Rethinking Corporate Agency in Business, Philosophy, and Law

Abstract

While researchers in business ethics, moral philosophy and jurisprudence have advanced the study of corporate agency, there have been very few attempts to bring together insights from these and other disciplines in the pages of the Journal of Business Ethics. By introducing to an audience of business ethics scholars the work of outstanding authors working outside the field this interdisciplinary special issue addresses this lacuna. Its aim is to encourage the formulation of innovative arguments that reinvigorate the study of corporate agency and stimulate further cross-fertilization of ideas between business ethics, law, philosophy and other disciplines.

Students reflect on the role of ethics in business management

“…Will companies be allowed to collect and use information and data utilizing algorithms and AI without consent or knowledge, what are the legal and ethical implications? (Fernando, 2018; Mansel et al , 2018).…”

Ethics and Banking: Do Banks Divest Their Kind?

“…We develop our divestment hypotheses based on Immanuel Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals or Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Kant 1785). We recognize the ongoing debate among business ethicists and moral philosophers on whether corporations can be considered moral agents (corporate personhood) and, therefore, be subject to Kantian ethics (e.g., Altman 2007;Barry et al 2019;Bowie 2017;Mansell et al 2019). Following studies that apply Kantian ethics to firm-level actions as a group of maxims and collective wills of corporate leaders (Van de Vijver 2022; Lenz 2020; MacArthur 2019; Robinson and Shah 2019), we argue that institutional investors can be considered as collective moral agents as shown in misconduct studies (e.g., Lilly et al (2021); Stevens (2013)).…”

Conceptualizing the business corporation: insights from history

“…Outside economics, numerous interdisciplinary special issues have been published (e.g. Mansell et al ., 2019).…”