ABSTRACT:I here advance a critical research agenda for the political perspective of corporate social responsibility (Political CSR). I argue that whilst the ‘Political’ CSR literature is notable for both its conceptual novelty and practical importance, its development has been hamstrung by four ambiguities, conflations and/or oversights. More positively, I argue that ‘Political’ CSR should be conceived as one potentialformof globalization, and not as aconsequenceof ‘globalization’; that contemporary Western MNCs should be presumed to engage in CSR for instrumental reasons; that ‘Political’ (...) CSR should be associated with a corresponding ‘political’ model of corporate governance; and that both a ‘Rawlsian’ and ‘Habermasian’ perspective of Political CSR are different from ‘Political’ CSR. In concluding, I use these four critiques to identify a number of areas within which increasingly robust and sophisticated positive and normative theories of Political CSR are required. (shrink)

Recent years have heralded increasing attention to the role of multinational corporations in regard to human rights violations. The concept of complicity has been of particular interest in this regard. This article explores the conceptual differences between silent complicity in particular and other, more "conventional" forms of complicity. Despite their far-reaching normative implications, these differences are often overlooked.Rather than being connected to specific actions as is the case for other forms of complicity, the concept of silent complicity is tied to (...) the identity, or the moral stature of the accomplice. More specifically, it helps us expose multinational corporations in positions of political authority. Political authority breeds political responsibility.Thus, corporate responsibility in regard to human rights may go beyond "doing no harm" and include apositive obligation to protect. Making sense of this duty leads to a discussion of the scope and limits of legitimate human rights advocacy by corporations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This (...) is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Do corporations have a duty to promote just institutions? Agreeing with Hsieh’s recent contribution, this article argues that they do. However, contrary to Hsieh, it holds that such a claim cannot be advanced convincingly only by reference to the negative duty to do no harm. Instead, such a duty necessarily must be grounded in positive obligation. In the search of a foundation for a positive duty for corporations to further just institutions, Stephen Kobrin’s notion of “private political authority” offers a (...) promising connecting point. Political authority implies political responsibility; Political obligation, however, includes more than merely not doing any harm—it is essentially positive obligation. The implications of the new political responsibilities of multinational corporations may even go far beyond the particular duty to promote just institutions; they may be symptomatic for a much more profound shift from an individual to a collective age. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Do corporations have a duty to promote just institutions? Agreeing with Hsieh’s recent contribution, this article argues that they do. However, contrary to Hsieh, it holds that such a claim cannot be advanced convincingly only by reference to the negative duty to do no harm. Instead, such a duty necessarily must be grounded in positive obligation. In the search of a foundation for a positive duty for corporations to further just institutions, Stephen Kobrin’s notion of “private political authority” offers a (...) promising connecting point. Political authority implies political responsibility; Political obligation, however, includes more than merely not doing any harm—it is essentially positive obligation. The implications of the new political responsibilities of multinational corporations may even go far beyond the particular duty to promote just institutions; they may be symptomatic for a much more profound shift from an individual to a collective age. (shrink)

