A central claim in stakeholder theory is that, if we see stakeholders as human beings, we will attribute higher moral standing or show more moral consideration to stakeholders. But would the same hold for firms? In this paper, I apply the concepts of humanization and moral standing to firms, and I predict that individuals attribute higher moral standing to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms, because individuals attribute more experience to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms. Five experiments support these predictions across (...) different operationalizations of stakeholder and profit orientations. The analyses show that moral standing attributions are not fully explained by attributions of agency to firms, or by attributions of experience or agency to human stakeholders. By unearthing the importance of experience attributions for moral standing attributions to firms, this work provides novel insights in ongoing legal, philosophical and public debates related to firms’ moral standing. The findings also bring the debate about firms’ moral standing to the heart of stakeholder theory, and lead to new normative and descriptive research questions about the interests of firms and their stakeholders. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) and the national corporate responsibility (NCR) environment in host countries using corporate social responsibility and international business theories. Based on data from the Japanese Government’s Ministry of Finance AccountAbility, and other sources, we find that the level of NCR has a positive relationship with FDI inflow for developing countries. The relationship for developed countries is negative but not statistically significant. The underlying host country development stage moderates the relationship. The results (...) can help deepen understanding of FDI behaviors and have practical implications for host countries in terms of attracting FDI. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to provide a general discussion about the legitimacy of corporate social responsibility. Given that social responsibility projects entail costs, it is not always obvious under what precise conditions managers will have a responsibility to engage in activities primarily designed to promote societal goals.In this paper we discuss four distinct criteria for evaluating the legitimacy of corporate projects for institutionalizing social responsibility.

This paper presents a conceptual link among green marketing, environmental justice, and industrial ecology. It argues for greater awareness of environmental justice in the practice of green marketing. In contrast with the type of costs commonly discussed in the literature, the paper identified another type of costs, termed "costs with positive results," that may be associated with the presence of environmental justice in green marketing. A research agenda is finally suggested to determine consumers'' awareness of environmental justice, and their willingness (...) to bear the costs associated with it. (shrink)

Much recent work in applied legal and political theory has been preoccupied with the problem of the moral status of business organizations and corporations, and of the nature of their agency and personality. On the one hand, moral rights, such as rights to freedom and autonomy, are paradigmatically ascribed to natural, human persons; moral responsibility analogously seems therefore paradigmatically applicable to individuals. Organizations seemingly have no will or mind, no human feelings such as pleasure, pain, shame, and remorse. How can (...) the language of rights and responsibility be applicable to them? On the other hand, it seems to be a fact that business organizations often do things that we human beings do—make deals, sign contracts, cause harm, and issue apologies. In ordinary and in legal discourse all the time we hear such things as, “Miller's Pulp Mill is responsible for its corrupt environmental practice”; “Philip Cosmetics Ltd. has the right to advertise its products”; and “Sunligt Co. is accountable for its irresponsible behavior.” How then are we to understand the attributions of organizational agency, personality, and responsibility that these statements presuppose? Are the predicates in these statements to be taken as having the same intension, or the same force, as similar ones predicated on natural persons? Or are the predications to be seen as extensions of meaning, justified or not? Or as exotic metaphors with no factual implications? (shrink)

This paper challenges a pervasive, if not always explicit assumption of the present state of theorising in business ethics. This is the idea that a workable theory of organizational ethics must provide a unified perspective on its subject matter. In this paper we will sketch the broad outlines of an alternative understanding of business ethics, which focuses on constraints on corporate conduct that cannot reasonably be rejected. These constraints stem from at least three different levels or spheres of social reality, (...) i.e. the preconditions of a well-ordered society, the internal morality of economic activity and the preconditions of autonomous agency. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of attitudes towards ethical questions in business life among managing directors. They study covers more than 240 Swedish firms of all sizes, from different lines of business, and it is based on a solid theoretical framework. It should be seen as a part of the author''s effort to develop a model explaining ethical organizational behaviour. Among the most important conclusions of the study is the concept of corporate moral view. It seems (...) possible to distinguish between the humanitarian morality versus the organizational morality, depending on who''s interests the decision maker prefers to take in a moral dilemma. (shrink)

