Author: David Rönnegard
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401797560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
It is uncontroversial that corporations are legal agents that can be held legally responsible, but can corporations also be moral agents that are morally responsible? Part one of this book explicates the most prominent theories of corporate moral agency and provides a detailed debunking of why corporate moral agency is a fallacy. This implies that talk of corporate moral responsibilities, beyond the mere metaphorical, is essentially meaningless. Part two takes the fallacy of corporate moral agency as its premise and spells out its implications. It shows how prominent normative theories within Corporate Social Responsibility, such as Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory, rest on an implicit assumption of corporate moral agency. In this metaphysical respect such theories are untenable. In order to provide a more robust metaphysical foundation for corporations the book explicates the development of the corporate legal form in the US and UK, which displays how the corporation has come to have its current legal attributes. This historical evolution shows that the corporation is a legal fiction created by the state in order to serve both public and private goals. The normative implication for corporate accountability is that citizens of democratic states ought to primarily make calls for legal enactments in order to hold the corporate legal instruments accountable to their preferences.
The Fallacy of Corporate Moral Agency
Author: David Rönnegard
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401797560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
It is uncontroversial that corporations are legal agents that can be held legally responsible, but can corporations also be moral agents that are morally responsible? Part one of this book explicates the most prominent theories of corporate moral agency and provides a detailed debunking of why corporate moral agency is a fallacy. This implies that talk of corporate moral responsibilities, beyond the mere metaphorical, is essentially meaningless. Part two takes the fallacy of corporate moral agency as its premise and spells out its implications. It shows how prominent normative theories within Corporate Social Responsibility, such as Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory, rest on an implicit assumption of corporate moral agency. In this metaphysical respect such theories are untenable. In order to provide a more robust metaphysical foundation for corporations the book explicates the development of the corporate legal form in the US and UK, which displays how the corporation has come to have its current legal attributes. This historical evolution shows that the corporation is a legal fiction created by the state in order to serve both public and private goals. The normative implication for corporate accountability is that citizens of democratic states ought to primarily make calls for legal enactments in order to hold the corporate legal instruments accountable to their preferences.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401797560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
It is uncontroversial that corporations are legal agents that can be held legally responsible, but can corporations also be moral agents that are morally responsible? Part one of this book explicates the most prominent theories of corporate moral agency and provides a detailed debunking of why corporate moral agency is a fallacy. This implies that talk of corporate moral responsibilities, beyond the mere metaphorical, is essentially meaningless. Part two takes the fallacy of corporate moral agency as its premise and spells out its implications. It shows how prominent normative theories within Corporate Social Responsibility, such as Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory, rest on an implicit assumption of corporate moral agency. In this metaphysical respect such theories are untenable. In order to provide a more robust metaphysical foundation for corporations the book explicates the development of the corporate legal form in the US and UK, which displays how the corporation has come to have its current legal attributes. This historical evolution shows that the corporation is a legal fiction created by the state in order to serve both public and private goals. The normative implication for corporate accountability is that citizens of democratic states ought to primarily make calls for legal enactments in order to hold the corporate legal instruments accountable to their preferences.
On the Concept of Corporate Moral Agency
Author: David Burris Ray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industries
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industries
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
The Moral Responsibility of Firms
Author: Eric W. Orts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198738536
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This book examines whether firms as organizations can be considered morally responsible for their actions. This question has profound practical implications as well as theoretical significance, not least when we are today so frequently confronted with misconduct in business.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198738536
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This book examines whether firms as organizations can be considered morally responsible for their actions. This question has profound practical implications as well as theoretical significance, not least when we are today so frequently confronted with misconduct in business.
