Abstract
The article offers a critical assessment of an article on “Corporate Legitimacy as Deliberation” by Guido Palazzo and Andreas Scherer in this journal. We share the concern about the precarious legitimacy of globally active corporations, infringing on the legitimacy of democracy at large. There is no quarrel with Palazzo/Scherer’s diagnosis, which focuses on the consequences of globalization and ensuing challenges for corporate social responsibilities. However, we disagree with the “solutions” offered by them. In a first step we refute the idea of a legitimacy of morals, maintaining that morality is a premodern mode of creating legitimacy. Even worse, moral is becoming a dangerous commodity under conditions of fundamental global disagreements and antagonisms. We secondly refute the concept of the “politicized corporation”, maintaining that Palazzo/Scherer disregard the consequences of functional differentiation of modern societies and, in particular, disregard the wisdom of political restraint and constitutional guarantees for the autonomy of different spheres of society. Finally, we refute a seemingly romantic notion of deliberation, maintaining that deliberation and deliberative democracy is a worthy idea, which, however, has no place in the real world of globalized contexts. On the other hand, we also find enough common ground and common concern with Palazzo/Scherer to validate a fruitful discourse.
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Prof. Dr. Helmut Willke holds a chair for State theory and Global Governance at the Department of Sociology of the University of Bielefeld, Germany. He has published eighteen books, and in 1994 has been award the (German) Leibniz prize. His research areas are systems theory, system governance, global governance and knowledge management.
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Willke is professor of economics at the University of Applied Sciences at Nuertingen, Germany. He has published six books and numerous articles. His research areas are economic theory, theory of capitalism, political economy and employment policy.
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Willke, H., Willke, G. Corporate Moral Legitimacy and the Legitimacy of Morals: A Critique of Palazzo/Scherer’s Communicative Framework. J Bus Ethics 81, 27–38 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9478-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9478-1