scholarly journals Relationships, Authority, and Reasons: A Second-Personal Account of Corporate Moral Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Alan D. Morrison ◽  
Rita Mota ◽  
William J. Wilhelm
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Corporate Communications ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Corporate Moral Agency ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Corporate Punishment

We present a second-personal account of corporate moral agency. This approach is in contrast to the first-personal approach adopted in much of the existing literature, which concentrates on the corporation’s ability to identify moral reasons for itself. Our account treats relationships and communications as the fundamental building blocks of moral agency. The second-personal account rests on a framework developed by Darwall. Its central requirement is that corporations be capable of recognizing the authority relations that they have with other moral agents. We discuss the relevance of corporate affect, corporate communications, and corporate culture to the second-personal account. The second-personal account yields a new way to specify first-personal criteria for moral agency, and it generates fresh insights into the reasons those criteria matter. In addition, a second-personal analysis implies that moral agency is partly a matter of policy, and it provides a fresh perspective on corporate punishment.

scholarly journals Moral agents and legal persons: the ethics and the law of state responsibility

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 466-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Fleming
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Functional Theory ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Corporate Moral Agency ◽  
The Law

Why, if at all, does it make sense to assign some responsibilities to states rather than to individuals? There are two contemporary answers. According to the agential theory, states can be held responsible because they are moral agents, much like human beings. According to the functional theory, states can be held responsible because they are legal persons that act vicariously through individuals, much like principals who act through agents. The two theories of state responsibility belong to parallel traditions of scholarship that have never been clearly distinguished. While the agential theory is dominant in IR, political theory, and philosophy, the functional theory prevails in International Law. The purpose of this article is to bridge the gulf between ethical and legal approaches to state responsibility. I argue that IR scholars and political theorists have much to gain from the functional theory. First, it provides a plausible alternative to the agential theory that avoids common objections to corporate moral agency. Second, the functional theory helps us to understand features of International Law that have puzzled IR scholars and political theorists, such as the fact that states are not held criminally responsible. I suggest that states can be ‘moral principals’ instead of moral agents.

scholarly journals From Corporate Moral Agency to Corporate Moral Rights

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avia Pasternak
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Community Group ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Corporate Moral Agency ◽  
Group Agents

Abstract Recent literature suggests that organizational entities, such as states and business corporations, can qualify as moral agents. Does it follow that, as members of our moral community, group agents are entitled to moral protections? This article explores the connection between groups’ moral agency and moral rights. I argue that corporate moral agency does not, in itself, ground a group’s claim for moral protections. Nevertheless, a group agent can be entitled to derivative moral rights protections, which attach to the group itself but are grounded in the interests of individuals, such as the group’s members. Furthermore, the agential status of a group helps to identify which rights can attach to it, given its moral agency. One such moral agency related right is a right not to be morally subverted. This right generates a duty for the group agent’s members to ensure that its decision-making process incorporates sound moral reasoning. The final part of the article applies these conclusions to recent debates on the rights of states. I argue that, as moral agents, states have a moral right not to be morally subverted. It follows that citizens have a pro tanto duty, directed at their state, not to engage in political activities that would subvert its moral powers.

scholarly journals Moral zombies: why algorithms are not moral agents

AI & Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carissa Véliz
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Physical Components

AbstractIn philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons.

Web-Based Financial Reporting: An Interpretative Model for Corporate Communications on Social Media

2017 ◽  
pp. 79-112
Author(s):  
Paola Ramassa ◽  
Costanza Di Fabio
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Corporate Communications ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Financial Communication ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Interpretative Model

This paper aims at contributing to financial reporting literature by proposing a conceptual interpretative model to analyse the corporate use of social media for financial communication purposes. In this perspective, the FIRE model provides a framework to study social media shifting the focus on the distinctive features that might enhance web investor relations. The model highlights these features through four building blocks: (i) firm identity (F); (ii) information posting (I); (iii) reputation (R); and (iv) exchange and diffusion (E). They represent key aspects to explore corporate communication activities and might offer a framework to interpret to what degree corporate web financial reporting exploits the potential of social media. Accordingly, the paper proposes metrics based on this model aimed at capturing the interactivity of corporate communications via social media, with a particular focus on web financial reporting. It tries to show the potential of this model by illustrating an exploratory empirical analysis investigating to what extent companies use social media for financial reporting purposes and whether firms are taking advantage of Twitter distinctive features of interaction and diffusion.

