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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.

This chapter addresses one of the most crucial areas for critical thinking: the morality of turbulent markets around the world. All of us are overwhelmed by such turbulent markets. Following Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2004, 2010), we distinguish between nonscalable industries (ordinary professions where income grows linearly, piecemeal or by marginal jumps) and scalable industries (extraordinary risk-prone professions where income grows in a nonlinear fashion, and by exponential jumps and fractures). Nonscalable industries generate tame and predictable markets of goods and services, while scalable industries regularly explode into behemoth virulent markets where rewards are disproportionately large compared to effort, and they are the major causes of turbulent financial markets that rock our world causing ever-widening inequities and inequalities. Part I describes both scalable and nonscalable markets in sufficient detail, including propensity of scalable industries to randomness, and the turbulent markets they create. Part II seeks understanding of moral responsibility of turbulent markets and discusses who should appropriate moral responsibility for turbulent markets and under what conditions. Part III synthesizes various theories of necessary and sufficient conditions for accepting or assigning moral responsibility. We also analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for attribution of moral responsibility such as rationality, intentionality, autonomy or freedom, causality, accountability, and avoidability of various actors as moral agents or as moral persons. By grouping these conditions, we then derive some useful models for assigning moral responsibility to various entities such as individual executives, corporations, or joint bodies. We discuss the challenges and limitations of such models.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss incongruities in the corporate entity over the matter of agency. In lieu of the traditional notion of moral agency theory, the stakeholder model offers congruent grounding to corporate governance. Socially irresponsible or unethical corporate activities are perceived to increase expenses, diminish shareholder value and tarnish business reputations. In contrast, socially responsible corporate practices contribute to positive attitudes to the company and contribute to the creation of competitive advantage.

This paper follows the ongoing evolution of the regulatory changes instituted after the scandalous corporate fiascos of the present century, such as those of Enron and WorldCom in the USA, Polly Peck in the UK, HIH Insurance and One.Tel in Australia, and Siemens in Germany, inter alia. The exposition also touches on the regulatory metamorphosis of corporate governance in its convergence towards “meta-regulation” with corporate social responsibility at the core.

While meta-regulation has so far worked in many countries, caution is expressed over the perils of over-reliance on a meta-regulatory approach. Industries or market sectors should also attempt to operate from the start within the confines of self-regulation and government regulation. Market sectors and industries need to find the framework of regulation that is best suited to their operations.

The paper concludes by discussing the observed challenges and implications of such convergence, as well as future directions for law practitioners, academics and researchers in the realm of corporate conduct.

This chapter points out and tries to describe the (missing) link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social ontology/ontology of the firm. The author believes that this gap in the literature hinders the progress of CSR theoretical/empirical understanding and effectiveness; therefore, the following question is addressed: is a social theory-focused approach to the ontology of the firm relevant to CSR studies? While currently many disciplines are seeking to clarify CSR theory and practice, the role of social ontology has relatively been under-explored despite its foundational importance.

This chapter provides rationales for identifying a set of interrelated themes to be included in future research projects. A literature review is carried out, and further analysis and desk research can be drawn from the key notions identified.

This viewpoint conceptual chapter suggests that social ontology can be an important subject of inquiry in order to bridge the existing gaps in CSR/Business Ethics studies. A possible conceptual agreement for a realist and social theory-focused approach to CSR is illustrated.

While encouraging more effort and commitment in this emerging and fascinating field, this chapter concentrates on some selected key aspects such as the meaning of corporate moral agency and the ontological status of social collectives (e.g. firms).

This chapter lays the ground for future pilot exploratory research, and could be instructive for the construction of specific research methodologies/theoretical tools seeking to explore not so much the ways CSR is defined (indeed, there seems to be a broad consensus about it) but rather how CSR is socially constructed, implemented and carried out.

This chapter can potentially help grow knowledge about the nexus between CSR, social ontology and the underlying metaphysical issues, thus facilitating a comprehensive inter-/multi-/pluri-disciplinary understanding and giving a contribution to the relevant ongoing scientific and practical debates.

