Reflections on Corporate Moral Responsibility and the Problem Solving Technique of Alexander the Great

Abstract

The academic debate over the propriety of attributing moral responsibility to corporations is decades old and ongoing. The conventional approach to this debate is to identify the sufficient conditions for moral agency and then attempt to determine whether corporations possess them. This article recommends abandoning the conventional approach in favor of an examination of the practical consequences of corporate moral responsibility. The article's thesis is that such an examination reveals that attributing moral responsibility to corporations is ethically acceptable only if it does not authorize the punishment of corporations as collective entities, and further, that this renders the debate over corporate moral responsibility virtually pointless.

Corporate character, corporate virtues

“…This debate is similar to that which has taken place over the contested nature of corporate moral agency (French ; Moore ; Velasquez ; Dubbink & Smith ; Hasnas ). Hasnas, in his review of the debate, argues that while corporations cannot be ontologically moral agents, the notion of corporate moral agency nonetheless ‘facilitates people's efforts to express moral condemnation of both the behavior of corporate employees and a corporation's ethical culture’ (Hasnas : 194). While we may well want to allow positive as well as negative features of a corporation's ethical culture, the point Hasnas makes is that using such terminology can ‘serve an important expressive function’ ( ibid .…”

Who's Responsible? (It's Complicated.) Assigning Blame in the Wake of the Financial Crisis

“…Just so, Acme can be blamed (and even punished) without the members being blamed (or punished) . The more careful critic, like John Hasnas (), makes a more practical point, drawing on the fact that many things that affect Acme will affect the members, even if the effects are not identical. In that case the concern may be that blaming or punishing Acme will negatively affect the members, even if it doesn't really blame or punish them.…”

“…In response, I note first that my concern in this article is exclusively with moral responsibility and blame—not with legal liability or penalties—and that the two are unrelated. Despite Hasnas's rather odd assertion that the only significance of corporate moral responsibility is that it makes corporations “liable to punishment, specifically criminal punishment” (, 188), “moral responsibility” is not an element of any crime, corporate or otherwise. So I restrict my analysis to the moral realm.…”

Moral Agency in Charities and Business Corporations: Exploring the Constraints of Law and Regulation

“…They add that even where some members are powerless to stop a group acting as it does, they may share in the group's responsibility 'to the extent that they… explicitly or implicitly endorse the group's actions' (ibid.). Hasnas (2012) considers the implications of such an argument for the criminal punishment of organisations and raises a legitimate objection. He clarifies that moral responsibility is a prerequisite for blame, and blame merits punishment: 'if corporations are morally responsible agents, then they are properly eligible for criminal punishment… ' (p. 190).…”