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Fictitious persons and real responsibilities
Corporations cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls. sup 1
People who deal in ethics sometimes have difficulties that are not apparent to the general public. The concept of blaming or praising a company makes sense to the average person, so that it is perfectly reasonable to claim, for example, that "Pepsi acted responsibly during the recent tampering hoax". Furthermore, it is clear that companies make deals, have spokespersons, and are taken to court. Companies are not people, but they are sufficiently like people to be regarded as agents which act in the social environment. Where, then, is the problem for ethicists? The issue centers around the issue of "corporate personhood". The law treats a company like a person, albeit a fictional one. If pressed, most people would say that what they mean by saying that a company acted well or badly is that members of the corporation, especially those who have influence, did well or badly. Thus, on the one hand, corporate personhood turns out to be a convenient invention so that issues of legal responsibility may be sorted out, or, alternatively, it is just a shorthand way of describing the actions of individuals.
But I propose more than either of these claims. I contend that it also makes sense to say that the corporation is itself a moral agent, so that the claim that it is praiseworthy or blameworthy is not always reducible to a claim about the acts of members of the corporation. So, for example, I will say that it is intelligible to propose that the Ford Motor Company -- and not only the significant human actors involved -- was morally blameworthy in marketing a car (the Pinto) with known design flaws. In some cases, corporate action has been reprehensible, although no individual can be held accountable, and my model will allow us to meaningfully pass moral judgement on the corporation. Thus in 1984 when National Semiconductor was charged with inadequately testing supplies for the Defense Department, president Charles Sporch is quoted as saying that no individual should be singled out because the behavior was "an industry pattern beyond any one individual's responsibility". sup 2 This sort of claim suggests...