In this article, I will argue that it is time to rethink and reconfigure some of the established assumptions underlying our conception of moral responsibility. Specifically, there is a mismatch between the individualism of our common sense morality and the imperative for collaborative responses to global problems in what I will call the “collective age.” This must have an impact also on the way we think about the responsibility of corporations. I will argue that most plausibly we ought to reframe (...) corporate responsibility as a conception of collaborative responsibility. Such a conception of collaborative responsibility is characterized by five key elements: first, it is based on the moral imperative for collaboration. Second, it shifts emphasis from commission to omission. Third, it is not only negative but also, and perhaps essentially, positive responsibility. Fourth, it is political responsibility. And finally, it is, most basically, human rights responsibility. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This (...) is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Although a research focus on the increasing involvement of corporations in shaping and maintaining the global rules of the game points out promising avenues for future research, it simultaneously makes clear how little currently established, mostly managerial conceptual frameworks have to offer in making sense of these developments. It is argued that we need to expand the rather restricted perspectives that these frameworks provide, in order to explore new conceptual foundations that will not only enable us to travel the confines (...) of the different disciplines involved with the study of the changing role of business in shaping the global rules of the game, but that can also systematically connect normative and positive research questions at the conceptual level. Three directions for this search for new foundations are briefly explored. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the political perspective of corporate social responsibility disclosures and, drawing on Weber’s notion of traditionalism, seeks to explain what motivates companies to make such disclosures in a traditional setting. Annual reports of 23 banking companies in Bangladesh are analysed over the period 2009–2012. This is supplemented by a review of documentary evidence on the political and social activities of corporations and reports published in national and international newspapers. We found that, in the banking companies over the period (...) of study, apparently neutral, corporate, philanthropic activities disclosed and promoted in CSR reports are inextricably linked to powerful leaders’ personal projects and the ruling party’s agendas. We have demonstrated elements of traditional societies, including personal loyalty and the public display of loyalty, the master–servant relationship, and obedience to personal rather than formal authority, provide an understanding of why banks have employed politically charged CSR disclosure strategies. The paper contributes to disclosure studies where political motivations of corporate disclosure rarely discussed. The paper extends the debate on political CSR by demonstrating that the role of family and familial values at the organisational and national levels may be much more important when it comes to CSR disclosure and activities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this address I argue that different perspectives on the normative foundations of corporate responsibility reflect underlying disagreements about the ideal arrangement of tasks between market and state. I initially recommend that scholars look back to the “division of moral labor” inspired by John Rawls’ seminal work on distributive justice in order to rethink why, and to what extent, corporations take on responsibilities normally within the purview of government. I then examine how this notion is related to recent theoretical work (...) in the field of business ethics. I thereafter turn to provide a brief outline of an alternative view that sees corporations as having responsibilities in so far as markets are sites of delegated oversight over the production of social goods that might otherwise be administered by the state. (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)

The aim of this paper is to discuss popular conceptions of business ethics and their relationship to the problem of racial injustice by way of reviewing Spike Lee’s (1989) _Do the Right Thing_. Taking place on one day in late 80’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, and set against a tense decade of racial conflict in New York City, Spike Lee’s masterpiece has deeply influenced American discourse on race, capturing many of the complex interpersonal dynamics that are both constitutive and consequence of American racial (...) hierarchies. Instead of focusing on shareholders and stakeholders, I argue that _Do The Right Thing_ suggests a more political understanding of business’s ethical obligations: a business’s ethical obligations don’t emanate from internal relations but from its social and political position. I conclude by discussing a more recent film, Steve McQueen’s (2020) _Mangrove_. Like _Do the Right Thing_, _Mangrove_ also focuses on a business that is at the center of an urban racial conflict, but which stands in a very different relationship to this tension, providing an alternative illustration of business ethics informed by political and social positioning. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In his 2018 presidential address to the Society of Business Ethics, Jeffery Smith claimed that political approaches to business ethics must be attentive to both the distinctive nature of commercial activity and, at the same time, the degree to which such commercial activity is structured by political decisions and choices. In what we take to be a friendly extension of the argument, we claim that Smith does not go far enough with this insight. Smith’s political approach to business ethics focuses (...) solely on the outcomes of political choices. But if we think of politics in terms of processes—as in, ongoing disagreement and contest—and not merely a series of legal, administrative, or institutional outcomes, a different view of business ethics emerges. In particular, we argue that such an emphasis points us toward seeing business actors as having a normative duty to preserve the integrity and functioning of democracy. (shrink)

Many tensions exist within the nexus of corporate social responsibility, competitive strategy, and political activity. Previously, these aspects of strategic management have been considered in relative isolation or at best in pairs. Accordingly, an attempt is made here to set out a general strategic problem of the corporation, in which all three aspects are combined. This project reveals a particular need to explicate the political assumptions held by or on behalf of the corporation. Examples might include the classical liberal model, (...) global hypercompetition, or variants of the stakeholder model. The project also reinforces the broader notion that when one adopts the perspective of a corporate strategist, one can sometimes find potentially productive ways of reframing issues in ethics, economics, and politics. (shrink)

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , the US Supreme Court sharply curtailed the ability of the state to limit political speech by for-profit corporations. This new legal situation elevates the question of corporate political involvement: in what manner and to what extent is it ethical for for-profit corporations to participate in the political process in a liberal democratic society? Using Scanlon’s version of contractualism, I argue for a number of substantive and procedural constraints on the political activities of (...) businesses. Central to this contractualist analysis is an identification of the self-governance-based interests of individuals that are affected by corporate political activity and a method for judging the various assignments of social rights, duties and roles according to how they collectively meet those interests. Together, these two features make this contractualist approach distinctive and allow it to generate substantive ethical results. (shrink)

