Corporate Moral Responsibility Research Articles

Corporate Weakness of Will

AbstractProponents of corporate moral responsibility take certain corporations to be capable of being responsible in ways that do not reduce to the responsibility of their members. If correct, one follow-up question concerns what leads corporations to fail to meet their obligations. We often fail morally when we know what we should do and yet fail to do it, perhaps out of incontinence, akrasia, or weakness of will. However, this kind of failure is much less discussed in the corporate case. And, where it is discussed, the view is that corporations are less prone to weakness. Here, I argue that proponents of corporate responsibility should say that corporations can and often do instantiate weakness of the will, and that this is important to recognize. Weakness of the will requires certain capacities that these proponents typically take corporations to have. And once this is appreciated, we can assess how corporate weakness might proceed differently than how it does for individuals. We can also begin a conversation about how best to meet the distinctive challenges for recognizing and correcting corporate weakness, using a number of resources from management scholarship.

Corporate moral responsibility for corporate governance: Indian perspective

Corporate moral responsibility for corporate governance: Indian perspective

I can Talk: Corporate Moral Responsibility, Word-of-Mouth, and Shared Values

This study investigated how inconsistencies between corporate moral responsibility (CMR) messages and CMR actions undertaken by corporations impact consumers’ positive and negative word-of-mouth (PWOM and NWOM) intentions using the expectancy violation theory. It also investigated the moderation effect of different types of CMR issues and consumers’ shared values on the relation. Analyses of data collected from 1296 U.S. consumers revealed that participants’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions, both positive and negative, were impacted by inconsistencies between CMR initiatives and actions. When inconsistency was absent, highest PWOM intention was generated for issues related to workers and least for shareholders. Shared values significantly moderated the relation as well. When CMR message action was consistent, PWOM intention was higher for participants with high shared value (vs. low shared value). These findings add knowledge to the literature of CMR and guide corporate CMR-related communications.

Communicating Moral Responsibility: Stakeholder Capitalism, Types, and Perceptions

With stakeholder capitalism being the new mantra for corporate moral responsibility, the question of how corporations’ moral commitments inconsistent with their executions would variably influence internal and external stakeholders and for different types of stakeholder capitalism issues remains unanswered. Using a 2 (inconsistency: present/absent) × 2 (stakeholder: internal/external) × 5 (stakeholder-capitalism issues: worker/environment/shareholder/customer/community) between-subjects experiment, this study investigated the variable impact on stakeholders’ corporate hypocrisy perceptions. With data collected from 1296 U.S. stakeholders, ANOVA results revealed that corporate moral responsibility messages-action inconsistency generates hypocrisy among stakeholders such that external stakeholders, namely consumers, experienced higher hypocrisy than internal ones, namely employees. The context of corporate moral responsibility (i.e., the types of stakeholder-capitalism issues) did not moderate resulting perceptions, but these issues directly impacted hypocrisy perceptions. These perceptions varied between external and internal stakeholders for different issues; the highest hypocrisy was recorded for shareholders and workers issues. Thus, the focus of this research was foregrounded on corporations’ moral responsibilities perceived as inconsistent with their execution to present a comparative analysis of different groups of stakeholders’ responses and devise effective solutions.

Corporate Moral Credit

When do companies deserve moral credit for doing what is right? This question concerns the positive side of corporate moral responsibility, the negative side of which is the more commonly discussed issue of when companies are blameworthy for doing what is wrong. I offer a broadly functionalist account of how companies can act from morally creditworthy motives, which defuses the following Strawsonian challenge to the claim that they can: morally creditworthy motivation involves being guided by attitudes of “goodwill” for others, and these attitudes involve affect and/or phenomenal consciousness, which corporate agents cannot maintain. In response, I show that what matters about being guided by attitudes of goodwill is being directly concerned for others in one’s practical deliberation. Companies can achieve this direct concern through their decision-making procedures without affect or phenomenal consciousness. I also explore how a company’s moral creditworthiness, or lack thereof, should shape stakeholders’ relationship with it.

Realistic skin vs. flawless skin: explicating the appeal of retouch-free advertising among Chinese women

Using retouched images of models in advertisements to embody idealized beauty prototypes (e.g., flawless skin) in various cultures has been a prevalent yet controversial practice. Guided by the overarching corporate moral responsibility framework, this study conducted two online experiments to assess the effects of ad retouching and disclaimers on advertising effectiveness. In Study 1, a 2 (model skin type: realistic skin vs. flawless skin) x 2 (retouch-free disclaimer: present vs. absent) between-subjects online experiment was conducted among Chinese female participants. The results revealed that Chinese female consumers’ preference for flawless skin still drives purchase intentions toward a skincare brand. However, when an ad employed a retouch-free disclaimer, participants who saw an ad depicting a model with realistic skin indicated higher ad honesty than those who saw an ad depicting a model with flawless skin. Consumers’ perceived ad honesty mediated the interaction effect between the model skin type and disclaimer on purchase intentions. In Study 2, we found a similar interaction effect and moderated mediation effects. Such that, when a retouch-free disclaimer was present, participants rated an ad featuring realistic skin to have significantly higher ad honesty than an ad featuring flawless skin, which in turn, led to higher purchase intentions. The findings provide theoretical and practical insights into how brands can better appeal to contemporary Chinese female consumers.

Catholic Social Teaching, Human Dignity, and the Common Good: Exploring the Major Factors Affecting Big Pharma’s Corporate Moral Responsibility During COVID-19

Catholic Social Teaching, Human Dignity, and the Common Good: Exploring the Major Factors Affecting Big Pharma’s Corporate Moral Responsibility During COVID-19

Corporate Moral Responsibility for Corporate Governance: Indian Perspective

Corporate Moral Responsibility for Corporate Governance: Indian Perspective

Catholic Social Teaching, Human Dignity, and the Common Good

This article explores the major factors that negatively affect the corporate moral responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry to promote human dignity and the common good during COVID-19 applying the ethical lens of Catholic social teaching and structural analysis of sociology. Utilizing textual data from published peer-reviewed articles, books, and media and church documents, it argues that the financialization of Big Pharma and the weakening of state regulation due to conflict of interests and unethical campaign contributions by the pharmaceutical industry to American legislators have resulted in corporate moral irresponsibility and the weakening of state regulation against profiteering in the sale of anti-COVID medicines and vaccines that can harm human dignity and the common good. It provides some recommendations on how to strengthen the state and non-state regulatory systems to protect human dignity and the common good during COVID-19.

Strategi Pengelolaan Lingkungan Melalui Tindakan Kolektif dalam Transformasi Program Inovasi Sosial “Pertamina Better” ke Yuk Ikam Wan Kawal Umpat Kolaborasi Nyata (Yuk Kawal IKN) oleh Pertamina Patra Niaga DPPU Sepinggan Group

The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is one of the concepts implemented to realize good corporate governance, where the company not only thinks about the company's interests in achieving financial benefits but also participates in ensuring the sustainability of social and environmental aspects in the area around the company's operations. This CSR concept emerged as a form of corporate moral responsibility to the community and the sustainability of the surrounding environment. Furthermore, what underlies this concept is a company's production activities that directly or indirectly affect social, economic, and environmental changes in the area around the company. Pertamina Patra Niaga DPPU Sepinggan Group, one of the companies that have implemented the CSR concept for a long time, also seeks to realize this through various social innovation programs, one of which is the Pertamina Better Program. For this reason, this article seeks to investigate the extent of the environmental management strategy carried out by Pertamina Patraniaga DPPU Sepinggan through its social innovation program. The author collects data through field observations, interviews, and documentation. The data analysis used is interactive. As a result, the Pertamina Better Program, a community empowerment program in the environmental field, can contribute to environmental sustainability by taking collective action involving various stakeholders. Each stakeholder of this program contributes not only in the form of funds but also ideas, thoughts, time, and energy. The Pertamina Better program can run better when each stakeholder contributes to the program. This contribution has become a collective action for the Pertamina Better program.

Corporate Moral Responsibility, Distributive Justice, the Common Good, and Catholic Social Teaching: The Case of Gilead Sciences and Remdesivir.

