Today, more corporations disclose information about their environmental performance in response to stakeholder demands of environmental responsibility and accountability. What information do corporations disclose on their websites? This paper investigates the environmental management policies and practices of the 200 largest corporations in the world. Based on a content analysis of the environmental reports of Fortune’s Global 200 companies, this research analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosures with respect to the following seven areas: environmental planning considerations, top (...) management support to the institutionalization of environmental concerns, environmental structures and organizing specifics, environmental leadership activities, environmental control, external validations or certifications of environmental programs, and forms of corporate environmental disclosures. (shrink)

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)

ABSTRACT:In a series of reports the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations has emphasized a tripartite framework regarding business and human rights that includes the state “duty to protect,” the TNC “responsibility to respect,” and “appropriate remedies” for human rights violations. This article examines the recent history of UN initiatives regarding business and human rights and places the tripartite framework in historical context. Three approaches to human rights are distinguished: moral, political, and (...) legal. It is argued that the tripartite framework’s grounding of the responsibility of TNCs to respect human rights is properly understood as moral and not merely as a political or legal duty. A moral account of the duty of TNCs to respect basic human rights is defended and contrasted with a merely strategic approach. The main conclusion of the article is that only a moral account of the basic human rights duties of TNCs provides a sufficiently deep justification of “the corporate responsibility to respect human rights” feature of the tripartite framework. (shrink)

In this paper, we examined how companies are employing new media to engage in dialogue with their stakeholders about corporate social responsibility -related matters. Through a qualitative theory-building study conducted in three stages over a period of 2 years, we discovered that corporations with reputations for CSR have built virtual spaces for dialogue about CSR, but that these spaces remain empty of dialogue. Our theory-building model highlights how the mix of four dialogue processes may allow companies to create open (...) dialogue about CSR initiatives and avoid leaving these spaces empty. Contributions for CSR studies are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I, firstly (section 1), distinguish between human rights, natural rights and institutional rights and argue that some so-called human rights, such as the right to life, are natural rights and others, such as the right to vote, are institutional rights. Secondly (section 2), I sketch my account of joint rights (developed in more detail elsewhere1) and apply it to two kinds of entities that are importantly different from one another and from individual human beings, namely, business (...) class='Hi'>corporations (section 3) and non-human animals (section 4). I do so to test the scope of joint rights in the context of the ascription of joint rights to human beings being uncontroversial (although the analysis of joint rights is far from being a settled matter). I argue that neither corporations nor animals have joint moral rights, since in neither case do they have moral rights, but that they do have, or at least they ought to have, legal rights, and some of these legal rights arguably ought to be joint legal rights. In doing so, I introduce a significant theoretical innovation to the literature on joint rights, namely, that of a layered structure of joint rights. (shrink)

In his 2007 Ethics article, “Responsibility Incorporated,” Philip Pettit argued that corporations qualify as morally responsible agents because they possess autonomy, normative judgment, and the capacity for self-control. Although there is ongoing debate over whether corporations have these capacities, both proponents and opponents of corporate moral agency appear to agree that Pettit correctly identified the requirements for moral agency. In this article, I do not take issue with either the claim that autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are the (...) requirements for moral agency or the claim that corporations possess them. I claim that if both of these claims are correct, then corporate moral agency entails that, in a liberal democracy, corporations should have the right to vote. I show that under the conception of democracy supported by most liberal political theorists, all parties subject to the law are entitled to the right to vote, and all parties that possess autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are subject to the law. Therefore, if the proponents of corporate moral agency are correct, then corporations satisfy the requirements for the right to vote. I then consider potential objections to this argument. I show that the strongest objection to the corporate right to vote is undermined by Pettit’s own argument for corporate autonomy. I then show that objections derived from other arguments for limiting the rights of corporations are equally unavailing. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument for the question of corporate speech rights. (shrink)

