Corporations conscience and responsibility
Introduction Milton Friedman, in a famous article on corporate responsibility maintains that the only responsibility of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value. ... Corporations are formed in order to perform certain tasks and to profit from these tasks. ... Even though corporations are required to operate within the legal framework, when they are international it is often unclear which legal framwork should actually set the standards. ... Corporations often do make decisions not only based on shareholder value, but on the interests of other stakeholders as well. Still, in most cases, I believe, shareholder value is the ultimate goal for most corporations and they only conform to accepted moral beliefs when it becomes absolutely necessary, for example to maintain a clean image and keep good relations with the public. ... Jerry Mander, in his paper on “The myth of the corporate conscience” even maintains that corporations are inherently bad, dehumanizing and exploitative A different view, presented by Kenneth E. ... in their paper “Can a corporation have a conscience?” is that corporations can indeed act as morally responsible persons. ... That a corporation actually has a conscience. In this short paper, I will analyze this view and the arguments behind it; whether the notion of corporate conscience holds water theoretically and whether it is meaningful and useful in the field of business ethics. ... The corporation and the concept of conscience Goodpaster and Matthews’ (G&M) argument for corporate conscience is twofold. Firstly, they argue that corporations (or their executives) should take into consideration other values than shareholder´s financial interest when making decisions. Secondly they argue that the concept of moral responsibility can meaningfully and usefully be projected to corporations. ... G&M begin by analyzing the concept of moral responsibility and find it to mean three things: First, accountability, second, being subject to external rules, and third, making responsible decisions. The distinguishing characteristic of moral responsibility, it seems to us, lies in this third sense of the term. ... Secondly, since we can determine whether an individual acts responsibly from the processes he or she uses to come to a conclusion, the same can be said of corporations. Thirdly, since we talk about corporations as having strategies, goals etc. we can also say they have a conscience. In more detail, the argument is that since we attribute certain goals, economic values and strategies to corporations, we should be able to project conscience to them as well. The fact (which I believe few would seriously deny) that an organization is more than a sum of it’s parts; that is it´s success or failure is determined to a great extent by the interaction of the people within it; seems to further strengthen the argument for corporate conscience. ... Whether a corporation really can have a conscience? ... Can a corporation really have a conscience? The concept of corporate conscience is based on the notion, that whether an entity has a conscience or not, can be determined by observing the following: • Its behaviour in its environment; whether it behaves similarly to persons. ... to organizations, we can just as well endow them with conscience. ... Understanding and conscience both relate to inner states or processes, which can not be directly observed in themselves. ... That is, even though a corporation may be observed behaving in a similar way as a person it does not mean we can meaningfully project the notion of conscience to it. ... G&M maintain that since rationality and respect underlie a moral decision made by a responsible person and that corporations can make decisions in the same manner, they can be attributed with conscience. But can corporations, as independent entities, actually make decisions in this way? ... But acting in accordance with a rule does not by itself imply responsibility or conscience. ... Without freedom and judgment conscience is meaningless; the moral agent has to make a free decision in order for his conscience to have any meaning to him and in the same fashion it must be his judgment, but not external rules, that determine his decision. ... to corporations, we can meaningfully talk about their conscience as well.