Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T16:58:35.366Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

For Better or For Worse: Corporate Responsibility Beyond “Do No Harm”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Florian Wettstein
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Do corporations have a duty to promote just institutions? Agreeing with Hsieh’s recent contribution, this article argues that they do. However, contrary to Hsieh, it holds that such a claim cannot be advanced convincingly only by reference to the negative duty to do no harm. Instead, such a duty necessarily must be grounded in positive obligation. In the search of a foundation for a positive duty for corporations to further just institutions, Stephen Kobrin’s notion of “private political authority” offers a promising connecting point. Political authority implies political responsibility; Political obligation, however, includes more than merely not doing any harm—it is essentially positive obligation. The implications of the new political responsibilities of multinational corporations may even go far beyond the particular duty to promote just institutions; they may be symptomatic for a much more profound shift from an individual to a collective age.

Type
Responses to BEQ’s Special Issue on the Changing Role of Business in Global Society
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 275 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Beck, Ulrich. 1988. Gegengifte. Die organisierte Unverantwortlichkeit. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Derber, Charles. 1998. Corporation Nation: How Corporations Are Taking Over Our Lives and What We Can Do about It. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.Google Scholar
Friedman, Richard B. 1990. “On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy,” in Authority, ed. Raz, Joseph. New York: New York University Press, 56–91.Google Scholar
Held, Virginia. 1991. “Can a Random Collection of Individuals Be Morally Responsible?” in Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics, ed. May, Larry and Hoffman, Stacey. Savage, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 89–100. Originally published in The Journal of Philosophy 68(14) (1970).Google Scholar
Hsieh, Nien-hê. 2004. “The Obligations of Transnational Corporations: Rawlsian Justice and Duty of Assistance,” Business Ethics Quarterly 14: 643–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsieh, Nien-hê. 2009. “Does Global Business Have a Responsibility to Promote Just Institutions?” Business Ethics Quarterly 19: 251–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kobrin, Stephen J. 1997. “The Architecture of Globalization: State Sovereignty in a Networked Global Economy,” in Governments, Globalization and International Business, ed. Dunning, John. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 146–71.Google Scholar
Hsieh, Nien-hê. 1998. “Neo-Medievalism and the Post-modern World Economy,” Journal of International Affairs 51: 361–86.Google Scholar
Hsieh, Nien-hê. 2009. “Private Political Authority and Public Responsibility: Transnational Politics, Transnational Firms and Human Rights,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19: 349–74.Google Scholar
Mathews, Jessica T. 1997. “Power Shift,” Foreign Affairs 76(1): 50–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pogge, Thomas. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1990. “Introduction,” in Authority, ed. Raz, Joseph. New York: New York University Press, 1–19.Google Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel. 2001. Boundaries and Allegiances. Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scherer, Andreas G., and Palazzo, Guido 2007. “Toward a Political Conception of Corporate Responsibility: Business and Society Seen from a Habermasian Perspective,” Academy of Management Review 32: 1096–1120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherer, Andreas G., Palazzo, Guido, and Baumann, Dorothée. 2006. “Global Rules and Private Actors: Toward a New Role of the Transnational Corporation in Global Governance,” Business Ethics Quarterly 16: 505–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherer, Andreas G., Palazzo, Guido, and Matten, Dirk 2009. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Globalization as a Challenge for Business Responsibilities,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19: 327–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulrich, Peter. 2001. Integrative Wirtschaftsethik. Grundlagen einer lebensdienlichen Ökonomie. Wien: Haupt.Google Scholar
Ulrich, Peter. 2008. Integrative Economic Ethics: Foundations of a Civilized Market Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, David. 2005 The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, David. 2008. “Socially Responsible Lobbying,” Harvard Business Review 86(2): 41.Google Scholar
Wettstein, Florian. 2009. Multinational Corporations and Global Justice: Human Rights Obligations of a Quasi-Governmental Institution. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris M. 2004. “Responsibility and Global Labor Justice,” Journal of Political Philosophy 12: 365–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar