years have heralded increasing attention to the role of multinational corporations in regard to human rights violations. The concept of complicity has been of particular interest in this regard. This article explores the conceptual differences between silent complicity in particular and other, more "conventional" forms of complicity. Despite their far-reaching normative implications, these differences are often overlooked.Rather than being connected to specific actions as is the case for other forms of complicity, the concept of silent complicity is tied to (...) the identity, or the moral stature of the accomplice. More specifically, it helps us expose multinational corporations in positions of political authority. Political authority breeds political responsibility.Thus, corporate responsibility in regard to human rights may go beyond "doing no harm" and include apositive obligation to protect. Making sense of this duty leads to a discussion of the scope and limits of legitimate human rights advocacy by corporations. (shrink)

In latter-day discussions on corporate morality, duties of commission are fiercely debated. Moral institutionalists argue that duties of commission—such as a duty of assistance—overstep the boundaries of moral duty owed by economic agents. " Moral institutionalism" is a newly coined term for a familiar position on market morality. It maintains that market morality ought to be restricted, excluding all duties of commission. Neo-Classical thinkers such as Baumol and Homann defend it most eloquently. They (...) underpin their position with concerns that go to the core of liberalism—the dominant western political theory that sustains the ideals of both the free market and the free, rational person. Those authors claim that liberalism calls for a fully differentiated market because it resents the politicization of the market. Fully differentiated markets exclude duties of commission. They also claim that full differentiation of the market closes the troublesome gap between moral motivation and moral virtue. Full differentiation redeems the promise of "easy virtue". In this paper moral institutionalism will be rejected from a Kantian point of view, mostly inspired by Herman's thesis on the invisibility of morality. Liberalism may perhaps ban the politicization of the market; it does not forbid its moralization. The idea of a fully differentiated market must also be rejected because it is either morally over-demanding (to the morally autonomous person) or morally hazardous (to the person with failing moral motivation). Contrary to what the moral institutionalists claim, right action, morally, is actually quite difficult in fully differentiated markets. (shrink)

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, corporations have faced a crisis of trust, with growing sentiment against ‘elites and ‘big business’ and a feeling that ‘something ought to be done’ to re-establish public regard for corporations. Trust and trustworthiness are deeply moral significant. They provide the ‘glue or lubricant’ that begets reciprocity, decreases risk, secures dignity and respect, and safeguards against the subordination of the powerless to the powerful. However, in deciding how to restore trust, it is difficult (...) to determine precisely what should be done, by whom, and who will bear the cost, especially if any action involves a risk to overall market efficiency and corporate profitability. The paper explores whether corporations have a moral duty to be trustworthy, to bear the cost of being so and thus contribute to resolving the current crisis of trust. It also considers where the state and other social actors have strong reason to protect and enforce such moral rights, while acknowledging that other actors have similar obligations to be trustworthy. It outlines five ‘salient factors’ that trigger specific rights to trustworthiness and a concomitant duty on corporations to be trustworthy: market power, subordination (threat and intimidation), the absence of choice, the need to preserve systemic trust, and corporate political power which might undermine a state’s legitimacy. Absent these factors and corporations do not have a general duty to be trustworthy, since a responsible actor in fair market conditions should be able to choose between the costs and benefits of dealing with generally trustworthy corporations. (shrink)

Nonprofit organizations play a crucial role in society. Unfortunately, many such organizations are chronically underfunded and struggle to meet their objectives. These facts have significant implications for corporate philanthropy and Kant’s notion of imperfect duties. Under the concept of imperfect duties, businesses would have wide discretion regarding which charities receive donations, how much money to give, and when such donations take place. A perceived problem with imperfect duties is that they can lead to moral laxity; (...) that is, a failure on the part of businesses to fulfill their financial obligations to nonprofit organizations. This article argues the problem of moral laxity rests on a misinterpretation of Kantian ethics and, therefore, is really not a problem at all. As such, we argue corporate philanthropy while an imperfect duty should be interpreted more akin to perfect duties and, as a consequence, moral laxity does not arise for those corporations committed to acting on the basis of the moral law. More specifically, firms have duty-based obligations on the basis of benevolence, and as good corporate citizens, to help fund non-profit organizations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human (...) rights abuses. This is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

