Corporate responsibility and corporate personhood

In this paper, I consider the claim that a corporation cannot be held to be morally responsible unless it is a person. First, I argue that this claim is ambigious. Person flags three different but related notions: metaphysical person, moral agent, moral person. I argue that, though one can make the claim that corporates are metaphysical persons, this claim is only marginally relevant to the question of corporate moral responsibility. The central question which must be answered in discussions of corporate moral responsibility is whether corporations are moral agents or moral persons. I argue that, though we can make a case for saying corporations are moral agents, they are not moral persons, and hence, we can hold them responsible. In addition, we need not treat them the way we would be obligated to treat a moral person; we needn't have the same scruples about holding a corporation morally responsible as we would a moral person. Rita C. Manning is Lecturer at California State College, San Bernardino. She has published in Southern Journal of Philosophy and in Informal Logic.     

The movement for reforming American business ethics: A twenty-year perspective

This paper presents a succinct review of the movement for moral genesis in business that arose in the 1970s. The moral genesis movement is characterized by: (a) the rejection of the premise that business and ethics are antagonistic; (b) the rise of the Issues Management approach, which stresses the social responsibility of the corporation: (c) disdain of government regulation as a means of business moralization, and (d) a search for control measures aimed at improving organization moral behavior. This movement now begins to give rise to a new organizational model, the Self-Moralizing Corporation, which transcends existing paradigms of corporate rectitude. The tenets of the Self-Moralizing Corporation are that: (a) the moral behavior of members is a requisite to the attainment of organization goals; (b) individual moral behavior is an asset which must be managed and developed by the corporation; (c) individual moral development is a collectively and individually shared responsibility; and, (d) the maintenance of moral values is more important than the preservation of organization structure.Simcha B. Werner has published in Israeli, British and American professional journals in the areas of government ethics, administrative reform and public enterprise.     

Justice: The root of american business ideology and ethics

Although there are many conceptions of Justice, these different perceptions can provide many interesting insights into a business person's ethical standards as well as that person's decision-making processes. Using the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on the U.S. Economy as the basis for asking questions about justice, twenty-four business executives were interviewed about their conception of justice. An analysis of these interviews reveals that this group of businesspeople operated under very different conceptions of Justice at the Macroenvironmental and Microenvironmental levels. This result has some interesting implications not only for those scholars concerned with business ethics but for everyone who has a stake in business education.Men are called good, chiefly on account of their Justice. Cicero, 56 B.C. Ideology is applied philosophy. Lodge, 1986 Richard McGowan, S. J. is an Assistant Professor of Operations and Strategic Management at Boston College. His research focus involves examining both the rationale behind business and public policy decisions as well as determining the effectiveness of these policy measures. Some of his recent publications include Deciphering the Japanese Import Quota, Policy Studies Journal (1988) and Public Policy Measures and Cigarette Sales: An ARIMA Intervention Analysis Study JAI Social Issues Management Volume (1989).     

Mergers,takeovers, and a property ethic

The recent takeover and merger trend cries out for ethical evaluation. This essay proposes a model for evaluating them in terms of their impact on a firm's immediate stakeholders: investors, owners, management and employees. Since mergers and takeovers are Transfers of Ownership of Firms (TOFs) they entail a property ethic of ownership, control, securing stakeholder interests, and defining which stakeholders should exercise these rights. I use the model to evaluate two fictional cases, a friendly merger and a hostile takeover. The results show that neither TOF serves all interests equitably. Since the control structure of the private firm is legitimized by its interest structure, I reason that both should be reformed. Both rest on a broader economic rationale; but it is controverted. Accordingly, the economic and ethical evaluation of TOFs, I conclude, both entail the democratic reform of the control structure of the firm.A corporation represents far more than its current stock price; it embodies obligations to employees, customers, suppliers and communities.Robert S. Saul, Peers Merchant BankVincent di Norcia is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sudbury. He is the author of Ethics in Management and Beyond the Red Tory.     

A Qualitative Exploration into Voters' Ethical Perceptions of Political Advertising: Discourse, Disinformation, and Moral Boundaries

Political campaign advertising continues to be a controversial policy topic in advertising and marketing research. It is also a prime subject for investigating the ethical evaluations of consumers (or voters). The following study draws from postmodern communication theory and employs a qualitative research methodology in order to explore voters' intimate and subjective views about politics, candidates, and political advertising. The findings include emergent themes relating to significant media rituals in voters' lives, the cynical perspective of politics as a game, and the widespread disapproval and suspicion with which voters regard negative political advertising. Additionally, the a priori theme of political information as disinformation was proposed and expanded upon. Findings are discussed in light of a greater understanding of the appropriateness of the traditional versus the postmodern perspective of political communication, informants' construction of moral boundaries which help them determine right from wrong, acceptable vs. unacceptable political behaviours in this particular context.     