For both philosophers and managers, reasoning with ourselves and others can be used both as (1) a way of knowing what is ethical and (2) a way of acting to help ourselves, others and organizations behave ethically. However, for many of us, knowing is frequently not the same as acting. Four areas are addressed: (1) thirteen limitations of ethical reasoning as an action strategy; (2) how a better understanding of these limitations can strengthen ethical reasoning as an action strategy; (3) (...) how an understanding of these limitations can serve as a conceptual foundation for exploring other ethical action strategies; and, (4) implications for experiential learning and teaching. (shrink)

This article begins with a detailed analysis of how the choice situation of a social contract for international business ethics can be constructed and justified. A choice situation is developed by analyzing conceptions of the multinational firm and the domain of international business. The result is a hypothetical negotiation between two fictional characters, J. Duncan Grey and Elizabeth Redd, who respectively represent the interests of businesses and communities seeking to engage in international trade. The negotiators agree on ethical principles governing (...) wages, the environment, and compliance social and cultural norms. These principles are then shown to rest in wide reflective equilibrium with considered moral judgments on international business ethics, which are drawn from international agreements, such as the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and voluntary business initiatives, such as the Global Sullivan Principles and the UN Global Compact. (shrink)

A series of survey studies on corporations' institutionalization of ethics has been done in the U.S. and Japan. Among them, one Japanese study suggests that company policy is the most influential factor in managers' ethical decision-making and behavior. This empirical evidence suggests that, in Japan, company efforts to institutionalize ethics are effective in improving business behavior. The author examines this by describing three case studies of Japanese managers' ethical decision-making.

In this paper I respond to separate criticisms by Bill Shaw (JBE, July 1988) and Richard Nunan (JBE, December 1988) of my paper A Critique of Milton Friedman's Essay The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits (JBE, August 1986). Professors Shaw and Nunan identify several points where my argument could benefit from clarification and improvement. They also make valuable contributions to the discussion of the broad issue area of whether and to what extent business should exercise moral (...) initiative.My objectives are (1) to show, with the aid of examples (inspired by Shaw) and the addition of one point of correction (inspired by Nunan), that my disapproving critique of Friedman's famous argument remains sound, (2) to show that Professor Shaw's argument contains serious problems, and (3) to build on the base laid by my critics by developing important reasons why business should exercise moral initiative. (shrink)

We need an account of corporate agency that is temporally robust – one that will help future people to cope with challenges posed by corporate groups in a range of credible futures. In particular, we need to bequeath moral resources that enable future people to avoid futures dominated by corporate groups that have no regard for human beings. This paper asks how future philosophers living in broken or digital futures might re-imagine contemporary debates about corporate agency. It argues that the (...) only temporally robust account is moralised extreme collectivism, where full moral personhood is accorded to those corporate groups that are reliably disposed to respond appropriately to moral reasons. (shrink)

We present asecond-personalaccount of corporate moral agency. This approach is in contrast to thefirst-personalapproach 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. (shrink)

Abstract:The central problems of political philosophy (e.g., legitimate authority, distributive justice) mirror the central problems of business ethics. The question naturally arises: should political theories be applied to problems in business ethics? If a version of egalitarianism is the correct theory of justice for states, for example, does it follow that it is the correct theory of justice for businesses? If states should be democratically governed by their citizens, should businesses be democratically managed by their employees? Most theorists who have (...) considered these questions, including John Rawls inPolitical Liberalism, and Robert Phillips and Joshua Margolis in a 1999 article, have said “no.” They claim that states and businesses are different kinds of entities, and hence require different theories of justice. I challenge this claim. While businesses differ from states, the difference is one of degree, not one of kind. Business ethics has much to learn from political philosophy. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of business ethics. I describe important issues, identify some of the normative considerations animating them, and offer a roadmap of references for those wishing to learn more. I focus on issues in normative business ethics, but discuss briefly the growing body of work in descriptive business ethics. I conclude with a comment on the changing nature of the field.