There has been tremendous growth in the sales of certified fair trade products since the introduction of the first of these goods in the Netherlands in 1988. Many would argue that this rapid growth has been due in large part to the increasing involvement of corporations. Still, participation by corporations in fair trade has not been welcomed by all. The basic point of contention is that, while corporate participation has the potential to rapidly extend the market for fair (...) trade goods, it threatens key aspects of what many see as the original vision of fair trade – most notably a primary concern for the plight of small producers and the goal of developing an alternative approach to trade and development – and may even be undermining its long-term survival. The primary purpose of this article is to explore the normative issues involved in corporate participation in fair trade. In order to do that, however, it first provides a positive analysis of how corporations are actually involved in fair trade. In order to achieve both of these ends, the article draws upon global value chain analysis. (shrink)

Very little has been done to find out what corporations have done to build ethical values into their organizations. In this report on a survey of 1984 Fortune 1000 industrial and service companies the Center for Business Ethics reveals some facts regarding codes of ethics, ethics committees, social audits, ethics training programs, boards of directors, and other areas where corporations might institutionalize ethics. Based on the survey, the Center for Business Ethics is convinced that corporations are beginning (...) to take steps to institutionalize ethics, while recognizing that in most cases more specific mechanisms and strategies need to be implemented to make their ethics efforts truly effective. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to explore the notion that corporations have moral rights within the context of a constitutive rules model of corporate moral agency. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the notion of moral rights, identifying the distinctive feature of moral rights, as contrasted with other moral categories, in Vlastos' terms of overridingness. The second part will briefly summarize the constitutive rules approach to the moral agency of corporations (à la French, Smith, (...) Ozar) and pose the question of the paper. The third part will argue that, since the moral agency of corporations is dependent on the choices of those whose acceptence of the relevant rules constitutes the corporation as a moral agent, the rights of corporations are conventional; that is, they exist because they are so created. Thus, as a first answer, corporations do not have moral rights.But this raises a further question which we must explore. Once a corporation has been constituted, by the acceptance of the relevant rules by the relevant persons, does the corporation then have rights which endure? Can those who have constituted a corporation with certain rights morally change or cancel those rights in medias res without doing some sort of moral violence to the corporation? Do corporations at least have a moral right to persist in the conventional rights with which they were constituted? (shrink)

Moderate holists like French, Copp :369–388, 2007), Hess, Isaacs and List and Pettit argue that certain collectives qualify as moral agents in their own right, often pointing to the corporation as an example of a collective likely to qualify. A common objection is that corporations cannot qualify as moral agents because they lack free will. The concern is that corporations are effectively puppets, dancing on strings controlled by external forces. The article begins by briefly presenting a novel account (...) of corporate moral agency and then demonstrates that, on this account, qualifying corporations do possess free will. Such entities possess and act from their own “actional springs”, in Haji’s :292–308, 2006) phrase, and from their own reasons-responsive mechanisms. When they do so, they act freely and are morally responsible for what they do. (shrink)

Corporations evolved from serving a public purpose at the beginning of the seventeenth century to, legally and culturally, primarily maximizing profit for shareholders which continues at the beginning of this twenty-first century. Government and civil society have largely continued serving the public interest over time, but have struggled to keep pace with increasing and rapidly evolving challenges in recent decades. While social entrepreneurs and the corporate sector have stepped in to help address these challenges, through the practice of corporate (...) responsibility, they have faced unnecessary hurdles in doing so. The benefit corporation was established in 2010 both to remove these hurdles and also help further unleash the power of business to address society’s most pressing problems. Despite various criticisms, benefit corporations are doing just that – enhancing the practice of corporate responsibility in the process – and will continue to improve over time. This paper summarizes the advantages of benefit corporations, points out some shortcomings which serve as areas for improvement, and addresses some of these criticisms. (shrink)