Political theories in general and deliberative democracy in particular have become quite popular in business ethics over the past few years. However, the model of deliberative democracy as generally referred to in business ethics is only appropriate for conceptualizing interaction between business and society which occurs within a context which is more or less institutionalized. The model cannot account for “unregulated” interaction between business and civil society. The authors argue that scholars need to resort to the so called “critical strand” (...) of deliberative democracy if we want to conceptualize interaction that happens without the involvement of decision-making institutions as political action in a deliberative sense. Adopting this approach allows us to identify cases in which unregulated interaction between business and civil society is preferable over institutionalization. (shrink)

This article assesses some of the implications of globalization for the scholarly debate on business ethics, CSR and related concepts. The argument is based, among other things, on the declining capacity of nation state institutions to regulate socially desirable corporate behavior as well as the growing corporate exposure to heterogeneous social, cultural and political values in societies globally. It is argued that these changes are shifting the corporate role towards a sphere of societal governance hitherto dominated by traditional political actors. (...) This leads to a discussion of the ambivalent results of such a process for a responsible corporate role in a globalized world. While assessing the current reception these changes have received in the management literature, the contributions of the four articles in this Special Issue are framed and evaluated. The argument closes by highlighting avenues of future research on this new challenge. (shrink)

This article assesses some of the implications of globalization for the scholarly debate on business ethics, CSR and related concepts. The argument is based, among other things, on the declining capacity of nation state institutions to regulate socially desirable corporate behavior as well as the growing corporate exposure to heterogeneous social, cultural and political values in societies globally. It is argued that these changes are shifting the corporate role towards a sphere of societal governance hitherto dominated by traditional political actors. (...) This leads to a discussion of the ambivalent results of such a process for a responsible corporate role in a globalized world. While assessing the current reception these changes have received in the management literature, the contributions of the four articles in this Special Issue are framed and evaluated. The argument closes by highlighting avenues of future research on this new challenge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article examines the presuppositions and theoretical frameworks of the “new-wave” “Post-Westphalian” approach to international business ethics and compares it to the more philosophically oriented moral theory approach that has predominated in the field. I contrast one author’s Post-Westphalian political approach to the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations (TNCs) with my own “Fair Share” theory of moral responsibility for human rights. I suggest how the debate about the meaning of corporate human rights “complicity” might be informed by the fair (...) share theory. While I point out that Post-Westphalians and moral philosophers may have fundamental disagreements about basic concepts such as legitimacy, justice, and democratic deliberation, I conclude that the Post-Westphalians have made a major contribution to the expansion of the field by presenting business ethicists with an opportunity to inform and guide debates about the potential future course of transnational governance. (shrink)

For more than three decades, business ethics has suggested and evaluated strategies for multinationals to address abject deprivations and weak regulatory institutions in developing countries. Critical appraisals, internal and external, have observed these concerns being severely constrained by the overwhelming prioritization of economic values, i.e., economism. Recent contributions to business ethics stress a re-imagination of the field wherein economic goals are downgraded and more attention given to redistribution of wealth and well-being of the weaker individuals and groups. Development ethics, a (...) lesser known field of normative enquiry, already offers nuanced justifications against economism which business ethicists can use in their current attempts to wean the field from old habits. (shrink)

The debate about the appropriate standards for upstream corporate social responsibility of multinational corporations has been on the public and academic agenda for some three decades. The debate originally focused narrowly on “contract responsibility” of MNCs for monitoring of upstream contractors for “sweatshop” working conditions violating employee rights. The authors argue that the MNC upstream responsibility debate has shifted qualitatively over time to “full producer responsibility” involving an expansion from “contract responsibility” in three distinct dimensions. First, there is an expansion (...) of scope from working conditions to human rights and social and environmental impacts broadly defined. Second, there is expansion in depth of this broader responsibility to the whole upstream supply chain without regard to contracting status. Upstream responsibility now includes all suppliers, including direct contractors and the chain of suppliers to such contractors. Finally, the change in CSR scope and depth has led to an evolution of CSR management practice. (shrink)