FORMATION OF CORPORATE CULTURE OF MEDIA ENTERPRISES

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Oleshko ◽  
◽  
Olena Basarab ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Employee Motivation ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Internal Communication ◽  
Information Support ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Corporate Communications ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
The Media

The article identifies specific features and suggests areas for improving the corporate culture of media enterprises. Dynamic changes in the economy due to digitalization require a revision of existing organizational forms and methods of management and the formation of a qualitatively new corporate culture at all hierarchical levels. The difficulty of solving this problem is the need to eliminate the negative elements in the Ukrainian corporate culture while adapting the development strategies of organizations to new economic conditions. The specifics of the formation of corporate culture of the media company is its special role, which is to implement the information product in order to obtain economic benefits and meet the social and communication needs of different segments of society. The article proposes changes in the organizational structure of media companies by creating a department for internal corporate communications in order to form a corporate culture that can increase the competitiveness of the company and form its positive image in the media space. This will form a highquality information support for internal communication of the enterprise, increase employee motivation and effectiveness of control over their work. The formation of a qualitatively new corporate culture of media enterprises also involves the transformation of the management system taking into account the need to focus on the use of creative work, increasing the level of knowledge, digital competencies, skills and professionalism, observance of system values of society. Ultimately, the formation of an effective corporate culture will have a positive impact on the process of creating quality information products

Moral agents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinit Haksar
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Concern For Others

Moral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality. Not all agents are moral agents. Young children and animals, being capable of performing actions, may be agents in the way that stones, plants and cars are not. But though they are agents they are not automatically considered moral agents. For a moral agent must also be capable of conforming to at least some of the demands of morality. This requirement can be interpreted in different ways. On the weakest interpretation it will suffice if the agent has the capacity to conform to some of the external requirements of morality. So if certain agents can obey moral laws such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then they are moral agents, even if they respond only to prudential reasons such as fear of punishment and even if they are incapable of acting for the sake of moral considerations. According to the strong version, the Kantian version, it is also essential that the agents should have the capacity to rise above their feelings and passions and act for the sake of the moral law. There is also a position in between which claims that it will suffice if the agent can perform the relevant act out of altruistic impulses. Other suggested conditions of moral agency are that agents should have: an enduring self with free will and an inner life; understanding of the relevant facts as well as moral understanding; and moral sentiments, such as capacity for remorse and concern for others. Philosophers often disagree about which of these and other conditions are vital; the term moral agency is used with different degrees of stringency depending upon what one regards as its qualifying conditions. The Kantian sense is the most stringent. Since there are different senses of moral agency, answers to questions like ‘Are collectives moral agents?’ depend upon which sense is being used. From the Kantian standpoint, agents such as psychopaths, rational egoists, collectives and robots are at best only quasi-moral, for they do not fulfil some of the essential conditions of moral agency.

The Uses and Abuses of Narrative for Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Meretoja
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Blind Side ◽  
Ethical Evaluation ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Narrative Imagination ◽  
Culture Of Silence ◽  
The Continuum

Chapter 4 tests hermeneutic narrative ethics as a lens for analyzing the (ab)uses of narrative for life in Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau (2007, The Blind Side of the Heart), exploring how narrative practices expand and diminish the space of possibilities in which moral agents act and suffer. It demonstrates how narrative “in-betweens” bind people together, through dialogic narrative imagination, and can promote exclusion that amounts to annihilation. It addresses the necessity of storytelling for survival, and a transgenerational culture of silence that leads to the repetition of harmful emotional-behavioral patterns. It explores the continuum from being able to tell one’s own stories to violently imposed narrative identities and suggests that moral agency requires a minimum narrative sense of oneself as a being worthy and capable of goodness. The chapter argues that the ethical evaluation of narrative practices must be contextual—sensitive to how they function in particular sociohistorical worlds.

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