Corporations are moral persons to the extent that they have rights and duties, but their moral personality is severely limited. As artificial persons, they lack the emotional make-up that allows natural persons to show virtues and vices. That fact, taken with the representative function of management, places significant limitations on what constitutes ethical behavior by management. A common misunderstanding of those limitations can lead ethical managers to behave unethically and can lead the public to have improper expectations (...) of corporations. (shrink)

According to some collectivists, purposive groups that lack decision-making procedures such as riot mobs, friends walking together, or the pro-life lobby can be morally responsible and have moral duties. I focus on plural subject- and we-mode-collectivism. I argue that purposive groups do not qualify as duty-bearers even if they qualify as agents on either view. To qualify as a duty-bearer, an agent must be morally competent. I develop the Update Argument. An agent is morally competent only if the (...) agent has sufficient positive and negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. Positive control involves the general ability to update one’s goal-seeking states, whereas negative control involves the absence of other agents with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with updating one’s goal-seeking states. I argue that even if purposive groups qualify as plural subjects or we-mode group agents, these groups necessarily lack negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. This creates a cut-off point for groups as duty-bearers: Organized groups may qualify as duty-bearers, whereas purposive groups cannot qualify as duty-bearers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In a series of reports the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations has emphasized a tripartite framework regarding business and human rights that includes the state “duty to protect,” the TNC “responsibility to respect,” and “appropriate remedies” for human rights violations. This article examines the recent history of UN initiatives regarding business and human rights and places the tripartite framework in historical context. Three approaches to human rights are distinguished: moral, political, and (...) legal. It is argued that the tripartite framework’s grounding of the responsibility of TNCs to respect human rights is properly understood as moral and not merely as a political or legal duty. A moral account of the duty of TNCs to respect basic human rights is defended and contrasted with a merely strategic approach. The main conclusion of the article is that only a moral account of the basic human rights duties of TNCs provides a sufficiently deep justification of “the corporate responsibility to respect human rights” feature of the tripartite framework. (shrink)

Human rights imply duties. The question is, duties for whom? Without a well-defined scheme for assigning duties correlative to human rights, these rights remain illusory. This paper develops core elements of a general scheme of duty assignment and studies the implications for corporations. A key distinction in such an assignment is between unconditional and conditional duties. Unconditional duties apply to every agent regardless of the conduct of others. Conditional duties reflect a division of (...) class='Hi'>moral labour where different tasks are assigned to specific agents, whose default activates back-up duties of other agents. Corporations face unconditional duties to not directly violate the rights of others, and not undermine the division of moral labour through practices such as tax evasion or corruption. Being unconditional, these duties cannot be deviated from by reference to the misconduct of competitors. In addition, corporate conditional duties to protect, promote or fulfil rights can be activated if the state and other designated duty-bearers fail to discharge their duties. (shrink)

In the wake of Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission, more companies are spending heavily on political speech, but the moral implications of doing so are not clear. Few business ethicists have directly addressed the moral legitimacy of corporate political speech and the conditions under which it may be morally permissible. My goal here is to outline the moral hazards associated with engaging in corporate political speech. I argue that whether one takes a narrow (...) Friedman-style shareholder primacy view of managerial duty, a broader stakeholder view, or an even more wide-ranging political corporate social responsibility view of the moral duties of business, various moral hazards must be taken into account in determining the moral legitimacy of corporate political speech. I discuss a number of moral hazards endemic to corporate political speech and suggest ways in which business practitioners might avoid those moral hazards. (shrink)

