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

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.

Business Ethics

“Business” has two meanings. A “business” is an entity that offers a good or service for sale, typically with the goal of making a profit. Wal-Mart and Toyota are businesses. “Business” can also mean the activity of exchange. An individual does business with Toyota when she exchanges some of her money for one of its cars. So “business ethics” includes the study of the ethics of the entities that offer (and often produce) goods and services for sale, as well as the ethics of exchange and activities connected with exchange (e.g., advertising). Philosophers have long been interested in these subjects. Aristotle worried about the effects of commerce on character, while Aquinas wrote on profit and prices. Smith and Marx thought deeply about the organization of the process of production. Business ethics in its current incarnation traces its roots to the 1970s and 1980s, when a group of moral philosophers applied ethical theories to business activity. A number of business ethics journals were created around this time, and business ethics became a familiar course in philosophy departments. Common topics of inquiry were and continue to be the purpose of the firm, corporate governance, corporate moral agency, rights and duties at work, fairness in pay and pricing, the limits of markets, marketing ethics, supply chain ethics, and corporate political activity. Not long after philosophers reinvigorated the field, social scientists entered it (and in fact had been working on related issues the whole time). They have increasingly pulled the field, and its academic courses, into business schools. This article concentrates on the philosophical or normative side of business ethics, but it also says something about the descriptive or social scientific side when they overlap.

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

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.

From Corporate Moral Agency to Corporate Moral Rights

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.