Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
Should corporations have "moral responsibility"?
Position‹2 of 2
Yes, corporations should have moral responsibility
Argument1 of 2›

Corporations are conversable agents

Corporations are able to use their voice to convey their objectives and mission statement. Therefore, they should have moral agency that guides that voice.

The argument

A company or brand can control the message it communicates to the public. Through this message, it can communicate its values, goals and mission statement. Because corporations are conversable agents, they have moral responsibility. They have a voice that is different from that of their employees. Therefore, the corporation should have a set of morals that reflect its voice.

Context

Corporations are able to effectively communicate their mission statement and values to the public. This means they are autonomous, conversable agents.

Premises

[P1]Corporations are conversable agents that control and communicate their own message, values, and mission to the public. [P2] This corporate voice is distinct from the voices of individual employees. [P3] Any agent that speaks with its own voice should be held to a set of morals reflecting that voice. [C] Therefore, corporations should bear moral responsibility.

Counter-arguments

The implications of this is that no individual can be held responsible for ethically dubious behaviour. If the corporation has a message, and that message or voice is not having a positive social or environmental impact, because the corporation is a conversable agent with communicative autonomy, no individual can be held accountable within the corporation. This would make it impossible to punish any individual in a case of corporations breaking the law or committing morally wrong acts

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] If you separate the corporation's voice from that of the individual, you cannot punish individual wrongdoers.

Framing

Entities with their own voice or message autonomy should have morals. Corporations have a voice that is distinct from that of their employees. Therefore, they should have morals.