Following the situation of poverty in the rights paradigm, this paper explores the links between the rights-based and corporate social responsibility approaches to the realization of socioeconomic rights in the broader context of an emerging recognition of CSR as private regulation of business behaviour. It examines complex theoretical and practical dimensions of responsibility and potential contributions of businesses to poverty alleviation and clarifies the apparent paradox of legal compulsion of essentially voluntary CSR activities. Rather than treat rights and CSR as (...) parallel approaches to protecting socioeconomic rights, it is argued that CSR can be part of a coherent framework of laws and policies for legally translating broad human rights commitments to poverty reduction into concrete programmes. The paper demonstrates how legally propped CSR arrangements can support poverty reduction and appropriate task-specific contextualised definitions and boundaries of CSR that complement the rights-based approach. It is argued that human rights principles have normative dimensions to guide and help formulate policies, programmes and practices, which in turn allow for a creative use of and legal prop to CSR. The conceptualization of human rights is not restricted to one implementation method, and CSR can partly satisfy states’ human rights obligations and transcend the narrow conventional human rights discourse on obligations of non-state actors. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Although a research focus on the increasing involvement of corporations in shaping and maintaining the global rules of the game points out promising avenues for future research, it simultaneously makes clear how little currently established, mostly managerial conceptual frameworks have to offer in making sense of these developments. It is argued that we need to expand the rather restricted perspectives that these frameworks provide, in order to explore new conceptual foundations that will not only enable us to travel the confines (...) of the different disciplines involved with the study of the changing role of business in shaping the global rules of the game, but that can also systematically connect normative and positive research questions at the conceptual level. Three directions for this search for new foundations are briefly explored. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary theoretical framework is proposed for analysing justice in global working conditions. In addition to gender and race as popular criteria to identify disadvantaged groups in organizations, in multinational corporations (MNCs) local employees (i.e. host country nationals (HCNs) working in foreign subsidiaries) deserve special attention. Their working conditions are often substantially worse than those of expatriates (i.e. parent country nationals temporarily assigned to a foreign subsidiary). Although a number of reasons have been put forward to justify such inequalities—usually with (...) efficiency goals in mind—recent studies have used equity theory to question the extent to which they are perceived as fair by HCNs. However, since perceptual equity theory has limitations, this study develops an alternative and non-perceptual framework for analysing such inequalities. Employment discrimination theory and elements of Rawls’s ‘Theory of Justice’ are the theoretical pillars of this framework. This article discusses the advantages of this approach for MNCs and identifies some expatriation practices that are fair according to our non-perceptual justice standards, whilst also reasonably (if not highly) efficient. (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)

ABSTRACT:The UN Framework on Human Rights and Business comprises the State’s duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and the duty to remedy abuses. This paper focuses on the corporate responsibility to respect. It considers how to overcome obstacles, arising out of national and international law, to the development of a legally binding corporate duty to respect human rights. It is argued that the notion of human rights due diligence will lead to the creation of (...) binding legal duties and that principles of corporate and tort law can be adapted to this end. Furthermore, recent legal developments accept an “enlightened shareholder value” approach allowing corporate managers to consider human rights issues when making decisions. The responsibility to respect involves adaptation of shareholder based corporate governance towards a more stakeholder oriented approach and could lead to the development of a new, stakeholder based, corporate model. (shrink)

This paper argues that some of the major theories in current business ethics fail to provide an adequate account of moral responsibility for the creation of systemic financial risk. Using the trading of credit default swaps during the 2008 financial crisis as a case study, I will formulate three challenges that these theories must address: the problem of risk imposition, the problem of unstructured collective harm and the problem of limited knowledge. These challenges will be used to work out key (...) shortcomings of stakeholder approaches and Integrative Social Contracts Theory. I will argue that pluralist connection models used in political theory can help to overcome these shortcomings. Adopting an approach based on these models shows that financial institutions incur obligations in five main areas: managing their own risk profile; remedying some of the harms caused by financial crises; supporting the development of better epistemic methods; curbing the transmission and amplification of initial losses; and instigating structural reforms. (shrink)