Numerous ethical theories have been proposed as a foundation of business ethics, and this often brings about appreciable perplexity. This article seeks to identify specific problems for a sound foundation of this discipline. A first problem is this multiplicity of ethical theories, each with its own metaethics, often accepted without a serious discussion of their philosophical grounds. A second problem is the fragmentation of theories; some centred on duties or obligations, others on consequences, virtues, or moral sentiments. In addition, some (...) theories focus on universal principles, while others take the singularity of each situation as their focal point. A third problem is that not every ethical theory covers the personal, organizational and societal dimensions of business ethics, and this introduces reductionism. These problems cannot be satisfactorily addressed through ‘ethical pluralism’, in which all theories are accepted, without falling into ethical relativism. ‘Ethical pragmatism’, which welcomes any ethical theory only on the basis of their practically, is also questioned. Furthermore, there is the problem of integrating ethics into business theory, which is often extrinsic to the economic function. After analysing these problems, the article concludes by exploring some proposals that might serve to build a sound and complete ethical theory which includes human goods (objective values), principles (or norms) and virtues. The necessity of reconsidering the human action for a closer integration of ethics into business theory is also suggested. (shrink)

B. Readings (University in Ruins. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) argued that universities have abandoned their original project of promoting a national culture and have tried to substitute by embracing globalization, but the vagueness and incoherence of the concept has failed to return purpose to the University. The academic treatment of corporate social responsibility illustrates this dilemma. For a generation after H.R. Bowen (Social Responsibilities of the Businessman. New York: Harper & Row, 1953) founded the field, scholars struggled to fit (...) the concept within a national system of pluralistic power-sharing among a variety of institutions that would define and enforce standards of responsibility necessary for the general good of American society. That understanding changed in the nineteen eighties, shortly after corporate executives had united to an unprecedented degree to direct the power of government in their interests, influence the public agenda, and roll back the power of unions. In response, business ethicists began to reformulate corporate social responsibility as a voluntary practice on the part of these same executives. Since the Kantian and Lockean principles upon which this approach was based were themselves problematic, it is not surprising that the experience gained over the last generation casts doubt on the efficacy of this reliance on voluntary restraint and personal initiative. However, circumstances that include the failure of globalization to deliver on its promises may have changed sufficiently in recent years to revive interest in approaches that acknowledge the importance of countervailing power for encouraging greater corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Over the last generation, American Business Ethics has focused excessively on the process of managerial decision-making while ignoring the collective impact of these decisions and avoiding other approaches that might earn the disapproval of corporate executives. This narrowness helped the field establish itself during the 1980s, when American management, under pressure from finance and heightened competition, was unreceptive to any limitations on its autonomy. Relying, however, on top-down approaches inspired by Aristotle, Locke, and Kant, while ignoring the consequentialism of Mill (...) and Rawls, made the field totally reliant upon the good will of these same corporate executives for generating any impact. Trends in employee compensation, finance, regulation, government procurement, and taxpayer subsidies suggest that Business Ethics has failed to significantly influence corporate behavior, a result that would have not surprised the realists of the post-war generation of Business and Society scholars. If Business Ethics is to prove relevant in the contemporary world, the field needs to acknowledge past failures and develop new approaches. The decline of American economic hegemony coupled to the increased internationalization of the discipline may create the opportunity to do so. (shrink)

A generation ago, the field of business ethics largely abandoned analyzing the broader issue of social justice to focus upon more micro concerns. Donaldson applied the social contract tradition of Locke and Rawls to the ethics of management decision-making, and with Dunfee, has advanced this project ever since. Current events suggest that if the field is to remain relevant it needs to return to examining social and economic fairness, and Rawl's approach to social contracting suggests a way to start. First, (...) however, the field needs to discard the weaker and counterproductive aspects of its Lockean legacy: Locke's hostility to government activism and his indifference with regard to outcomes for the bulk of society. Donaldson's and Dunfee's social contracting approach is not suited to, nor was it designed to, analyze or resolve broad issues of social and economic justice. Their postulated network of communities upon which they rely is problematic in a number of ways, and while they take the legal and political status quo into account, their method does not deal with the historical reality that, as the economic and social environment changes, promoting greater justice requires new and sometimes coercive government interventions. Rawls's work, however, does acknowledge the historically demonstrable necessity of using the power of government to help to achieve desirable social outcomes. While he rejected Mill's methodology, Rawls was inspired by the earlier philosopher's concerns for social justice at a time of major economic change. The field would do well to follow the example of both men in this respect. (shrink)

