10/21/2017 0 Comments Reading 08: Corporate ConscienceFirst, what exactly is the concept of Corporate Personhood and what are its legal, social, and ethical ramifications?
The concept of Corporate Personhood is that a corporation, a number of person united in one body for a purpose per NPR, has constitutional rights like that of a citizen of the United States. These rights extend to some rights, and not others. The rights it does extend to include the right to free speech, freedom from search and seizure, and more. However, it doesn’t include things like the right to marry or the right to “plead the fifth.” The ramifications of corporate personhood (or the lack thereof) are significant. The extent of corporate personhood may be said to be proportional to a corporation’s power. If they have little rights (or no corporate personhood), then they may be acted unjustly upon by the government. If their rights are too significant, then they may be able to do what they want with little accountability or consequence. In such a situation, we have to worry ethically about purposes for creating corporations, as it would seem to be the case that incorporating is a means of committing crimes and carrying out poor moral endeavors because they wouldn’t be able to be prosecuted appropriately. For the IBM and the Holocaust case study, do you believe IBM was ethical in doing business with Nazi Germany? Should corporations be responsible for immoral or unethical use of their products? Should corporations refrain from doing business with immoral or unethical organizations or persons? I don’t believe that IBM was ethical in doing business with Nazi Germany. Within the historical context of the time, even if the extent of the genocide wasn’t yet clear, it was obvious early on that the Nazi party were some bad dudes hell-bent on screwing over some Jewish people. It seems that there was enough to go on for IBM to understand that their machines would at least be used for heavy oppression of the Jews. I don’t think that companies should be held responsible for immoral or unethical use of their products provided that they legitimately didn’t know that they would be used for that purpose. If it was sold to them without suspicion of such use or if it was taken from an appropriately secured area, then I would say that the company isn’t liable for the activities that occurred. An exception to this would be if a product’s usage was pretty obviously restricted to criminal or immoral usage. As such, I do believe that corporations should refrain from doing business with obviously immoral or unethical organizations or persons. If corporations are afforded the same rights as individual persons, should they also be expected to have the same ethical and moral obligations and responsibilities? Discuss why or why not, particularly in the context of your chosen case study. Definitely. Put simply: I think it’s absurd that a corporation, a bunch of persons, can aid in murdering a population and suffer little consequence relative to what an individual person would if they did the same. If we don’t restrict them and hold them to the same standards as people, incorporating will increasingly be seen as a means to being free from accountability and the responsibility to act ethically.
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AuthorNikolas Dean Brooks is a current Senior at Notre Dame. This blog is for the "Ethics and Professional Issues" course under Dr. Peter Bui. Archives |