The freedom (or its lack) of employees within large corporations has been the topic of considerable attention. Various discussions have invoked utilitarian appeals, social contract arguments, rights to meaningful jobs and analogies between corporations and state government. After briefly reviewing and rejecting these approaches, this paper contends that the legitimate exercise of corporate authority requires its accountability to a relevant group. It is then argued that the rnost relevant group are the employees over whom such power is exercised (...) and that the form such accountability must take is that of recognizing the right of employees to participate in corporate decisions and actions. Recognition of this right to participation, it is contended, constitutes respect for the freedom of corporate employees. (shrink)

Corporations wield power in today’s economies, and political theories of the corporation argue about the legitimacy conditions of corporate power. This paper argues in favour of a double-fiduciary theory for corporations. Based on a concession theory of markets, it sees all markets as authorized by states (in the name of society), for the purpose of creating economic value, or wealth. Hence corporations, as much as non-incorporated firms, have a fiduciary duty to the state/society to create wealth, in (...) the competitive structure of the market. However, their pursuit of wealth often creates unbalanced relations of power between corporations and their stakeholders, which can at some point be classified as instances of domination. Therefore, corporations need to be subjected to a second fiduciary duty, i.e. not to dominate others in the economy. This duty is also, in the final instance, owed to the state/society. In an era when everyone can incorporate their business, states/societies can be interpreted as having, through corporate law, mandated shareholders as ‘proximate beneficiaries’, to incentivize corporations to create wealth. Now states/societies need to think about how to prevent corporations from dominating others. New mechanisms of accountability towards stakeholders and/or citizens as proximate beneficiaries are needed. Only in this way can corporations be effectively held to account for both of the fiduciary duties which characterize their normative status. (shrink)

This article develops contractarian business ethics by applying social contract arguments to a specific question: What are the pre-legal (or moral) rights and responsibilities of corporations? The argument uses a hypothetical social contract to show the existence of for-profit corporations in democratic capitalist societies is consistent with Rawls’s fundamental principles of justice. Corporations ought to have recognised their rights to be autonomous, to pursue private purposes, and to engage in economic activities. Corporations have a responsibility to (...) respect the freedom and human rights of all people, and not to interfere with government programs that ensure people have the education and training they need to find and keep corporate employment and that provide a safety-net that prevents destitution. If corporations have any other rights and responsibilities, those rights and responsibilities need to be established by actual social contracts, probably in the form of legitimate democratic processes. (shrink)

The article deals with the question how transnational corporations can bear direct responsibility for human rights abuses they commit by analysing the deficiencies of the current international legal background with respect to human rights and transnational corporations, and the solutions offered by national and regional legal tools. By establishing that current international law is incapable of reducing or compensating for governance gaps, the case law analysis shows that the litigation system under the Alien Tort Claims Act in the (...) United States and ATCA-like litigation possibility in the European Union present a feasible alternative to international law in the field of human rights protection when abuses are committed by transnational corporations. (shrink)

The author critiques the expedient application of market valuation principles by the transnational corporations and other large firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry on a number of issues like patents, pricing, irrational drugs, clinical trials, etc. He contends that ethics in business is chiseled and etched within the confines of particular social structures of accumulation. An ascendant neo-liberal social structure of accumulation has basically shaped these firms' sharp opposition to the Indian Patents Act, 1970, government administered pricing, etc. The (...) author contends that the practice of neo-liberal economics is strongly associated with a "one dimensional" ethics that privileges market valuation principles over all others. This seems to inevitably generate a social counter-movement that struggles for social protections. He critiques neo-liberal business practices from a perspective that derives from the work of the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi. Before the present phase of liberalization in India, markets were "managed", but without a "welfare state" in place. Moving toward deregulation of the markets without a welfare state in place is unethical. Keeping the debilities of the institutional framework of public policy in mind, the author adopts a Polanyian perspective that places its trust and hope in the growing social legitimacy of the counter-movement in opposition to both neo-liberal business practices and the degenerate behavior of state agencies. (shrink)

