The Moral Status of Corporations
Modern Organisational Governance
ISBN: 978-1-78714-695-2, eISBN: 978-1-78714-694-5
Publication date: 22 August 2017
Abstract
In this chapter, I analyze the notion of corporate responsibility from the person-centric perspective. I offer a four-dimensional exposition in terms of which I examine the corporate moral personhood view. These four dimensions are explained and critiqued to arrive at a definition of moral responsibility and status appropriate to corporations. I suggest that a corporation cannot be construed as a person in the sense in which individuals are persons. Since a corporation cannot be an independently existing entity, it cannot have an independent moral personality of its own as individual persons have. Therefore, I argue that a reasonable construal of corporate moral personhood has to exploit a different point of view altogether. With this difference of standpoint, I develop what is called the institutional personhood view. I argue that corporations do acquire a sort of collective institutional moral personality.
Keywords
Citation
Mishra, N. (2017), "The Moral Status of Corporations", Modern Organisational Governance (Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Vol. 12), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 47-66. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2043-052320170000012003
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited