journal article
Do Businesses Have Moral Obligations beyond What the Law Requires?Journal of Business Ethics
Vol. 15, No. 4 (Apr., 1996)
, pp. 457-468 (12 pages)
Published By: Springer
//www.jstor.org/stable/25072768
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Journal Information
The Journal of Business Ethics publishes original articles from a wide variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives concerning ethical issues related to business. Since its initiation in 1980, the editors have encouraged the broadest possible scope. The term 'business' is understood in a wide sense to include all systems involved in the exchange of goods and services, while 'ethics' is circumscribed as all human action aimed at securing a good life. Systems of production, consumption, marketing, advertising, social and economic accounting, labour relations, public relations and organisational behaviour are analysed from a moral viewpoint. The style and level of dialogue involve all who are interested in business ethics – the business community, universities, government agencies and consumer groups. Speculative philosophy as well as reports of empirical research are welcomed. In order to promote a dialogue between the various interested groups as much as possible, papers are presented in a style relatively free of specialist jargon.
Publisher Information
Springer is one of the leading international scientific publishing companies, publishing over 1,200 journals and more than 3,000 new books annually, covering a wide range of subjects including biomedicine and the life sciences, clinical medicine, physics, engineering, mathematics, computer sciences, and economics.
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Journal of Business Ethics © 1996
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A moral agent is a person who has the ability to discern right from wrong and to be held accountable for his or her own actions. Moral agents have a moral responsibility not to cause unjustified harm.
Traditionally, moral agency is assigned only to those who can be held responsible for their actions. Children, and adults with certain mental disabilities, may have little or no capacity to be moral agents. Adults with full mental capacity relinquish their moral agency only in extreme situations, like being held hostage.
By expecting people to act as moral agents, we hold people accountable for the harm they cause others.
So, do corporations have moral agency? As artificial intelligence develops, will robots have moral agency? And what about socially intelligent non-human animals such as dolphins and elephants?
Indeed, future philosophers and legal scholars will need to consider moral agency as it applies to these situations and others.