Corporations and Morality
Author: Thomas Donaldson
Publisher: Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall
ISBN: 0131770144
Category : Industries
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Publisher: Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall
ISBN: 0131770144
Category : Industries
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility
Author: Cornelia Ulbert
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351781863
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
At a time when globalization has side-lined many of the traditional, state-based addressees of legal accountability, it is not clear yet how blame is allocated and contested in the new, highly differentiated, multi-actor governance arrangements of the global economy and world society. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility investigates how actors in complex governance arrangements assign responsibilities to order the world and negotiate who is responsible for what and how. The book asks how moral duties can be defined beyond the territorial and legal confines of the nation-state; and how obligations and accountability mechanisms for a post-national world, in which responsibility remains vague, ambiguous and contested, can be established. Using an empirical as well as a theoretical perspective, the book explores ontological framings of complexity emphasizing emergence and non-linearity, which challenge classic liberal notions of responsibility and moral agency based on the autonomous subject. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility is perfect for scholars from International Relations, Politics, Philosophy and Political Economy with an interest in the topical and increasingly popular topics of moral agency and complexity.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351781863
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
At a time when globalization has side-lined many of the traditional, state-based addressees of legal accountability, it is not clear yet how blame is allocated and contested in the new, highly differentiated, multi-actor governance arrangements of the global economy and world society. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility investigates how actors in complex governance arrangements assign responsibilities to order the world and negotiate who is responsible for what and how. The book asks how moral duties can be defined beyond the territorial and legal confines of the nation-state; and how obligations and accountability mechanisms for a post-national world, in which responsibility remains vague, ambiguous and contested, can be established. Using an empirical as well as a theoretical perspective, the book explores ontological framings of complexity emphasizing emergence and non-linearity, which challenge classic liberal notions of responsibility and moral agency based on the autonomous subject. Moral Agency and the Politics of Responsibility is perfect for scholars from International Relations, Politics, Philosophy and Political Economy with an interest in the topical and increasingly popular topics of moral agency and complexity.
Corporate Moral Agency and the Role of the Corporation in Society
Author: David Ronnegard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781847535801
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
PhD thesis, London School of Economics: The thesis is an analysis of the corporation in society which spans the disciplines of Ethics, Law, Economics and Political Philosophy. Part One challenges the position, generally accepted in Business Ethics, that a corporation qualifies as a moral agent. The thesis analyses the most prominent theories of corporate moral agency and concludes that the corporation itself is not a moral agent. The thesis argues that attributions of moral responsibility to corporations are an elliptical way of referring to the responsibility of individuals. Part Two traces the historical development of the corporate legal form in English and American law and argues that the corporate form is a legal agent. The thesis takes issue with the Corporate Social Responsibility movement and argues that many of its prescriptions rest on a mistaken premise of corporate moral agency. Further, the thesis suggests that many CSR issues are better addressed through legal enactments by government.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781847535801
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
PhD thesis, London School of Economics: The thesis is an analysis of the corporation in society which spans the disciplines of Ethics, Law, Economics and Political Philosophy. Part One challenges the position, generally accepted in Business Ethics, that a corporation qualifies as a moral agent. The thesis analyses the most prominent theories of corporate moral agency and concludes that the corporation itself is not a moral agent. The thesis argues that attributions of moral responsibility to corporations are an elliptical way of referring to the responsibility of individuals. Part Two traces the historical development of the corporate legal form in English and American law and argues that the corporate form is a legal agent. The thesis takes issue with the Corporate Social Responsibility movement and argues that many of its prescriptions rest on a mistaken premise of corporate moral agency. Further, the thesis suggests that many CSR issues are better addressed through legal enactments by government.
Can Institutions Have Responsibilities?
Author: Toni Erskine
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780333971291
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Can institutions (in the sense of formal organizations) bear duties and be ascribed blame in the same way that we understand individual human beings to be morally responsible for actions? The idea of the "institutional moral agent" is critically examined in the guise of states, transnational corporations, the UN, NATO and international society in the context of some of the most critical and debated issues and events in international relations, including the Kosovo Campaign, development aid, and genocide in Rwanda.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780333971291
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Can institutions (in the sense of formal organizations) bear duties and be ascribed blame in the same way that we understand individual human beings to be morally responsible for actions? The idea of the "institutional moral agent" is critically examined in the guise of states, transnational corporations, the UN, NATO and international society in the context of some of the most critical and debated issues and events in international relations, including the Kosovo Campaign, development aid, and genocide in Rwanda.
Persons, Rights, and Corporations
Author: Patricia Hogue Werhane
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
The Moral Background
Author: Gabriel Abend
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171122
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them. Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations—such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools—and identifies two types of moral background. "Standards of Practice" is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals' actions and decisions. The "Christian Merchant" type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person's life as a unity. The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171122
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 413
Book Description
In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them. Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations—such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools—and identifies two types of moral background. "Standards of Practice" is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals' actions and decisions. The "Christian Merchant" type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person's life as a unity. The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general.
Moral Imagination
Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622323X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622323X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.