The Fallacy of Corporate Moral Agency / / by David Rönnegard

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910484769903321
• Autore: Rönnegard David
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Dordrecht : , : Springer Netherlands : , : Imprint : Springer, , 2015
• ISBN: 94-017-9756-0
• Edizione: [1st ed. 2015.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (225 p.)
• Collana: Issues in Business Ethics, , 2215-1680 ; ; 44
• Disciplina: 174.4
• Soggetti: Ethics; Econometrics; Law - Philosophy; Law - History; Moral Philosophy and Applied Ethics; Quantitative Economics; Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters.
• Nota di contenuto: Abstract; Contents; Introduction; Part I The Fallacy of Corporate Moral Agency; 1 The Importance of Corporate Moral Agency; References; 2 Necessary Conditions for Moral Agency; References; 3 Corporate Intentions; 3.1 Explication of Peter French's Conception of Corporate Moral Agency; 3.2 The Metaphysics of Intentions and Its Moral Relevance; References; 4 Corporate Actions; 4.1 Are Corporate Agents Autonomous?; 4.2 Free vs. Non-free Agents; 4.3 Emergent Corporate Moral Agency?; References; 5 Corporate Autonomy; References; 6 Summary of Why Corporate Moral Agency Is a Fallacy; 6.1 Autonomy; 6.2 Intention6.3 Action; Reference; 7 The Reference of Corporate Proper Names and Responsibility Attributions; References; 8 Corporate Collective Moral Agency; 8.1 Joint/Shared Intentions; 8.2 Group/Corporate Intentions; 8.3 Corporate Collective Intentions; References; 9 Conclusion: Legitimate and Illegitimate Corporate Moral Responsibility Attributions; 9.1 Moral Responsibility Attribution to a Collective Whole; 9.2 Moral Responsibility Attribution to a Corporate Structure; 9.3 Moral Responsibility Attribution to a Unanimously Intending Collective; 9.4 Elliptical Moral Responsibility Attribution to a Collective WholeReferences; Part II The Role of the Corporation in Society; 10 The Role of the Corporation in Society: The Descriptive View; 10.1 The First Corporations; 10.2 The Legal Debate About the Nature of the Corporation; 10.3 The Shareholder Primacy Norm; 10.4 The Separation of the Corporation from the Shareholders and the Emergence of the Corporate Share as an Autonomous Form of Property; 10.5 The Limited Liability of Shareholders; 10.6 The Reification of the Corporation (and the Legal Influence of the Theories About the Nature of the Corporation)10.7 The Corporation as Socio-economic Instrument; References; 11 The Role of the Corporation in Society: The Prescriptive View; 11.1 Ought the Corporate Legal Form to Be Used as an Instrument of the State?; 11.1.1 The Problem with the Descriptive Claims of the Nexus-of-Contracts Theory; 11.1.2 The Problem with the Libertarian Prescription for Absolute Property Rights; 11.2 The Wrong with the Corporate Social ResponsibilityMovement; 11.2.1 The Philosophical Foundations of the CSR Movement11.2.2 Shareholder Theory vs. CSR; 11.2.2.1 The Economic Efficiency of Shareholder Theory vs.Stakeholder Theory; 11.2.2.2 Exogenous vs. Endogenous Corporate Safeguards; 11.2.3 The Rationality of the Shareholder Primacy Norm; 11.3 The Division Between Public and Private Corporate Responsibilities; 11.3.1 The Public/Private Distinction; 11.3.2 The Market as a Zone of Moral Exception; 11.3.3 The Justification for State Regulation; 11.4 Summary: The Role the Corporation Ought to Play in Society; References; Conclusion; Bibliography
• Sommario/riassunto: It is uncontroversial that corporations are legal agents that can be held legally responsible, but can corporations also be moral agents that are morally responsible? Part one of this book explicates the most prominent theories of corporate moral agency and provides a detailed debunking of why corporate moral agency is a fallacy. This implies that talk of corporate moral responsibilities, beyond the mere metaphorical, is essentially meaningless. Part two takes the fallacy of corporate moral agency as its premise and spells out its implications. It shows how prominent normative theories within Corporate Social Responsibility, such as Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory, rest on an implicit assumption of corporate moral agency. In this metaphysical respect such theories are untenable. In order to provide a more robust metaphysical foundation for corporations the book explicates the development of the corporate legal form in the US and UK, which displays how the corporation has come to have its current legal attributes. This historical evolution shows that the corporation is a legal fiction created by the state in order to serve both public and private goals. The normative implication for corporate accountability is that citizens of democratic states ought to primarily make calls for legal enactments in order to hold the corporate legal instruments accountable to their preferences.