corporations and individuals bear the moral responsibility for organizational or corporate actions

 corporations and individuals bear the moral responsibility for organizational or corporate actions

Moral responsibility is a fundamental concept in the current business world. The question regarding who is morally responsible for the actions of a corporation or a business is controversial. Decision-making processes in a company are usually collective, and work is shared among the members. Humans can influence the outcomes of the organization by taking actions and making decisions on an individual as well as on a group basis. The environment in the corporation may influence the decisions that individuals and teams take (Ripken, 2019). As discussed in the paper, corporations and individuals bear the moral responsibility for organizational or corporate actions.

The people who act on behalf of an organization bear the moral responsibility for the actions of the company. Humans are moral agents because they are rational beings who are capable of making decisions. In this light, managers and employees remain responsible for their actions in the organizations. The responsibility holds regardless of the influence from environment and other individuals. The individuals in a team or department of an organization can act collectively. People may question the existence of individual moral liability in such instances of collective actions of groups. Each member is in control of his or her actions as an intentional agent separate from the collective agent (Albin, 2016). The collective actions of a group or organization do not preclude the personal or individual liability that might also be present, although the collective responsibility may not be reducible to individual liability alone (Lenk, 2019). Overall, the individual intentions must count because they are the prerequisite of the collective ones.

The corporation is a moral agent and bears the ethical responsibility for its actions. Firms and corporations are capable of purposeful actions that are distinct from individual employees. The internal decision-making structure of a corporation is impossible to ascribe to specific individual members (Lampert, 2016). Corporate actions arise when the employees perform duties in their right roles within the organization, according to the mandated procedures, and in line with the organizations’ commitment emanating from the corporate RPV (rational point of view) (Ripken, 2019). The RPV results when corporations make decisions to operate in a particular manner regarding their commitments, such as profits and other beliefs. For instance, a corporation may decide to implement a policy that emits pollutants. The decision can be interpreted as the corporation’s interest in making a profit and its perspective that the release of the pollutants is the effective method of realizing the profit (Giubilini & Levy, 2018). Such actions of the organizations are not attributable to specific individual members.

The corporate climate, culture, and actions of other people in several departments influence the actions of each member. The input of each individual is mixed with the other constituent contributions. The outcome comprises a collective action that is ascribed to the corporate entity. In such cases, nobody will be identified as blameworthy if the corporation is not ascribed as a moral agent.

In summary, both people and corporations bear ethical responsibility for organizational actions. The actions of the individual members have an impact on the action of the organization. As moral agents, humans should bear the moral responsibility for organizational actions. Additionally, the corporations have a moral agency that is separate from the personal one. A set of commitments engender instrumentally rational actions that corporations take. Besides, organizations make culture and structure that influence the input of the members. Nevertheless, corporate moral liability does not preclude individual responsibility. Individuals who are deemed blameworthy should be held liable even if the organization is ethically responsible for its actions.

References

Albin, R. (2016). Collective responsibility: Organizations as organic entities. Open Journal of Philosophy, 6(04), 392.

Giubilini, A., & Levy, N. (2018). What in the world is collective responsibility? Dialectica, 72(2), 191-127.

Lampert, M. (2016). Corporate social responsibility and the supposed moral agency of corporations. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 16(1).

Lenk, H. (2019). Is individual responsibility enough? International Journal of Arts and Humanities, 1(1), 3-12.

Ripken, S. K. (2019). Corporate personhood. Cambridge University Press.