This study investigates the impact of fraud/lawsuit revelation on U.S. top executive turnover and compensation. It also examines potential explanatory variables affecting the executive turnover and compensation among U.S. fraud/lawsuit firms. Four important findings are documented. First, there was significantly higher executive turnover among U.S. firms with fraud/lawsuit revelation in the Wall Street Journal than matched firms without such revelation. Second, although on average, U.S. top executives received an increase in cash compensation after fraud/lawsuit revelation, this increase is smaller than (...) that of matched non-fraud/lawsuit firms. Third, fraud/lawsuit firms were more likely to change top executive when chief executive officer (CEO) was not the board chairman and CEO had been on the board for a short time. Fourth, fraud/lawsuit firms were more likely to reduce their executive cash compensation when profitability was low, firms were involved in fraud, the compensation committee size was small, and the board met more often. These findings indicate that although, in general, U.S. fraud/lawsuits firms did not reduce their executive cash compensation, those involved in fraud were more likely to reduce their executive cash compensation than to change their top executives. The finding, that ethical standards is not a significant factor for U.S. executive turnover nor compensation reduction, suggests that ethics appears to play no part in the board’s decisions, and that U.S. firms may have ethical standards in writing but they do not implement nor enforce the standards. (shrink)

How do we deal with difference personally, interpersonally, nationally? Can we weave a cohesive social fabric in a religiously plural society without suppressing differences? This collection of significant essays suggests that to truly honour differences in matters of faith and religion we must publicly exercise and celebrate them. The secular/sacred, public/private divisions long considered sacred in the West need to be dismantled if Canada (or any nation state) is to develop a genuine mosaic that embraces fundamental differences instead of a (...) melting pot that marginalizes. An ethics of difference starts with a recognition of difference, not as deviance or deficit that threatens but as otherness to connect with, cherish, and celebrate. The book begins with the suggestion that our inability to come to terms with social plurality is not fundamentally the fault of religious differences, and that a public/private split inadequately deals with matters of basic difference. It then explores how encouraging people to live out their respective faiths may open new possibilities for respectful, honourable, and just negotiations of contemporary dilemmas arising out of the multicultural fabric of Canadian life. Towards an Ethics of Community introduces readers to some of the most challenging and divisive dilemmas we face in this increasingly pluralistic, postmodern world — issues such as family and domestic violence, Aboriginal rights, homosexuality and public policy, and female genital mutilation. This is a book truly global in scope and significance. (shrink)

Alain Grau | : Au légiste qui l’interroge sur ce qu’il faut faire, Jésus répond : « Comment lis-tu? » À nous qui lisons, la question n’est pas sans poser le problème de savoir quel corps nous formons par cette lecture. La « personnalité corporative » pourrait constituer une réponse, pourvu toutefois qu’elle soit dépouillée de tous ses attributs classiques : psychologique, religieux, ou encore littéraire. Sans contenu objectif, elle n’en est pas moins opératoire. Mais en figure seulement, qui attend (...) d’être comblée par la chair pour devenir vraie. La Chair de Jésus, et la nôtre. L’avenir de cette vieille notion ne serait-il pas la grâce divine? | : To the expert in the law who asks Him what to do, Jesus replies: “How do you read?” For us who do read, the question is not without posing the problem of knowing what body we form by this reading. The “corporate personality” could provide an answer, but on the condition that it be stripped of all its classical attributes : psychological, religious, or literary. Even deprived of any objective content, it is none the less operational. Yet only figuratively, waiting to be fulfilled by the flesh to become true. The Flesh of Jesus, and ours. Might not the future of that old notion be divine grace? (shrink)

This article is an attempt to develop a practical politico-jurisprudential account of the corporate person, which it does by building on contemporary ideas about collective and shared intentions. It argues for a model of shared intentions, which posits a set of interlocking preferences, and other supporting attitudes. It examines the work of Bratman, Gilbert, Hurley, and Sugden and addresses issues of choice, coercion and will.

