Manuel Velasquez : Responsibility for Corporate Misconduct
Manuel Velasquez, the Charles J. Dirksen Professor of Management, weighed in on a Venitism blog post which questioned where blame should lie in instances of corporate misconduct. The piece pointed out the dangers of blaming a firm, which hurts innocent people and allows those responsible for a wrongdoing to walk away scot-free; on the other hand, individuals cannot always be blamed in all cases. Ultimately, the author says, a medium must be reached.
An excerpt from the article:
In her chapter in our book, Amy Sepinwall, a professor at the Wharton School, suggests that corporations themselves have no capacity for emotion or responsiveness to moral reasoning are therefore unable to experience guilt, and, as it makes sense only to blame those who can experience guilt, corporations do not qualify for moral agency. In other words, it is the individuals inside the corporation, not the corporation itself, who should take responsibility for actions taken in the name of a firm. This is supported by arguments put forward by David Rönnegard, a visiting scholar at INSEAD, and Manuel Velasquez, a professor of management at Santa Clara University, who insist that individual members of corporations are “autonomous and free.” Company-level policies and procedures may influence people in firms, but it is individuals who are ultimately responsible for their decisions and actions.