Abstract
Contrasting two standard models of corporate responsibility—the so-called “collectivist” and “individualist” model—this essay proposes a third option, namely, a discursive conception of responsibility and examines whether and how this conception can be applied to the corporate level. It does so by taking a careful look at one of the preconditions of individual discursive responsibility, i.e. discursive practical reason, and discussing how corporate agents can meet this precondition. Building on this new concept, the essay also offers a novel approach to justifying corporate responsibility by referring to an argument advanced by Rainer Forst stating that a fundamental human right to justification is the normative core of any kind of responsibility and combining it, in a second step, with an argument recently proposed by Philip Pettit and Christian List showing the impossibility of forming consistent group attitudes and beliefs as a function of the attitudes and beliefs of individual group members. Finally, this essay outlines certain preliminary conclusions about the incorporation of responsibility in a corporate context.
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Notes
The discursive understanding of responsibility we develop in the following connects well with the etymological roots of the word. The word „responsible“ derives from the French „responsable“ and this, again, from Latin “responsabilis”, which meant (at least from the early seventeenth century onwards) an obligation to respond, to be “answerable or liable to be called to account to another person for something” (cf. the article for “responsible” in the Oxford English Dictionary). In other languages (e. g. French, German), the translations of responsibility (i.e. responsabilité, Verantwortung) bear a similar semantic content. Recently, this original meaning has also been discussed under the heading of “answerability”. In this paper we argue, however, that considering this discursive aspect of responsibility may also help to advance the current debate on corporate responsibility. Cf. for a more detailed history of the concept of responsibility McKeon (1957).
Cf. chapter 5 of this paper for a further justification of this right.
Derivatively, responsibility cannot only be attributed for already-completed acts but also for a realm of actions and tasks in the care of the agent. In this case, the object of responsibility does not simply denote a set of actions but rather an (unspecified) number of tasks that need to be performed. Someone has to take care that something or some actions happen so that he or she can avoid a situation in the future in which he or she would not be able to give good reasons for what he or she will have done or omitted.
This is often the case when responsibility is understood, for example, almost as a synonym for duty, as in the philosophical debate of global justice. Cf. Kuper (2005).
As a further advantage of this discursive conception of responsibility, we see the fact that the metaphysical question of to what extent a responsible subject is supposed to be a free and autonomous author of its actions does not need to be answered a priori. However, this important question falls outside of the scope of our argument here.
In a companion paper we take a careful look at the first two preconditions of individual discursive responsibility, i.e. efficacy and intentionality, and argue that the newly proposed concept of discursive corporate responsibility can be understood as an intermediate position between the collectivist and the strict individualist position. However, that is not the focus of this contribution.
Similarly, for Apel responsibility is one of the three foundational norms, human beings have to presuppose in every speech act. Cf. Apel 1988.
Although this obligation cannot be derived from the moral status of corporations itself – as corporation do not represent moral actors (i.e. persons) in the full sense – it is the consequence of their status as autonomous reason-guided actors constituted by moral persons (i.e. its members).
Accordingly, as the moral status of corporations is derived from the moral status of ist members, corporations have a moral right to justification only if that can be derived from the respective individual rights of its members. When and in what form that is the case would need further examination.
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Buddeberg, E., Hecker, A. Justification Incorporated: a Discursive Approach to Corporate Responsibility. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 21, 465–475 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9921-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9921-7