This paper argues that economic agents, including corporations, have the duty to further justice, not just a duty merely to comply with laws and do their share. The duty to further justice is the requirement to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist in society. The paper is grounded in liberal theory and draws heavily on one liberal theorist, Kant. We show that the duty to further justice must be interpreted as a duty of virtue (...) that is owed. This means that the duty is not enforceable but that violating this duty is still wrong and not merely non-virtuous. Our analysis has consequences for the morality of commercial life. It is often suggested that the morality of the market is a special, restricted morality that is leaner than the morality that agents must acknowledge outside the market. If our analysis is correct, the duty to further justice cannot be exempted from market morality, even if it is agreed that this must be leaner than the morality outside commercial life. Our analysis also has direct consequences for John Ruggie’s view on the responsibilities of businesses. Ruggie has never explicitly acknowledged a duty on the part of business enterprises to further justice. If our analysis is correct, his view is contradictory in that it presupposes the normative validity of free market enterprise yet shrinks from taking into account the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

In the canonical view of the corporation, management is the agent of the owners of the corporation-the stockholders-and, as such, has a fiduciary duty to manage the corporation in their best interests. Most business ethicists condemn this arrangement as morally indefensible because it fails to respect the right of other corporate constituencies or “stakeholders” to self-deterrnination. By contrast, the modern agency theory of the firm provides a defense of this arrangement on the grounds that it is the result of (...) stakeholders’ right to self-determination. This paper uses the exarnple of managers’ fiduciary duty to stockholders to argue that different normative judgrnents often mask empirical disagreements. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In an era when the public and shareholders increasingly demand greater accountability from institutions for racial injustice and slavery, scholarship on corporate reparations is more and more essential. This article argues that corporations have played a significant role in the cultural dehumanization of Blackness and therefore have a particular responsibility to make repair. Cultural dehumanization refers to embedding anti-Blackness into US culture in service of capitalist profit accumulation, which has resulted in status and material inequalities between Blacks and whites (...) that have persisted from slavery to the present. More specifically, the article argues corporations have a moral duty to offer reparations to Black Americans regardless of any redress offered by other perpetrators of anti-Blackness. It appeals to tort law in providing a moral justification for corporate reparations to Black Americans. (shrink)

This paper aims, firstly, to bridge debates on human rights and Transnational Corporations within practical philosophy and those within the business and human rights literature and, secondly, to determine the extent to which human rights duties can be assigned to TNCs. To justifiably assign human rights duties to TNCs, it is argued that these duties need to be grounded in moral theory. Through assessment of two approaches from practical philosophy, it is argued that positive duties (...) cannot be assigned to TNCs because their bindingness cannot be grounded in moral theory. A positive argument is introduced to interpret TNCs’ human rights duties as corresponding to virtues rather than rights. Though such duties are indeterminate regarding what constitutes adequate performance, they can be made more determinate through legal instruments outside of positive human rights law. An approach is introduced exemplifying how such approaches can achieve the end of TNCs compliance with human rights norms. (shrink)

For the past half century, there has been a large controversy within academic business ethics, in legal scholarship, and in the larger public about the role that corporations should have in addressing social injustices. Do corporations have a moral obligation to conduct business in a way that reduces poverty, racial inequality, other unjust economic and social inequalities, and unjust threats to the environment? Or should for-profit corporations focus on making money and leave solutions of these social problems to governments, (...) nonprofit organizations, and private individuals? -/- There are related but distinct controversies about corporations’ moral duties of transactional and relational justice. One important question is whether financial agreements or employment contracts can be wrongfully exploitative despite being fully consensual and beneficial to all parties. This question is distinct from the question whether corporations have a duty to promote distributive justice. Transactional unfairness is arguably possible in society with a just economic system, and fair transactions are presumably possible in a society with an unjust distribution. There are also important questions about the extent of firms’ moral obligation to avoid pollution, to refrain from discrimination, to treat employees fairly, and to respect the democratic process. These moral obligations may require more than obeying the relevant law. (shrink)