Comment on The Microsoft Antitrust Policy Case

This paper both responds to Economides analysis and attempts to address the Microsoft case from a broader than U.S. perspective. The importance of the roles played by disloyalty payments, compatibility requirements, information asymmetry and the rather static nature of market definition, particularly in the context of allegations of tying, in the Microsoft case are highlighted. In contrast to the position in the U.S., the European Commission acts for all EU member states and has its disposal the possibility of imposing large fines. However, structural remedies are not available to the European Commission. Comity procedures, by allowing for the inclusion of foreign surplus in domestic welfare functions, offer a model for international co-operation in the future application of competition laws.     

Norman Bowie and Richard Rorty on multinationals: Does business ethics need ‘metaphysical comfort?’

Norman Bowie wrote an article on the moral obligations of multinational corporations in 1987. This paper is a response to Bowie, but more importantly, it is designed to articulate the force and substance of the pragmatist philosophy developed by Richard Rorty. In his article, Bowie suggested that moral universalism (which he endorses) is the only credible method of doing business ethics across cultures and that cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are not. Bowie, in a manner surprisingly common among contemporary philosophers, lumps Rorty into a bad guy category without careful analysis of his philosophy and ascribes to him views which clearly do not fit. I attempt to provide both a more careful articulation of Rorty's views, and to use his pragmatism to illustrate an approach to business ethics which is more fruitful than Bowie's. This brand of philosophy follows the Enlightenment spirit of toleration and attempts to set aside questions of Truth, whether religious or philosophical, and have ethics centered around what James called that which is good in the way of belief. Rather than looking for metaphysical foundations or some type of external justification, ethicists perform their craft from within the cultural traditions, narratives and practices of their society.Andrew C. Wicks, M.A. in Religious Ethics. Currently a fourth year Doctoral Candidate in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.     

Ethical Beliefs and Management Behaviour: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

A cross-cultural empirical study is reported in this article which looks at ethical beliefs and behaviours among French and German managers, and compares this with previous studies of U.S. and Israeli managers using a similar questionnaire. Comparisons are made between what managers say they believe, and what they do, between managers and their peers' attitudes and behaviours, and between perceived top management attitudes and the existence of company policy. In the latter, significant differences are found by national ownership of the company rather than the country in which it is situated. Significant differences are found, for both individual managers by nationality, and for companies by nationality of parents, in the area of organizational loyalty. The attitude towards accepting gifts and favours in exchange for preferential treatment, as a measure of societal values, is also found to show significant differences between national groups. However, no significant differences are found for measures for group loyalty, conflict between organizational and group loyalty and for conflicts between self and group/organization. The findings have implications for cross-border management decision strategies regarding such issues as receiving and giving of gifts, and the management of relations between local employees and international organizations which may be affected by differences in attitude to corporate loyalty.     

Measuring Market Orientation: Generalization and Synthesis

This paper reports on an integrative, cross-nationalstudy which synthesizes and retests work of three separate groupsof researchers who in the late 1980s developed measurementsof a firm's Market Orientation. The projects resulted in threedifferent but syntactically similar Market Orientation scaleswhich, along with other measures, were used to support substantiveconclusions, particularly those involving firm Performance. Basedon a new study of 82 managers in 27 European and U.S. companies,we show that all three scales are reliable and valid. The scalesalso seem to generalize well internationally, both in terms ofreliability and prediction of Performance. We also show thatthe scales are similar to one another in terms of various validitymeasures and in terms of correlations with Performance measures.Finally, we synthesize a 10-item scale based on a more parsimoniousdefinition of Market Orientation as: the set of cross-functionalprocesses and activities directed at creating and satisfyingcustomers through continuous needs-assessment.     

Are physicians a “delinquent community”?: Issues in professional competence,conduct, and self-regulation

This paper examines the moral responsibilities of physicians, toward themselves and their colleagues, their students and patients, and society, in terms of the nature and exercise of professional self-regulation. Some of the author's close encounters with cases involving research misconduct, behavioral impairment or deviance, and medical practice at the moral margin, are described to illustrate why, in Freidson's words, physicians are a delinquent community with respect to the ways they meet their responsibility to govern the competence and conduct of their members. Judith P. Swazey, president of The Acadia Insttute, is co-author of The Courage to Fail: A Social View of Organ Transplants and Hemodialysis and co-editor of several books on medical responsibility. The include Human Aspects of Biomedical Innovation, Social Controls and the Medical Profession and Whistleblowing in Biomedical Research: Policies and Procedures for Responding to Reports of Misconduct. Her Ph.D. in the history of science.     