Applying the moral principles of Catholic social teaching’s (CST) on capitalism, distributive justice, private ownership, the common good, and the role of the state in the economy as the overall theoretical framework and utilizing secondary data, media reports, and scientific literature, this article explores the corporate moral responsibility of the top drug makers in the ownership and pricing of their essential medicines and COVID-19 vaccines. Specifically, it presents the case of the Gilead Sciences’ business strategies and overpricing of Remdesivir drug to illustrate how predatory capitalism undermines the moral responsibility of drug makers and CST’s moral principle on the common good in today’s pandemic. Distributive justice requires that the publicly funded and developed medicines and vaccines should be priced and distributed fairly to promote the common good and prevent the public from “paying twice” for these essential medicines. Given the public character of these medicines and the demands of social justice, the price of Remdesivir and other essential medicines of Gilead Sciences and Big Pharma for COVID-19 could have been lower than what was officially announced. Ultimately, these medicines could have been made global public health goods in accordance with CST’s doctrines on distributive justice, the common good, and the social dimension of private ownership.

Study on the Construction of Enterprise Culture based on Enterprise Moral Responsibility

Corporate culture is the key to the survival and development of enterprises. Corporate moral responsibility is an important part of the construction of corporate culture, a core element of the sustainable development of an enterprise, and a key component of the core values of an enterprise. To strengthen the construction of corporate culture with corporate moral responsibility as its content is the inevitable way for the development of modern enterprises.

Toward a circular economy: Understanding consumers' moral stance on corporations' and individuals' responsibilities in creating a circular fashion economy

AbstractFor long, the fashion industry has adopted the linear economy's “take‐make‐use‐throwaway” system, an approach that has adverse side effects, such as economic loss, environmental destruction, and threats to human society. To address these adverse consequences from fashion's linear system, governments and business leaders are advocating the societal need for a shift from the linear economy to the circular economy, which endorses the “take‐make‐use‐reuse” system. Despite the growing demand for changing to a circular economy in the fashion business (circular fashion [CF]), two critical issues remain understudied in the current literature. First, although academic research on CF has increased in the past 5 years, the lack of scalable CF research has hindered the industry's ability to increase its adoption of a truly circular economy. Second, although the fashion industry faces complex challenges in instituting CF in that just one supply chain member's (a fashion retailer's) commitment is not sufficient to create a truly CF without the involvement of others (consumers), there is yet no empirical research that investigates whether consumers morally support the idea of a CF and feel obliged to take part in fashion businesses' CF offerings. Thus, we investigate whether and how morally grounded traits—corporate moral responsibility (H1+), consumer moral responsibility (H2+), their interaction effect (H3), and corporate hypocrisy (H4−)—influence consumers' attitudes and engagement (H5+) toward fashion corporations' CF offerings. Our empirical evidence, using a U.S. consumer survey dataset of 351 responses, shows that all of these hypotheses are supported. The results provide important theoretical and managerial implications.

Chinese textile and apparel manufacturers' moral duty positions, goals and structures toward sustainability

PurposeUsing the moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability (MRCS) framework , the study examined Chinese textile and apparel (T&A) manufacturers' moral duty positions, goals and structures toward sustainability, with a goal of creating a spectrum of corporate sustainability (CS) performance.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey method was employed to investigate participants' views on their companies' perceptions, goals and structures toward each of the listed sustainability-related activities.FindingsThe results showed that all participants expressed their companies have moral responsibilities toward some aspects of sustainability. Particularly, they viewed that their companies emphasize labor relations (LR) and righteous operation (RO) activities over environmental protection (EP) or public welfare involvement (PW) activities when fulfilling their sustainability responsibilities. After analyzing each response by following MRCS, 41 companies were categorized as occasionally sustainability corporations. The remaining 259 responses were categorized as consistently sustainability corporations in selective areas.Originality/valueThe study for the first time revealed the sustainability-related activities that most respondents in Chinese T&A manufacturing industry perceived as perfect or imperfect duties. Findings add knowledge to the area of corporate moral responsibility toward sustainability and show a spectrum of Chinese textile and apparel manufacturers' sustainability performance, empirically supporting MRCS.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY MANUFACTURING COMPANY IN INDONESIA

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a form of corporate moral responsibility to its stakeholders. The impact of the company’s operational results must be accountable as a form of social responsibility to the stakeholders. The implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility done by the company well provides benefits in increasing the value of the company in the eyes of investors which can also affect the company’s financial performance. This research was conducted to determine and explain the effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on the value of the company and the company’s financial performance and to know and explain the influence of the company’s value on the company’s financial performance. This study uses quantitative research types, namely explanatory research with approval, where this research was conducted on cement manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2018. The research sample was obtained using a purposive sample method so as many as 6 sample units were obtained and using panel data there were 30 units of analysis. The data analysis technique used in this study is PLS (Partial Least Square) using SmartPLS. The results of this study indicate that Corporate Social Responsibility has a significant and positive effect on firm value, Corporate Social Responsibility has an insignificant and negative effect on Financial Performance, and Corporate Value has an insignificant and positive effect on Financial Performance.