This paper reports research on the influence of corporate and individual characteristics on managers'' social orientation in Germany. The results indicate that mid-level managers expressed a significantly lower social orientation than low-level managers, and that job activity did not impact social orientation. Female respondents expressed a higher social orientation than male respondents. No impact of the political system origin (former East Germany versus former West Germany) on social orientation was shown. Overall, corporate position had a significantly higher impact on social (...) orientation than did the characteristics of the individuals surveyed. (shrink)

While researchers in business ethics, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence have advanced the study of corporate agency, there have been very few attempts to bring together insights from these and other disciplines in the pages of the Journal of Business Ethics. By introducing to an audience of business ethics scholars the work of outstanding authors working outside the field, this interdisciplinary special issue addresses this lacuna. Its aim is to encourage the formulation of innovative arguments that reinvigorate the study of corporate (...) agency and stimulate further cross-fertilization of ideas between business ethics, law, philosophy, and other disciplines. (shrink)

This study explores the research paradigms of contemporary business ethics research in 2001–2008. With citation data from the top two business ethics journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index, this study conducts citation and co-citation analysis to identify the most important publications, scholars, and research themes in the business ethics area and then maps the intellectual structure of business ethics studies between 2001 and 2008. The results show that current business ethics studies cluster around four major research themes, including (...) morality and social contract theory, ethical decision making, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder theory. This study helps profile the invisible network of knowledge production in business ethics and provides important insights on current research paradigms of business ethics studies. (shrink)

This study explores the research paradigms of contemporary business ethics research in 2001–2008. With citation data from the top two business ethics journals included in the Social Sciences Citation Index, this study conducts citation and co‐citation analysis to identify the most important publications, scholars, and research themes in the business ethics area and then maps the intellectual structure of business ethics studies between 2001 and 2008. The results show that current business ethics studies cluster around four major research themes, including (...) morality and social contract theory, ethical decision making, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder theory. This study helps profile the invisible network of knowledge production in business ethics and provides important insights on current research paradigms of business ethics studies. (shrink)

There is a growing literature that attempts to define the substantive rights of employees in the workplace, a.k.a. the duties of employers toward their employees. Following Nozick, this article argues that — so long as there is a competitive labor market — to set up a class of moral rights in the workplace invades workers' rights to freely choose the terms and conditions of employment they judge best.

This article revisits the "harmony doctrine" school of economics and its distinctive understanding of how ethics and economics intersect. Harmony doctrine thinkers staked out a “natural” understanding of economic phenomena that in many ways fused the classical political economy of Adam Smith with the earlier French Physiocratic School. Their metaphysically grounded interpretation was largely eclipsed by the developments of utilitarian and marginalist schools by the end of the nineteenth century. Yet harmony doctrine thinking adhered to a distinct understanding of how (...) ethical processes and outcomes play out within the economic sphere that has to date gone under examined by business ethicists. This paper outlines three characteristics of harmony doctrine views: the belief in curative forces empowered to "heal" the economic order, a dichotomous interpretation of the economic realm that distinguishes the “natural” from the “artificial,” and an overarching belief in a harmonious social order actualized by cooperative interdependencies within economic enterprises. Despite falling into obscurity in the economic discipline, all these ideas found new life in intellectual currents of organizational and political thought at the turn of the twentieth century. After surveying these historical developments, this article concludes by demonstrating how harmony doctrine thinking helpfully illuminates persisting metaphysical dimensions of contemporary business ethics. (shrink)