National Innovation Systems, ‘Real Economies’ and Instituted Processes

The design of institutions, policies and units of analysis are all predicated upon the ways in which we see the world and explain change. Today, as the pace of change quickens due to technological advancement and growing technoeconomic interdependencies in a series of processes generally referred to as globalization, analytic frameworks which emphasize national systems have emerged to provide a unit of analysis through which to explain these changes and growing interactions. These frameworks have the allure of trying to incorporate the ways in which economies, markets and economic agents actually behave – with particular reference to innovation, knowledge, learning and institutions. Our purpose in this paper is to raise some questions about the importance of these frameworks from a policy (managerial) and analytic perspective, to outline some limitations of their utility, and to suggest some useful paths for investigation.     

Integrating Religious Principles and Human Resource Management Activities

Many ethical problems faced by organizations concern human resource management. This paper shows how some religious principles can be integrated into a human resource management course. First, it presents a discussion of employee responsibilities and rights in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Next, it suggests how various principles can be applied to human resource management activities. Do to others as you would have them do to you is applied to equal opportunity. Thou shall not commit sexual impropriety (or in positive terms, respect and love) is the basis for no sexual harassment. Thou shall not steal (or in positive terms, deal fairly) is related to fair pay in exchange for excellent employee performance. Thou shall not lie (or in positive terms, be truthful) is needed for due process in employee disputes. Thou shall not kill (or in positive terms, respect life) is applied to employee safety and health, plus health care benefits. A list of potential readings is included for instructors to consider for their own courses.     

Beyond bean counting: Establishing high ethical standards in the public accounting profession

Business professions are increasingly faced with the question of how to best monitor the ethical behavior of their members. Conflicts could exist between a profession's desire to self-regulate and its accountability to the public at large. This study examines how members of one profession, public accounting, evaluate the relative effectiveness of various self-regulatory and externally imposed mechanisms for promoting a climate of high ethical behavior. Specifically, the roles of independent public accountants, regulatory and rule setting agencies, and undergraduate accounting education are investigated. Of 461 possible respondents, 230 questionnaires (a 49.6% response rate) indicated that the profession's own rule setting body (The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) and the use of peer review were perceived as the most effective mechanisms, while government regulation was ranked least. Respondents also evaluated the extent to which ethics should be covered in the accounting curriculum. For every course, the CPAs believed a greater emphasis on ethics is appropriate than presently exists. Suggestions for more effectively integrating ethics into accounting courses are made. Finally, respondents were also asked whether in answering the questionnaire they used a definition of ethics as either the Professional Code of Conduct or a moral and philosphical framework for guiding beliefs. Those who viewed ethics as abiding by a professional code had more confidence in the mechanisms addressed in this study to aid the public accounting profession's ability to ensure high ethical standards of conduct. Methodological implications of this distinction for future studies in business ethics are discussed. Jeffrey R. Cohen is Assistant Professor of Accounting at Boston College. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a C.M.A. and a Peat Marwick Research Fellow. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Accounting Research, Decision Sciences and The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review. His work on Ethics has appeared in Issues in Accounting Education, Management Accounting, and The CPA Journal. Laurie W. Pant is Assistant Professor of Accounting at Boston College. She holds an M.B.A. and a D.B.A. from Boston University and an M.Ed. from Emory University. She serves on the editorial board of Issues in Accounting Education. Her articles on Ethics have appeared in Issues in Accounting Education, Management Accounting and The Organizational Behavior Teaching Review.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 American Accounting Association National Meeting.     

Ethical encounters of the second kind

When our society holds widely shared norms and values, we can agree on what constitutes unethical business practices. To the extent our social consensus is unraveling, agreement becomes increasingly problematic. Unfortunately, mainstream Western moral philosophy offers no guidance in this situation. We must therefore begin to focus on the types of social relationships that must exist for there to be agreement on what is right, good and just. This line of argument is, at best, merely suggested in discussions and articles on business ethics. Jonathan B. King is Associate Professor of Managment at the College of Business at Oregon State University. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College (1965); subsequently served for eight years as an officer in the United States Navy; received his M.B.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) in Business, Government and Society from the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the areas of epistemology and moral philosophy — e.g., the contribution of the liberal arts to interpretive thought, the sociology of moral knowledge, and the organizational distortion of information. His most important publications are: Teaching Business Ethics, Exchange1984 and A Case for the Humanities Perspective, Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal1984     

Reactions to ethical dilemmas: A study pertaining to certified public accountants

This study discusses how perceptions of ethics are formed by certified public accountants (CPAs). Theologians are used as a point of comparison. When considering CPA ethical dilemmas, both subject groups in this research project viewed confidentiality and independence as more important than recipient of responsibility and seriousness of breach. Neither group, however, was insensitive to any of the factors presented for its consideration. CPA reactions to ethical dilemmas were governed primarily by provisions of the CPA ethics code; conformity to that code may well be evidence of higher stage moral reasoning.Gregory A. Claypool is Associate Professor of Accounting and Finance at Youngstown State University.David F. Fetyko is Professor of Accounting at Kent State University. Michael A. Pearson is Professor of Accounting at Kent State University. He is the author of Enhancing Perceptions of Auditor Independence, Journal of Business Ethics 4 (1985), 53–6, and Auditor Independence Deficiencies and Alleged Audit Failures, Journal of Business Ethics 6 (1987), 281–7.     

