Corporate Citizens and Morality – Could Such a Thing Be?
At the risk of sounding like the bleeding-heart that I have been accused of being, I believe in morality. Morality is an illusive concept, but it is one of those things that makes us unique as a species. We, as human beings, feel compelled to help our neighbors.
Rationally, this does not make sense. We could just say, “forget the rest” and live for our own gain. While some people do just that, the rest of us are left with these odd feelings of empathy, guilt, responsibility and ultimately, morality. I believe that corporations should operate under this same code.
This idea is reportedly shared by some corporate figures. Donald MacNaughton, Ex-Chief of Prudential Life, once said“[We] believe that, as a corporate citizen, we have the same responsibility to contribute to the welfare of the community as does any leading as does any leading citizen”. Corporate Citizenship, besides being the namesake of the company for whose blog I am writing, is an interesting concept. Many critics of corporate responsibility do not believe that a company can be moral or immoral, due to the fact that a corporation is not actually a person or citizen, but rather a bundle of contracts. Let’s get one thing clear, we all recognize that a corporation is not a person; however, a company is run by people, employs people, serves and benefits from people and exists in the same society as people who share some moral code. Therefore, the people who run any ‘corporate citizen’ should have some kind of moral obligation.
As citizens, we live in a world guided by many forces, among the strongest are law and morality. While most would agree that regulations and laws are needed to govern corporate behavior, ideally these should be safety net, similar to the laws that govern conduct in our society. Laws against murder exist because it is universally accepted on a moral level that we should not kill our neighbors (and not just because it is illegal).
Psychologist Piget, who studied how children developed morality, would call this “Autonomous Morality.” We recognize that rules are made for a reason and are moved by empathy to cooperate with others and obey. This is a higher stage of moral development. The lower form of development is called ‘Heteronymous Morality’, best described as the ‘I’m fine so long as I don’t get caught’ mentality. If we all lived under the later moral code, the world would be a far darker place.
In today’s world, I strongly believe that corporations should be held to the standard of Autonomous Morality and should not simply slide by with Heteronymous Morality. As James J. Brummer once said, “Decision-making does not cease to be in the moral arena just because some one is dressed in a three-piece suite…” Regulations should be there to catch companies who fail at their moral obligations, but companies should rise above simply not breaking the rules.