Question

what is the difference between "personal " duty and "corporate " duty. do corporations have the same "values " as people?

Answer 1

1) Despite self-serving and self-justifying claims to the contrary, the concepts of personal and corporate responsibility are real and important. While the application of ethical principles may be contextual (e.g., the “situation” is relevant to what is fair or respectful or how to demonstrate responsibility or caring), the ethical principles themselves are not. An ethical person, a person of good character, demonstrates integrity, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and good citizenship in all contexts. Greed is not good.
The poster above articulates the moral truth:ETHICS IS A GROUND A RULE, NOT AN OPTION. The crucial question is not whether an act is permissible, but IS IT PROPER? Not whether it is legal, but IS IT RIGHT? People of character know the difference between what they have a right to do and what is right to do; they often do more than what’s required and less than what’s allowed.Yet we hear in business, politics and sports the excuse: “EverythingI did was legal. Blame the law, not me.” From an ethical perspective, this claim is a nonstarter.The law tells us what is prohibited or required. It doesn’t tell us what is right and proper. Those are moral questions we are all accountable to ask and answer. Imagine a society where everyone did everything they had a right to do and only what they were required to do. There would be no kindness, generosity, charity or respect. There would be no personal restraint on the use of power or authority. Ultimately, to assure a civil society we would need volumes and volumes of laws.Some seem to believe that when we are engaged in commerce, the pursuit of profit is the only pertinent consideration, that the only moral principle in business is the obligation to ourselves and family, our business and our employees is to maximize financial gain. This principle justifies treating what some call civic responsibilities as burdens to be avoided and minimized to the greatest extent possible.

Personal and Corporate Responsibility

And though there are plenty of examples of this cynical and essentially selfish perspective, most recently in the flagrant illegal and immoral moral actions at Volkswagen and Wells Fargo, no public company today overtly espouses and most do not pursue a profit only perspective. Instead, it is widely accepted that businesses have moral duties to a wide range of stakeholders including consumers, vendors and the general public.This has given rise to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) defined succintly in Wikipedia as:“a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. CSR policy functions as a self-regulatory mechanism whereby a business monitors and ensures its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards and national or international norms. With some models, a firm’s implementation of CSR goes beyond compliance and engages in “actions that appear to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm and that which is required by law.”For some, the concept is simply a sincerely noble and uplifting way to look at a business enterprise, for others, it is just a strategy to better achieve profitability by increasing trust and loyalty and avoiding resource draining and reputation-damaging lawsuits and scandals.Regardless of the motive, anyone who claims a fiduciary obligation to use every possible means to maximize profits without regard for the collateral consequences is adhering to a primitive and discredited theory masking socially irresponsible selfishness.There is both a personal and corporate responsibility to do ones share, to pay ones share and to moderate selfishness.

2) Today, however, the Supreme Court endorsed corporate person hood — holding that business firms have rights to religious freedom under federal law.Not only do corporations have rights, their rights are stronger than yours.The Constitutional Rights of Corporations. In various cases, the Supreme Court has granted corporations some of the same Constitutional rights as citizens. Explicitly, they are protected by the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments.Corporations are not without some constitutional protection in an investigation. The Fourth Amendment, which recognizes “the right of the people” to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” protects the privacy of a business to the same extent as an individual.The main target of the corporations-are-not-people crowd is the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling striking down limits on independent corporate spending in elections. After that case, groups sprang up to fight corporate personhood. Others rebranded themselves by newly taking aim at it. But they do not limit themselves to attacking the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. Most groups make a broader attack on corporations being able to assert any First Amendment speech rights at all; and some have called for disabusing all corporations or businesses of any constitutional right.Common Cause, for example, uses Robert Reich to tout its support for “a constitutional amendment declaring that ‘Only People are People’ and that only people should have free speech rights protected by the Constitution.” Public Citizen, the liberal litigation group founded by Ralph Nader, argues that “rights protected by the Constitution were intended for natural people.” Free Speech for People, one of the groups most influential in the anti-personhood movement, is pushing a “People’s Rights Amendment.” A version has already been sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Jon Tester of Montana and in the House by Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. It would declare that “the rights protected by this Constitution” are “the rights of natural persons.” A range of liberal groups have signed on to the anti-personhood project—MoveOn, Sierra Club and NAACP chapters, and steelworker and SEIU locals. By their count, sixteen states and nearly 600 localities have endorsed some kind of anti-personhood amendment. Even in a moment when the progressive left seems otherwise to be fighting rearguard actions, this movement has genuine energy.