Oriental scholars discuss the concept of corporate personalitywithout any reference to Islamic law. A leading proponent of this view isJoseph Schacht; a western scholar of jurisprudence who contended that Islamicjurisprudence is limited to individual personality and devoid of corporate laws,hence, contractual agreements between corporations has no basis in Islamiclaw. Several scholars and researcher have responded with sufficient literatureon the status of an artificial person in Islamic law, but there are still issues withthe legal implication of corporate personality (...) in the event of financial distress.This study aims to explore Islamic threshold on fundamental principles ofcorporate personalities and its contemporary applications in the situation offinancial trouble. The study will employ the analytical approach in describingthe essential characteristics of a corporation as inherent in Islamic law throughinterpolation from the natural person and the possibility of adapting the existingconventional bankruptcy laws. This study employs an analytical approach to Islamic literature and regular related works. The study found out that eventhough the concept of financial distress has basis in Islamic law, it remainscomplicated as it entails insolvency, bankruptcy and interdiction in a debtorcreditorrelationship. Overall, further efforts need to be done to put theseconcepts into contemporary and applicable perspectives without violatingIslamic fundamental principle of justice and fair dealings. (shrink)

This essay provides a genealogy of corporate personhood as it exists currently in US law and places moral personhood in a similar genealogical context. This treatment demonstrates that the two are inextricably intertwined in both conception and institutionalized practices. We would do well to dismantle both; meanwhile, however, corporate personhood's implicit illiberal notion of collective mentality and responsibility may suggest possibilities for establishing collective counterforces to oppose activities of transnational for-profit corporations and mitigate their devastating political, economic, and (...) environmental effects upon actual people and the ecosystems upon which we depend. (shrink)

In this theoretical paper, motives for CSR are considered. An underlying assumption is that the commercial imperative is not the sole driver of CSR decision-making in private sector companies, but that the formal adoption and implementation of CSR by corporations could be associated with the changing personal values of individual managers. These values may find expression through the opportunity to exercise discretion, which may arise in various ways. It is suggested that in so far as CSR initiatives represent individuals' values, (...) so the responsibility in evidence is less obviously corporate. Our emphasis on personal initiative is intended to counter a tendency to view the corporation as the agent, and may serve to remind us that individuals can, indeed, make a difference. (shrink)

In her paper, Ladelle McWhorter offers a genealogical account of the historical entanglement between the concepts of moral and legal personhood, which introduces a new level of complexity to contemporary debates concerning corporate personhood. In this commentary, I discuss the insights of McWhorter's genealogical analysis and pose two sets of questions concerning the ontological status of corporate personhood and the potential practical difficulties surrounding the creation of non-forensic, corporate entities. Particularly, I emphasize the intimate, historical relationship between (...) legality and corporation, and consider its effects on the ontological and practical possibilities of corporations. (shrink)

Exploring legal treatises, court decisions, political illustrations, photographs, and modernist literature, this volume reveals that the ambiguous status of corporate intention in the first half of the twentieth century provoked conflicting theories of meaning and interpretation still debated today.

The literature acknowledges a distinction between immoral, amoral and moral management. This paper makes a case for the employee (at any level) as a moral agent, even though the paper begins by highlighting a body of evidence which suggests that individual moral agency is sacrificed at work and is compromised in deference to other pressures. This leads to a discussion about the notion of discretion and an examination of a separate, contrary body of literature which indicates that some individuals in (...) corporations may use their discretion to behave in a socially entrepreneurial manner. My underlying assumption is that CSR isn’t solely driven by economics and that it may also be championed as a result of a personal morality, inspired by employees’ own socially oriented personal values. A conceptual framework is put forward and it is suggested that individuals may be categorized as Active or Frustrated Corporate Social Entrepreneurs; Conformists or Apathetics, distinguished by their individualistic or collectivist personal values. In a discussion of the nature of values, this paper highlights how values may act as drivers of our behavior and pays particular attention to the values of the entrepreneur, thereby linking the existing debate on moral agency with the field of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Robots are now associated with various aspects of our lives. These sophisticated machines have been increasingly used in different manufacturing industries and services sectors for decades. During this time, they have been a factor in causing significant harm to humans, prompting questions of liability. Industrial robots are presently regarded as products for liability purposes. In contrast, some commentators have proposed that robots be granted legal personality, with an overarching aim of exonerating the respective creators and users of these artefacts from (...) liability. This article is concerned mainly with industrial robots that exercise some degree of self-control as programmed, though the creation of fully autonomous robots is still a long way off. The proponents of the robot’s personality compare these machines generally with corporations, and sporadically with, inter alia, animals, and idols, in substantiating their arguments. This article discusses the attributes of legal personhood and the justifications for the separate personality of corporations and idols. It then demonstrates the reasons for refusal of an animal’s personality. It concludes that robots are ineligible to be persons, based on the requirements of personhood. (shrink)

A survey of 138 college students reveals an undergraduate major has a greater influence on corporate social responsibility than business ethics. Business students are no less ethical than nonbusiness students. Females are more ethical and socially responsible than males. Age is negatively related to one's Machiavellian orientation and positively related to negative attitudes about corporate efforts at social responsibility. The results suggest a greater need to focus busines ethics instruction based on student characteristics.

