The Moral Responsibilities of Companies

The Moral Responsibilities of Companies is a philosophical analysis of the question of whether companies can be held morally responsible for the harms they create, and what implications such a view has on the moral position of employees and shareholders in these companies. We regularly encounter companies in everyday life that have harmful and beneficial effects. When considering responsibility for these effects, we appear to have two intuitions: a 'holist' intuition that a company is a suitable object of praise or blame, and an 'individualist' intuition that all actions are fundamentally reducible to actions of individuals. From a philosophical perspective, the 'problem of corporate responsibility' is how to allocate moral responsibility in the context of an attachment to these two conflicting intuitions. The Moral Responsibilities of Companies is a timely philosophical analysis of whether companies can be held morally responsible for the harms they create, how we balance the benefits of corporate activity against its social costs, and what implications this has on the moral position of individuals. The book draws on a range of ethical and metaphysical literature to develop an ambitious new account of corporate and individual morality, and applies this to a range of real-life examples Front Matter....Pages i-vii The Problem of Corporate Responsibility....Pages 1-9 The Object of Study: The Nature of the Company....Pages 10-23 The Emergence Account (I) — The Agent-Choice Condition....Pages 24-47 The Emergence Account (II) — Causation and Control....Pages 48-69 The Emergence Account (III) — Good Judgment....Pages 70-92 Developing an Alternative Account of Good Judgment....Pages 93-113 Understanding Collective Responsibility....Pages 114-138 Implications of the Emergence Account (I) — Rights and Punishment....Pages 139-164 Implications of the Emergence Account (II) — Individual Moral Responsibility....Pages 165-183 Conclusions....Pages 184-200 Back Matter....Pages 201-243 Preface The problem of corporate responsibility The object of study : the nature of the company The emergence account (I) : the agent-choice condition The emergence account (II) : causation and control The emergence account (III) : good judgment Developing an alternative account of good judgment Understanding collective responsibility Implications of the emergence account (I) : rights and punishment Implications of the emergence account (II) : individual moral responsibility Conclusions Notes Bibliography Index.