Corporate moral agency

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 279-291

  Arnold, Denis G ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049333359     PISSN: 03636550     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4975.2006.00140.x     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. "Corporation," in Black's Law Dictionary (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1999), 340-43.
2. Peter A. French, "The Corporation as a Moral Person," American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 207-15.
3. See Peter French, Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984);
4. "Principles of Responsibility, Shame and the Corporation," in Shame, Responsibility and the Corporation, ed. Hugh Cuiller (New York: Haven, 1986), 19-55;
5. Responsibility Matters (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992);
6. Corporate Ethics (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995);
7. and "Integrity, Intentions, and Corporations," American Business Law Journal 34 (1996): 141-55.
8. Some of French's critics include Manuel G. Velasquez, "Why Corporations Are Not Responsible for Anything That They Do," Business & Professional Ethics Journal 2 (1983): 1-18;
9. Richard De George, "Corporations and Morality," in Shame, Responsibility and the Corporation, ed. Hugh Curtler (New York: Haven, 1986), 57-75;
10. Thomas Donaldson, "Personalizing Corporate Ontology: The French Way," in Shame, Responsibility and the Corporation, 99-112;
11. Larry May, The Morality of Groups: Collective Responsibility, Group- Based Harm, and Corporate Rights (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987);
12. Michael J. Kerlin, "Peter French, Corporate Ethics and the Wizard of Oz," Journal of Business Ethics 16 (1997): 1431 38;
13. and John Danley, "Corporate Moral Agency," in A Companion to Business Ethics, ed. Robert F. Frederick (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 243-56.
14. French, "The Corporation as a Moral Person," 207.
15. De George, "Corporations and Morality," in Shame, Responsibility and the Corporation, 61.
16. See also Donaldson, "Personalizing Corporate Ontology: The French Way," in Shame, Responsibility and the Corporation, 99-113.
17. French, Corporate Ethics, 10.
18. French has made it clear that he regards "actors" and "agents" as synonymous. He made this point at the symposium on his work "Corporate Moral Personhood: Peter French and His Critics," Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics, Washington DC, August 2001.
19. French. "Integrity, Intentions, and Corporations," 143.
20. Recent papers that criticize French's position while failing to take into account his modified position include the comments by John Danlcy and Manuel Velasquez at the session "Corporate Moral Personhood: Peter French and His Critics." Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics, Washington DC, August 2001;
21. Manuel Velasquez, "Debunking Corporate Responsibility," Business Ethics Quarterly 13 (October 2003): 531 62;
22. and Wim Dubbink, "Conceptualizing Corporate Moral Responsibility: A Neo-Kantian Approach," Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics, Honolulu, HI, August 2005.
23. I reached much the same conclusion independently in an early version of this paper that I presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Association for Business and Society, Paris, June 1999.
24. While I do not take up practical questions concerning corporate moral responsibility in this essay, others have done so. See, e.g., Paul B. Thompson, "Why Do We Need a Theory of Corporate Responsibility?" in Shame, Responsibility and the Corporation, 113-36;
25. and Michael J. Phillips, "Corporate Moral Responsibility: When It Might Matter," Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 555 76.
26. John Danlcy,"Corporate Moral Agency:The Case for Anthropological Bigotry," in Action and Responsibility, eds. M. Bradie and M. Brand, Bowling Green State University Conference in Applied Philosophy (Bowling Green, OH: Applied Philosophy Program, 1980), 141.
27. Manuel G. Velasquez, "Why Corporations Are Not Morally Responsible for Anything They Do," Business and Professional Ethics Journal 12 (1983): 8.
28. He writes, "The fact that we attribute intentional qualities to groups-including corporate organizations-that are not attributable to their members .. . does not imply that those groups have real intentions. The intention we attribute to groups is metaphorical." Manuel G. Velasquez, "Debunking Corporate Moral Responsibility," Business Ethics Quarterly 13 (October 2003): 545-46.
29. Important contributions to this literature include Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980);
30. John Searle, Intentionality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983);
31. Michael Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987);
32. Carl Ginet, On Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
33. Alfred Mele, Springs of Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992);
34. and Alfred R. Mele and Paul K. Moser, "Intentional Action," Nous 28 (1994): 39-68.
35. and Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
36. Bratman, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, 28.
37. Bratman, "Shared Intention," in Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency, 109-29.
38. For psychological, as opposed to physical, coercion to take place, three conditions most hold. First, the coercer must have a desire about the will of his or her victim. However, this is a desire of a particular kind because it can only be fulfilled through the will of another person. Second, the coercer must have an effective desire to compel his or her victim to act in a manner that makes efficacious the coercer's other regarding desire. The distinction between an other regarding desire and a coercive will is important because it provides a basis lor delineating between cases of coercion and, for example, cases of rational persuasion. In both instances, a person may have an other regarding desire, but in the case of coercion that desire will be supplemented by an effective first-order desire which seeks to enforce that desire on the person, and in cases of rational persuasion it will not. What is of most importance in such cases is that P intentionally attempts to compel Q to comply with an other regarding desire of P's own. These are necessary, but not sufficient conditions of coercion. In order for coercion to take place, the coercer must be successful in getting his or her victim to conform to his or her other regarding desire. In all cases of coercion, P attempts to violate the autonomy of Q. When Q successfully resists P's attempted coercion, Q retains his or her autonomy. In such cases, P retains a coercive will. This is a slightly modified version of the account of coercion that I defend in my "Coercion and Moral Responsibility," American Philosophical Quarterly 38 (2001): 53-67.
39. May, The Morality of Groups, 69-70.