The efficiency argument for profit maximization says that corporations and their managers should maximize profits because this is the course of action that will lead to an ‘economically efficient’ or ‘welfare maximizing’ outcome. In this paper, I argue that the fundamental problem with this argument is not that markets in the real world are less than perfect, but rather that the argument does not properly acknowledge the personal sphere. Morality allows each of us a sphere in which we are free (...) to pursue our personal interests, even if these are not optimal from the social point of view. But the efficiency argument does not come to terms with this feature of social life. (shrink)

What is the nature of the decision-related personal values of corporate management? Managers' attitudes and behaviors are built upon their personal value systems (PVS). Knowledge about the structure of management's PVS assists in understanding the attributes of corporate decision making. Utilizing a survey instrument developed and used by England (1967, 1975), this article updates this research into corporate managers' personal value systems. England's PVS consists of sixty-six pre-tested values clustered into five groups. As one could expect with (...) personal values, statistical tests reveal that even with dramatic changes in the business environment the overall personal values structure has not changed over the intervening three decades. The results also reveal that corporate managers retain their pragmatic value orientation as discussed by England. (shrink)

The primary thesis of this article is that the rights and powers of corporations--to collect, recombine, and resell personal data--have accrued in such a way as to fundamentally circumvent traditional and conventional conceptions of privacy, especially with respect to the sphere of informational privacy. In so doing, informational capitalism has also altered in fundamental ways the public and social sphere itself, the sphere through which one might expect these corporate forces and uses of technology to be controlled.

There are various indications that corporations and their leaders are currently not perceived as trustworthy. This decline in trust is one of the factors that has contributed to the rise of interest in corporate governance. There is an explicit expectation that an adherence to the principles and practice of good corporate governance will bolster the trust of stakeholders in business. It is exactly this expectation that provides the focus for this article. The expectation that good corporate governance (...) will result in higher levels of trust will be critically examined. This will be done by first making some crucial distinctions regarding corporate governance in order to clarify what kind of corporate governance is at stake in the examination that is to follow. Also, with regard to the concept of 'trust', a number of important distinctions will be made to clarify what is meant by trust within the context of this paper. Against the backdrop of these distinctions regarding corporate governance and trust, the question will then be refined as to whether, specifically, internal corporate governance can bolster the perceptions of trustworthiness that stakeholders have of business. Principles and practices of internal corporate governance will then be critically examined to determine their potential for enhancing stakeholders' perceptions of the trustworthiness of corporations and their leaders. (shrink)

Are limited liability business corporations compatible with the free market, as libertarians understand it? Many libertarians think they are. Others are at least doubtful. And still others—I include myself1 among them—deny that limited liability business corporations belong in a free market.2 My purpose here is to spell out some of the reasons for that denial as well as to qualify it: I have no argument against large enterprises that issue limited liability shares or protect their managers with extensive vicarious liability (...) arrangements. However, as we shall see, the compatibility problem of the corporation does not stem from these contemporary business practices. There is no need here to consider the legal and political incentives and disincentives, such as tax and labour laws, accountancy requirements, jurisprudential doctrines, administrative practices and so on, that in various national legal systems may incline people to see the corporate form as advantageous or disadvantageous relative to other forms of business organisation. Such factors reflect various types of interventions by the state, its legislators, administrators and judges, which would be absent in a libertarian free market. Consequently, they are not germane to the logical question of the compatibility of business corporations with the principles of the free market. Of course, I must assume respect for personal.. (shrink)

This study examines whether and how the presence of managerial hedging opportunities, which allows executives to reduce the sensitivity of their equity-based compensation to the firm’s stock price performance, affects firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We find a significant and negative relationship between the presence of managerial hedging opportunities and firms’ CSR performance. The effect of managerial hedging opportunities on CSR performance is more pronounced for CEOs with greater personal hedging needs. Additionally, the effect is weakened if firms (...) limit corporate insiders from trading exchange-listed options. Overall, this study suggests that allowing managers to delink their equity-based compensation from firm stock price performance through hedging their personal portfolios can lead to unexpected consequences for firms’ CSR performance. (shrink)

