Organizational and Moral Portraits of Responsibility

Abstract

This article aims to argue in favour of two different kinds of responsibility: moral and organizational. I present the notion of moral responsibility and, specifically, moral accountability, which stands at the centre of the later discussion. I address Coleen Macnamara’s view of accountability, a model of enforcement involved in setting demands and sanctions. Then I account for some cases of morally impaired persons’ failure to respond adequately to moral demands, in contrast to their capacity to respond effectively to organizational demands. I take the latter findings to show that there are two distinct kinds of accountability, moral and organizational. While moral accountability is connected to the arousal of emotions, I claim that organizational accountability is related to inner-organizational reactive procedures associated with employment benefits (such as promotion and other employment rewards) or sanctions. However, this can be distant from emotions.