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Corporate Social Responsibility

Imperial College London Business School EMBA Individual Assessment for Elective in Corporate Social Responsibility

5. (a) Can corporations be ‘uncaring’? That is, can only individuals care and have consciences?
(b) Can it ever be competitively advantageous for corporations to be philanthropic?

Much of the argument over whether corporations can have consciences revolves around whether the corporation can be considered to be a person. If it can, it naturally follows that just as people have consciences, so to do corporations. People have the capability to care about themselves and those around them. Corporations on the other hand “are creatures of, and to a degree prisoners of, the systems of economic incentive and political sanction that give them reality and therefore should not be expected to display the same moral attributes that we expect of persons.” (3)

Kant described moral conscience as respect for other people as ends and not just as means. It can be argued that some corporations have not shown themselves to have a conscience by this definition. Nike has been accused of not respecting the children that worked in its clothing factories in Cambodia and Pakistan. Similarly Shell came under fire for disrespecting the environment people live in when they planned to dump the Brent Spar out at sea. Enron showed lack of respect for stockholders and employees by committing fraud that lead to the failure of the company.

These examples show that some corporations have not demonstrated having a conscience, but that does not necessarily mean that they cannot have a conscience. Goodpaster and Mathews believe that it is possible to project the moral responsibilities that apply to individuals onto the corporation for which the individuals work. They suggest that it is possible for a group to act like a person. Corporations are organised into a unit with structure and rules governing decision making and conditions where particular individual’s actions become...