This paper argues that some of the major theories in current business ethics fail to provide an adequate account of moral responsibility for the creation of systemic financial risk. Using the trading of credit default swaps (CDS) during the 2008 financial crisis as a case study, I will formulate three challenges that these theories must address: the problem of risk imposition, the problem of unstructured collective harm and the problem of limited knowledge. These challenges will be used to work out (...) key shortcomings of stakeholder approaches and Integrative Social Contracts Theory. I will argue that pluralist connection models used in political theory can help to overcome these shortcomings. Adopting an approach based on these models shows that financial institutions incur obligations in five main areas: managing their own risk profile; remedying some of the harms caused by financial crises; supporting the development of better epistemic methods; curbing the transmission and amplification of initial losses; and instigating structural reforms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Within corporate social responsibility (CSR), the exploration of the political role of firms (political CSR) has recently experienced a revival. We review three key periods of political CSR literature—classic, instrumental, and new political CSR—and use the Rawlsian conceptualization of division of moral labor within political systems to describe each period’s background political theories. The three main arguments of the paper are as follows. First, classic CSR literature was more pluralistic in terms of background political theories than many later texts. Second, (...) instrumental CSR adopted classical liberalism and libertarian laissez-faire as its structural logic. Third, new political CSR, based on a strong globalist transition of responsibilities and tasks from governments to companies, lacks a conceptualization of division of moral labor that is needed to fully depart from a classical liberalist position. We end by providing a set of recommendations to develop pluralism in political CSR. (shrink)

A fundamental question of global business ethics is, “When moral business conduct standards conflict across borders, whose standards should prevail?” Western scholarship and practice tends to depict home country standards as “higher” or more “restrictive”or “well-ordered” than the “lower” standards of emerging market actors. As much as the question appears culturally neutral, many who ask it do so with a culturally-specific lens shaped by prevailing conditions of Western economic strength. However, the dominanteconomic powers of the future are not likely to (...) be the same North American and Western European markets that have reigned supreme in the recent past. As corporations increasingly re-examine their political roles in global governance, we need also to re-examine the moral authority of global ethical norms so they do not merely reflect the dominant ideologies of the most economically powerful market actors. (shrink)

In a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is (...) typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

In a globalizing world, governments are not always able or willing to regulate the social and environmental externalities of global business activities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI), defined as global institutions involving mainly corporations and civil society organizations, are one type of regulatory mechanism that tries to fill this gap by issuing soft law regulation. This conceptual paper examines the conditions of a legitimate transfer of regulatory power from traditional democratic nation-state processes to private regulatory schemes, such as MSIs. Democratic legitimacy is (...) typically concerned with input legitimacy (rule credibility, or the extent to which the regulations are perceived as justified) and output legitimacy (rule effectiveness, or the extent to which the rules effectively solve the issues). In this study, we identify MSI input legitimacy criteria (inclusion, procedural fairness, consensual orientation, and transparency) and those of MSI output legitimacy (rule coverage, efficacy, and enforcement), and discuss their implications for MSI democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Scholars who favor shareholder primacy usually claim either that managers should not fulfill corporate duties of beneficence or that, if they are required to fulfill them, they do so by going against their obligations to shareholders. Distinguishing between structurally different types of duties of beneficence and recognizing the full force of the normative demands imposed on managers reveal that this view needs to be qualified. Although it is correct to think that managers, when acting on behalf of shareholders, are not (...) required to fulfill wide duties of charity, they are nevertheless required to fulfill a variety of narrow duties of beneficence. What is more, the obligation to fulfill these duties arises precisely because they are acting on behalf of shareholders. As such, this article 1) refines our understanding of the duties of corporate beneficence and 2) helps to identify which duties of beneficence are imposed on managers when they are acting on behalf of shareholders. (shrink)

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)

Business Ethics, the Environment &Responsibility, Volume 32, Issue 4, Page 1452-1469, October 2023.

Many corporations are large, powerful, and wealthy. There are massive shortfalls of global justice, with hundreds of millions of people in the world living below the threshold of extreme poverty, and billions more living not far above that threshold. Where injustice and needs shortfalls must be remediated, we often look towards agents’ capabilities to determine who ought to bear the costs of rectifying the situation. The combination of these three claims grounds what I call a ‘linkage-based’ account of why corporations (...) have demanding positive duties to the global poor. In this paper, I put forward a distinctive linkage-based account of corporations’ positive duties centred on the idea of dependence and the importance of meeting agents’ core needs. In addition to outlining and defending this account, I will show that we can utilise its basic conceptual components to make headway on questions that have received insufficient attention in the business ethics literature; specifically, we can say something substantive about the weighting of needy agents’ competing claims to assistance, and about the limits to the demands that can be lodged against corporations on the basis of others' unmet needs. Having integrated considerations of duties' grounding, their comparative weight, and the limits of their demandingness into a single account of corporate positive duty, I conclude by discussing a challenge to attributing to corporations duties owed to the worst-off amongst the global poor. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this address, I outline a “back to basics” approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm, provide an adequate basis for specifying the responsibilities of business managers. The second is framing the role of business in society by looking to the values realized by the basic building blocks of contemporary economic activity, i.e., (...) markets and firms. The third is making explicit the basic institutions that structure the background against which business operates. The aim is to develop a plausible framework for managerial decision making that respects the fact of value pluralism in a global economy and that fosters meaningful criticism of current business practices while remaining sufficiently grounded in contemporary circumstances so as to be relevant for managers. (shrink)

In a series of articles, Thomas Dunfee defended the view that managers are permitted and at times, required, to utilize corporate resources to alleviate human misery even if this is at the expense of shareholder interests. In this article, I summarize Dunfee's defense of this view, raise some questions about his account and propose ways in which to answer these questions. The aim of this article is to highlight one of Dunfee's contributions to the debate about corporate governance and corporate (...) responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the moral responsibili- ties that companies have with regard to the development of their sector, especially when there are path dependences that can lead sectors on more or less morally accept- able paths, e.g., with regard to market access for disad- vantaged groups. The interdependencies between companies in a sector are underexplored in the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Reflections on the normative status of profit-seeking and on the normative bases of CSR, however, provide (...) us with reasons for seeing sector-related responsibilities as an important component of CSR. Based on a case study of a financial institution, I analyze various morally relevant ways in which the strategic decisions of companies relate to those of other companies in their sector. I argue that companies have a co-responsibility to contribute to the development of the moral dimensions of their sectors, especially when they deal with vulnerable customers. (shrink)

Political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) calls for firms to implement and engage in deliberative democracy processes and structures, addressing governance gaps where governments are unwilling or unable to do so. However, an underlying assumption that the implementation of PCSR will enrich democratic processes in society has been exposed and challenged. In this conceptual article, we explore this challenge by developing a framework to reveal the dynamics of firms’ deliberative democratic processes and structures (meso level), and those at nation state (macro (...) level). Using existing cases as illustrative examples, we demonstrate that despite the public good premise of PCSR theory toward thickening the overall democracy in a society, corporate democratization at meso level can have the opposite effect and may actually erode macro-level democratic control of society and the economy. These findings imply a need for multilevel analysis in PCSR research and greater consideration of state-level public institutions and the responsibilities of business firms toward those institutions. Furthermore, we contribute to the PCSR literature by identifying the disruptive mechanisms associated with these dynamics and outline two alternative perspectives to allow firms to continue to take on political responsibilities. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recently conceptualized and studied as a political phenomenon. Most debates in this scholarship have thus far focused on normative issues. Less attention has been paid to the explanatory potential of CSR research grounded in political theory and philosophy. In this article, we conduct a pragmatist reading of political scholarship on CSR and seek to deploy existing knowledge for research pursuing political explanation. We argue that the political ontologies that underlie scholarship on CSR can be (...) used to transform normative and descriptive research also for explanatory uses. We show how ontologies vary in terms of potential research objects and scopes of political explanation, and argue that the main types of political-ontological stances adopted in scholarship on CSR, foundational and post-foundational stances, offer explanatory analysis of different schematic guidelines. Our pragmatist reading of previous research and an empirical case illustration of political explanation of change in corporate responsibility in the biofuel industry demonstrate the opportunities, limitations, and challenges different political-ontological commitments provide for political explanation. (shrink)

This article explores the cooperation of government and the private sector to tackle the ethical dimension of artificial intelligence. The argument draws on the institutionalist approach in philosophy and business ethics defending a ‘division of moral labor’ between governments and the private sector. The goal and main contribution of this article is to explain how this approach can provide ethical guidelines to the AI industry and to highlight the limits of self-regulation. In what follows, I discuss three institutionalist claims. First, (...) principles of AI ethics should be validated through legitimate democratic processes. Second, compliance with these principles should be secured in a stable way. Third, their implementation in practice should be as efficient as possible. If we accept these claims, there are good reasons to conclude that, in many cases, governments implementing hard regulation are in principle the best instruments to secure an ethical development of AI systems. Where adequate regulation exists, firms should respect the law. But when regulation does not yet exist, helping governments build adequate regulation should be businesses’ ethical priority, not self-regulation. (shrink)