In recent years, the stakeholder approach has been widely applied in the debate on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Although many authors of this approach have reviewed many elements of the model, they have unconditionally accepted several criteria assumed by Freeman ( 1984 ) to identify stakeholders. In general, stakeholder authors have assumed that (a) the company establishes dyadic relationships with other agents, and (b) decisions made by a company only have foreseen and direct effects on other agents. These criteria have (...) enabled researchers to understand simple processes. However, they have also prevented researchers from explaining how action comes about, and how responsibility is shared, in many complex processes taking place in contemporary societies. Such complex processes involve many agents, and each decision can generate unexpected effects which accumulate or disseminate. Furthermore, the normative structure governing these processes can affect and/or be affected by the actions of agents. In this study, we propose new criteria to expand the stakeholder model and facilitate the study of CSR in such processes. (shrink)

Issues management (IM) is becoming widely accepted in the business-and-society literature as a policy tool to enhance the social performance of corporations. Its acceptance is based on the presumption that firms have incorporated ethical norms into their decision-making process. This paper argues that IM is simply a technique to identify, analyze, and respond to social issues. It can be used either to improve or forestall corporate social performance. Different values will steer IM practitioners in different policy directions.If IM is to (...) be more than a social gadget, designed to promote the firm's narrow economic objectives, it must be self-consciously grounded in ethics. Stakeholder analysis and the comprehensive corporate ethic are concepts that can help forge links between ethics and the administrative process, between values and decision-making in IM. (shrink)

This article begins with an explanation of how moral development for organizations has parallels to Kohlberg's categorization of the levels of individual moral development. Then the levels of organizational moral development are integrated into the literature on corporate social performance by relating them to different stakeholder orientations. Finally, the authors propose a model of organizational moral development that emphasizes the role of top management in creating organizational processes that shape the organizational and institutional components of corporate social performance. This article (...) represents one approach to linking the distinct streams of business ethics and business-and-society research into a more complete understanding of how managers and firms address complex ethical and social issues. (shrink)

The dominant approach to the analysis of issues in business ethics consists in the articulation and use of a set of mid-level moral principles. This approach is geared to business practitioners who are not interested in the difficult problems of moral and political theory. I argue that this "practitioner model" is philosophically suspect. I show how the theoretical frameworks prominent business ethicists employ are insufficiently developed. I also show how many of their analyses presuppose substantive views about issues of social (...) justice which they rarely defend or acknowledge. Since no neutral position on these issues is available, I argue that the only alternative is to address the problems such issue's raise for the analysis of institutions and the conduct of persons acting under those institutions. I offer suggestions about how we can develop a more philosophically defensible approach to business ethics. (shrink)

How should we understand the relation between corporate agency, corporate moral agency and corporate moral patienthood? For some time, corporations have been treated as increasingly ontologically and morally sophisticated in the literature. To explore the limits of this treatment, I start off by redeveloping and defending a reductio that historically has been aimed at accounts of corporate agency which entail that corporations count as moral patients. More specifically, I argue that standard agents are due a certain type of moral concern, (...) but corporate agents are not due that type of concern, so they are not agents of, at least, the standard type. Diagnosis: because corporations plausibly lack qualia, they are ‘zombie agents’ that mimic real agents. This explains why they are neither standard agents nor standard moral patients: they are not standard agents because they lack mental states, and because they lack experiences, they are, at best, morally notable rather than morally respectable. However, I then argue that we nevertheless have instrumental reasons to include them in our moral responsibility practices, both because that is what notability involves and bluffingly, and both when it comes to treating them as moral agents and as moral patients. Hence, we may treat corporations as part of our moral responsibility practices to a limited extent anyway. (shrink)

Abstract:Social contracting has a long and important place in the history of political philosophy (Hardin, 1991; Waldron, 1989) and as a theory of justice (Baynes, 1989; Rawls, 1971). More recently, it has been developed into an individual rights-based theory of organizations (Keeley, 1980, 1988), and as a way to integrate ethics and moral legitimacy into corporate strategy and action (Donaldson, 1982; Freeman&Gilbert, 1988). Currently, it is being proposed as an integrative theory of economic ethics (Donaldson&Dunfee, forthcoming). This paper will extend (...) the Donaldson and Dunfee approach by arguing thatsocial contracting can best be understood and applied in organizational settings if it is perceived and treated as a network governance process. This insight can benefit management scholars and practitioners alike, since it calls attention to the processes by which trust is created and sustained in on-going contractual relationships. It also strongly suggests that a new approach to applying managerial discretion, asmoral agency, is needed to realize the full competitive and ethical potential of emerging network forms. (shrink)

