what according to james is a necessary condition for moral responsibility?

When business behaves badly, who is held morally responsible? The firm or the individual?

The post-financial crisis world is becoming a more than business-critical 1. In that location are unprecedented levels of scrutiny of large corporations and their actions and those who fall foul of the police face a more severe backfire than before.

This is breathing new life into the debate around corporate moral responsibleness and the extent to which business organisations tin can be correctly said to have moral responsibilities and obligations.  In philosophical terms, the question is posed as one of the "moral agency" of organisations.  Notwithstanding, in practice, we speak readily of BP "being responsible" for the Gulf of United mexican states oil spill—information technology is considered morally blameworthy—and deportment are taken against the company.  Under Anglo-American police force, at least, a corporation such as BP is considered a legal person, but is it a moral person?

It is often argued that merely private human beings can be morally responsible and that the deportment of a firm are those of its individual members.  Corporate moral agency raises the possibility that a corporation tin can be considered morally responsible and accountable for an action merely no individual person.  The contempo INSEAD-Wharton ideals conference, The Moral Responsibility of Firms: For or Confronting? brought together fresh perspectives and the latest ideas on this consequence.

Making the case for corporate moral responsibility

The commencement fix of speakers nosotros gathered were all proponents of corporate moral agency, but they approach the problem in dissimilar ways.  Peter French, the Lincoln Chair in Ideals, Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University and an early proponent writing over xxx years ago, argued that acts of individuals within a corporation go the intended acts of that corporation on the basis of a Corporate Internal Conclusion (CID) structure.  French shared his latest thinking on "corporate diachronic moral responsibleness"—responsibility over fourth dimension.  French asked: "Is BP today morally responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster of April 2010?" French offered two means of addressing the trouble, past looking at firm operational mechanisms and corporate self-narratives every bit indicators of agent sameness.  French noted that the moral responsibility of firms and individuals are not mutually exclusive; both BP and its managers can be morally responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Katsuhito Iwai, Distinguished Beau at The Tokyo Foundation, avant-garde his view of a "2-story" formulation of the corporation, according to which, corporations tin can be upstanding agents because they can be thought of as rational agents free to cull ethical ends in spite of shareholders' pursuit of profits.  Philip Pettit, the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human being Values at Princeton University, made his argument in support of corporate moral agency on the basis of five key claims, including the claim that the corporation is a "conversable agent".  The corporate group makes commitments via its words and by and large lives up to them and we hold corporations responsible if they don't go along to their word.  In his view, the corporation has a vox of its own, distinct if not dissimilar from those of its members.  Like French, Iwai and Pettit urged that we tin can and should hold both individuals and groups responsible, avoiding a potential responsibility deficit where just a group is held responsible and not the individuals involved.

Other speakers also advanced the case for corporate moral agency.  Michael Bratman, Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, Christian List, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the London Schoolhouse of Economics, Raimo Tuomela, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki and Geoffrey Hodgson, Research Professor of Concern Studies at Hertfordshire Business School, focused on intentionality.  Bratman extended his work on the shared agency of pocket-sized groups to propose it might also utilize to larger more circuitous organisations, such as firms.  For Bratman, shared intentions of a group and shared framework policies entailing commitment to activeness are sufficient conditions for group intention.  This understanding also gives rise to the possibility of "discontinuities", where there tin be group intentions that are not the shared intentions of the members of the group.

List observed that nosotros concord human being beings morally responsible considering they are intentional agents (in contrast to, say, an avalanche).  Nosotros can hold firms responsible where 3 jointly necessary and sufficient weather condition are found: one) Normatively significant option (possibility of doing something good or bad, right or incorrect); 2) Access to relevant information (the agent understands and has the evidence available to brand judgments about the options); 3) Control over the choice of option.  These conditions do not concur for all collectives (e.one thousand., crowds, stampedes).  Tuomela identified "we-style" groups as groups organised for activity on the basis of "we-thinking".  He differentiated between extrinsic and intrinsic intentionality, observing that even a we-mode group is not literally an agent (person) and thus cannot be responsible in terms of intrinsic intentionality considering it only has extrinsically intentional attitudes.  However, group responsibility may be something extrinsically attributed to groups and thus many organised groups can be regarded as morally responsible.  Hodgson argued in favour of accepting collective intentionality on the grounds that a firm is greater than the individuals who make it up.

Those opposed

Four speakers opposed to the thought of corporate moral agency, both on theoretical grounds and in light of its implications besides made their example.  30 years ago, Manny Velasquez, of Santa Clara University, in response to French, claimed that corporate acts practise not originate in the corporation only in the corporation'southward members.  He asserted that every organisational act is causally produced by its organisational members; drawing a parallel with a wind-up toy, he pointed to the winding-upwards of the toy as indicative of the private responsibility for the actions of the toy.  Citing the instance of misconduct at National Semiconductor, Velasquez made the case that it is important to turn down the idea of moral responsibility of organisations considering information technology lets individuals off the hook, innocent parties become punished, and it takes away the incentive for individuals not to again engage in misconduct.