Most business ethicists maintain that corporate actors are subject to a variety of moral obligations. However, there is a persistent and underappreciated concern that the competitive pressures of the market somehow provide corporate actors with a far-reaching excuse from meeting these obligations. Here, we assess this concern. Blending resources from the history of philosophy and strategic management, we demonstrate the assumptions required for and limits of this excuse. Applying the idea of ‘the state of nature’ from Thomas (...) Hobbes, we suggest that corporate actors would be excused from duties if complying with them threatened their vital interests. We show how this excuse is not available for most individuals within firms; instead, it is an excuse perhaps available to firms themselves, but only given substantive assumptions about corporate personhood. For those willing to make these assumptions, we apply the competitive advantage construct to delimit the scope of this excuse. We suggest that firms are excused from fulfilling an obligation when complying leads to a competitive disadvantage, as this imperils the firm’s vital interests. After revealing why this excuse does not generalize, we conclude by considering when we should reform the market to avoid the legitimacy of this excuse. (shrink)

This book argues that justice often governs apologies. Drawing on examples from literature, politics, and current events, Cohen presents a theory of apology as corrective offers. Many leading accounts of apology say much about what apologies do and why they are important. They stop short of exploring whether and how justice governs apologies. Cohen argues that corrective justice may require apologies as offers of reparation. Individuals, corporations, and states may then have rights or duties regarding apology. Exercising rights to (...) apology or fulfilling duties to provide them are ways of holding one another mutually accountable. By casting rights and duties of apology as justifiable to free and equal persons, the book advances conversations about how liberalism may respond to historic injustice. Apologies and Moral Repair will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in ethics, political philosophy, and social philosophy. (shrink)

The damaging effects of the activities of corporations on the natural environment have given rise to the need to evaluate corporate policies, decisions, and actions affecting the natural environment on moral grounds. There are two important questions that need to be addressed in this regard. The first is whether corporations have a moral obligation to protect the natural environment, which is over and above their economic duty to maximize profits for their stockholders and their legal duty to (...) obey environmental laws. And the second is, given that they do have this moral obligation, what sort of environmental ethical theory (homocentrism, biocentrism, utilitarianism) ought to guide the exercise of such an obligation? This paper argues that corporations do have such moral obligations, for they are moral agents in virtue of their nonmetaphorical possession of rational capacities. This, however, implies that the corporations’ exercise of this obligation can only be properly guided by a rationalist type of ethics. (shrink)

For years business ethics has limited the moral duties of enterprises to negative duties. Over the last decade it has been argued that positive duties also befall commercial agents, at least when confronted with large scale public problems and when governments fail. The argument that enterprises have positive duties is often grounded in the political nature of commercial life. It is argued that agents must sometimes take over governmental responsibilities. The German republican tradition argues along (...) these lines as does Nien-Hé Hsieh. Agents in commercial life are bound by positive duties because at some point they become citizens that must take on the responsibilities of the state. In this paper we leave undisputed the claim that corporations must acknowledge positive duties. However, we demonstrate that the political grounding fails, at least in the sense that this theory insufficiently acknowledges a long standing liberal tradition that vindicates apolitical markets and clear borderlines between politics and economics. We carve out an alternative route to the grounding of one specific positive duty—the duty to further justice. Our argument is based on the moral nature of commercial agents and tries to demonstrate that the duty to further justice ensues from liberalism. Taking a Kantian perspective, it conceptualizes the duty to further justice as a moral duty, orientated toward the political domain. It is grounded in the obligation to attain moral autonomy in the civil condition. (shrink)

It is widely thought that firms that employ workers in “sweatshop” conditions wrongfully exploit those workers. This claim has been challenged by those who argue that because companies are not obligated to hire their workers in the first place, employing them cannot be wrong so long as they voluntarily accept their jobs and genuinely benefit from them. In this article, I argue that we can maintain that at least many sweatshop employees are wrongfully exploited, while accepting the plausible claim at (...) the core of many defenses of sweatshops, namely that engaging in a voluntary and mutually beneficial transaction with a person in need cannot constitute morally worse treatment of that person than doing nothing at all to benefit her. We can do this, I claim, by accepting that wealthy multinational corporations have positive duties to employ or otherwise benefit the global poor. I argue that these duties can be plausibly grounded in the fact that potential sweatshop workers are victims of global structural injustice, from which multinational corporations typically benefit. (shrink)

