College of Business Administration

Seminar in Business and the Good Society

Discussion Questions for May 07, 1998:

Business Horizons

Facilitated by: Curtis

1. In many of the articles in the Business Horizons issue there is a struggle to define the corporation as an individual in giving it personhood status. Corporations have individual rights but are not held morally responsible for their actions. "The corporation cannot be kicked, whipped, imprisoned, or hanged by the neck until dead" (Gibson, as cited in Foundational Considerations in the Corporate Social Responsibility Debate, Richard J. Klonski)
How can you get beyond this hurdle in dealing with the moral responsibilities of the corporation? Is it possible? If not should the individual rights be taken away because of this lack of repercussion?

2. In his article entitled Are Corporations Inherently Wicked?, Dunn claims "We are quick to equate legal protection with moral immunity."
In your utopia is the law more closely related to the values that your societal emphasis as right and true? Or is the law more of the minimal standard on how to act?

3. In Carrol's Pyramid of Social Responsibility, it is argued that ethical responsibilities embrace these activities and practices that are expected or prohibited by societal members even though they are not coded into law."
Why is it so hard to incorporate ethical responsibilities into law? How can we expect corporations to hold themselves to a higher code than law? If these responsibilities are that important to us why don't we code them into law and take the responsibility off of the corporation?
From this article it seems that coding philnthropic and ethical responsibilities into law would make sense in creating more socially responsible corporations. Would you agree?

4. In your utopia, do corporations even exists? Why? Why not?

5. In his article entitled Managing as if the Earth Mattered by Post, a situation is recounted in which Mr. Gomez and Mr. Crumhotz are involved in making a decision that will affect the global commons.
Should people be given the oppurtunity to make decisions like this about the global commons? If not how do you go about governing these decisions on a global level?

6. Finally to an article entitled Corporate Social Responsibility : A Critical Approach, in which Freeman and Liedtka take a much more aggressive approach by stating reasons why CSR should be abandoned. Reason number five states "CSR promotes incompetence by leading managers to involve themselves in areas beyond their expertise- that is, repairing societies ills".
Is this true? Who are the experts on repairing societies' ills?

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