Drawing on multiple examples, Ian Maitland, Professor of Strategic Direction and Entrepreneurship at the University of Minnesota, also asserted that the idea of corporate moral agency can give ascension to morally unacceptable outcomes, including the possibility of the officers of a house beingness unaccountable for its actions.  He ended that the anthropomorphism of the corporation does not humanise the corporation simply rather dehumanises individuals.  Co-ordinate to David Ronnegard, a visiting scholar at INSEAD, whose recent published piece of work builds on that of Velasquez, at the eye of the matter is whether a corporation can be morally responsible without whatsoever of its members beingness morally responsible.  In his view, autonomy debunks the thought of corporate moral agency because autonomy demands that we must be consciously aware of the choices we make and corporate structures (CIDs) are non aware of anything.

While John Hasnas, Associate Professor of Business concern at Georgetown University, accepts that corporate moral bureau might exist feasible theoretically, he argued that information technology but has practical significance as a means of authorising the punishment of corporations equally collective entities and he ended that this is not desirable.  Corporate moral agency is not necessary to punish individual wrongdoers within an system, to require an organisation to make restitution for the wrongdoing of its employees, to subject an organisation to administrative regulation, or to criticise an organisation.  In his view, it is impossible to punish a corporation; the punishment inevitably passes through to consumers, employees and shareholders.  To illustrate the unjustness of this approach, Hasnas points out that the Nazis operated on this principle in occupied France during the Second Globe War, by punishing innocent members of communities where sabotage was occurring to deter acts of resistance.

In response, various participants pointed out that these parties might not exist so innocent or should accept engaged in sufficient due diligence so as to avert being in the situation where they are punished for corporate misconduct (e.g., shareholders of banks punished for rigging LIBOR).

The unemotional corporation

Amy Sepinwall, Banana Professor, Section of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, contended that a capacity for emotion is necessary for knowing the difference betwixt right and wrong, thus arguing that corporations are non persons. Nevertheless, she then asserted that corporate personhood is a carmine herring and not necessary or sufficient for attending to the corporate rights or moral responsibility of firms; in her view, these are normative and political questions instead.  In a similar vein, Kendy Hess, Banana Professor of Ethics at Holy Cross, observed that the philosophical debate does not have to be resolved to address the important bug of corporate moral responsibility.  In contrast, even so, she questioned the assumption of human psychology as a necessary condition in determining corporate moral agency.  On a more than pragmatic level, she also highlighted the messiness of organisational decision-making, questioning the simplistic model of controlling individual decision-makers in organisations and noting the distributive determination-making often found in organisational contexts.  Richard De George, University Distinguished Professor at the Academy of Kansas, observed that the discipline of business ethics does non in fact need to reach a final determination on the question of corporate moral bureau as the police clearly accepts that corporations can be held responsible, whether legally or morally.

Other speakers looked beyond the direct question of whether there is moral responsibility of firms to related considerations. Waheed Hussain, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business organisation Ethics and of Philosophy at the Wharton School, offered a "normative functionalism" perspective, suggesting that treating corporations as independent agents serves a item function.  R. Edward Freeman of the Darden School of Business concern and University Professor at the University of Virginia, besides offered a meta-analytic perspective, remarking that the debate is framed by particular uses of linguistic communication and highlighting the fact that nigh business organization activeness is not that of large corporations.  Teemu Ruskola, Professor of Constabulary at Emory Police force, noted how treatment of the question of moral responsibility of firms is coloured by cultural differences in theories of the firm, distinguishing between Western liberal views, state socialism, and Chinese Confucianism.  While Ryan Burg, Banana Professor in the Faculty of Management at the University of Moscow, brought a monetary perspective to the question, asking the audition to imagine an economy that issued a traceable, reclaimable moral currency, in which morally questionable business actions would have less value than moral ones.  Finally, Nien-he Hsieh, Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, asked whether, if nosotros assume no corporate moral agency, we tin can appropriately ground the actions of a firm in individual agency.  He explored, by fashion of dissimilarity with the overriding emphasis on misconduct and punishment in earlier presentations, situations where there are positive outcomes, such as pharmaceutical companies providing access to essential medicines.

Individuals and firms responsible

Theoretically, a strong case can be made for the moral responsibility of firms.  However, this does not preclude individual moral responsibility for acts as a corporate member.  Moreover, it was besides evident that considerable concern exists about corporate misconduct going unsanctioned and the possibility that both proficient and bad corporate behaviour is greatly influenced past the extent to which individuals and corporate entities are held morally responsible.

N. Craig Smith is the INSEAD Chaired Professor of Ethics and Social Responsibility at INSEAD. The conference on The Moral Responsibility of Firms: For or Against? was sponsored past the INSEAD-Wharton Alliance, the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre, Dreyfus Banquiers, The Wharton Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership, The Wharton Legal Studies and Business Ethics Section and the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Centre for Business Ethics and Research at the Wharton Schoolhouse.

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Source: https://knowledge.insead.edu/responsibility/the-moral-responsibility-of-firms-for-or-against-3243

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