The decline of empirical research on ethical decision-making based on ethical theories might imply a tacit consensus has been reached. However, the exclusion of virtue ethics, one of the three main normative ethical theories, from this stream of literature calls this potential consensus into question. This article investigates the role of all three normative ethical theories—deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics—in ethical decision-making of corporate executives. It uses virtue ethics as a dependent variable thus studying the interconnectivity of all three (...) normative ethical theories in specific circumstances. We find that managers use different ethical theories in different circumstances (business vs. private life, formal vs informal ethical leadership, etc.). A predictive model of ethical decision-making, however, cannot be established. We also find that only a limited number of variables influence the choice of ethical theory, which leans business ethics towards postmodern management paradigm. We suggest that moral pragmatism could provide the answer to ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity impliesthat corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights (...) abuses. This is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

In this article I will look into Corporate Legal Responsibility taking into account Levinas’s notion of infinite responsibility, as well as his understanding of ethical language. My account of Levinas’s philosophy will show that it challenges – breaking down – deeply entrenched distinctions in the dominant strands of moral philosophy, within which the theory of individual responsibility is embedded, such as between:(1) duty to others on the one hand and supererogation on the other; (2) perfect duty to others (...) on the one hand and imperfect duties to others on the other; (3) insiders and outsiders; kith and kin on the one hand and strangers on the other; Levinas’s moral vision is an inclusive one which embraces all of humanity (at least of those present today) irrespective of historical, linguistic, cultural differences and diversities. In other words, each has responsibilities for and duties towards all others. Of course, one might say that there is nothing new about a universalising ethics – after all Kantianism, liberalism as well as utilitarianism are well known instances. However, more crucially, all these traditional moral philosophies uphold the theory of individual responsibility, which is rooted in the philosophy of individualism. Such a philosophy can make sense only of the concept of individual moral/legal agency but not corporate agency. Therefore, in this article I will attempt to show that the Levinasian vision is able to help us change our view with respect to corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Are corporations ever morally obligated to engage in counterspeech—that is, in speech that aims to counter hate speech and misinformation? While existing arguments in moral and political philosophy show that individuals and states have such obligations, it is an open question whether those arguments apply to corporations as well. In this essay, I show how two such arguments—one based on avoiding complicity, and one based on duties of rescue—can plausibly be extended to corporations. I also respond to several (...) objections to corporate counterspeech. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe responsibility of the food and beverage industry for noncommunicable diseases is a controversial topic. Public health scholars identify the food and beverage industry as one of the main contributors to the rise of these diseases. We argue that aside from moral duties like not doing harm and respecting consumer autonomy, the food industry also has a responsibility for addressing the structural injustices involved in food-related health problems. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young, this article first (...) shows how food-related public health problems can be understood as structural injustices. Second, it makes clear how the industry is sustaining these health injustices, and that due to this connection, corporate actors share responsibility for addressing food-related health problems. Finally, three criteria are discussed as grounds for attributing responsibility, allowing for further specification on what taking responsibility for food-related health problems can entail in corporate practice. (shrink)

The employment of foreign workers is one of the most crucial problems today in the domain of work relations. Absorbing workersfrom abroad poses serious questions concerning the moral obligations of the employers as well as the government authorities in the migrantreceiving country. Unfortunately, the moral dilemmas of foreign labor have been largely neglected by business ethics researchers. This paper develops a conceptual framework based on the multinational corporation (MNC) ethical research to help examine the moral obligations of (...) employers and states toward foreign workers, as opposed to citizens. The main argument is that domestic employers, who have the power to affect crucial aspects in the lives of migrant workers, incur obligations to these people and bear moral responsibility for their subsistence. As regards the host country in a universal social order based on the existence of nation-states, the employment of foreign workers poses a genuine ethical dilemma between two valid moral duties: the duty to improve the welfare of nationals and the duty to promote the interests of everyone, regardless of their nationality. (shrink)

