Comments on: The Moral Obligations of Companies vs Individuals

By: AdamGurri

AdamGurri — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:23:17 +0000

I have a different view of what morality is, but agree with your take on agency.

By: Tom Henrich

Tom Henrich — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:05:48 +0000

I think it boils down to individuals being both morally and legally responsible (to certain extents, at least), and companies being legally responsible but morally ambivalent. Morality is essentially a human construct, so then by that definition a company is incapable of being morally… anything.

Companies can be their own legal entity, in part so that the individuals employed there can be free of direct legal responsibility for the company’s actions. The people who work for a given company (past, present, or future) may have a moral responsibility to handle the consequences of their company’s endeavours, but unless they’re singled out as being particularly guilty for something or another (willful disregard for regulations, etc), they’re usually not legally culpable.

In the end it’s just semantics. Morality is whatever the majority decides it is, and legal responsibility can go every which way.

By: AdamGurri

AdamGurri — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:16:57 +0000

That is my position exactly. We talk about a company or a group being responsible, but we (usually) understand that that is just shorthand for the actual people to whom the responsibility falls upon.

Thanks for the link! I also winced when we got Godwin’d; just a second before it happened I invoked Stalin in an attempt not to fall into that trap! haha

By: Ryan Jenkins

Ryan Jenkins — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:50:32 +0000

Keep in mind, also, a distinction is often drawn between two kinds of “responsibility”: Culpability, that is, backward-looking responsibility for some wrong, and accountability, which is forward-looking responsibility to fix something. So while Tony Hayward, for the sake of argument, might be morally culpable for the Deepwater Horizon, if he changes jobs, he is arguably no longer accountable for fixing it. (I tend to think that culpability is prima facie accountability, and that his moral accountability would continue to exist in this case.)

Also, the law, I think, would ideally track moral responsibility. That’s why the two line up in so many cases: that’s why we have torts and demand compensation from wrongdoers, and why the law demands that people be punished when they, morally speaking, deserve to be punished, etc.