For years business ethics has limited the moral duties of enterprises to negative duties. Over the last decade it has been argued that positive duties also befall commercial agents, at least when confronted with large scale public problems and when governments fail. The argument that enterprises have positive duties is often grounded in the political nature of commercial life. It is argued that agents must sometimes take over governmental responsibilities. The German republican tradition argues along these lines as does Nien-Hé (...) Hsieh. Agents in commercial life are bound by positive duties because at some point they become citizens that must take on the responsibilities of the state. In this paper we leave undisputed the claim that corporations must acknowledge positive duties. However, we demonstrate that the political grounding fails, at least in the sense that this theory insufficiently acknowledges a long standing liberal tradition that vindicates apolitical markets and clear borderlines between politics and economics. We carve out an alternative route to the grounding of one specific positive duty—the duty to further justice. Our argument is based on the moral nature of commercial agents and tries to demonstrate that the duty to further justice ensues from liberalism. Taking a Kantian perspective, it conceptualizes the duty to further justice as a moral duty, orientated toward the political domain. It is grounded in the obligation to attain moral autonomy in the civil condition. (shrink)

This paper argues that economic agents, including corporations, have the duty to further justice, not just a duty merely to comply with laws and do their share. The duty to further justice is the requirement to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist in society. The paper is grounded in liberal theory and draws heavily on one liberal theorist, Kant. We show that the duty to further justice must be interpreted as a duty of virtue (...) that is owed. This means that the duty is not enforceable but that violating this duty is still wrong and not merely non-virtuous. Our analysis has consequences for the morality of commercial life. It is often suggested that the morality of the market is a special, restricted morality that is leaner than the morality that agents must acknowledge outside the market. If our analysis is correct, the duty to further justice cannot be exempted from market morality, even if it is agreed that this must be leaner than the morality outside commercial life. Our analysis also has direct consequences for John Ruggie’s view on the responsibilities of businesses. Ruggie has never explicitly acknowledged a duty on the part of business enterprises to further justice. If our analysis is correct, his view is contradictory in that it presupposes the normative validity of free market enterprise yet shrinks from taking into account the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

Integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) has been an influential theory in normative business ethics for well over a decade, drawing attention both as an object of criticism and as a source of inspiration. In this paper I argue that, despite this attention, the fact that it is a genuinely pluralistic theory, in the tradition of pluralistic theories of political philosophy, is often overlooked. It is in the notion of moral free space that this pluralism is most clearly expressed. This oversight (...) is unfortunate for two reasons. Firstly, it prevents the potential of ISCT, as a normative theory of business ethics, from being appreciated fully; secondly, it leads us to ignore resources that could help tackle its most problematic flaws. In this second respect, I show how some of these flaws could be addressed by paying closer attention to the similarities between ISCT and John Rawls' theory of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the moral permissibility of corporate political activities under the existing legal framework in the United States. The author unpacks and examines the standard case for and against the involvement of business in lobbying and electoral activities. And the author provides six objections against the standard arguments and proposes that the wrongness of corporate political activities does not have much to do with its potential social consequences but rather with nonconsequentialist considerations. The author’s ultimate aim is (...) to make sense of the intuition that corporate political spending is morally objectionable. The author argues that his case against corporate political spending fares better than the standard case. What is wrong with the current system of regulation of corporate lobbying and campaign finance is that it is inconsistent with the principles of political equality and consent. By taking advantage of this unfair regulatory framework, business firms are making a contribution to undermine the basis of a robust democratic regime at both the societal and the corporate level. (shrink)

Recent discussions on corporate citizenship highlight the new political role of corporations in society by arguing that corporations increasingly act as quasi-governmental actors and take on what hitherto had originally been governmental tasks. By examining political and sociological citizenship theories, the authors show that such a corporate engagement can be explained by a changing conception of corporate citizens from corporate bourgeois to corporate citoyen. As an intermediate actor in society, the corporate citoyen assumes co-responsibilities for social and civic affairs and (...) actively collaborates with fellow citizens beyond governmental regulation. This change raises the question of how such corporate civic engagement can be aligned with public policy regulations and how corporate activities can be integrated into the democratic regime. To clarify the mode of CC contributions to society, the authors will apply the tenet of subsidiarity as a governing principle which allows for specifying corporations’ tasks as intermediate actors in society. By referring to the renewed European Union strategy for Corporate Social Responsibility, the authors show how such a subsidiary corporate-governmental task-sharing can be organized. (shrink)