This chapter, while uncovering and exploring the aforementioned novel connections, can enrich the study of CSR with respect to the current mainstream approaches, for example, stakeholder management and engagement, social accounting and reporting, socially responsible investment (SRI).

This paper aims to respond to increasing interest in the intersection between accounting and human rights and to explore whether access to information might itself constitute a human right. As human rights have “moral force”, establishing access to information as a human right may act as a catalyst for policy change. The paper also aims to focus on environmental information, and specifically the case of corporate water‐related disclosures.

This paper follows Griffin and Sen, who suggest that a candidate human right might be recognised when it is consistent with “founding” human rights, it is important and it may be influenced by societal action. The specific case for access to corporate water‐related information to constitute a human right is evaluated against these principles.

Access to corporate water‐related disclosures may indeed constitute a human right. Political participation is a founding human right, water is a critical subject of political debate, water‐related information is required in order for political participation and the state is in a position to facilitate provision of such information. Corporate water disclosures may not necessarily be in the form of annual sustainability reports, however, but may include reporting by government agencies via public databases and product labelling. A countervailing corporate right to privacy is considered and found to be relevant but not necessarily incompatible with heightened disclosure obligations.

This paper seeks to make both a theoretical and a practical contribution. Theoretically, the paper explores how reporting might be conceived from a rights‐based perspective and provides a method for determining which disclosures might constitute a human right. Practically, the paper may assist those calling for improved disclosure regulation by showing how such calls might be embedded within human rights discourse.

This paper analyses what is seen as a crisis of authority in financial reporting. It considers the view that an element of authority may be restored to accounting through communicative reason. The paper argues that the justice‐oriented rationality of traditional, Habermasian, communicative ethics is incapable of providing a solid foundation for the re‐authorisation of financial reporting. The paper argues that a more adequate foundation might be found in an enlarged communicative ethics that allows space to the other of justice‐oriented reason. The inspiration for the enlargement is found in Ricoeur's analysis of narrative, his exploration of its role in the figuration of identity, and in his biblical hermeneutics which reveals the necessity of an active dialectic of love and justice.

In popular culture, ethics and morality are topical, heightened by recent attention to the banking industry and pay awards, monopoly capitalism, global warming and sustainability. Yet, surprisingly, little attention is given to these in the narrative of the conceptualisation of social enterprise or social entrepreneurship – nor in the academic research on the sector. Current conceptualisations of social enterprise fail to fully satisfy the spirit of the movement which advances a narrative that social enterprises: are more like businesses than voluntary organisations; are more entrepreneurial than public service delivery; use business models but are not just in it for the money. A focus on the economic implies a business model where deep tensions lie. A focus on social capital offers a different frame of reference, yet both these conceptualisations fail to fully identify the phenomenon that is social enterprise. The objective of this paper is to fill that gap. Ethical capital is offered here as an alternative and unrecognised conceptualisation in the field of social enterprise.

This paper is exploratory in nature – a tentative piece of theorising that brings together the authors' perspectives on ethical capital to offer a new frame of reference on social enterprise. It sets out to investigate some of the issues in order to provoke further research.

It is argued in the paper that the current ideology of the neo‐classical economic paradigm pursues interests towards the self and towards the erosion of the moral basis of association. The outcome leaves society with a problem of low ethical virtue. The implications of this paper are that social enterprises maximise ethical virtue beyond any other form of organisation and as such hold great value beyond their missions and values.

This paper starts the process of intellectual debate about the notion of ethical capital in social enterprises. The conclusions of this paper outline further research questions that need to be addressed in order to fully develop this concept.

This paper offers great value in the understanding of social enterprise through fresh insight into its conceptualisation. A critical perspective is adopted towards the current literature. This paper sheds new light on an understanding of the sector, providing practitioners, business support agencies and academics alike with a conceptualisation that has not been explored before.