Corporate Executive, Disasters and Moral Responsibility What ...

[renzo156]

Corporate Executive, Disasters and Moral Responsibility
 
  What would be your main and supporting claims on this?

Question 2

The Moral Responsibility of Corporate Executives for Disasters
 
  What would be your main and supporting claims on this?

[brittiany.barnes]

Answer to Question 1

John Bishop is mistaken in claiming that corporate executives can be held morally accountable for disasters they could not reasonably be expected to have prevented.
Bishop holds that, although professional responsibility is to be distinguished from moral responsibility, professional responsibilities may include moral responsibilities. Professional responsibility thus includes moral and non-moral elements. He states that a typical professional responsibility is to be successful in fulfilling the requirements of the job. Thus, a corporate executive has a professional responsibility to avoid disasters. A corporate executive's professional responsibility also includes the moral responsibility of seeking to avoid disasters. He concludes on this basis that, even in cases where a corporate executive could not reasonably be expected to have prevented a disaster, we are justified in holding the executive accountable for the disaster on moral grounds.
Larmer criticizes Bishop's claim on three grounds.

• Any decision to hold corporate executives accountable in such cases is based not on moral considerations, but on purely non-moral aspects of professional responsibility, i.e. any judgement that the executive has failed to meet her professional obligation is grounded not in the fact that she has failed to meet the requirements of morality, but in the non-moral insistence that executives be successful in what they undertake.


• Bishop assumes that because professional responsibility is often understood in a fashion that holds individuals accountable for events over which they had no control, such a concept of professional responsibility is morally acceptable. This ignores the issue of whether we should accept such a notion of professional responsibility. (Note: This criticism links to the following criticism.)


• The notion of professional responsibility is dependent upon the notion of moral responsibility. Professional responsibility ultimately derives from moral responsibility. Thus, any assignment of professional responsibility for a disaster implies that there is at least the possibility of ascribing moral responsibility for its occurrence. (Probably what drives the notion that we may hold professionals accountable without inquiring into moral responsibility is that in complex situations it is very difficult to judge accurately degrees of moral responsibility.

Answer to Question 2

Senior executives are morally responsible for disasters resulting from corporate activities, even in instances where the information needed to prevent the disaster was not passed on by subordinates.
Bishop accepts that corporate officers are not responsible for anticipating acts of God and their immediate consequences, nor for disasters which do not arise as a result of their corporation's actions. He also accepts that a corporate executive is to be held responsible for a disaster if s/he possessed the information necessary to prevent the disaster, but failed to act on it. What he wants to demonstrate is that an executive may be held responsible in instances where the information necessary to prevent the disaster was possessed by someone in the company, but that information failed to reach the executive. Specifically, he wants to show that, even in instances where it is unreasonable to expect corporate executives to have gained access to the necessary information, we are nevertheless justified in holding them responsible on moral considerations. His argument is that:

• Moral responsibility must be distinguished from professional responsibility. One cannot hold a person morally responsible for performing a certain action unless the person could reasonably be expected to perform the action. In the case of professional responsibility there is no such requirement. A person may be held professionally responsible to produce certain results, even though it may be unreasonable to expect that person to produce those results.


• Corporate executives cannot be held morally responsible for failing to obtain information they could not reasonably be expected to obtain, but they can be held professionally responsible for failing to attain such information.


• Part of the professional responsibility of a corporate executive includes the moral responsibility of seeking to avoid disasters. It also includes the professional obligation actually to avoid disasters.


• Therefore, since the professional responsibility of corporate executives includes the moral requirement of seeking to avoid disasters, and since the professional obligation of the corporate executive is actually to succeed in avoiding disasters, we are justified on moral considerations in holding corporate executives responsible for avoiding disasters, even in cases where they could not reasonably be expected to obtain the information necessary to avoid the disaster.