Theorizing Digital Distraction

This commentary contributes to philosophical reflection on the growing challenge of digital distraction and the value of attention in the digital age. It clarifies the nature of the problem in conceptual and historical terms; analyzes “freedom of attention” as an organizing ideal for moral and political theorizing; considers some constraints of political morality on coercive state action to bolster users’ attentional resources; comments on corporate moral responsibility; and touches on some reform ideas. In particular, the commentary develops a response to an anti-paternalistic line of argument rooted in Mill’s Harm Principle that would oppose state regulation on the grounds that securing attentional capacities is a matter of personal responsibility alone. The commentary engages throughout with James Williams’s recent work on the attention economy by identifying areas of agreement and difference.

CSR - the Cuckoo’s Egg in the Business Ethics Nest

Corporate/collective moral responsibility is a thorny topic in business ethics and this paper argues that this is due a number of unacknowledged and connected epistemic issues. Firstly, CSR, Corporate Citizenship and many other research streams that are based on the assumption of collective and/or corporate moral responsibility are not compatible with Kantian ethics, consequentialism, or virtue ethics because corporate/collective responsibility violates the axioms and central hypotheses of these research programmes. Secondly, in the absence of a sound theoretical moral philosophical foundation, business ethicists have based their ideas on legal and political epistemologies, yet still claim to be ethics-based. Thirdly, research is often driven by an intention to prove that a specific social goal is right, not by open and critical inquiry. Finally, today, corporate/collective moral responsibility is widely accepted as the Truth as most researchers are unaware of any issues because they are untrained in philosophy. The paper identifies the confusion about the epistemic basis as a major impediment for delivering a thick concept of the role of corporations as moral agents. Thus, the paper does not argue against corporate or collective agency as such, but points out an obvious but forgotten paradox: corporate and collective personhood cannot, at the moment at least, be epistemologically grounded in the field in which business ethics claims to operate: moral philosophy.

Responsibility Unincorporated: Corporate Agency and Moral Responsibility

Responsibility Unincorporated: Corporate Agency and Moral Responsibility

Do We Believe in Consequences? Revisiting the “Incoherence Objection” to Penal Substitution

Summary Among recent assessments of penal substitutionary accounts of atonement one significant critique is Mark Murphy’s “incoherence objection.” In this essay I express general agreement with Murphy’s critique of penal substitution, yet I suggest that there is a way to reconceive the doctrine of atonement such that it is conceptually coherent, is commensurate with scripture, and is a version of penal substitution. I call this view: The Penal-Consequence View of Atonement. This is a view of atonement that makes use of a distinction between what I call “penal consequences” and “mere consequences.” The view is defended with special reference to the topics of corporate moral responsibility and union with Christ.

Individual Actions and Corporate Moral Responsibility: A (Reconstituted) Kantian Approach

This paper examines the resources of Kantian ethics to establish corporate moral responsibility. I defend Matthew Altman’s claim that Kantian ethics cannot hold corporations morally responsible for corporate malfeasance. Rather than following Altman in interpreting this inability as a reason not to use Kantian ethics, however, I argue that the Kantian framework is correct: business ethicists should not seek to hold corporations morally responsible. Instead, they should use Kantian (and/or other ethical-theoretical) resources to criticize the actions of individual businesspeople. I set forth a model for decomposing business actions into their individual parts and reconstituting them in a context-specific “maxim” that Kantian ethics can evaluate. The reconstituted form of Kantian ethics that I defend is better able to manage decision-making complexity than traditional interpretations. To demonstrate the usefulness of my approach, I apply it to the recent Wells Fargo bogus-accounts scandal.