Growing public concern and uncertainties surrounding emerging technologies suggest the need for socially-responsible behavior of companies in the development and implementation of oversight systems for them. In this paper, we argue that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important aspect of nanotechnology oversight given the role of trust in shaping public attitudes about nanotechnology and the lack of data about the health and environmental risks of nanoproducts. We argue that CSR is strengthened by the adoption of stakeholder-driven models and attention (...) to moral principles in policies and programs. In this context, we examine drivers of CSR, contextual and leadership factors that influence CSR, and strategies for CSR. To illustrate these concepts, we discuss existing cases of CSR-like behavior in nanotechnology companies, and then provide examples of how companies producing nanomedicines can exhibit morally-driven CSR behavior. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper explores an ontological approach to the issue of whether corporations, like individuals, are morally responsible for their actions. More specifically, we investigate the identity of organizations relative to the individuals that compose them. Based on general systems theory, the traditional assumption is that social collectives are more complex, variable, and loosely coupled than individuals. This assumption rests on two premises. The first is a view of the individual as simple, stable, and tightly coupled (i.e., unitary). The second premise (...) is that the relationship between social collectives and their members is characterized by the complete inclusion of individuals in higher order systems.We examine the social science literature that bears on these premises and conclude that they are false. The differences between organizations and individuals in the magnitude of complexity or variability appear to be minimal or nonexistent. An implication of our analysis is that individuals and organizations are coterminous and, therefore, inseparable as moral agents. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in Finnish managers' corporate responsibility perceptions from 1994 to 2004. Following earlier research, the concept of corporate responsibility is operationalised using the stakeholder approach. Empirically, we ask how managers' views on stakeholder issues have changed during the 10-year research period, and how managers' stakeholder orientation compares with their economic orientation. The data were collected using a survey research instrument in the years 1994, 1999 and 2004. The research results show a (...) positive change in managers' corporate responsibility perceptions during this time period. In addition, managers' stakeholder orientation seems to be in balance with their economic orientation. However, the economic context – in terms of both their own company's economic position and the general economic situation – has an effect on managers' stakeholder orientation. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in Finnish managers' corporate responsibility perceptions from 1994 to 2004. Following earlier research, the concept of corporate responsibility is operationalised using the stakeholder approach. Empirically, we ask how managers' views on stakeholder issues have changed during the 10‐year research period, and how managers' stakeholder orientation compares with their economic orientation. The data were collected using a survey research instrument in the years 1994, 1999 and 2004. The research results show a (...) positive change in managers' corporate responsibility perceptions during this time period. In addition, managers' stakeholder orientation seems to be in balance with their economic orientation. However, the economic context – in terms of both their own company's economic position and the general economic situation – has an effect on managers' stakeholder orientation. (shrink)

This paper criticizes De George's portrayal of theological ethics and its purported inability to make a distinctive contribution to business ethics with the following theses. (1) De George's understanding of the nature of theological ethics is faulty. Consequently his typology of the field is not an adequate description of the range of prevailing approaches. (2) A constructive proposal for religious ethics is offered which takes as its starting points (a) an aspect of human experience (self-transcendence) and (b) the human capacity (...) to reason in order to claim (via Kant, Rahner, Gamwell, and others) that practical reason is religious in nature. As such, a distinctive contribution of religious ethics is its capacity to evaluate business activity in terms of its consistency with our most fundamental, all-inclusive human loyalities and affirmations about the nature of reality itself. (shrink)

There is a tendency in the business ethics literature to think of ethics in restrictive terms: what one should not do, and how to control this. Drawing on Lawrence Kohlberg''s theory of moral development, the paper focuses on, and draws attention to, another more positive aspect of ethics: the capacity of ethics to inspire and empower individuals, as well as groups. To understand and facilitate such empowerment, it is argued that it is necessary to move beyond Kohlberg''s justice reasoning so (...) as to appreciate the value and importance of feeling and care. Accordingly, we draw upon case study material to review the meaning of Kohlberg''s higher stages — 5, 6 and 7 — to question the meaning of ethical reasoning. With such deeper understanding of particular ethical codes or practices, it is thought that members of organisations may come closer to thespirit, as opposed to the letter, of ethical conduct in organisations. This, we argue, is consistent with the degree of trust and integrity demanded by leaner, post-bureaucratic ways of organizing and conducting business as well as being personally beneficial to the people involved. (shrink)

