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  1. Shareholder Theory and Kant’s ‘Duty of Beneficence’.Samuel Mansell - 2013 - Journal of Business Ethics 117 (3):583-599.
    This article draws on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to explore whether a corporate ‘duty of beneficence’ to non-shareholders is consistent with the orthodox ‘shareholder theory’ of the firm. It examines the ethical framework of Milton Friedman’s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well-being of non-shareholders as a corporate objective. The article examines Kant’s distinction between ‘duties of right’ and ‘duties of virtue’ (the latter including the duty of beneficence) and investigates their consistency with the shareholder (...)
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  2.  48
    Proximity and Rationalisation: The Limits of a Levinasian Ethics in the Context of Corporate Governance and Regulation.Samuel Mansell - 2008 - Journal of Business Ethics 83 (3):565-577.
    In this article, I explore how the ideas of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas offer insights into a debate often held today in the field of corporate governance, concerning the relative merits of statutory and voluntary approaches to the regulation of business. The philosophical position outlined by Levinas questions whether any rule-based systematisation of ethical responsibility, either statutory or voluntary, can ever equate to a genuine responsibility for the other person. I reflect on how various authors have adapted Levinas’s philosophy to (...)
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    Moral Agency in Charities and Business Corporations: Exploring the Constraints of Law and Regulation.Eleanor Burt & Samuel Mansell - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 159 (1):59-73.
    For centuries in the UK and elsewhere, charities have been widely regarded as admirable and virtuous organisations. Business corporations, by contrast, have been characterised in the popular imagination as entities that lack a capacity for moral judgement. Drawing on the philosophical literature on the moral agency of organisations, we examine how the law shapes the ability of charities and business corporations headquartered in England to exercise moral agency. Paradoxically, we find that charities are legally constrained in exercising moral agency in (...)
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  4. Rethinking Corporate Agency in Business, Philosophy, and Law.Samuel Mansell, John Ferguson, David Gindis & Avia Pasternak - 2019 - Journal of Business Ethics 154 (4):893-899.
    While researchers in business ethics, moral philosophy, and jurisprudence have advanced the study of corporate agency, there have been very few attempts to bring together insights from these and other disciplines in the pages of the Journal of Business Ethics. By introducing to an audience of business ethics scholars the work of outstanding authors working outside the field, this interdisciplinary special issue addresses this lacuna. Its aim is to encourage the formulation of innovative arguments that reinvigorate the study of corporate (...)
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    Hobbesian resistance and the law of nature.Samuel Mansell - 2024 - Intellectual History Review 34 (2):317-341.
    Hobbes’s account of the individual’s right to resist sovereign authority is nuanced. His allowance for cases in which a sovereign’s command falls outside the terms of the social contract, despite recent reappraisals, cannot rescue him from the accusation that his system is contradictory. It has been suggested that some Hobbesian rights can be transferred whilst others are quarantined, or that it is the institution of law, rather than the particular commands of the sovereign, which Hobbes ultimately upholds. By reconsidering Hobbes’s (...)
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