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RE: Corporations as persons
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"The tendency to anthropomorphise is strong but I think unhelpful. There are
minds involved in the corporations' actions...you are providing those moral
agents...with a cover behind which they will shelter from their own
responsibility."
If talking about corporations as persons allows corrupt employees to dodge moral
responsibility, then that's clearly a bad thing. But allowing that corporations
have a moral role in our society need not mean the absolution of human blame.
It may amount to no more than recognising that a corporation is a complex
institution with which we interact in many ways in everyday life, and through
which we act as a group. Even if moral agency inheres only in human beings,
isn't there some sense in which a corporation is a moral unit? Even if all
praise and blame eventually filters down to human beings within a corporation,
it seems that a corporation is a sort of 'doing machine', and the acts of a
corporation could be seen as acts for which humans may be ultimately
responsible, although the agency involved in such acts is a special kind of
'corporate-human agency' which is somehow different from ordinary human-agency.
Describing a corporation as a person is a decisive step away from the view of a
corporation as a faceless, inhuman monolith. This is a prevalent and mythical
view of business which has become synonymous with the word 'corporation'. The
word 'person' instead emphasises that a corporation plays a particular role in
society - creating the goods, services, and jobs which human beings need, in a
sustainable way. It also reminds us that the relationship between corporations
and persons is not one way. If a corporation is a person (but not a psychopath)
then perhaps human persons have a duty to contribute time and support, at least
if they intend to reap the benefits in terms of wealth and products.
The long standing distrust of business often relates to contingent features of
the corporation and its behaviour. Nothing about the intrinsic nature of a
corporation entails the disintegration of human society. Treating corporations
as persons (in certain respects) allows us to clarify the interactions of these
complex institutions in the world, gives us a vocabulary in which to express
what we expect from corporations and what we have to offer, and describe a
complex web of moral obligations in a world which includes people alongside
institutions of all shapes and sizes.
Nick
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