Abstract
Organisational Ethics could be more effectively taught if organisational agency could be better distinguished from activity in other group entities, and defended against criticisms. Some criticisms come from the side of what is called “methodological individualism”. These critics argue that, strictly speaking, only individuals really exist and act, and organisations are not individuals, real things, or agents. Other criticisms come from fear of the possible use of alleged “corporate personhood” to argue for a possible radical expansion of corporate rights e.g. to claim a right to vote. Others say that if corporate businesses were persons, and judged as such, they would be sociopaths (Bakan 2004). Large corporate businesses are one kind of organisation, and if organisations were allowed to claim to be full persons, this would mean that the latter criticisms were valid. The proposed account goes between the horns of the above dilemma: impersonal aggregates or full persons. It avoids both the reductive individualism and expansive, full personhood account. It gives grounds for attributing and distributing praise and blame to organisations as whole complex entities, and to their parts. Primarily, responsibility belongs to Board incumbents within them, on the basis of their goals; their direction of the acts of the other main internal role incumbents, managers and staff, and enablers, in the role structure; their own ethical decision methods; the impact of their acts on external stakeholders like end-users, other players in the practice or local community, and on the state. These factors are picked out on the basis of a theory of meaning Aristotle’s theory of analogy of attribution, some architectonic features of his Philosophical Anthropology; and Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics (NAVE). The paper expounds a quasi-person model of organisations, (QPM), previously described in this journal (Ardagh 2011, 2012, 2013). This model identifies functional similarities at three levels, between capacities within natural persons (NPs) on the one hand and the roles/ incumbents within the structure of organisational artificial/quasi-persons (APs on the other). In each entity, we find an architectonic direction, sub-ordered operational entities, and enablers (a DOE structure) in a communicative structure or reporting chain of authority. The common elements between natural persons (NP) and artificial persons (AP) and their ethically relevant attributes are captured in an acronym –GRAEOS. Both persons and organisations have a “top” entity capable of having/choosing worthwhile ethically permissible goals, G; of architectonically directing the use of capacities/repertoires or incumbents in designed architectonic roles, R, within a DOE-type structure, well or badly; of using ethical decision making procedures, E; of execution of good choices for the person or organisation in action, A , with good or bad impacts on others, or with others, O, in the context practice or domain; and of having good relations with the law and the state, S. Application to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, and public sector organisations, is briefly discussed to illustrate the potential to deal with short or long case study narratives.
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Notes
“Towards an Analysis of Corporate Self-Governance for Virtuous Organisations: A Quasi-Personal Alternative to some Anglo-American Pluralist Models” Philosophy of Management , (2011) Vol 10, #3 pp 41-58..This is referred to as Paper 1 in the text; “Presuppositions of Collective Moral Agency: Analogy, Architectonics, Justice, and Casuistry ” Philosophy of Management Vol 11#1(2012) pp5-28. This is referred to as Paper 2 in the text; and “A Critique of Some Anglo-American Models of Collective Moral Agency in Business” Philosophy of Management, Vol 12,(2013) pp5-26. This is referred to as Paper 3.
The methodological individualist position is much more common than the “full person” account of French, Too many philosophers to list have been represented in its defence in edited anthologies and textbooks over the years, such as J. Feinberg, S. Miller, and others cited in Paper 1. See also Stanford Encyclopaedia article “Collective agency”.” The idea of organisations as one of many domains is also set out paper 1,pp48-49..
See Ladd(1970)
POLC stands for: Planning, Organising, Leading, Controlling as the elements of Management. POSDCORB is : Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, C0-ordinating, Reporting, Budgeting.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
See Paper 2’s discussion of justice, pp.13-15.
For the best overview see Black Wave: Legacy of the Exxon Valdez, CBC Films, 2008
The description here of the Exxon Valdez case is not offered as the definitive one, but only a reasonably informative one. The incident, like the Bophal disaster or the Lockheed brake scandal, or the Pinto gas tank case, is capable of being described in great detail at book length and in a few paragraphs in a textbook. In this paper no serious effort is made to establish the whole ultimate truth. The idea is to suggest a tool for analysis which will suggests the features about which one would need to seek the most information.
Oddly, even in the absence of positive international agreed law on many matters, there seems to be less worry about saying:” The US-led coalition was wrong to invade Iraq a second time” using just war discourse, and ascribing immorality and injustice to nation states as such, on the basis of their failing to meet just war ad bellum criteria. The criteria call for a state to have the right intent of restoring justice by proportionate means; have proper authority; no alternative; and good chance of success-all coherently attributable to organisations.
The main argument for the six- feature analysis of action, and three levels of activities was presented in paper 1 on pp ’44-56 Vol.10#3 2011; also paper 2 p 6.
Some other related obstacles which are not addressed here are: the longstanding libertarian conception of minimal business social responsibility based on Milton Freidman’s concept of the free market as ethically constrained only by law and “the rules of the game”; and the radical rejection of the whole notion of corporate personhood as “sociopathic” mentioned on the previous page (in Korten 1996; Bakan 2004); or that it is dangerously expansive.