Business managers and moral sanctuaries

Moral Sanctuary is used in this paper as a metaphor for any theory which makes actions immune from moral criticism. Three arguments favoring moral sanctuaries for business activities are countered. Two of the arguments rest on faulty analogies. One compares business activities to games, another to the behavior of machines. The third rests on the claim that business is a unique activity. This position is rejected by a reductio ad absurdum argument; it entails the immunity of all professional activities from moral judgment. I argue that business managers are accountable to the combined requirements of professionalism and democratic citizenship, notions which are briefly described at the conclusion of the paper.     

Risk Management for E-Cash Systems with Partial Real-Time Audit

We analyze coin-wallet and balance-wallet under partial real-time audit, and compute upper bounds on theft due to the fact that not all the transactions are audited in real time, assuming that everything else is perfect. In particular, we assume that the audit regime holds for innocent payees. Let v be the maximum allowed balance in a wallet, and 01 be the fraction of transactions that are audited in real time in an audit round. Assume one unit transactions. We show that the upper bound on expected theft for coin-wallet is lim₀^–2, while for plausible (similar) parameter choice the bound for a balance-wallet is O(exp(mv)), where 1<m. The former is nicely bounded for small transactions, however, the bound for balance-wallet can become huge in those cases where we require very small false alarm probability. We conclude that partial audit, may be suitable for coin-wallets with low denomination coins, and possibly for balance-wallet, when we may tolerate a relatively high false alarm rate, but it may be too risky for balance-wallet, where very low false alarm rate is required.     

A note on government policy and the new ‘intrapreneurship’ in Bulgaria

Conclusion I have attempted in this paper to highlight the recent emergence and rapid growth of a particular type of intrapreneurship in the Bulgarian economy. This intrapreneurship involves the creation of new smaller establishments within existing large-scale industrial firms. These semi-autonomous auxiliary plants are exempt from part of the bureaucracy which constrains the larger addition, they have provided a higher rate of technological advance, a better supply of consumer goods, a greater utilization of labor resources, and a higher return to human capital.Only through the continued development of a small-firm sector can the Bulgarian economy meet the challenge currently posed by its western counterparts. Whether the next step from intrapreneurship to entrepreneurship is taken may hold the key for industrial development in Bulgaria.     

Is there any ethics in business ethics

It is argued, against Richard T. De George, that while clarification of concepts, implications, and presuppositions in business ethics largely relies on a neutral territory of reason, determination of what moral intuitions are correct depends on non-neutral ethical theories. The latter posit ethics in business to varying degrees. Thus while the Kantian and utilitarian ethical theories are, for De George, proper (philosophical) approaches to business ethics, they are as reliant on affirming and encouraging moral sentiments outside parameters of pure reason as theological approaches. And hence if theological approaches can make no unique contribution by virtue of relying on more than reason or experience alone, then philosophical approaches can make no distinctive contribution either. Either both are viable or neither are. Oscillation between the mutually dependent notions of business ethics and ethics in business obfuscates what the field of business ethics is and renders De George's position inadequate.Robert Trundle, Jr., received his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Kentucky University where he teaches Business Ethics. He has worked at such companies as Stearns-Roger and Rogerson-Hiller Corporation where he was a member of the Hazardous Materials Safety Committee.     

The ethics of Nigeria's proposed withdrawal from the organisation of petroleum exporting countries

In the wake of the prevailing world oil glut which has affected the revenue earning powers of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) members, there are serious proposals and arguments in favour of Nigeria's withdrawal from OPEC.The mission of this paper is to question the ethical basis of this proposed strategy after she has benefited from OPEC membership for over a decade. This paper postulates that it would be ethically wrong to do so and suggests a strategy that would boost the petrochemical industry for agriculture, building, pharmaceuticals, automative industry, etc. Dr. Bedford A. Fubara is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He was awarded the Columbia University Fellowship 1970–1972 and he received the Unesco Research Award in 1981/1982. His most important publications are: Negative Profitability Performances of Public Enterprises in Developing Countries: A Business Policy Anatomy, 1984, Public Enterprise 4; Government in Business, 1983, Management in Nigeria; Corporate Planning Art in Nigeria: The Experiental Evidence of Corporate Executive, Long Range Planning (forthcoming).This research was financed by the Rivers State University of Science and Technology under Project No. SRPC/014 dated 11th June, 1984.