Corporate Strategy has emerged as a central metaphor for private-sector enterprise. Given inherent imperfections in markets, one important question to consider is how well the practice of Corporate Strategy contributes to social welfare. An account of the implicit morality of free markets is developed as a standard against which two particular, second best solutions to market imperfections — namely, American federal antitrust policy and Corporate Strategy — are compared. Corporate Strategy is subsequently evaluated in terms of (...) the fundamental principles of Rawls' theory of justice. In both analyses, Corporate Strategy is found to depart significantly and systematically from the standards of social justice. An alternative principle, grounded in the concept of duty, is introduced as a means for reconceptualizing Corporate Strategy. (shrink)

Although the literature on organizational justice enactment is becoming richer, our understanding of the role of the deontic justice motive remains limited. In this article, we review and discuss theoretical approaches to and evidence of the deontic justice motive and deontic justice enactment. While the prevalent understanding of deontic justice enactment focuses on compliance, we argue that this conceptualization is insufficient to explain behaviors that go beyond the call of duty. We thus consider two further forms of deontic behavior: humanistic (...) and supererogatory behavior. Drawing on the concepts of situation strength and person strength, we further argue that the reduced variance in behavior across morally challenging situations makes deontic justice enactment visible. We thus observe deontic justice enactment when an actor’s deontic justice motive collides with strong situational cues or constraints that guide the actor to behave differently. We formulate propositions and develop a theoretical model that links the deontic justice motive to moral maturation and deontic justice enactment. (shrink)

The ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ (Principles) that provide guidance for the implementation of the United Nations’ ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework (Framework) will probably succeed in making human rights matters more customary in corporate management procedures. They are likely to contribute to higher levels of accountability and awareness within corporations in respect of the negative impact of business activities on human rights. However, we identify tensions between the idea that the respect of human rights is a (...) perfect moral duty for corporations and the Principle’s ‘human rights due diligence’ requirement. We argue that the effectiveness of the ‘human rights due diligence’ is in many respects dependent upon the moral commitment of corporations. The Principles leave room for an instrumental or strategic implementation of due diligence, which in some cases could result in a depreciation of the fundamental norms they seek to promote. We reveal some limits of pragmatic approaches to coping with business-related human rights abuses. As these limits become more apparent, not only does the case for further progress in international and extraterritorial human rights law become more compelling, but so too does the argument for a more forceful discussion on the moral foundations of human rights duties for corporations. (shrink)

Without doubt, the global challenges we are currently facing—above all world poverty and climate change—require collective solutions: states, national and international organizations, firms and business corporations as well as individuals must work together in order to remedy these problems. In this chapter, I discuss climate change mitigation as a collective action problem from the perspective of moral philosophy. In particular, I address and refute three arguments suggesting that business firms and corporations have no moral duty to reduce greenhouse (...) gas emissions: (i) that business corporations are not appropriate addressees of moral demands because they are not moral agents, and (ii) that to the extent that they are moral agents their primary moral obligation is to their owners or shareholders, and (iii) the appeal to the difference principle: that individual business corporations cannot really make a significant difference to successful climate change mitigation. (shrink)

There is good reason to think that moral responsibility as accountability is tied to the violation of moral demands. This lends intuitive support to Type-Symmetry in the collective realm: A type of responsibility entails the violation or unfulfillment of the same type of all-things-considered duty. For example, collective responsibility necessarily entails the violation of a collective duty. But Type-Symmetry is false. In this paper I argue that a non-agential group can be collectively responsible without thereby violating a collective (...) duty. To show this I distinguish between four types of responsibility and duty in collective contexts: corporate, distributed, collective, shared. I set out two cases: one involves a non-reductive collective action that constitutes irreducible wrongdoing, the other involves a non-divisible consequence. I show that the violation of individual or shared duties both can lead to irreducible wrongdoing for which only the group is responsible. Finally, I explain why this conclusion does not upset any work on individual responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I specifically consider the issue of corporate governance and normative stakeholder theory. In doing so, I arguethat stakeholder theory and responsibilities to non-shareholder constituencies can be made more intelligible by reference to Kant’sconception of perfect and imperfect duties. I draw upon Onora O’Neill’s (1996) work, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructivist Account of Practical Reasoning. In her text O’Neill underlines a number of relevant issues including: the integration of particularist and universalist accounts of morality; the (...) priority of obligations over rights; the importance of the distinction between imperfect and perfect duties; and the relation between the virtues and imperfect duties. On the basis of the foregoing analysis, the paper argues that business ethicists should avoid recommending the institutionalising of stakeholder responsibilities in terms of legally defined sets of stakeholder rights. Instead, we should regard stakeholder responsibilities as uniformalised imperfect duties. Conceiving responsibilities to all stakeholder groups in this manner, allows the firm the freedom to perfect these duties in ways appropriate to cultural and societal setting, and in accordance with the capacity to do so. (shrink)