Empirical analyses of the ethics of corporations with the aim to improve the state of corporate ethics are rare. This paper develops an integrated, normative model of corporate ethics by conceptualizing the ethical quality of organizations and by relating this contextual quality to various expressions of immoral behavior. This so-called Ethics Qualities Model for organizations, which contains 21 ethical qualities, allows one to assess the ethical content of institutional groups of individuals. A proper conceptualization is highly relevant both for the (...) empirical corroboration of business ethics theories and for managerial purposes, such as judging individual and group performance or informing external stakeholders. The empirical applicability of the model is illustrated by an explorative case study of a large, globally operating financial institution. This case-study demonstrates that the corporate ethical qualities differ with respect to their perceived optimality as well as to their estimated impact on (un)ethical conduct. The various results provide managers with many clues to understand their organization and to take effective measures to improve the ethical content of their organization. (shrink)

Moral responsibility for outcomes in corporate settings can be ascribed either to the individual members, the corporation, or both. In the latter case, the relationship between individual and corporate responsibility has been approached as inversely proportional, such that an increase in individual responsibility leads to a corresponding decrease in corporate responsibility and vice versa. In this article, we develop a non-proportionate approach, where, under specific conditions, individual and corporate moral responsibilities interact dynamically, leading to a mutual enhancement of responsibility: the (...) more the corporation is responsible, the more the individuals become responsible and vice versa. We develop this mutually enhancing approach in terms of normative ascriptions of responsibility, while leaving aside empirical implications in terms of mutual awareness of responsibility between individuals and corporations. We explore conceptually the conditions and mechanisms that generate this mutual enhancement and also discuss the implications for research and practice. (shrink)

This article critiques the concept and discourse of social responsibility in terms of theoretical coherence, empirical salience, normative viability, and power/knowledge implications from a Marxist-institutionalist perspective. The social responsibility concept and discourse is found to be problematic along each of the above dimensions. The basic point can be stated succinctly: The concept and discourse of social responsibility are viable only in the absence of a historically grounded understanding of capitalist political economy. At the same time, however, the article argues that (...) social responsibility constitutes an influential ideology with material implications for stakeholder groups. (shrink)

Business ethics serves the important social function of integrating business and society, by promoting the legitimacy ofbusiness operations, through critical reflection. Although the social function of business ethics is impliCit in leading business ethicsfoundation theories, it has never been presented in a systematic way. This article sets out to fill this theoretical lacuna, and to explore the theoretical potentials of a functional approach to business ethics. Key concepts from Parsonian functionalistic SOCiology are applied to establish the social integrative function of (...) business ethics. This produces a theoretical framework for business ethics that provides strong theoretical arguments against often-heard criticisms of business ethics. Many of these criticisms are ideological in nature, in that they systematically play down the importance of integrative functions in the bUSiness-society relationship, on the grounds of unrealistic assumptions about the performance of economic and bureaucratic institutions. However, business ethics itself can alsobecome ideological, if it forgets that the conditions for the application of ethics to business are not always ideal as well. (shrink)

Exploring the concept of citizenship from the history of political philosophy provides suggestions about what corporate citizenship could mean. The metaphor of corporate citizenship suggests an institutional approach to corporate social responsibility. Citizenship is a social role, characterized by an orientation towards the social contract, collective and active responsibility, as well as a positive attitude towards the juridical state. By analogy, corporate citizenship is a social role, characterized by the social contract of business, a participatory ethics of business, the precautionary (...) principle and the promotion of just international institutions. It is considered that corporate citizenship depends on a number of interacting institutional conditions that hold society partly responsible for the social performance of their companies. Finally, the problem of the dissolution of corporate social responsibility is reviewed in an institutional environment where everyone is considered responsible. (shrink)