creators_name: Jensen, Karsten Klint
type: journalp
datestamp: 2009-08-06
lastmod: 2009-08-20 14:37:13
metadata_visibility: show
title: Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Paradox Reconsidered
ispublished: inpress
subjects: 7consumer
full_text_status: public
keywords: Democracy, Ethical responsibility, Freedom, Free rider

abstract: Is it legitimate for a business to concentrate on profits under respect for the law and ethical custom? On the one hand, there seems to be good reasons for claiming that a corporation has a duty act for the benefit of all its stakeholders. On the other hand, this seems to dissolve the notion of a private business; but then again, a private business would appear to be exempted from ethical responsibility. This is what Kenneth Goodpaster has called the stakeholder paradox: either we have ethics without business or we have business without ethics.

Through a different route, I reach the same solution to this paradox as Goodpaster, namely that a corporation is the instrument of the shareholders only, but that shareholders still have an obligation to act ethically responsible. To this, I add discussion of Friedman’s claim that this responsibility consist in increasing profits. I show that most of his arguments fail. Only pragmatic considerations allow to a certain extent that some of the ethical responsibility is left over to democratic regulation.

date: 2007
date_type: published
publication: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
refereed: yes
citation: Jensen, Karsten Klint (2007) Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Paradox Reconsidered. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. [ In Press , 2007] *
document_url: http://orgprints.org/11344/1/11344.doc