This article draws on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to explore whether a corporate ‘duty of beneficence’ to non-shareholders is consistent with the orthodox ‘shareholder theory’ of the firm. It examines the ethical framework of Milton Friedman’s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well-being of non-shareholders as a corporate objective. The article examines Kant’s distinction between ‘duties of right’ and ‘duties of virtue’ (the latter including the duty of beneficence) and investigates (...) their consistency with the shareholder theory. The article concludes that it is possible within the ethical framework of shareholder theory for managers to pursue directly the happiness of non-shareholders. Furthermore, shareholders have a duty to hold management to account for the moral consequences of the firm’s activities on non-shareholding stakeholders. (shrink)

This paper identifies six basic languages of morals and shows that while in general it is impossible to say that one moral language is better, some languages are better for the purpose of characterizing international corporate responsibility. In particular, moral languages that imly minimum rather than perfectionist standards of behavior, and which are not overly dependent on analogy with human moral psychology, are better than ones ranging broadly over both minimum and maximum standards and requiring analogy (...) to human beings. Languages based in rights and duties, avoidance of harm, and social contracts, are better for understanding international corporate ethics than ones based in virtues, self control, or the maximization of human happiness. (shrink)

This paper discusses the vast continuum between the letter of the law (legality) and the spirit of the law (ethics or morality). Further, the authors review the fiduciary duties owed by the firm to its various publics. These aspects must be considered in developing a corporate code of ethics. The underlying qualitative characteristics of a code include clarity, comprehensiveness and enforceability. While ethics is indigenous to a society, every code of ethics will necessarily reflect the corporate culture (...) from which that code stems and be responsive to the innumerable situations for which it was created. Several examples have been provided to illustrate the ease of applicability of these concepts. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with price gouging? Its defenders argue that it increases supply of scarce necessities; critics argue that it is exploitative, inequitable and vicious. In this paper, I argue for its moral wrongness and legal prohibition, without relying on charges of exploitation, inequity or poor character. What is fundamentally wrong with price gouging is that it violates a duty of easy rescue. While legal enforcement of such duties is controversial, a special case can be made (...) for their legal enforcement in this context. This account distinguishes, morally, price gouging by corporations from that of individual entrepreneurs. (shrink)

Censorship in the area of public health has become increasingly important in many parts of the world for a number of reasons. Groups with vested interest in public health policy are motivated to censor material. As governments, corporations, and organizations champion competing visions of public health issues, the more incentive there may be to censor. This is true in a number of circumstances: curtailing access to information regarding the health and welfare of soldiers in the Kuwait and Iraq wars, poor (...) health conditions in Aboriginal communities, downplaying epidemics to bolster economies, and so forth. This paper will look at the use of a computer worm (the benevolent health worm) to disseminate vital information in␣situations where public health is threatened by government censorship and where there is great risk for those who ‹speak out’. The discussion of the benevolent health worm is focused on the Peoples’ Republic of China (China) drawing on three public health crises: HIV/AIDS, SARS and Avian Influenza. Ethical issues are examined first in a general fashion and then in a specific manner which uses the duty-based moral philosophy of Confucianism and a Western human rights-based analysis. Technical, political and legal issues will also be examined to the extent that they better inform the ethical debate. (shrink)

