Dismemberment,divorce and hostile takeovers: A comment on corporate moral personhood

We can explain our intuitions about corporate takeover cases by appeal to Peter French's picture of the corporation as a moral person. He argues that corporations are persons in much the same sense as you and I, and are entitled to the same rights as humans. On this analysis, takeovers are murders, attempted murders, attempts to enslave, etc. I want to explore the consequences of this view for corporate takeovers. I shall argue that, though French can explain why our moral intuitions seem to arise in response to some concern about the corporations themselves, his analysis commits us to the wrong intuitions in some cases. I shall then offer an account of these intuitions which focuses on the character of corporations.Rita C. Manning is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at San Jose State University. She has published widely — on Artificial Intelligence, Ancient Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, and Informal Logic, in addition to Business Ethics. She is currently working on a Feminist critique of Moral Philosophy.     

Wages Councils: Was There a Case for Abolition?

The 1993 Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act removed the remaining minimum wage protection for some 2.5 million low paid workers by abolishing the last 26 UK Wages Councils. The Government's case for abolition rested on three key arguments: (1) minimum wages do little to alleviate poverty since most covered workers do not live in poor households; (2) when in operation, minimum wages reduced employment in covered industries; (3) the problems of poverty that the wages councils were set up to deal with in 1909 are not relevant in today's labour market. In this paper we address each of these points in turn. We find that: (a) 50 per cent of families with at least one earner being paid wages council rates come from the poorest 20 per cent of families; (b) the existing evidence suggests that abolishing the Wages Councils is unlikely to create jobs; (c) the widening earnings distribution in the UK means that low pay is an increasingly important determinant of poverty. If anything, there appears to be an increasing need for minimum wage legislation in the UK.     

Movin' On Up: Interpreting The Earnings–Experience Profile

Human capital theory provides the generally accepted interpretation of the relationship between earnings and labour market experience, namely that general human capital tends to increase with experience. However, there are other plausible interpretations. Search models, for example, generally predict that more time in the labour market increases the chance of finding a better match and hence tends to be associated with higher earnings. This paper shows how a simple search model can be used to predict the amount of earnings growth that can be assigned to search with the residual being assigned to the human capital model. A substantial if not the larger part of the rise in earnings over the life-cycle in Britain can be explained by a simple search model, and virtually all the earnings gap between men and women can be explained in this way. Overall, the evidence suggests that we do need to reinterpret the returns to experience in earnings functions.     

Tradeoffs Among Social,Resource, and Management Attributes of the Denali Wilderness Experience: A Contextual Approach to Normative Research

Wilderness experiences are thought to be comprised of three primary dimensions, including social, resource, and management conditions. Decisions about how to manage wilderness recreation in Denali National Park and Preserve involve potential tradeoffs among these conditions. This study extends the normative approach to wilderness research by developing and applying a decision-making model that considers social, resource, and managerial attributes of the wilderness experience within a more holistic context. Specifically, stated choice analysis is used to evaluate the choices overnight wilderness visitors make when faced with hypothetical tradeoffs among the conditions of social, resource, and management attributes of the Denali wilderness. Study findings offer normative, but contextually informed empirical guidance in formulating indicators and standards of quality for the wilderness experience.     

Sliding Scales and Wage Flexibility in 1920s Britain

This note uses a cross-section of industry-level wage and unemployment rate information for early 1920s Britain to demonstrate that, in general, sliding scales had little impact on wage settlements. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that industries which had an above-average unemployment rate in the early 1920s experienced a disproportionate fall in nominal wages. There are also compositional effects in the sample which suggest that industries which had a predominantly male workforce, or were highly exposed to international competition in product markets, saw above-average rates of wage deflation.     

Jamie Mackie: scholar,mentor and advocate

With the passing of Jamie Mackie in April 2011, the intellectual and policy community in Australia lost a scholar, mentor and advocate who charted understandings of Indonesia, Southeast Asia and Australia's relations with Asia for over half a century. Mackie provided effective leadership and quiet inspiration for the development of Indonesian and Asian studies in three of Australia's top universities and throughout the nation. His intellectual contribution ranged across politics, international relations and economics. He urged students, fellow scholars, policy makers and the broader community to remember the historical basis of events in the region, strove to understand what ‘makes things tick’ in Indonesia and promoted racial tolerance in Australia. His style was low-key and personal, mentoring individuals and bringing together groups of like-minded people. While not dodging difficult issues, he was generally optimistic that sensible and sensitive approaches would enable Australia to live in greater harmony with its neighbours.     

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.