Individual Actions and Corporate Moral Responsibility: A (Reconstituted) Kantian Approach

Tobey Scharding ()
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Tobey Scharding: Rutgers Business School - Newark and New Brunswick

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 154, issue 4, No 4, 929-942

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the resources of Kantian ethics to establish corporate moral responsibility. I defend Matthew Altman’s claim that Kantian ethics cannot hold corporations morally responsible for corporate malfeasance. Rather than following Altman in interpreting this inability as a reason not to use Kantian ethics, however, I argue that the Kantian framework is correct: business ethicists should not seek to hold corporations morally responsible. Instead, they should use Kantian (and/or other ethical-theoretical) resources to criticize the actions of individual businesspeople. I set forth a model for decomposing business actions into their individual parts and reconstituting them in a context-specific “maxim” that Kantian ethics can evaluate. The reconstituted form of Kantian ethics that I defend is better able to manage decision-making complexity than traditional interpretations. To demonstrate the usefulness of my approach, I apply it to the recent Wells Fargo bogus-accounts scandal.

Keywords: Banking ethics; Corporate moral responsibility; Cross-selling; Kantian ethics; Wells Fargo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3889-z

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