Politics I,2 (1254b5); Physics II, 2, (194b 5); De Anima II, 8 (420b 18); De Anima III,3, (427b23-28)
In a conversation at a conference in 1967, Foot told the author she was an atheist Thomist, and this explained her then unfamiliar view that virtue ethics must have a non-theological rationale.
Orders of consideration include: imperative or descriptive/indicative; theoretical or practical; intention or execution.
See Polanyi (1968) Schumacher (1977)
This is a hierarchy of choice-worthiness with respect to wellbeing. One will sacrifice a gangrene infected toe to preserve overall voluntary mobility; some degree of mobility to preserve sense perception and consciousness. It is not a moral ranking, but good and bad in this sense are the objects of moral judgment.
Directive immanent acts of intellect are inner, not overt or public; and “intransitive” in not acting on a pre-existing externally observable patient, as in act-potency-act cases, but rather are said to be act-to-act operations. Intellect seeing a point or seeing a bird through eyes does not change the world. Directive immanent acts of intellect forming intentions can still proceed on to a commanded overt act, but it need not become transitive. Searle’s speech act theory (1984:1992; 2004) discussions of the indispensable notion of the self and intentional direction of fit and causation; Kenny’s account of will (1974) and Haldane’s “analytic Thomism” (2010) all closely parallel Aristotle and Aquinas’s account of the relation of intellect and will to other sensory capacities and responses to other people’s acts.
The architectonic relation of anthropology, ethics, politics, and economics was explained in Paper 2 pp 7- 13 and pp18-23 and summarised in Table A, p 10 and Table B, p 21.
This is incompatible with hard determinist physical reductionism or reductive materialism. Against such a view see Ardagh (2014).
Walsh (1997). We need not accept the universal doctrine of scala naturae. We can retain some of its notions for understanding hierarchical relations in humans and human society.
J. Dine (1990); see also Paper 2,pp19-20
On the concept of justice assumed, defined in terms of positive and negative freedom and equality, desert, need-satisfaction and reciprocity, see paper 2, (2012) pp.13-15: also section C) below.
On immanent see Nugent (1963)
The power of the GREAOS acronym is not unlimited as a practical tool; and the precise extent of NP/AP overlap is still unclear. Problems in the theory of action or ethics pertaining to NPs, such as how much freedom of choice is constrained by ethics, whether charity is morally required, with its obligations to strangers, enemies, or the wicked, distinguishing results from consequences, (unforeseen, foreseen, foreseeable and so on), all will still arise in some transposed form for artificial persons, AP e.g. extent of directors’ duties of informing themselves or the scope and motive of corporate social responsibility. But this only confirms the power of the analogy.
See paper 1 pp 50-51 for table summarising the analogy.
Unlike the individual, organisations are inescapably overt and social, and act in a domain of their own. They cannot literally enter the private home, and cannot do many things like feel pain. Individuals cannot do some things which organisations can do, e.g. last 400 years. But like the individual, organisations and the states are ideally ethical and just if they can meet or fulfil the ideal description of justice below. The organisational domain is sector-neutral as between NGOs, businesses, or state bureaucracies.
See Paper 2, 2012, pp7-10
The differences need a whole paper, but Finnis’s basic goods are self-evident, stand alone, and not fundamental qua distinctive goods of capacity.
For example, questions whether we want equality of respect, income/wages, opportunity, reward for desert, or need-satisfaction suggest different answers.
See Nussbaum and Sen (1996)
On the differences between moral modalities like ethical prohibition, permission, recommendation, requirement /obligation, supererogatory ethical behaviour see Chisholm and Urmson discussed in paper 2,pp.15 ff.
Outlined in Paper2, p 15-18;pp 24-28.
The telos of business is discussed in paper 2,p 21. Domains are arenas of activity like the private/personal, family/domestic, organisational/work, public/civic, and natural environments.
On the quasi-personal model, employees are parts of the firm as agent, not just internal stakeholders, but they remain stakeholders.
See Toni Erskine ((2003) As Plato observes somewhere, a very bad X can fail to exist as an X.
As table B p 21, paper 2 suggested, profit can mean non-financial benefit as in : What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his own soul?
Businesses making chemical weapons or child pornography might fail the ethics test at step G. Also, companies making cigarettes and asbestos products perhaps.
as set out in Table B paper 2 p21
Businesses making chemical or nuclear weapons or child pornography might fail the ethics test at step G. Also, companies making cigarettes and asbestos products perhaps?
See paper 2, 2012, appendix 1, pp24-25.
See paper 2,pp13-15
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Ardagh, D. Towards An Acronym for Organisational Ethics: Using a Quasi-person Model to Locate Responsible Agents in Collective Groups. Philosophy of Management 16, 137–160 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-016-0046-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-016-0046-6