Corporate Agents of Responsibility as Way of Social and Economic Welfare

The point of personality

The notion of collective moral agent contradicts the idea of moral duty, which is always individual. Simultaneously, the concept of collective responsibility is contrary to the idea of social ethics of liberalism whose fundamental claim is that differences between individuals should be respected.

The methodological point

Another controversy of collective responsibility which some thinkers emphasize has been based on the idea of methodological individualism. This idea supposes that all social processes can be explained by reference to a set of principles governing individual human behavior. As the result, we are left with a situation in which in every researched case of collective activity we can reduce responsibility and find a guilty agent. Of course, such reduction of responsibility lets some people avoid it and other are forced to assume all responsibility.

The difficulties which corporate responsibility has can be solved if reconstruct the paradigm of an individual responsibility. The paradigm of individual responsibility deal with the sense which a person has. It means, I am able to control a situation and can predict some consequences of my choice. Responsibility is way how abstract moral duty concretizes in an individual act. In other words, responsible person who is able to accept a situation as dependent from a moral choice. Retrospective aspect of individual responsibility means that the action has free and an intentional character and a person knows about all circumstances. It is a basis to have connection between responsibility and capacity to predict consequences. If we do not have a chance to see consequences, we cannot be responsible. The negative sanctions such as shame, conscience and guilt appear after taking decision. In Kant’s ethics where outcomes do not have value, so a personality is responsible for only motives. And it is not important where an accent is. In other words, motives or outcomes do not have importance for moral obligation because the boundaries of the actions have strict time – the present.

Summarizing the main definitions of responsibility, it can be defined as particular personal interpretation of moral duty. Through the responsibility abstract moral obligation, which appeals to all human being, becomes individual duty. Relations between responsibility and consequences are based in human ability to predict and control outcomes. One cannot be responsible for results which are unforeseen.

In generally, the main condition of corporate moral responsibility supposes that people in groups agreed to take responsibility for actions which have been acted by others. In other words, a person is responsible for others actions and has absolutely the same sanctions real and negative order as if he or she takes part in actions directly.

The bases for such moral obligation is belongs to social community. It is said that the idea of corporate responsibility is the way to eliminate moral responsibility. It is a big deference between person responsibility and a situation when people are in the group. Groups actions reduce the sense of responsibility.

Summarizing the main definitions of responsibility, it can be defined as particular personal interpretation of moral duty. Through the responsibility abstract moral obligation, which appeals to all human being, becomes individual duty. Relations between responsibility and consequences are based in human ability to predict and control outcomes. One cannot be responsible for results which are unforeseen. Responsibility means the ability of a person to act consciously and take into account the consequences of his or her actions. Being capable to understand the needs of other people is main feature of responsible person. Responsibility has intentional character because it is attitude of personality to society, to another person and to herself or himself. The problem of ascriptions has not been complicated for certain. Talking about consequences of actions in the past they were predictable and ethical theory did not deal with remote outcomes and it was not necessary to have complex scheme for ascriptions. Close interactions among people created briefly mechanism of moral estimations where moral imperatives were as the fundamental principles, but simultaneously they concretized in the particular cases. Retrospective (backward-looking) character of individual responsibility is bases for moral assessment and this mechanism which provided responsibility were shame, blameworthiness. According to this mentioned definitions of responsibility we suppose that the classical ethical theory did not need some corporate moral agents at all because a responsibility agent could be defined in any case.

The paradigm of individual responsibility which is presented in this study needs us in order to we answer following questions. First of all, does really corporate responsibility reduce individual responsibility? Secondly, is it possible to keep individual bases of morality within collective activity?

At that moment, different discussions of collective responsibility can be articulated in three projects, where researchers attempt to proof moral status of collective agents. The main assumption which we should admit about collective responsibility that it has intentions so as individuals. Such idea realizes in a project which is called «a Corporate Agents of Responsibility» (Corlett, 2006). In this case, we deal with organized actions where a personality is place into institutional and corporate context. So as to solve the anthropological prejudice of personality P. French reformulates this principle. Using another variant of personality concept, he creates another approach. It means that the concept of personality can be used for different agents, for instance, corporations which have abilities to act intentionally and to bring about changes in his or her environment. This an agent is able to correct its behaviour using the positive and negative experience. This agent can to take interests of other subjects into account. Actually, according to P. French some collectives is satisfy completely the conditions which we use for persons in the moral sense. If we observed some kind of corporations, they are satisfied these clams. As we have already mentioned, responsibility is intrinsically linked to the intention. If we consider that a feature such as intention can be attributed to certain groups (in which case we would qualify it as a collective intention), we can treat them as agents of moral responsibility.

In this situation to think that such agencies accept moral responsibility so well individuals are not correct because it is another way accepting responsibilities. P. French thinks that the collective intention realizes in «corporate internal decision-making structure». In order to realize effective mechanism taking responsibility, the researcher is speaking about two elements: firstly, «an organizational or responsibility flow chart that delineates stations and levels within the corporate power structure» (French, 2009). Secondly, «corporate decision recognition rule(s) usually embedded in something called corporation policy».

As the result, corporate decisions do not reduce individual decisions, corporations are collectives (or conglomerates) and their internal identity does not have strict connection with constant personal membership. P. French identifies moral individual position with moral position of collectives. Actually it is not correct we cannot to equalize their positions (French, 2009).

Corporations are not moral personality and using the depersonalized structure in collectives does not guarantee that we would deal with real moral agent. Accumulate will all participants in the collective decisions supposes that such agent neds particular structure which provides the democratic features. In other words, the atmosphere of publicity, where accepting different positions and open public discussions. It is thought we have a chance to save individual base of morality in group. Opposite situation when democratic structure is absent in collectives, we do not have a chance to solve the problem of moral responsibility. That is why the French’s model of corporate responsibility was supplemented with principals of publicity by A. Corlett (Corlett, 2006) and N. Rescher (Rescher, 1998). In this context the mechanism of bearing responsibility can be realized through a shame. Using the notion of blameworthiness for corporations is not efficient because usually corporations have more pragmatic goal that moral, so the shame can be effective. Public censure is the strongest mechanism of effect for corporate than blameworthiness, because blameworthiness characters’ individual behaviour, bur for corporate is more important confidents of partners.

Finally, organized collectives cannot be presented as a moral personality, but they are particular agents or «quasi personality», which can be accessed through moral norms. Vicarious Notion of Responsibility is another way to see in collective’s responsible agents. Focusing on moral senses such as blame, ashamed, repentance which a personality has for other members of group. It is thought that the claim for this kind of experience becomes a moment of identification of the individual with the group on the basis of national, religious, professional or other interests. Actually, this type of corporate responsibility deals with individual responsibility for activity and the consequences, which have been acted by others. Basically, the corporate responsibility does not eliminate individual dimension of responsibility. when people shared values with other people it creates bases for bearing and attributing responsibility. In this sense, the main condition is our is symbolic sharing preferences with others. The notion of responsibility before have provided for individual’s particular social role and guaranteed part of irresponsibility in collective actions. Today decisions of corporate agents are a subject of personal responsibility and care, because a person through the own preferences, values takes part in different organizations, social groups.