The Morality of the Corporation
Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (4):445-458 (1994)
| Abstract | In the canonical view of the corporation, management is the agent of the owners of the corporation-the stockholders-and, as such, has a fiduciary duty to manage the corporation in their best interests. Most business ethicists condemn this arrangement as morally indefensible because it fails to respect the right of other corporate constituencies or “stakeholders” to self-deterrnination. By contrast, the modern agency theory of the firm provides a defense of this arrangement on the grounds that it is the result of stakeholders’ right to self-determination. This paper uses the exarnple of managers’ fiduciary duty to stockholders to argue that different normative judgrnents often mask empirical disagreements | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
|
| Through your library | Configure |
Ian Maitland (2001). Distributive Justice in Firms. Business Ethics Quarterly 11 (1):129-143.
Richard J. Klonoski (1986). The Moral Responsibilities of Stockholders. Journal of Business Ethics 5 (5):385 - 390.
Allen Kaufman (2002). Managers' Double Fiduciary Duty: To Stakeholders and to Freedom. Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (2):189-214.
John R. Boatright (1994). Fiduciary Duties and the Shareholder-Management Relation. Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (4):393-407.
Rogene A. Buchholz & Sandra B. Rosenthal (2005). Toward a Contemporary Conceptual Framework for Stakeholder Theory. Journal of Business Ethics 58 (1-3):137 - 148.
Rogene A. Buchholz & Sandra B. Rosenthal (2006). Integrating Ethics All the Way Through: The Issue of Moral Agency Reconsidered. Journal of Business Ethics 66 (2/3):233 - 239.
Amitai Etzioni (1998). A Communitarian Note on Stakeholder Theory. Business Ethics Quarterly 8 (4):679-691.
Michael Haynes (2007). Rationality, Morality and Joel Bakan's the Corporation. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics 3 (1):1-18.
David E. Schrader (1987). The Corporation and Profits. Journal of Business Ethics 6 (8):589 - 601.
Lisa H. Newton (1986). The Internal Morality of the Corporation. Journal of Business Ethics 5 (3):249 - 258.
David T. Ozar (1985). Do Corporations Have Moral Rights? Journal of Business Ethics 4 (4):277 - 281.
Laurent Leduc (2004). Corporate Governance with a Difference: Fiduciary Duty for a Wisdom Economy. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics 1 (s 2-3):147-161.
Rob Maessen, Paul Setervans & Eleonore Rijckevorsevanl (2007). Circles of Stakeholders: Towards a Relational Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics 3 (1):77-94.
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-01-09Total downloads16 ( #74,648 of 549,068 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,068 )How can I increase my downloads? |

