Corporations as persons

["Alex Watt" <alex.watt@blueyonder.co.uk>]

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It strikes me as a very dangerous idea to treat a corporation as a person.
The problem is that as it is a collection of humans acting together and if
we treat their activities as those of a separate responsible agent then we
remove them (to some extent from responsibility). The veil of incorporation
should not be a cover for the managers to hide from the moral responsibility
that they should hold personally. Their guilt may to some extent be
attenuated by the fact that it is a collective activity but nevertheless,
the moral responsibility must lie with actual people. Otherwise, we get into
the situation that we have reached with the government or public services
where we are all quite happy to criticise the large, faceless organisation
but 'there are lovely people working in it'. If there is no personal
responsibility then there is little valuable social effect to moral
approbation.

Alex Watt





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