ABSTRACT:The distinction between what I call nonelective obligations and discretionary obligations, a distinction that focuses on one particular thread of the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, helps us to identify the obligations that carry over from principals to agents. Clarity on this issue is necessary to identify the moral obligations within “shareholder primacy”, which conceives of managers as agents of shareholders. My main claim is that the principal-agent relation requires agents to fulfill nonelective obligations, but it does not always (...) require discharging discretionary obligations. I show that the requirement to fulfill nonelective obligations is more far-reaching than has been acknowledged by most defenders and critics of shareholder primacy. But I also show that managers are not bound by certain discretionary obligations like charity, showing that their moral obligations are more circumscribed than the obligations that apply to human beings in general. (shrink)

I argue that, alongside the already well-established prohibition against treating persons as mere means, Kant’s Formula of Humanity requires a prohibition against treating persons as mere things. The former captures ethical violations due to someone’s (perceived) instrumental value, e.g. exploitation, the latter captures cases in which I mistreat others because they have no instrumental value to me. These are cases in which I am indifferent and complacent towards persons in need; forms of mistreatment frequently suffered by the world’s poorest. I (...) explain why we need the category of treating others as mere things and what the prohibition against such treatment entails. Prohibitions against treating as mere means and as mere things are both essential for understanding the specific nature and extent of our duties to the world’s poorest. (shrink)

Moral intensity theory is used to explain how characteristics of moral issues affect ethical decision-making. According to moral intensity theory, individuals and firms will make more ethical decisions when moral intensity is present, such as greater negative consequences, including harm to customers. However, evidence suggests this does not always happen in crisis situations. For example, Fisher Price waited until 30 babies died before recalling its Rock’n Play Sleeper in 2019. In this article, the concept of immoral entrenchment is introduced to (...) address how crises affect the expected firm responses to morally intense ethical issues. Immoral entrenchment suggests that firms experience threat-rigidity responses to crises that lead to collective moral disengagement. Immoral entrenchment results in firms’ denial of responsibility and unethical behavior, instead of ethical behavior, in the face of highly negative consequences. The study in this article tests immoral entrenchment in the context of the speed to recall 843 consumer products. Supplemental qualitative evidence illustrates the collective moral disengagement dimension of immoral entrenchment. Contributing to the literature on ethics and crisis, the findings demonstrate that crises can generate immoral entrenchment in firms, which reverses the expected ethical response of those firms to issues with high moral intensity. (shrink)

In ways accentuated by the global coronavirus pandemic, corporations constitute vital instruments of the acts of beneficence needed by the people of the world to make progress in public health and increase collective and individual well-being. This article contributes to understanding the variety of moral forces that may lead corporations to commit acts of beneficence, including Friedman’s business case for corporate beneficence, the duty of beneficence as developed by business ethicists, and Dunfee’s social contract account of corporate obligation. Whereas Mejia (...) recently contributed to scholarship on corporate beneficence by expressly adopting shareholder primacy’s conception of corporate governance, this article embraces a stakeholder-oriented, managerialist picture of corporate governance. I extend the literature on beneficence by incorporating what I argue is the intuition underlying Dunfee’s contractualist formula of minimal contribution, namely that management’s duty to do good is awakened and unshackled to the extent management judges the corporation can afford to commit acts of beneficence, all stakeholders considered. The all-stakeholders-considered case for corporate beneficence compels management to act, I argue, when inaction would undermine the moral integrity of managers personally committed to promoting the well-being of humanity. (shrink)

A number of influential Kantian philosophers assume that true need represents shared and fundamental human concerns that can both ground duties of aid and limit how much an agent can be morally required to do for others. In this paper, I take on this misreading and argue that true need is representative of personal priorities. This subjectivist reading fits better with Kant’s own characterization of true need and with his conceptions of need and happiness. Moreover, I argue that Kant’s own (...) conception of true need is philosophically appealing, as it is anti-paternalistic. Agents are free to determine their own true need. This frees Kant from the challenge of coming up with a list of true human needs that are supposedly stable across cultures, epochs and individuals. Furthermore, my reading also implies that the mere fact that someone else considers something their true need does not necessitate our help. (shrink)

Institutional investors control almost 60% of all assets under management worldwide and encompass a wide variety of organizations. Despite this reach, however, institutional investors have not received the normative scrutiny they merit beyond general discussions around their legally grounded fiduciary obligations to their beneficiaries. This paper offers a discussion of institutional investor ethical obligations in light of their specific attributes. We propose that the different characteristics of institutional investors and the diverse roles they play in the marketplace inform the scope (...) of their activities, and, in turn, the different ways in which their basic ethical obligations can be fulfilled. (shrink)