Are Corporations Like Psychopaths? Lessons On Moral Responsibility From Rio Tinto's Juukan Gorge Disaster

Anne Schwenkenbecher

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2025, vol. 34, issue 4, 2309-2320

Abstract: There seems to be a striking parallel between the features of psychopaths and those of agential groups, including states and corporations. Psychopaths are often thought to lack some of the capacities that are constitutive of moral agency. Two features of psychopaths are commonly identified as grounds for limiting their moral responsibility: (i) their lack of relevant emotional capacities and (ii) their flawed rational capacities. Roughly, the first argument is that the lack of moral emotions such as sympathy, guilt, or shame negatively impacts moral perception and therewith an agent's capacity for moral reasoning. The second argument is that psychopaths are diminished in their agency as such, not just in their moral agency; they are erratic and impulsive and show other significant failures of rationality. Using the 2020 Juukan Gorge disaster in Western Australia as a case study, I conclude that deliberate or reckless corporate irrationality cannot be grounds for diminished corporate moral responsibility. Corporate agents are chiefly responsible for core aspects of their moral agency, including their internal epistemic structures and decision‐making processes. They have obligations to establish or maintain internal epistemic integrity and consistency.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:buseth:v:34:y:2025:i:4:p:2309-2320

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