Multinational corporations face a litany of challenges regarding ethical decision-making as they traverse new variables in each country they operate in. Presented here is a new approach to ethical decision-making research for multinational corporations with the inclusion of moral virtues, national culture, and a feedback mechanism. The new proposed model builds off of the existing work by Trevino’s Person-Situated Interactionist Model. Hofstede’s work on individual national culture characteristics is used to move the conversation forward by explaining the relationships (...) between individual moderators in Trevino’s model and the effect of national culture on them. The new proposed model recommends the inclusion of moral virtues, with honesty and integrity as examples, as individual moderators in the decision-making process based on previous work. It contributes to the literature by introducing moral virtues into traditional ethical decision-making process models and introduces a new variable with a feedback mechanism for future learning. The paper concludes with recommendations for the future direction of research for ethical decision-making models for multinational organizations. (shrink)

The constitutions of many nations have been explicitly or implicitly founded upon principles of the social contract derived from Thomas Hobbes. The Hobbesian egoism at the base of the contract fairly accurately represents the structure of market enterprise. A contractarian analysis may, then, allow for justified or rationally acceptable universal standards to which businesses should conform. This paper proposes general rational restrictions upon multi-national enterprises, and includes a critique of unjustified restrictions recently proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and (...) Development (OECD). I propose restrictions that may be tighter than the OECD and international law currently demand, because reason requires that the activities of enterprises accord with standards of environmental and governmental sustainability in addition to consortium, national law and international law agreements. I argue that it is justifiable that indictments may be presented by a citizen or a government against the local arm of a multinational enterprise in response to violations committed by an arm within a different country. (shrink)

Does it make sense to talk about corporate responsibility for climate change mitigation? Through utilizing systems thinking, I will argue that mitigation should be incorporated into corpora...

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)

According to the reports in the past decade, some Asian subcontractors, mainly Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea transnational corporations, tend to be labor abusive in their overseas investment destinations like China or Southeast Asia. Taking Vietnam as an example, this paper raises questions as to why Taiwanese transnational companies can control workplace unions in a trade-union-supportive regime. Given the government s constraint of political rights, and the individualized workplace unions, the function of trade unions in Vietnam is destined to (...) be limited. The trade unions turn out be an arm of management, rather than representing workers interests in these transnational companies. This article also explores the influence of the newly developed codes of conducts from Western buyers. In the survey of three companies which are required to follow the codes of conduct by buyers, trade unions had no more freedom than those in companies without codes of conduct. The paper discusses the implications of this research, offering strategies for labor rights improvements. (shrink)

Contemporary advances in the fields of globalization and technologies raise the question of the relationship between international business and the global common good. Half of the hundred biggest economies in the world are now corporations. Nation-states were tradi- tionally viewed as the guarantors of the common good; however, the current historical stage is marked by the waning of the role of government, and reveals an emerging situation characterized by a co-responsibility of multiple agents in this respect. Three major evolu- (...) tions are likely to induce multinational corporations (MNCs) to take the global common good into account: the imperative of the preservation of our biosphere, the rise of an anti-globalization sentiment with all its potential consequences, and the necessity to design a global social contract. Besides, these three phenomena are interconnected, which adds to the pressure on MNCs to change their policies. ba. (shrink)

This paper consists of the text of a key-note address to the Vincentian Business Ethics Conference in Chicago in 2013. The content is substantially as delivered; some few ad hoc comments have been removed to preserve consistency of meaning in a printed text. The speech is presented by a senior executive of a number of FTSE listed firms. It offers his insights into the 2007 / 8 financial crisis and some retrospective interpretations of both ‘what’ happened and ‘how’ this changed (...) things. These insights, and some clear criticisms, are complemented with his suggestions for a way to reconstruct business in society less unsustainably. (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)

At a time when nationalism is rising and support for democratic values is declining, this paper considers the role that businesses and corporations play in building and undermining social trust. It was published as part of the Future of the Corporation programme led by the British Academy.

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)