Within business ethics, there is a longstanding debate concerning Corporate Moral Responsibility, the question of whether corporations themselves are the kinds of things that can be responsible for wrongdoing. Proponents of this view hope to vindicate our sense that firms are the appropriate targets of blame and censure. However, proponents have failed to decisively make their case, and they have also failed to come to terms with the magnitude of corporate wrongdoing. Even if firms are possibly responsible, this is far short of showing that corporations have the sensitivity, incentives, position, to be anything but accidental agents for good, let along equal members of the moral community.
As corporations are some of the most significant actors in modern society, this presents a real problem. If it is right to think that corporations have genuine obligations, then a sincere effort must be made to come to terms with why they fail to meet them as well as how to train firms to behave morally in the future. In short, corporations need a moral education. Given this, CMP is broken into three objectives:
- It will consider whether corporations are capable of being morally responsible for their actions.
- It will uncover the challenges to corporate moral conduct.
- It will determine whether and how to facilitate corporate moral progress.
CMP will meet these objectives with resources far outside of business ethics. Defending corporate moral agency involves using cutting-edge work within metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. Understanding corporate wrongdoing requires reconceiving of how corporations make moral decisions and are motivated to act on them, as well as the nature of their privilege in society. And determining how to improve firms morally requires integrating work on moral education and moral progress with management disciplines such as strategic management. By doing all of this, CMP will pursue concrete ways to improve firms for good.