A corporate executive is miserable and seeks the help of a psychotherapist. A college student is unhappy in her current major and goes to her academic advisor. A married couple struggles with discord and seeks the help of a licensed counsellor. In each case, the diagnosis and prescription will likely be the same: you are miserable because you are not doing what you want. Your path to happiness thus lies in figuring out what you enjoy doing, coming up with (...) a strategy to satisfy these desires, and then executing your plan. This is the standard approach to happiness used in much of today's counselling and psychotherapeutic practice. The Socratic, Stoic, and Confucian philosophical traditions tell a different story: you are miserable because you are not doing what you must. Through historical and contemporary case studies, analyses of key novels, reviews of modern psychological research, interviews with struggling people, and close readings of philosophical texts, The Joy of Duty illuminates the intimate connection between human joy and the performance of ethical obligation. (shrink)

Family firm philanthropy (FFP) is the donation of resources to support societal betterment in ways meaningful for the controlling family. Family business literature suggests that socioemotional goals of achieving family prominence, harmony, and continuity drive FFP. However, these drivers fail to explain spiritually motivated philanthropic behaviors like anonymous giving by business families. 14 case studies of Indian Hindu business families with a combined FFP exceeding 2 billion INR in 2016–17 reveal spirituality or the moral dimension as an additional important (...) driver of corporate behaviors like FFP. Two fundamental spiritual beliefs of dharma (duty towards society) and karma (right to action without expectation of rewards) instill a duty-bound giving culture in Hindus. However, the strength of each belief varies in controlling families revealing four configurations of philanthropists labeled as Devout, Committed, Devoid, and Coerced in this study. Devouts, the biggest givers, are spiritually motivated, controlled by at least third-generation family members with executive power and professional support. Committed philanthropists are motivated by societal development rather than spirituality. While devoids hold spiritual beliefs, they neglect to devote appropriate resources or develop professional structures to support FFP. Coerced, the smallest givers, focus on business growth, lack family champions or supporting professional structures, and face turbulent family or business domains. (shrink)

The virtue of moral psychology is that it emphasizes what is most human in business, as opposed to the more bloodless conceptsof “obligation,” “duty,” “responsibility” and rights.” The heart of moral psychology is to be found in such concrete phenomena as fear, love, affection, antipathy, loyalty, jealousy, anger, resentment, avarice, ambition, pride, and cowardice. In this essay, I want to explore two of the core virtues of the corporation, conceived of as a community, the “sentiments” of care and (...) compassion. These were taken to be the very core of ethics by Adam Smith. I want to distinguish care and compassion from each other and both from the more principled and rule-bound conceptions of ethics that still dominate philosophy. (shrink)

Learning to address moral dilemmas is important for participants on courses in business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). While modern, rule-based ethical theory often provides the normative input here, this has faced criticism in its application. In response, post-modern and Aristotelian perspectives have found favour. This paper follows a similar line, presenting an approach based initially on a critical interpretation of Ross's theory of prima facie duties, which emphasises moral judgement in actual situations. However, the (...) retention of a modern element is suggested, with an invitation to hypothetically universalise detailed proposals for action, following Hare. This further step may reassure students/managers who seek additional closure in their decision-making. Some pedagogical implications are also briefly raised regarding the use of case material and the need to recognise questions of social interaction and personal character as features of dilemma resolution in actual organisational contexts. (shrink)

Neoliberal globalization has not yielded the results it promised; global inequality has risen, poverty and hunger are still prevailing in large parts of this world. If this devastating situation shall be improved, economists must talk less about economic growth and more about people's rights. The use of the language of rights will be key for making the economy work more in favor of the least advantaged in this world. Not only will it provide us with the vocabulary necessary to reframe (...) such pressing global problems and to find adequate economic solutions; it will also deliver the basis for deriving according duties and duty-bearers - the language of rights is congruent with the language of justice and as such it is inevitably and at the same time the language of obligations. The language of obligations exposes the multinational corporation as one of the main agents of justice in the global economy. Taking distributive justice as a starting point for reflection, a consistent derivation of the multinational's moral obligations must focus on capabilities rather than on causality. This will lead to a shift from merely passive to active duties and accordingly to a stronger emphasis on the corporation's contribution to the realization of positive rights. (shrink)