Recent anthropological studies consider the corporal experience as an indispensable attribute of a person’s life world. They declare to go beyond the dichotomy of body and mind and present a modern person as a complex integrity of all systems and characteristics of a living organism. Body and mind are a union of vitality with different forms of their manifestation. The corporal is not regarded as an essential complement to the mental, the corporal is the mental, just in a different form (...) of its manifestation. The implementation of a methodological turn from a rationalcognitive approach to a holistic understanding of human nature and the peculiarities of cognitive processes outlines the problem of education transformation in both theoretical and practical terms. Taking into account the complexity and multiplicity of tasks in solving this problem, the guideline in defining conceptual ideas is the understanding of a person as a multi-temporal being who lives simultaneously in multiple hierarchical levels, ontological time and the scale of processes. It is a question of necessity to construct educational activity in semantic planes: mindbody- culture, mind-body-activity, body-consciousness-reaction and others. (shrink)

This essay is about the United States Supreme Court's discursive creation of two kinds of persons, one corporate the other criminal, during its 1886 term. The aim is to contrast the Supreme Court's construction of corporate personhood in County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad with its view of the criminal's body in Ex parte Royall, a habeas corpus case. The Court's purpose in deciding these two cases was to design a way to disperse newly emergent (...) and conflicting interests in particular directions within the judicial apparatus. The result is that both criminal and corporate bodies come to be understood through discourse, not outside of it. So the body which is being introduced can be described as a discursive body, not as an anatomical given. (shrink)

In our book The Inessential Indexical we argue that the various theses of essential indexicality all fail. Indexicals are not essential, we conclude. One essentiality thesis we target in the third chapter is the claim that indexical attitudes are essential for action. Our strategy is to give examples of what we call impersonal action rationalizations , which explain actions without citing indexical attitudes. To defeat the claim that indexical attitudes are essential for action, it suffices that there could be even (...) one successful impersonal action rationalization. In what follows we bolster our case against an essential connection between action and the de se (or indexicality), first by developing a range of new action models and secondly by responding to challenges from Dilip Ninan, Stephan Torre, and José Luis Bermúdez . (shrink)

There are a number of controversies surrounding responsibility, but few doubt that there is anything conceptually confused or morally problematic about holding competent adults responsible for their free and informed actions. Thus, we regularly praise (and perhaps reward) people for behaving virtuously or blame (and perhaps punish) them for their vicious deeds. In today's world, though, much of the most important good and evil is done not by solitary individuals, but by groups of people acting in concert. The most spectacular (...) technological advances and the most horrific wars, for instance, are often the work of private corporations and political states. And if humanity regularly achieves its greatest triumphs and commits its most deplorable sins as collectives, it is worth exploring the plausibility of holding groups responsible for their actions. (shrink)

Goodpaster's principle of moral projection is intended to support a program of corporate moral improvement based on an analogy between persons and corporations. In this paper I try to show that the analogy breaks down at a crucial point — namely at the search for amotive for moral improvement. Further, the analogy may foster a tendency to suppose that corporations, like persons, have intrinsic value. I conclude that the analogy does more harm than good for the following (...) reasons: (a) it distracts from the crucial question, which is, how can we motivate people to shape the institutions in which they work into morally better ones? and (b) it may reinforce a morally dangerous tendency to serve corporations for their own sakes. (shrink)

Organisational leaders mismanaging business affairs are guided by performance pressures and/or greed while pressurising employees to follow. Unethical activities have led to stakeholder losses, with no accountability by individuals perpetuating the fraud. Corporate governance frameworks and subsequent reforms have been used merely as tick box measures, proving them inefficient in numerous corporate collapses. This study intends to explore and analyse the roles of personal and collective virtues in corporate citizenship. Developing from the virtues theory and using a (...) mixed method of three focus group discussions and a self-administered questionnaire of 119 participants from various organisations, the authors establish that personal virtues are important to portray ethical individualism. However, in a corporate setting, collective virtues are more important to enhance corporate citizenship, through ethical culture and collective accountability. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Drawing on managerial discretion and conflicting institutional logics literature, this study investigates the relation between the personal sustainability behaviors of owner–managers and the corporate sustainability practices of SMEs. The research proposes a contingency model that assesses the moderating effects of perceived economic advantages and environmental hostility on this relationship. Based on linear hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a cross-sectoral sample of French SMEs, the results suggest a positive influence of the manager's PSB on the SME's CS practices that appears (...) to be differently moderated depending on the type of practice considered. The influence on environmental practices is fostered through the perception of economic advantages. The influence on workplace practices is only effective when the business environment is deemed benign and the influence on community practices is dampened by the perception of environmental hostility. Highlighting the trade-off between the manager's personal values and the SME's economic constraints, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the critical antecedents of sustainability in small businesses. (shrink)

This study examines the antecedents of corporate scandals. Corporate scandals are defined as rare events occurring at the apex of corporate fame when managerial fraud suddenly emerges in conjunction with a significant gap between perceived corporate success and actual economic conditions. Previous studies on managerial fraud have examined the antecedents of illegal acts in isolation from strategic decisions and in terms of CEOs’ individual responses to the external context. This study frames the antecedents of corporate (...) scandals in terms of the interplay of CEOs’ personal traits with corporate strategy and stakeholders’ cohesion. With this aim, this study builds on extant theory to examine the case of Banca Popolare di Lodi, an Italian bank involved in a corporate scandal in year 2005. The model contributes to advance understanding of the complex dynamics underlying the emergence of corporate scandals. (shrink)

This article explores the influence that an organisation’s corporate values have on employees’ behaviour and values both within and outside the work environment. In particular, it focuses on the impact of these values on the personal buying behaviour of employees. The empirical research was undertaken within a case study organisation that produces wine in Spain and involved interviews with senior management, an analysis of company documentation, as well as group discussions with employees supported by an employee survey. The article (...) argues that an organisation’s corporate values influence not only its employees’ behaviour within the work environment, but also impacts on their global values system outside of the work environment. In particular, this was evident within the employees’ buying behaviour practices in relation to supplier loyalty and environmental concern. This has implications for business ethics as an organisation’s value system may go beyond the purely business context. Organisations need to be aware of their impact on employees’ behaviour outside of the work environment; this is particularly the case for multinational companies working across many cultures. (shrink)

An organisation which operates without a ‘self-concept’ of its goals, authorised roles, governance procedures regarding sharing information, decisional powers and procedures, and distribution of benefits, or without continuous audit of its impact on its end-users, other players in the practice, and the state, does so at some ethical risk. This paper argues that a quasi-personal model of the collective ethical agency of organisations and states is helpful in suggesting some of these key areas which are liable to need careful organisational (...) design and control by leadership groups if the organisation as a whole entity (directors, operators, enablers) steered by the board/CEO as ‘mind/will,’ is to identify its stakeholders - internal and external - and treat them well. Such a quasi-personal model is outlined (QPM) in which six suggested areas should be covered by the leadership group in ethical governance: goals, roles, decision procedures, execution/verification, relations with endusers and other players in the practice, and relations with the community and the state. The ethical conception presupposed is Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics (NAVE). In subsequent papers the many advantages of QPM/NAVE which will be claimed are these: it comes with an analysis of justice which straddles individuals, families, communities, markets, and states; it offers a more coherent normative account of ‘stakeholder’ and the internal/external stakeholder distinction, by differentiating their descriptive, ethical, and causal relations to the firm as collective agent; and it suggests that business practice and business corporations are partly creatures of the state, and merely one kind of evolving and changeable institution, in a practice with a specific socio-political permit, (not the source of ethics, politics, and social policy). (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 17-32, January 2022.

We present asecond-personalaccount of corporate moral agency. This approach is in contrast to thefirst-personalapproach adopted in much of the existing literature, which concentrates on the corporation’s ability to identify moral reasons for itself. Our account treats relationships and communications as the fundamental building blocks of moral agency. The second-personal account rests on a framework developed by Darwall. Its central requirement is that corporations be capable of recognizing the authority relations that they have with other moral agents. We discuss the (...) relevance of corporate affect, corporate communications, and corporate culture to the second-personal account. The second-personal account yields a new way to specify first-personal criteria for moral agency, and it generates fresh insights into the reasons those criteria matter. In addition, a second-personal analysis implies that moral agency is partly a matter of policy, and it provides a fresh perspective on corporate punishment. (shrink)